The remnant of Judah

Miika Tucker in TC raises a study of that infamous LXX/MT dispute over Jeremiah, here what is 40-44 in MT. Mainly this is in dialogue with Hermann-Josef Stipp "Empty Land" (2021), who'd covered MT 37-43 as a Narrative of Judah’s Downfall in Palestine (JDP).

Tucker figures that before we allow higher critics like Stipp to gaily trample the clover, we should be restoring the earliest attainable Hebrew. Everyone but the most cretinous fundamentalist knows that the ancient Jews messed up this particular text. (They did it to 2 Reigns too.) But before we play the drunken Klingon and tout the "original Greek", the Graecophones had their own agendae with the text. This assigns to Tucker some work to do.

The top tier - the very Masoretic - relays a few variants against the Targum, a few more against the Vulgate, and the most against Peshitta. MT appears a "Byzantine" text in 41:10 and 42:2, incorporating a doublet which came from variant readings in the proto-MT(s); probably Hebrew but possibly some ancient Aramaic targum or Hebrew pesher.

MT 42:12 is more deliberate. The proto-MT had Jeremiah (perhaps through Baruch) quote the Lord: And I will grant you mercy, and I will have mercy on you and return you to your land. MT instead has the Lord promise this through Nabuchadrezzar. Tucker thinks the Hebrew behind Peshitta was using infinitive constructions, which are good CBH, but archaic for Qumran-era Hebrew (we see similar loss of infinitive in modern Greek against the remoter dialects, like Pontic). That would make that Hebrew, likewise CBH, to be taken seriously. The MT nod to Nabuchadrezzar would reflect a pro-'Iraq tendency, (I think) for Roman times maybe Trajan's.

Before proto-MT, MT 37-44 would be 44–51. This, Tucker's third chapter, is the strongest in my view. It follows a section to distinguish the synopsis "remnant" from the proto-MT's understanding thereof.

For Jeremiah himself, Nabuchadrezzar wasn't all bad, either; recall that it all went wrong when the Judaeans resisted him in the first place. In the 40/47 synopsis, Gedaliah is a benevolent governor for the imperium, appointing men and women. MT has men and "poor and children(!)"; LXX, men and "their wives". Tucker notes the MT parallels children in MT 43:6 as exiles; "poor" agree with plusses in MT 39:10 and 52:16 also not in Greek. In MT 40 this would simply be a harmony which the (proto-)MT made up. The idea was to paint Gedaliah as a gatherer of all the exiles, beyond being a fair governor for the (home) "remnant". Proto-MT has a theology of remnant-in-exile, which we'll be seeing shared in Leontopolis and Qumran. The remnant for the Jeremiah synopsis is to follow the prophet.

Because Gedaliah's Eden could not last. One Ishmael - who might have been a Davidide - murdered the man, synopsis 41/48, with a general massacre in Mizpah. In Greek, Ishmael butchered "everybody", which he could do in Greek where the relevant population are direct male and female agents of Nabuchadrezzar. Proto-MT here restricts the killing to "soldiers". Tucker argues that this had to happen because proto-MT had earlier stuffed Mizpah with total innocents. Even in Greek, Ishmael orders survivors (including Jeremiah and Baruch, not deemed collaborators) out of Mizpah, toward the Jordan and old Ammon. Then one Johanan chases Ishmael's caravan. In Greek, they "turn to" Johanan; in proto-MT, they rejoice. For Tucker, the MT is "indicting" the people for rebelling against Ishmael. MT is generally pro-David.

Ishmael then leaves his refugees, or hostages, on the west-bank as he slips across the river into Ammon.

Chapter 44/51, which Stipp has dismissed as a Deuteronomic homily, teleports the prophet into Egypt. This centres a Deuteronomic speech from Jeremiah. The prophet here addresses all the Judaeans (now) in Misraym, which indeed includes Manuf / Memphis. The speech indicts the Judaean kingdom for its disobedience, and promises more chastisement in their place of supposed refuge. MT adds the present generation, and extends the smiting to Jews worldwide. Tucker surmises that the proto-MT does not want the remnant to be sojourning in - anywhere.

Tucker thus disagrees with Stipp on the finer meaning of "remnant" for that one's projected JDP. JDP might just be a chapter-section of Baruch's wider compilation of Jeremiah lore. Stipp's "Ishmael file" must await its own poast.

A plank in our eyes

As part of the Trump I era project The Extreme Right and the Revision of History; S.J. Pearce reviews Fernández-Morera.

This blog first reviewed The Myth back in 2019, when (I assume) Pearce was still revising his takedown. Mine own review dinged it for not spending time on its "Song Duchy" phase, before those Nāfiʿ codices trickled over there ~200/800. We can however evaluate if Pearce' review be any better than its object (or, target) - on the review's own standards.

Pearse' review claims that The Myth strawmans The Ornament of the World in particular, on its way to pillorying wider academia. Indeed: Fernández-Morera had got his book published through ISI, a sort of refuge for frustrated para-academics in an appeal to a wider (conservative) market. Pearse further pins Fernández-Morera to the Spanish Right, in particular Franco in 1939, which he associates more narrowly to the Phalangists.

The overall book's call-for-abstracts suggests that the editors had no desire to impose basic sobriety upon the submissions. If you're not on the team, you're Extreme Right. And you deserve to be punched.

Whatever The Ornament printed about how Catholic (or Jewish) life went under the Maliki dhimma: the title chosen was - as we say now - clickbait, for people who wanted to believe in a multicultural Chrislam like we got in Twohy's Pitch Black movies. Looking around this 'ere blog, direct apologetic for Corboda's amirate is rife in quasi-historical text like the pious asides in Covey. I suppose Moller's 105-IQ takes might count as less scholarly... except that her book got rave reviews by mainstream newspapers who usually pull their reviewers from the universities; it also got blurbed by Nixey.

Fernández-Morera intuited that The Ornament had a Tendenz, which he could extrapolate from its reception-history.

If we don't allow Fernández-Morera to attack a vibe, a midwit fad, surrounding a text; then I wonder why Pearce or his editors imagine that we should allow Pearse to attack a "far right" or "extreme(!) right" surrounding Fernández-Morera's text.

I also have to ask why an anti-Islamist book should be considered "far" ... anything. I can assuredly rank Franco with the far right, if not as far as - say - Carlism (or Tolkien). To that: even if we're eschewing the Almoravid "fundamentalism"; we're invited to compare Franco with a hereditary amirate backed by Malikite fiqh and a standard Qurân. If the Umayyad state was anything, it was a political project to be judged accordingly. I beg of Pearse to find any moderation in that.

Fernández-Morera wasn't writing about Spain in its 1930s. As an aside, I don't think Franco would much approve an antiMoroccan text, himself; given how the Moroccans helped him win.

Much of Pearse' review is just namecalling. Here we must handle his treatment of the Phalanx. If Pearse could read Spanish, or even use Google Translate in its 2019 edition, he should know that the Phalanx appealed to a racial Spain bypassing Islam and Christianity both. "Phalanx" evokes no history in Spain; it evokes classical Greece. Frankly that crew were kinda gay, sort of a Spanish Sturmabteilung. Franco like... that other guy... could use such a Front, but he never much controlled them and he'd come to get rid of them. If you would like to know more (so-to-speak): also from 2020 we have AH Lloyd.

A proper review of Fernández-Morera's project would be welcome. Pearse cannot provide it.

Knovíz

Northeast Europeans got two papers recently: on the Germans and on the Celts. I am mainly discussing the Celts.

By the time the Greeks noticed the great Rhône hinterland from their Massilia, it was a "Galatía". The paper's "3200-2800 BP" is the post-Bronze Dark Age; already the legendary past for the Massilia colonists, who as colonists cared more about Greek legend than about Gaulish. Although some Gauls did claim some Heracles-slept-here type of cross-cultural tropes.

That paper is noting the migrations which brought a common Gaulish to the Greek Riviera. A few decades ago, scholars tended to blur these, not having excellent dates and lacking genetics. Bell Beakers (formerly, battle axes) northwest; Corded Ware in the north, and something-or-other at Knovíz. About the only agreement was that the Germans won't show up until about the time Caesar shows up.

We are now finding that Knovíz, which looks a lot like La Tène (and, in north Italy, Urnfield), drove one final migration in that Iron Age. It would have been them - "Hallstatt C" - who took Britain 700s BC. They seem also to have crossed the Pyrenees into northeast Hispania/Iberia.

Ireland's conservative Goidelic remains unconstrained here, the paper simply noting that earlier papers are clustering around the same time as the Hallstatt C invasion of Britain. Irish myth remembers multiple arrivals, and maybe even the Halberd / Beaker divide; but we cannot pin dates to anything before the great Iona chronicles.

I expect earlier migrations had already fed Lusitanian into our Portugal, and Italic into you-know-where. At least the former had been primed toward Indo-European by the Bell Beakers; so shifting to (Lusato-)Italo-Celtic would have been like a shift between Tocharian dialects for them, or from Median to Imperial Persian. The great Gaulish push, likewise, would not have been drastic. Latin was effectively a back migration, so wasn't drastic either. Etruscan into Italy of course would have been drastic, even under Gaulish leadership; and on defence the Euskara are still refusing Romance.

As for later, a Celtic helm ended up in Łysa Góra. That's at Bagienice, later part of Old Prussia around where the Tolkien family came from. Tacitus is there translated/quoted: On the right coast of the Suebian Sea [the Baltic Sea] dwell the Aestian nations, whose customs and attire are the same as those of the Suebians, but their language more resembles that of Britain. As such the "Aesti" folk might share a name with the modern Estonia but a Finnic language is ruled out. Whether this be a holdover from "Hallstatt C" or from some British trade-colony: hard to say. If the latter, it doesn't look like a recent colony.

Korea's insane membrane

Korea's answer to DARPA or Skunk, KAIST in Roman acronym, can now refine oil without heat; with the help of Georgia Tech. This allows to skip modular reactors.

They use a polyacrylonitrile membrane, a type used elsewhere but not for crude. They claim that the heavier hydrocarbons attach themselves to the membrane but not so finely as to turn it into a barrier. The lighter oils will still flow. 23 times the permeability of anything else.

They'll flow for a full 28 days before needing to swap the membrane, which as noted is presently a commodity.

Downstream of this, the tech might turn various wastes into something useful. Pyrolysis oil from recycling plastics, solvents from battery-cell manufacture.

Hebrews, Pauline sermon upon 1 Peter

Some excellent work from Elizabeth Myers, as expounded by Carrier: the sermon to the "Hebrews" might have derived from 1 Peter 2:5.

"Hebrews" would then have accepted 1 Peter as Scripture, of a sort; reacting to that text. The author of "Hebrews" himself was an ultraPauline, arguing to his audience to abandon all Jewish practices. Paul in his own time had allowed that Jews existed alongside Gentiles so was unwilling to push the former from being Jews at home.

Carrier isn't (yet) taking a side on the Hebrews / 1 Clement parallels, and in this case it's unimportant. The point is that he endorses Myers on 1 Peter being earlier than both.

1 Peter, Myers and Carrier further contend, is not much intersecting with Paul at all (as 1 Clement and Hebrews - and Mark - intersect). So 1 Peter might really be Peter's. Carrier goes on (like, mooting that 1 Peter was written in the Parthic Eraq) but - whatevs. I need to track back, to the Peter / Paul intersection. Where's Marcar 2016? That pointed to 1 Peter's knowledge of Paul's letter to the Romans.

Abû Isḥâq's Kufian tafsîr

Abû Isḥâq of al-Kûfa - brace for diacritics, tonight - was a legal specialist under the caliph Hishâm and for a few years of the chaos he left behind, d. AD 745. Most Muslims approve of him across confessional boundaries, which boundaries Najm Haider has proven already existed, especially after the Zayd bin ʿAlî mess. Andreas Görke is looking into one of Abû Isḥâq's sources, where he needed Qurânic warrant. This source is one al-Barâʾ bin ʿÂzib, d. 72/691.

That date is a banner year in Islam: the date pinned to the Dome of the Rock, and remembered as Unity Year. It falls also over a half century before the death of his best student.

Before I get into that, I must preface that Görke is one of the best scholars of early Islamic tradition we have. It's been awhile since I last looked at his take on Abû Mijlaz, and the two traditions in Tidings of Flame didn't intersect with that project's traditions (and are rejected anyhow); but I had no problem with Görke's summary, and I don't find where others had, either. Abû Mijlaz however died in the 100s AH. His floruit would have covered the final imprimatur upon the Umayyad codex under caliph Walîd and his pitbull Ḥajjâj in the ʿIrâq, flowing into the Sulaymân and ʿUmar II caliphates. Barâʾ is earlier.

Görke convinces me that Barâʾ existed - and that he taught a school. The paper offers ʿAdī b. Ṯābit (d. c. 116/734), Saʿd b. ʿUbayda (d. 101/719), Khaythama (b. ʿAbd al-Raḥmān, d. 82/701), Zādhān Abū ʿAmr (d. c. 83/702) and Abū Mālik al-Ghifārī (d. between 100/718 and 110/728), all of whom are Kufan. Zâdhân and Khaythama would have outlived their teacher by only a decade.

Abû Isḥâq outlived every name in that school. Sure: he is also reported, or reputed, born 33/654, in which case Abû Isḥâq could have sat in on the Barâʾ classes in his thirties. That this one student also transmitted the most lore, I find sus.

I should like some research on when exactly Abû Isḥâq was transmitting to others. I have a feeling his transmissional peak will be under Hishâm, and not before. Most of these other students were transmitting before or during caliph ʿUmar, contemporary with Abû Mijlaz. Their students eschewed Abû Isḥâq at the time. If Abû Isḥâq was in late middle age and at the peak of his brainpower: why skip him?

Also to be added is that "Barâʾ" is recorded as transmitting relatively conservative vocalisations of the rasm. Relative to ... Abû Mijlaz, with the suras 92 and 99 I'd checked (and to repeat, I reject Abû Mijlaz on each). The "Barâʾ" readings follow what I expect of the generation of Abû Isḥâq, as Arthur Jeffery reported from al-Aʿmash (d. 148/764). By diachrony, Abû Mijlaz makes sense. Al-Barâʾ does not.

I propose that these early Barâʾ transmitters skipped Abû Isḥâq because Abû Isḥâq was, then, a student himself. Abû Isḥâq was not born in the 30s/650s. Rather, during the 100s/720s, our man compiled a Kûfic tafsîr from multiple sources, for his own use, which he ascribed to al-Barâʾ. Nobody else was allowed to copy this notebook.

Beyond Chandrasekhar

Five years ago I noted large dwarf ZTF J1901+1458, pondering if it be metastable. One way out might be spin. But stars also have magnetic fields; neutron stars on the other side certainly do, and black holes at least have charge. So here is a study showing what magnets do to WDs.

The Chandrasekhar Limit thereby is an ideal: for the nonmagnetic star, or maybe a 'dwarf whose collapse (from the red giant) scrambled its dynamo. Thing is, I don't think that ever happens. So the Limit of an existent dwarf needs to take into account its gausses and/or teslas.

This suggests a sub-type-2 supernova. Take the starved overlarge dwarf. It never gobbles sufficient matter at once to light that ("standard") Type I candle. It might, however, nibble lightly. As it ages and the dynamo drops too low, and the mass increases: implosion.