The Levites' prayer, II

Last I looked at Nehemiah 9, I gathered 2010s-decadal research into a summary. It turns out that Marshal Cunningham was also doing this in 2023, but competently. The consensus of the early 2020s, we both agree, is that the prayer depends upon the Torah we got, but - nonetheless - that it floated outside the canon. Until Nehemiah's editors made the call to include it.

When reading it, Cunningham noticed that it doesn't mention the exile. That may be a problem for any argument that Nehemiah composed this work; but is an equal problem for the argument that the Torah is, likewise, a post-exilic document.

Cunningham argues here for a social amnesia. He doesn't bring up Orwell; he doesn't have to. In the Levitic mind, as opposed to the Deuteronomic, Jeremiahvic, or Ezekielian: Judah was handed over to Babylon but only the sinners were exiled thither. The people of Judah-and-Levi have inherited a land that was always theirs. Very golah might still mean scouring.

Revisiting sodium and lithium

Matt Ferrell updates us on the +1 ions, for cathodes. Here on this blog, I'd looked at sodium as an alternative to lithium. But since 2021ish we've found absolute mounds of lithium, with more to come, so the price has crashed.

We can however compete at the niches, like cell life. Sodium happens to compete with this and also works better at sharp swings of ambient temperature. This makes sodium work well near where solar power is viable, out in the deserts; which also happens to be near supplies of sodium in Wyoming (and Utah, I believe). Ferrell notes a company that is using passive cooling out there which is electricity that doesn't need for itself.

As to why sodium which is so much more common than lithium is struggling on raw price, elsewhere: Ferrell reminds us of the anode counterparty. This is "just" carbon... opposite lithium cathodes. Although graphite will do for lithium, the sodium cathodes must speak to better carbon. Ferrell notes coconut shells(!), or anthracite. I know we have lotsa coal but anthracite is a little harder to find.

As to why we want solar/battery driving electricity through the middle of apparent nowhere: the old Bonneville coast in Utah hosts several cities, of which SLC is comparable to Denver. Arizona and Nevada also have energy-hungry cities. They have mines out West, elsewhere. And if nothing else, as vehicles get electrified (sodium is tagged here as well, for those cross-country trips), they'll need electrical power top-ups.

Proposal

Today is the anniversary of Armistice. Americans honor their veterans, whilst Europeans respect the fallen. All may ponder the human cost of war. Except for Israel, whose war is ongoing. (To disclose: Ace has banned me - again - for the short version of this comment.)

Support for Israel is often termed support for "genocide". This post isn't going to assume that. A softer form is that it is support for "war", and/or "apartheid". This post will accept "apartheid" for the sake of argument, but will duck the morality thereof (inasmuch as Islam also prescribes apartheid, for Jews: dhimmat). This day is a day to look at war.

One may retort that it takes two to make a war, and that Israel's enemies aren't asking for ceasefires, so why pick on Israel, especially given the other wars Israel's enemies are fighting with nary a Jew in sight. Often amongst each other.

I have to ponder the thought that as long as Israel exists where it is, that war will not stop. The so-called "neo conservatives" have made their peace with that, so to speak. Meanwhile those of us whose income streams aren't that high are paying the price for it. Which is why the Republicans lost so hard. (And not by "fraud". And the $4.25 petrol signs where I live were not an op.)

Another reason the Republicans lost was that the Jewish vote the Republicans were chasing - the Scot Aronson vote - didn't come. I came, but I'm only 30% Jew (and only 30% of Jews joined me). Aronson and Woit got into their mutual insult-flinging, none of which budged Aronson on the topic of the Republicans as MAGA fascists or whatever. Back in the early 1990s, James Baker warned us as much.

It's not as if the Israeli religions are even (remotely) likely to be true. We've had thirty years of Robert Spencer and others trying to convince everyone that Islam is comparatively false and evil. (To disclose, again: I've done mine own research on Islam's falsity.) Look where we're at. So Zionists don't even have G-d on their side.

To sum up, we are prosecuting a war which won't end, absent a real genocide on one part or the other. The people on "our" side of that war are not on our side. Nobody's prayers are getting answered. Israelis represent, in south Syria, naught but a target; a bargaining-chip against all the world's other interests in the Near East. As the war drags on, only the antiSemites will win on Western countries, who - so Marx has taught us - are natural socialists.

My proposal, from the humanist perspective, is to phase an evacuation of everyone in Israel who is likely to suffer from a military strike. Those who seek peace with the Arab world can stay and hash out that peace, perhaps a dhimmat under the Damascenes.

Because being wrong shouldn't be a death sentence. But we also shouldn't be forced to pay for your nation-state.

Uriah and Bathsheba, across three languages

Most people looking in on the old Greek for the Old Testament, called "Septuagint" in its first five books, will be using the Rahlfs edition. Yesterday I noted the Samuel-Saul cycle in 1-2 Reigns / Samuel, Thackeray-Barthélemy's α-ββ. Once David ben Jesse ascends the throne, which this poast will term 2 Reigns; we're in kaige territory.

Someone had gone in and fixed the Greek on its way to the good Professor-Doktor. Historically, scholars have blamed Lucian. Some ancient editors had tweaked (e.g.) the ββ elegy on Saul as well; but there we have better attestation of who did what and when. So Lucian has been deemed the earliest-attainable Greek for kaige.

Over 2019-21, some Finns came to the SBL conference and mooted that we may have witness to non-kaige readings. These show up as translations into Latin. One witness is Palimpsestus Vindobonensis, La¹¹⁵ for short. This covers 4:10–5:25, 10:13–11:19, 13:13–14:3, 17:12–18:9 (Timo Tekoniemi fn. 5).

Tekoniemi flagged 2R 5 vv. 4-5, 21, 24 all still ββ, then 10:19 and 11:17 which over in Greek have since gone kaige. For chapter 5 Tekoniemi found - respectively - parallels with 4QSam^a's chronology, taking of Philistine idols for - as MT, against ββ - destroying them, and a hint at Asherah-groves. La¹¹⁵'s 5:4-5 and 24 readings must precede even the majority ββ but the 5:21 reading is more Lucian-ic. In 10:19, the Latin hints that David with Aram made a "covenant" (*יכרתו); everyone else says it was a "peace". In 11:17, the Latin allows for more blame upon David than the MT/Rahlfs will allow. Those will be early too.

In 2019 Tuukka Kauhanen had taken on 2 Reigns 11:11, where David's sin is more-explained. Tekoniemi aware of Kauhanen elsewhere did not use this one paper. Kauhanen for 11:11 argued for Rahlfs and Barthélemy. La¹¹⁵ mostly backs this.

The Lucianic text is, then, post-kaige.

Handsome Saul

When waiting for the shop to swap out some defective car-parts Friday, I got to skim that TC journal with my free oversweetened coffee-machine product. They're on the Scholarly Publishing Collective now. A lot of it concerned the transmissions of the Masoretic and the Greek; this morn we handle 2 Reigns. The most defective part of the Masoretic Text.

Our part of 2 Reigns concerns the death of Saul. In Greek this is in Thackeray's first eight-or-nine ββ chapters, which Barthélemy considered (relatively) unadulterated by later editors. The rest of the volume will be "kaige" sometimes ascribed to Lucian. Zachary Margulies here accepts a 2021 Oxford "handbook" consensus that the Codex Vaticanus ("B") preserves all 2 Reigns pretty well. That old Greek somewhat-famously translates the 4Q51 / Sam^a scraps, against the Masoretic Hebrew which... ain't great, for the Reigns quartet. Unfortunately that Qumran scrap does not preserve Margulies' subject, which is the lament for Saul. As to the Vetus Latina, we get no aid from the Palimpsestus Vindobonensis nor the Quedlinburg.

It turns out that the old Greek for ββ did suffer a bit of emendation outside of B's tradition. That emendation is the Lucianic tradition of Antioch ("L"). This affected the lament.

The Vaticanus (and Alexandrinus... and Sahidic) called the subject ὡραῖος, which means "beautiful". And, yeah: the footnotes point to Old Latin scraps with pulchri as an ephebic beauty. (Paging Al Sharpton.) In this context, which is Saul and not, say, Jonathan: that Greek doesn't work. The Lucianic made him εὐπρεπεῖς, which in kaige 23:1 is "handsome" or "dashing". Margulis concludes the Lucianic is improving a sus translation. The base Hebrew for Jonathan's good looks should be the same: נעים, to follow beloved Saul נאהב.

Of some interest here, perhaps, I see that the corrections toward the Hebrew do not encompass deletions against the Aleppo/Putingrad codices. The Hebrew proto-MT (as "II Samuhel") was already corrupted when Jerome got to it.

From XR-100 to H10

I looked at a Nested Hall Thruster - from 19-22 August 2019. I figured it time for any updates on that tech since sometimes things just fall out of view, like that weedy aerogel fission scheme. In the Hall case, matters are looking better.

Specific-impulse is a function of reach and vice-versa. NASA would like the 3.1 ks which the Dawn ion-drive used to orbit Vesta and on to Ceres. Taxpayers lament, however, Dawn's extreme expense. Plenty of cool rocks remain floating out there; we can settle for something more like Psyche which as of this poast has been running smooth for 1.8 ks. Hall thrusters are cheaper than ion drives such as VASIMR. Hall Thrusters have been for stationkeepers and inter-orbit tugs. That ain't nothin'.

But Hall-effect plasma will degrade the engine. This requires some kind of shield; ablative (somehow) or magnetic. This allows operations in the kilohours, to span something between a day and a few months; when what propellant you'd brought would be used. Here's the focus of the last few years.

Here's JPL's H10.

This is a form of Hall Effect Rocket with Magnetic Shielding which NASA in 2022 was labelling HERMeS. For Hall I_sp, the 2019 presentation had clustered 2 ks; HERMeS in 2022 was 2.78 ks from 12 kW. Now for the real ks, the operating-time...

JPL are saying that over the past few years, their lifespan has improved from the kilohours to 10-30 kh which I'm pretty sure refers to that HERMeS. This lifespan is a gift of the "MeS" side, citing this magnet paper from 2024 (running 8187 h so, slightly over a year). The excited plasma would be krypton or xenon for 50-60% efficiency. This is a lot better than the 20% it used to be; dunno if they'll move to argon.

This occasioned a battle of the kiloseconds, as operating-time feuded with... I_sp. HERMeS ran into a voltage-limit: beyond 500 V, oscillations ruin the flow. Various mitigations are being researched; JPL has decided, for now, not to bother. Instead they increase power density, implicitly a function of mass so W/g here. That shifts the problem to thermodynamics - throwing out all those watts. JPL deal with that, with a segmented radiator that is coupled to high temperature components.

JPL say H10 has tested for peak performance at 800 V, 10 kW of 457 mN thrust, 3400 s specific impulse, and an efficiency of 76%. Its mass is 20 kg for an alpha of 2 kg/kW (lower is better).

I do believe we can supply 10 kW in space with a lightweight heat source, like with neutron-activated enthalpy. How to shield this engine; I don't know if superconductors be possible, or needed.

The new Madduwattas

Hermann-Josef Stipp in his "Concept of Empty Land" (2010; ed. 2021) had argued in Jeremiah 37-44/44-51 for an affidavit of Ishmael's crimes as did not happen to involve Jeremiah. Stipp called this "The Ishmael File" even in 2010 so not as edgy as we'd deem it today.

That a file like this could exist, seems reasonable. Hittologists and Trojan War enjoyers have expended much ink on the Indictment of Madduwattas. Later, Ochus "Darius II" will be presiding over various complaints the Jews of the elephantine island were raising.

The original file would have been draughted over at Mizpah, by Ishmael's enemies. Chief among the latter would be Johanan, according to the file proper. Johanan then likely went to Nabuchadrezzar in person, or at least to his transeuphratic legate. His aim was to explain what happened to Gedaliah, to absolve himself and his coterie of blame, and to inform on the antagonist of the story Ishmael: still alive, and infesting the transjordanian hills.

When Johanan reports that Ishmael had killed everybody, he means everyone who matters to the great king. When he notes women among the men, he is playing to the king's sense of pathos, inasmuch as he owned one; alternatively, the king injected this for reasons I'll get to.

Pace Stipp (2010 ed.) p. 124 I deem easier how come this ephemeral affidavit was preserved. The great king would have kept his own copy, likely wedged into Akkadian and baked into clay. More copies would have been gone to the Judaean quarter in Babylon: this would tell the exiles that, yes, a rebellion had broken out back home, but don't get your hopes up. Nabuchadrezzar would not fail to note that Ishmael had butchered women too, that villain. And of course the king would have sent some troops either to back up Johanan or else to see if he was lying.

At some point in the narrative we got, comes Johanan's personal motive, to protect the remnant of Judah from obliteration. This has Johanan warn Gedaliah of Ishmael's plans in advance, in the hope Gedaliah will get at Ishmael first (which he didn't). I don't know how much of that went to the king; more likely it went into the local annal, as Johanan presented his case before his own people, several of whom might grouse that Ishmael had done nothing wrong and/or that Johanan was an opportunistic vulture. Stipp would roll that whole account into the "JDP", arguing that such existed to showcase the emptying of Judah and the fulfilment of the Deuteronomic curse; all beyond my scope. We do agree that Jeremiah MT 44 be a pseudepigraph, likely Baruch's work.

As for Jeremiah (perhaps more-so, Baruch): if they hadn't been in Mizpah, they were no victims of the massacre of collaborators. Although Jeremiah was uninvolved (he was probably in Egypt already) he assuredly agreed with Johanan's action. Baruch, perhaps, had inserted the prophet (his hero) into the events so as to make of him an eyewitness.