Ibn Barrajân (and al-Biqâ'î)

Waaay long ago in a library a thousand miles away, I picked up a published tafsîr by al-Biqâ'î. It made several Biblical references as I'd not seen in any other tafâsir. Many of these were referred, or deferred, to an Ibn BRGAN. Later I found out about Ibn Barrajân but, as of 2013, you could download a raw manuscript but not an edition.

Live long enough, and sometimes things change for the better. I am not the only one to travel down the same path; nor, I suspect, the first. Roy McCoy III, or Roy Michael McCoy, has a few articles and a full dissertation. It's not so easy to read the articles but the University of Oxford has generously allowed all to download the dissertation. I assume it's earned for him a PhD now.

Ibn Barrajân was an Andalusian. He was born in Tunis and made his way to Seville. Unfortunately this, and he, ended up under the Almoravids. On AH 536, which is AD 1146, their emir in Marrakesh summoned him and clapped him in irons, where he died.

Yousef Casewit in 2016 floated a summary of Ibn Barrajân's interface with the Bible. By his time, also the time of Ibn Hazm the Zahirite, a Catholic population existed in the Arabophone community. One may compare the Melkites in Jerusalem and Cairo. Outsiders in Spain called them the Musta'rabs, "Mozarab" for those still speaking Iberian Romance. As Arab-speakers, they needed a lection... and, perhaps, a Bible. Local traditions insist they had a Bible although such does not survive.

I am not willing, yet, to credit all this. Assuredly lections, at least, existed. Popular bases for the day's Lesson came from the Creation, from the Abraham/Isaac/Lot cycle, and from Matthew's Gospel. Casewit finds Ibn Barrajân quoting extensively such passages. Enough to finger the source as the Latin Bible; mostly Jerome's, but with a touch of Vetus-Latina as well. I assume Matthew has come from the Byzantine text of emperor Theodosius which Jerome promoted against the Alexandrine.

It is of high interest that Ibn Barrajân considers Matthew the Gospel against Luke. John the high-Christologer offers little of interest for the Moslem, and Mark - although eminently low-christologic - simply doesn't contain all the material one wants. Suras 3 and 19, I had thought, were more tied with Luke or at least with the harmonies. Harmonies existed in Latin and even in Arabic, which we tend to ascribe to relics of the Diatesseron. But not here: only Matthew is here.

Perhaps the Mozarabs were insisting on Matthew-alone so they didn't have to get sura 3 preached at them. Also famous, I must note, is an ancient translation of Matthew into Hebrew which was making the rounds among the Jews, of course not that many of them were much preaching from that book.

Zahirites like Ibn Hazm believed that the Bible was near-worthless, read only to be debunked. Ibn Barrajân by contrast loved the Torah (in Vulgate/MT form) and even defended it. He was accused of more of Christianising than of anything else, though. Perhaps because he did, in fact, use a Latin basis over Hebrew (plenty of Arab-speaking Jews existed, using their own translations). But also he may have accepted Original Sin from Adam, which other Muslim Sunnis deny.

Another Phaethon

One Patrick M. Shober has reported a cluster of meteors. He argues the same clustering-effect happens with the Geminids. The Geminids have a source: 3200 Phaéthon. So a different - but similar - nearEarth asteroid has delivered this set of meteors.

This sort of rock behaves more like a comet. Shober's parent body is probably a C like Phaéthon, or Bennu.

The next project, Shober leaves to others: to get 'scope time for the hunt for this now-invisible asteroid.

Enamel

Denisova 3 - and Harbin / longi - has been called out as containing a "super archaic" introgression. It had been suspected from Erectus if circumstantially. More circumstantial evidence came in a couple days back. Here's a release mostly from Kirsty Penkman of York; here's the article from China.

This is from proteins, such as Linus Pauling might have approved; not full DNA. These teeth are simply too old and rare to risk mulching for DNA, as we might for Neanders and Denisovans which are everywhere now. One protein is AMBN-M273V found in the tooth-enamel. And in some (mostly later) Denisovan DNA; but not in the rest of us. Another is AMBN-253G which isn't anywhere else, so is now available to tag a tooth as specific to Erectus.

The Neanders perhaps never met any Erectus, as the post-split Denisovans met-n'-matched them. Erectus seems met in southeast Asia, preEemian, maybe when it was Sundaland.

As a humble protein-set rather than DNA, this thesis remains circumstantial: evidence, but not "proof". One reviewer, Massilani, points out that parallel mutations be possible. But: how come these mutations outside Erectus be so rare (M273V) or nonexistent (253G)? Penkman asks similar questions.

The Beja of old

I saw this one yesterday but was flat too exhausted - I blame altitude sickness - to post anything of it. So I'll try tonight.

These are mass graves in the strip of Sahara east of the Nile, 4000-3000 BCE extending into the third millennium, so overlapping the upper-Egyptian kingdom... in time (we'll get to space and people). The report comes from Atbai in modern Sudan. This abuts the southeast Egyptian coast. I expect similar ruins exist in that side of Egypt as well.

That region was Blemmyes in antiquity; the reaches of the Cushitic language Beja today. Since Browne in 2003 most scholars believe Beja - which is simply "Beduin" adapted to the language - evolved from Blemmyan. The Nubians seem not to have mingled with them much by contrast with Egyptians and, lately, Arabs.

The Red/Erythraean sea maintained links with the Egypt of the Pyramids, of "Red Sea Scrolls" fame. I don't know that any Beja vocabulary appears in those scrolls. It may be too far north for our purpose. There's talk the Egyptians first took note of the Blemmyes in the later Ramesside era or under Sheshonq, because - as with Qeheq - someone then uses a Beja word to open a prayer. The earlier Egyptian pharaohs cared about Nubia, who owned a viable state of their own; but ignored the nomads, who did not and do not.

The article notes that the old desert herdsmen, who assuredly behaved there like the Beja behave today, evolved an elite class. But was it a Cushitic or a Nubian class?

Local Bubble: Origins

A few years back we looked into iron-60 from recent supernovae. I pondered if such were connected to our local bubble. Today we heard that the local bubble indeed has something to do with Fe-60 in Antarctic ice... but this iron's a lot younger. It arrived between 40,000 and 124,000 years ago, say Catherine Zucker, Seth Redfield, Sara Starecheski, Ralf Konietzka, and Jeffrey L. Linsky.

This is about as low as, perhaps, a consistent Antarctic ice core can go, since 122kBC is MIS-5e/Eemian. At least easily.

The explosion which hollowed out this gap, and created the iron, out in space; has been dated 1.2Mya in Upper Centaurus Lupus. Joshua Peek offered some help, whom we remember from 2024 (with Opher and, sigh, Loeb). The paper does not rule out earlier excursions into other iron-poor bubbles, as Zucker's crew point out.

Anti-abecedaries

"Abecedary" refers to the ABCD order of the present common European alphabet, coming as it does from Imperial Latin. Earlier Latin had the "element", which I recall referred to an earlier LMN start to the sequence. Also in use - and perhaps influencing Latin's decision for ABCD - is "abgad". This applies to Arabic (where it's usually "abjad") and Hebrew - also Greek.

Al-Jallad with Prioletta is discussing the wider Semitica where they used a consonantal system as against, like, cuneiform or whatever the Ethiopians are doing. It's been known that the Yemenis preferred a HLHMQ order. These two argue that the Yemenis, too, used a mnemonic to fill in the letters: "halham[aq]".

Safaitic and Hismaic transcribe old dialects of Jordanian and north-Hijazi (respectively) Arabic, like that of the urban Nabatis. The two authors note that they eschewed-or-abandoned halham. When they write their spots in order, the order is that of the Jews. Abgad.

BACKDATE 5/15

Yet another PseudoMethodius book

Ancient Jew Review, which is not the Internet's best site for that - nor is it always Jewish - is hosting Evan Schafer's 23 March(?) review of Christopher Bonura's A Prophecy of Empire. According to the review, the book lifts the prophecy of the title, which it claimed for Mar Methodius, from the Shingar(a) / Sinjar highland. From that, the book transfers this prophecy to the "East Syriac" world.

Pseudo-Methodius famously skipped over John's Revelation. That omission may count as evidence for not being au-courant with such Miaphysitism as held sway among, for one, the Copts. Its main prophetic source instead was Aphrahat's fifth memra (not "memro") on Daniel. I must say here that Aphrahat is evidence for nothing inasmuch as his career preceded the Ephesian councils.

I took the liberty of searching for "Treasures" in the book. I don't find the word. I had the notion that everyone knew the apocalypse relied upon the Cave of Treasures but, it seems, not Bonura - nor Schafer. It is this, not the manuscript-tradition, which scholars use to place this text for the Miaphysite world. I must say that Singara will do as well as any other monastic environment for an east-Syrian Miaphysite origin.

As to why the text itself prefers "Qardu" and does not mention Shingar, I look at a map of old Corduene and I'm ... not seeing much difference. Qardu might be a little up and northeast. One can still find Miaphysite monasteries over there like Elpap / Alfaf / Mar-Mattai though, so even if that MS is wrong about Shingar it still doesn't matter.

Where were the University of California's internal reviewers?