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.

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.

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 proto-MT is "indicting" the people for rebelling against Ishmael. Proto-MT is generally pro-David; MT proper (to repeat) will be making a return to commending the Babylonians.

In the 43/50 synopsis 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.