Four Heavens

David Stuart the Mayanist has a book out, The Four Heavens: A New History of the Ancient Maya. American Scholar has hosted Ilan Stavans' review. Nature since has posted Andrew Robinson's, but since it is not open access I'm not linking it.

Personally I had a problem with Dr Stuart turning his classmates out for Obama in 2008; which I saw in light of minority populations in central America not least the Chorti of western Honduras. I didn't think Obama would be good for them. I didn't think Stuart was good for our discourse (also see, McGaugh's "Triton Station" 2020 - or, indeed, Nature itself). But hey. For Stuart it's been eighteen years.

By this book Stuart has stepped forth as Michael Coe's heir. Although as Stavans points out, Stuart doesn't touch sociology - or, more worryingly, the economy. Coe, revising a 1966 text, initially started with material culture, since he simply could not then read the elites' words.

For sociology, I must be more lenient than Stavans. It might be that Stuart is not the man to do it.

I am unsure what Stavans wants from terms like "race" in a Maya context. One can imagine a local response to foreign leadership. The Maya endured a lot of that, starting with Striking-Owl from that land of reeds which Aztecs will name the "Teotihuacan". Some of Palenque's ahauob were Yucatec, from its north. Later classic-Maya kings are also western and depicted in foreign trappings, of course not then Teotihuacano. The true Maya in the north are, later, famously depicted like Toltecs. And as they all sometimes bore foreign lords, the classic- and postclassic-Maya all had neighbours, starting with Maya cousins whose languages may or may not be depicted in the hieroglyphs. We would love to know how the Chorti understood closely-related Tzeltal, or the more distant Mam up the hills. Or, for Copan, the Honduran Lenca, or what happened to the Xinca after the Ilopango eruption. Can foreigners be depicted as slaves?

Sex relations (we're not just talking the bedroom) might also be of interest. We have a real literature on that for Assyrians, Greeks, Hittites, Romans... Chinese, arguably the Aztecs if only via Gary Jennings. Can such an essay be written for the Maya? Hittites and Muslims have given us law-codes. The Spanish related one for the Aztecs. I don't know we have that for the Maya.

I'll throw in, the animal kingdom, as well. They raised dogs and rabbits, and tamed monkeys, and respected the jaguar; the owl, perhaps, was held in honour more elsewhere.

Such might have to come to us via the myths. Again, though, I am unsure to what extent we have those myths. It is like reconstructing the old Arabic creation-myth from graffiti-references, architecture and statuary. A "Popol Vuh" exists; but I see this as a reaction to the classic myths, like the Quran is to the (then mostly-Syriac) Bibles. Or, heavens, like our Bible reacts to... itself, and to the Canaanites before it.

Noah as the new Adam

Just this morning, a Lutheran posted about the Noah story. He points out (he's hardly the first) that Genesis 7-8 is a de-creation, along the lines of Genesis 1. What I didn't know is the further parallel of Genesis 9 with Genesis Two - the gan-'Eden.

For the Christian, or - I'll argue - the Jew: Noah follows Adam's footsteps in a way history repeats itself as farce. Noah barely has agency; the mover of the story is the Elohim of Heaven. When Noah is left to himself, he plants a vineyard - shadow of Eden - and gets drunk. Our youtuber points out that Noah isn't the hero. Someone like that was the hero of parallel Flood tales all over the Near East, but Genesis refuses to present Noah as him.

If there has to be a hero, he isn't onstage. James of Edessa would have it that the final editor of Genesis set up these stories on purpose, as failed Dispensations. Coming up is the Exodus. In the Haggadah interpretation, God is once more the mover of events, leaving Aaron and Miriam and even Moses as flawed implementors of His will. So: who'd read that sorry litany, if it weren't to end in a successful Dispensation?

The Deuteronomic History might say the hero were Moses, the Torah he divulged to the people, and the king Josiah who made it law. The Samaritans would say the hero was the spirit of YHWH in the Tabernacle, someday the Temple; Essenes and Sadducees agree, all differing on where exactly He resides. Somewhere around here was the righteous Messiah, and you know who Christians need that to be.

That Genesis 1+2 does parallel Genesis (6-)8+9 has Implications for the Documentary Hypothesis. TheTorah is saying Noah was the hero... of Genesis Two, as his vineyard redeems the land from the curse set upon Adam (and Eve). Noah's part in the Flood myth came later.

The counter-coup

Eli Lake: Mossedegh had dissolved the Majles, replaced the army leadership and Supreme Court and closed newspapers by the time the Shah used his constitutional authority to fire him.

The first Parthava Shah, Reza Khan, served under Ahmad Qajar, whom the parliament - which we'll agree to spell "Majles" - had installed over his father. The Qajars were Turks; Khans are also usually Turks, but Reza claimed to be Pahlavi. Someone would have to test that Y chromosome. Anyway as it happens, Khan did the coup - in 1921. This vacated the throne, although the Qajars lingered on, until 1923 when Ahmad gave up and left the empire. The Majles then installed Reza as shah, 1925; as he remained until 1944, when he died and Iran got the Shah we 1970s kids know and love, Mohammed Reza.

I know that it may be bad form to bring Greek standards into an Iranian context. Luckily for you, readers; bad form is exactly what we do here. Mohammed Mosaddegh (sorry, I'm insisting on this spelling) was a tyrannos. This, as opposed to a dictator; we can argue the legality of Reza's rule, but at least the Majles formalised his term, in retrospect, in 1925. For Mosaddegh, there was no Majles. He was simply the commander-in-chief of his own pet army. As well as the supreme Judge. And the arbiter of information.

The only in-house centre of power left as could reinstate any norms at all was the institution of the shah. Off-house, I'll admit, we Brits didn't want Mosaddegh either and who was in charge of the north in 1952-3... well, after March, that's actually a good question, and whoever wanted to be in charge had some motive for a quick victory abroad.

The shah did the only thing he could do, and the Brits were right to support him. This does not excuse how the shah chose to run Iran until the 1970s. But it can't have been worse than arbitrary rule by a tyrant and the likely Soviet invasion to follow.

Baetica's shifting economy

The south of Spain got reconquista'd, and the Catholic conquerors found it a vast plantation economy. There was a lot of wealth in Granada allowing its emirs to import Moroccans to defend it. That wealth came from olives: before natural gas and petroleum, nights were lit by olive oil. Also some ranching; their vaquero literally means "cowboy" as certain Puerto Ricans had to (re)learn over here. Right now we're talking olives.

With tariffs in the news, the old Baetica might not be able to offload their product so well. But Baetica (and before it, Tarshish) has something else: sunlight. The climate is quite East Texan in that regard, although the sheer timespan of its agro-mono-culture might not make its soil as good.

So some landowners are making the switch from olives, to solar-panels (and maybe batteries).

Some people care. They ... shouldn't. That's what Baetica has always been.

BACKDATE 3/3

TANSTAAFL

I am unsure where else than Christianity we hear this:

It's a free gift!

All you have to do is -

The rest may be safely ignored. The Christian has already revealed himself to be peddling snake-oil. Anything that comes after this wastes time.

If it's a free metaphysical gift, then - either it's not real, or - I've got the gift already and I don't have to thank you for it. I don't have to do or think anything. But this line of apologetics is never honest. Anyway, although we're done here, allow me to talk past the sale. Heaven knows the Christian who's already lost the argument will near-invariably switch tactics.

One such is to assert that our life was that gift - so simple honour demands we pay it back somehow, in gratitude ("faith") if nothing else. That assumes we're enjoying life.

More respect may be given to such as argue that the gift however costly should be accepted - and paid for - because of the alternative. This was Blaise Pascal's take. It has some vindication from Cantor (and, they tell me, Dedekind).

But paid to whom? Some Jew on a stick? Or maybe with Richard Carrier and 2 Enoch we assume the act of redemption happened on Mars' Lagrangian haloes (or so I count Fifth Heaven). There's the rub, isn't it?

Anyway, don't take the tack of fREe GiFt. It is not an honest tack so you'll sail to hell on it.

Stop the presses: Vox Day launders lies again

Beale links Neon Revolt, not imagining that Candace Owens has made herself odious all on her own.

Grok thinks the memo is realsies but Columbia University rates Grok poorly. The source is Matt Wallace, somewhere down the Charles Johnson level of credibility (pick a CJ; F. or C.). Some crypto saar confessed to the memo yesterday evening.

I'm not - or I hope I'm not - one to throw out "demonic"; that's how very bad things happen. I might allow it for Tucker Carlson who has admitted to a demonic violation himself (so: take it up with him). I am also unsure of words ending "-path" on account I am not a licenced pathologist. I instead use terms like "opportunist" or "liar". I don't know if I've used "conscienceless" yet.

I find Neon Revolt and Beale to lack conscience. Beale doesn't need the money; he just posts what he posts because he enjoys watching people scramble around to refute his lies. One suspects Tucker Carlson is in it for the money, which goes double for Milo "Nero".

Candace Owens has a husband, but any woman does hope for an independent revenue-stream in case something happens at home. I have, of course, taken no money to call shenanigans on her opportunism. Conscienceless, at that.

The good news is that Laura Loomer and others might be able to dip into the revenue-stream... of the liars. It is unfortunately difficult to come after Beale's clearinghouse; like Mark Tapscott, he doesn't lie, he links to lies and lets you come to your own conclusions (which better be the lies' conclusions).

Jews for the ish malhama

In Exodus, the Song at the Sea anthropomorphed G-d. On visiting /pol/ yesterday: I find that this Song is a proof text for Christians now. Or at least it serves "goys" as a text showing up legacy-Judaism for not being as monotheist as Jews claim it to be - which is why Rabbi Tobias Singer doesn't like it.

Here, I'll lay the case that the Rabbi should buck up... and be a man.

The Song is very old, linguistically. Later literature shows this, textually, as well. A while ago I summed up Emmanuel Tov's textual scuffing; what follows, pulls that content up here, in case anyone missed it.

In the MT, and presumably in the mouths of Miriam and Moses themselves, YHWH is a man of war (ish malhama). Elsewhere Psalm 24 prefers to hail YHWH a gabur malhama. That reading backwashed into the Samaritan Pentateuch, despite that sect not accepting the Psalter. GBR is also in the Aramaic Targum and the Syriac, here as emphatic: the gêvra, the ganbura (w-QRBTN' for the song and the psalm both which is, yes, Biblical Aramaic). I find the "גבור המלחמה" also-also in the apocalyptic War Scroll although the text is a bit corrupt here.

Tov flags Targum's "Samaritan" switch from "man" to "jabbâr" unusual inasmuch as Targum prefers MT; personally I disagree, and consider the Samaritan as inlining midrash into the text itself, as Targum did perhaps-independently. Psalm 24 exists to bind the Psalter's first book (Ps. 3-41), and may be read as an update or even critique to the Song at the Sea. The wordshift to gbr seems also to have afflicted Arab apocalyptic and the Palaestinian tradition.

Anyway. As Ash Maiz points out, ish only means a "man". David tells Solomon (in CBH) to be an ish. Not to be a master or a lord or (lol) a husband; just to be the least of what you are made of. Take care of your business.

It is exactly because ish can only mean "man" that so many pietists referring to The Song have attempted to change the ish in it. As Maiz also points out, none of this is even necessary. Christians don't even bother referring to it much; and - you know why? Because it is a poem. It's just some dudes and young girls singing a song.

Really at stake for Jews (if not for Samaritans) isn't G-d's transcendence, which cannot be harmed by this harmless song. The Jews' Psalter is chock-full of para-pagan imagery, yea even unto CBH. At stake is whether Miriam and Moses and Aaron, supposedly superior to that sinner David, could sing this song.

But - even then; all Israel is on their way to Sinai where they are about to - okay, spoiler-alert. Suffice that their innocent song here might foreshadow their fuller misunderstanding, at that Mount. Maiz could have mentioned this too. I find of interest that Maiz didn't.

Rather: Singer could have mentioned it (a lotta that goin' round). I called yesterday's match 2-0, for Maiz. This one gotta be a 0-0 draw; if Singer had kept it at that, I doubt Maiz even would have touched this one.