Lulyane

I had problems interpreting some parts in that John bar Penkaye translation, or “translation” as the professionals might justifiably write. I had a devil of a time with Lulyane, a heretic whom John places in Armenia. Or was it l-Ulyana? Whoever it was, I could not find him in the early Armenian church-histories, so I just transcribed the thing and hoped for the best.

So: Grigory Kessel, “A List… of Abraham Shekwana”, Parole de l’Orient 36 (2011), 39-65; name #25. It has a footnote: #41.

The available evidence that I managed to find is that he is commemorated as a malpana (Doctor) on a par with Ephrem, Narsai, Abraham, John and Michael (Mingana Syr 542, see MINGANA 1933, 996). Since all of the mentioned names are related to the School of Nisibis, I assume that he was also somehow related to that School and thus one might expect that certain exegetical traditions were attributed to him; however he is not mentioned in VÖÖBUS 1965. On the other hand, one [ed.: Kessel credits Alexei Muraviev] might wonder if the name stands for the so-called “Julius Romance” (in which the name of the Roman emperor is rendered as Yulyanos). If so, then it could be a token of the survival of the text in the East Syriac tradition, which otherwise is extant in a unique manuscript of the 6^th-7^th c. Furthermore, Fiey has proposed to see in Lulyane’ a Syriac monk Julian Saba [FIEY 1963, 391: IV^e siècle].

Fiey's footnote:

From the sources quoted in BHO., p. 123, an Arabic summary can be added in Shuhada', v. 2, p. 33-41. Formerly Julien Saba was studied by ASSEMANI, in B. O., v. 1, p. 433, recently by P. A.-J. FESTUGIÈRE, in Antioche païenne et chrétienne (Paris: 1959), p. 247-252, 259, 291, and by A. VÖÖBUS, in History of Asceticism, v. 2 (C.S.C.O., t. 197 / Subsidia 17, Louvain: 1960), p. 42-51. See Comm. martyr. rom., p. 231 (9 June).

Kessel here informs us that Lulyane’ as a real name was comprehensible to the East Syrians. [UPDATE 2/10 - Ishoyahb #28 is addressed to a contemporary "Lulyano". UPDATE 3/27: Balad's diptych: Vosté 150 > Mingana 564 > Brock 1971 10.1484/J.ABOL.4.02898.] John bar Penkaye, moreover, enters his testimony that this man was a real figure of post-Ephesian eastern Christian thought. John was well aware of the name Yulyanos - applied to that apostate Emperor, to whom Memre XIV devotes a long rant which I have (so far) spared you. Further, if “Lulyane” be a mistake for “Yulyane”, this mistake held consistently, for all John’s known copyists.

Muraviev’s thesis is hereby weakened, to the tentative (albeit gracious) extent Kessel has entertained it; Fiey's thesis crumbles with it. New speculation is warranted. That… this blog, can do.

Propose that Lulyane belongs to the minority-report in Nisibis which allowed for Chalcedon’s correction to Ephesus – usually associated with Henana of Adiabene (pdf). This would explain how one faction may include Lulyane as an heir to Narsai but other factions dismissed him.

CASE CLOSED 2/1: Mar-Emmanuel -

The person referred to as ‘Lulian’ must be identical to the person of the same name who is mentioned in Babai’s Christological work On Union. Babai states that Lulian had argued that “Our Lord did not take [i.e. united with] this mortal human body which suffers and dies, but [He took] that [body which] Adam [possessed] before he sinned, when he was immortal and nonsuffering.” Babai then adds that “Lulian, and the son of his father, Severus [of Antioch, d. 538 A.D.], were from two handmaids.” [ See Babai the Great, Liber de Unione, ed. and trans. Arthur Vaschalde, CSCO 79-80, (Paris: CORPUS, 1915), III, ch. 9.] This evidence places Lulian firmly in the period before the Second Council of Constantinople in 553.

The âlap-bêt

The Syriac alphabet is easy enough; my problem is that it doesn't follow the Latin sequence.

Partly I blame the Etruscans. For instance: they didn't have a kappa, so just used the Euboean gamma in third place. Latin is Indo-European and absolutely does use a kappa as well as gamma. They put a diacritic on the Etruscan (false) gamma to make a hard G, keeping the Etruscan gamma where it is as the letter C. Meanwhile I take it that some Latins kept the K around, eventually sticking that approximately where the Greeks put the kappa.

The Etruscans also kept the digamma, F pronounced W - at first. Those tend to get turned into "f" sounds, or "v" if German. Meanwhile the Etruscans also had the upsilon which they just simpified to V, not unlike Greek cursive. No Italians wanted Φ. The Romans took the F, using the V as both U and W. All the latter of which, they dumped at the end. With Z, a letter the Romans and Etruscans both didn't use very much.

Meanwhile over in Greece the Athenaeans overlapped the Euboeans (and Thebans) for cultural primacy, especially under Alexander (a Dorian himelf). They certainly weren't going to bend to those jumped-up Gauls over in the bad part of Italy. Ditto the Canaanites and, oh look, I'm working with Syriac, whose Christian nations use a cursive of the Canaani alphabet.

So: how can a Gaul/German mutt like myself follow this âlap-bêt. Mnemonics?

How about: first, ABGDH[digamma], not unlike Greek. Then, since we already did G: Z, and since we did H: hard Hêt. Next hard Têt. Then it gets back to JKLMN, German-style. Semkat interrupts; then 'Ayin which stands in for the Greeks' omicron. Then: P! and Sade interrupts (gah!). Finally Q-R-Sh-T.

Yeah, I don't rate this mnemonic as too helpful, either. At least the first batch of letters read like Shel Silverstein's ABZ Book, and then after the letter J it reads like Dr Seuss constantly interrupting to hype On Beyond Zebra. Why didn't some Semite just put all the S sounds together (including Z) at the end? or put 'Ayin up at the top or at least next to the G?

Probably the Semites didn't want to make life easier for us fur-wearing savages either. The Eastern Med would say we're the ones who suck at the alphabet.

Groundhog

In hibernation news, ground squirrels have a way to keep their musculature running through the winter. Their gut biome breaks down urea (for nitrogen) before it gets into their kidneys.

The headline made me WTF since the tree rats out here never take the winter off. The main text concerns ground squirrels, usually colloquially misnamed like the ground "hog" and the prairie "dog".

The authors note this is works not just against muscle-atrophy during long term space travel, but also against sarcopenia among us GenX and older. Which is telling me it is good for ... being in space, even if kept busy. Add probiotics to the sleeping-bag.

"Undernourishment" is another issue. Our planet does not, in fact, own a food shortage. It does, however, own - outside major supply-lines - subsistence grazers using hills for livestock, eroding those hills.

The theory had been around since the 1980s so I do take personally, a bit, that its confirmation took as long as it has. Well at least we have it now.

Scaling rebco

The VIPER strikes! - well, October 2020 it struck, and now ToughSf reports. The acronym is Vacuum pressure impregnated, Insulated, Partially transposed, Extruded, Roll-formed; the material is rebco. (Why not bisco?)

They say we were making hundreds of kilometers of rebco wire a year. But it has a known problem: 'tis brittle. And the magnets were limited to 15 T and, more to the point, 25 kA. We're looking at wrapping Ganymede or powering a Venus orbital ring. Protecting a planet, even Venus, from solar ions doesn't take all that much T but I suspect we'll get killed on A, even at Deimos. Those (slightly) less gonzo are improving aerofoils; in this article (pdf), the relevant section is V-D.

Conditions can be harsh up in low-atmo. The main variable is temperature, as the planet or moon moves around the sun. Yes in equatorial low-orbit too, during the many weeks of either equinox; those days and (more so) nights will simply be short. Low-tilt Venereans can expect that equinox to be eternal.

Overall, VIPER-crafted rebco, and maybe bisco too, seems like the way to work with superconductors in fluctuating-temperature microatmosphere.

Yersinia in Bronze Age Britain

R1b's first showed up in pre-Celtic Britain around 2500 BC, although - Wiki now tells me - they abandoned their Bell Beakers by 2100 BC, instead using "food vessels and cinerary urns". It seems Somerset then suffered a plague problem. Two children ten and twelve years of age caught the plague, were killed by weapons, then their corpses were dumped in a well.

I vaguely recalled a Bronze Age cold patch but, no, that's yet to come: MBA, 1800-1500 BC. If we're talking Rapid Climate Change, that's 4200 BC and 2200 BC. Maybe the latter occasioned the shift in British material culture.

The 2000 BC plague demonstrates commerce between pre-Celtic Britain and the Continent - perhaps also, then, pre-Celtic. That commerce will be drying up following the LBA collapse 1200 BCish.

The authors say that this wasn't the most virulent such bacillus; so, horrible welts were involved, but not enough to kill most folk pace the Turtle. (Unless it went septic of course.) This grave was not a mass grave. Bernard says: La présence des blessures mortelles sur les squelettes de ce puits rends improbable le fait que ce puits a servi de sépulture à la suite d'une épidémie de peste. I disagree; given the age of these two kids, it is likely their community did perceive a threat from their disease, so killed these two precisely to spare the rest.

Blemmydes' paraeuonomianism

This blog exists as a vehicle for a specific Christology. This, as a means to harmonise but not identify Security with Information more crudely "Church and State". The Chalcedonian Creed is adopted as, despite its flaws, the best-available exponent of The Three Hundred Eighteen; with the Latin filioque as the best interpretation of that. It follows that I am less concerned with the mystical tradition (for the East) nor the Mary veneration (West); although I do not reject them for others. I care about the Sacraments.

That summary done wit', let's revisit Maximus Confessor. He stands in a tradition alongside Sophronius and the bishop Martin, the latter one taking command as an independent Latin Pope and convening to the Lateran his own synod. Maximus is the weak link here, who despite being a near-martyr to Chalcedon, didn't do filioque. For him the Spirit flows from the Father through the Son. Can we save this for orthodoxy?

Meet Nicephorus Blemmydes. I'm unsure if his family name came from the deserts east of the upper Nile - probably not. Anyway a generation after the Latin conquest of Constantinople, this one figured the Greeks could get around "filioque" by asserting that the Spirit flows from the Father through the Son such that the Son be generated through the Spirit. "Epistle to Theodore Laskaris", 10 - I am told.

Basil Lourié thinks Blemmydes had invented his own system of logic: Paraconsistency. In particular, paraconsistent numbers, incomprehensible by the notion of ordered pair. You might think this is all so much geometric logic but - Instead, they imply a known (first described by Emil Post in 1941) but still little studied logical connective ternary exclusive OR. It's real; maybe useful to database programmers, or further downstack the quantum computing field.

For a theory of the state, however: I see this as a sovereign (the Father) organising itself and expressing itself through a hypostatic language (the Spirit) thus creating all things - which includes the Son. This is just Arius or the two Eusebii, isn't it? Small wonder it didn't get anywhere.

Sawn in three

The Christians owned a prequel to Matthew in a "Martyrdom of Isaiah": so Warren Campbell. This was subsequently expanded by Apocryphon-of-John gnostics. On 12 April 2019, a former me mused that the core of its first five chapters, wherein Isaiah is sawn bodily in twain, be a rhetorical attack upon those who might slice the manuscript into sections. Modern scholars cut Isaiah, today: there's Isaiah up to chapter 35, then from ch. 40 Deutero-Isaiah the poet of return from Babel; and many scholars split the latter into Trito-Isaiah, also.

I don't want to get into Isaiah 36-39 tonight - and as we shall read, this post doesn't have to. Refer to Dan'el Kahn 10.1017/9781108856416.012... for now.

Latter-me now has evidence for this speculation - in Upper Egypt, where that Johannine apocryphon found its home. Some Sahidic monks found convenient to divide Isaiah - not into two, but into three. Thus, that international treasure Alan Siciu.

I still don't know that any Isaiahvic editor had a division at chs. 39/40; Siciu posits a division after verse 30:5, and then (with better evidence) after ch. 46 (but this was just to make the remainder of the text, manageable). I further know not if a multivolume Isaiah was remembered by any Jewish and oral sources, before the Christians composed the Martyrdom. Last I looked, most scholars today consider chs. 28-35 a thematic unity by the authentic Isaiah; verse 30:5 is not the best place to break the book we got. It looks, though, that the Egyptian multivolume version, which the Copts may have come up with by their own selves, be sufficient to explain the sawn-in-twain trope.

I'd thought that the trope was Greek - from the Aegaean littoral of Asia, or perhaps Antioch. Now, seeing how the Copts dealt with this Prophet, I am pondering Alexandria. Cyril himself saw no break in chapter 30.

UPDATE 1/27: Might this trope strike out, instead, against Dyophysitism...? It may at least explain its popularity alongside the second edition of ApocJas. HEBREW/GREEK 4/13/23: Qumran had split Isaiah at ch. 33 - in twain. Looks like Peshitta followed suit (at first). Is Isaiah's martyrdom a commentary upon early Jewish practice...?

Res gestae Johannis Phencadis

[ed. from Rahmani’s Studia Syriaca]

The deeds of John by the name of Bar Phencaja, a Saba ascetic, whose legacy is the work of the institutes of monastic, coenobitic, and evangelical perfection, which begins in this way:

He who restrains his tongue from speaking, guards his own heart from passion [cf. Proverbs 21:23 Lamsa]; and he who keeps his own heart from passion immediately looks to God.

This illustrious John Phencaja achieved the summit of perfection, after he had broken through the river of the passions of carnal lust and, on receiving his entreaties, knocked down the batallions of iniquity.

When this John arrived at the monastery of Mar John of Kamul, by Abbot Sabrjesus he was clothed in a monastic habit; and as soon as possible he kept himself away from all pleasures. But as he suffered slightly from lesions in the body, the same aforesaid abbot Mar Sabrjesus anointed the same with the oil of the candlestick hanging at the tomb of Mar John and Mar Ukamae, so he was immediately healed and cleansed. After having worked diligently in the monastic life in the monastery with a cheerful spirit, he went out into the wilderness, shutting himself in his cell. He would seek their prayers, and also that he might learn from them the battle to fight against the demons. But he assaulted the demon of blasphemy, for the space of one year, by fasting and by vigilance, and by prayer, while standing on the snow most nights. On this matter he wrote in his letter: As long as that struggle lasted, despair so long oppressed me, and therefore I found no consolation in speech or reading, and on account of my troubled mind, I counted all things as nothing, however much I was clothed with a sackcloth, and sat upon the ashes, until the grace of Christ, rising up, visits me. He also wrote about the carnal struggle against which he immersed himself throughout the year in snow and ice until he was liberated from it. He wrote, moreover, of all the other battles of the demon he winnowed and dispersed. He has compiled five tomes on the plan of holiness and then two more tomes, which he termed as "supplement"; and he wrote two works against heresies, one volume on morals, the other on the education of children, and at length another volume containing seven treatises on gain (spiritual), in which he stored his opinions on the monastic institution. So he closes this scroll: The pouch of money which the merchants (Ismaelites) carried on, escaped, at the order of the Lord, the food of the Israelites in the land of Egypt: that pouch foreshadows the seven talents of discernment. Let us give thanks to Christ who has granted the victory to us.

He is also the author of many poems, treatises, and even books, which they call "the beginning of the words" [=Resh Melle]. And he worked many miracles. On this subject John Bishop of Kardu [=Ararat] tells us, When I collapsed one year, my hand was broken, and for three months my pain did not improve through amulets and medicines. Mar John Phencaja anointed me with the oil of prayer three times and so I was healed. In addition, a tiger appeared several times at the door of the cell, and the brothers from that time were alarmed and shouted for help. Mar John went out of the room. When he struck the tiger with his staff, he drove it to flight, so that it could no longer be seen there.

But after he had spent some time in the monastery of Raghuul, he transferred himself to another monastery, called Daliatharum, which the other John had founded, whose life is explicated elsewhere. Finally he wrote a treatise on the relaxation of the monastic life and another treatise on the perfection of the divine monastic institute. At length he died in his seventieth-third year of his life, until the sacred body was buried in the monastery of John of Kamul. And of all his saints; we who have pleased God, let us be made worthy of pardon by our prayers.

Raw material

After that little digression into John bar Penkaye's overall oeuvre, I return to the Resh Melle - for manuscripts.

Last Sunday I'd found the Syriaco #592 held at the Vatican. The second Memra starts here at down-arrow 159v = page 320 (in Arabic numerals). For some reason I know not, it is in the Western script - did some Nestorian slip away back there?

I am (now) accustomed to the Eastern script so for that - Furman directs us to BnF 405. Pace Furman, I consider the Qadmaya Memra to start Page 4v=1: BnF 405 carries the first memra to 21v, where the second picks up. BnF 405 is the first volume; the second, BnF 406, starts at Memra #8, best I can read that. Note: not broken #9/#10 like Johanan bar Penkaye intended. I should point out that BnF 405 looks like a palimpsest although the lower text does not obscure our text. The scribe's crabbed handwriting does that...

Both have their flaws; but since we do have this thing in two scripts, poor penmanship in the Bibliothèque may be checked against bad photocopying in the Vatican.

John bar Penkaye's black book

I speak of Von Kulten, that great lost work of the mad monk... John bar Penkaye. Baumstark's footnote 4 reads: 'A[bd-Îsho] in third place. If the Kulte book exists on its own, it may carry on to schismatics within the Eastern Church herself: Bar Sauma, Hnana... edgelords like them. Unsure about that schism under Isho'yahb III; if we're lucky, we may get the Heretic of Rewardashir who (I think) was al-Khirrît. Well! such is the hope.

I have a bad feeling we shall not be lucky. I suspect we shall find these contents aussprechliche already. In part, even in English.

We already have this man's Main Points. It tells us what he cared about, and what his sources were . . . and what they weren't, starting with Epiphanius' Ephesus-associated Panarion.

We must prepare ourselves that Memre 5 and 9 of the Resh Melle be those two "volumes". Or maybe just Book 9 attached to some rando's mediaeval epitome of the Panarion.

UPDATE 2/2: The anti-sectarian work did exist. Resh Melle refers to it, so it preceded these memre. But - Mar-Emmanuel reports - it is no longer with us. But exactly because it preceded #5 and #9 (and "On The Trisagion", one assumes) - do we care?

The memra on ascetism

After looking around for John bar Penkaye's five-to-seven volume On Asceticism, I find that various MSS collections own a Memra ascribed to this man - in a compilation for “ascetica”. These copies cluster in the Library of Congress, #26 made AD 1550. #40 is an AD 1531 copy and a #24 also exists. All are compiled with John of Mosul so, the autograph for this collection postdates AD 1270. syri.ac knows of no non-Syrian who has touched this Memra in modern times.

These MSS are on the Library of Congress which has posted this on the Internet. That's great! . . . in black-and-white. Which isn't so great, for titles often in red. I think this is where our memra starts in #40 but even the consonants for "Yohnn br Pnkaye'" are hard to read, let alone the dots. Oh: and #40 is used parchment, so palimpsest. If so: 17-20 images, of maybe 280. This text corresponds to #26 here; #26 is at least paper so not palimpsest.

This memra is, as you can see, a minor work; not seven volumes nor even two. These things get tacked at the end of codices, to fill up the last (costly) pages; as witnessed by the Copts when they ended their codices with that "letter of Peter to Philip".

Fair Warning: this memra may belong rather to one of those later monastic Johanans. Ebedjesu himself may witness only to the same late-mediaeval confusion which Baumstark has decried. But ... does that matter? John of Dalyata and John Daylamaya are early eighth-century, also in scope for Seeing Islam.

UPDATE 1/26: this poast is what happens when I speed-translate something without checking the footnotes. Baumstark already warned us.

The Jacobite adjective

One word I ran across in the BnF 405 - qadmaya. 'Tis an ordinal pseudonumber for "first"; I think hadaya would be most literal, and we may find reshaya somewhere. The -aya ends up in other adjectives, here and there - but the pa''îl seems more basal to Biblical Aramaic. The unstoppable Sebastian Brock tracks this -aya habit across history. It turns out more common in seventh-century text than in fourth-.

I note that many if not most of Brock’s choices of translation are Ephesian: Cyril of Alexandria, Severus, PsZacharias (i.e. Zacharias, as paraphrased and continued), and the Western Bible. Then there're the prose-writers. From the fifth and sixth century they too are had-qnoma: John of Apamea, Philoxenus, Cyrus and Thomas of Edessa, Daniel of Salah, and John of Ephesus.

Brock for the East has Narsai fl. AD mid/late-400s... then skips to Heraclides' translation in mid-sixth. Beyond this: Barḥadbeshabba, Sahdona, Dadisho‘ [of Qatar] ... Isho‘yahb III; also Isaac of Nineveh and Babai.

I take it that the monastic synopsis and Elias of Nisibis are all too late and secondary even to work with. Arbela is sus. Siʿrt, of course, is in Arabic now. Per Stephen Gero, “The See of Peter in Babylon: Western Influences on the Ecclesiology of Early Persian Christianity”, we cannot trust even the textual integrity of Eastern synodic "minutes".

I also note among the East that John bar Penkaye isn't noted. John, too, rejected Ephesus and - further - had no Greek and wasn't keeping up with Siʿrt's sources. So, that one might be slow to follow the Western seventh-century translators.

Might be worth a nuanced and independent look at all these Easterners - starting with Bar Ṣawma. The first Socrates translator will be pro-Nestorius, as well. Some, like Babay and Isaac and the aforementioned Narsai, had some dialogue with the West; but they were all Nestorians, even suffering from anti-Nestorian tampering in their MSS.

John bar Penkaye, as Baumstark summarises him

'Tain't edited, as Yulia Furman has edited books 1 and 9... but there's manuscripts, which I'll get to. But first I'd like some hints as to what's worth translating. As to that heeerrre's Baumstark, again. I've taken the liberty of deleting the folio-references because I'm starting with a different folio. I've lost what little German I ever had, so this is Google Translate - use at own risk.

• Book I begins with the creation of heaven and earth. The first half is devoted to that six-day work; the second recapitulates much more briefly the rest of the biblical prehistory up to the Rapture of Enoch.
• Book II continues the Old Testament story up to the Babylonian exile. It concludes with a chronographic list of the kings of Judah and Israel, and one of the alleged Assyrian-Babylonian rulers, as contrived by the Christian chronograph from Alexandros Polyhistor and the OT, separated by a few sentences about Nabuchodonussor.
• Book III begins with the reign of Cyrus and the return of the Jews from exile. In all essentials, what follows is exactly the content of the second book of the Maccabees. The martyrdom of the seven brothers is told in great detail. On the other hand, for the time being there is no mention of the victorious Jewish struggle for freedom.
• Book IV is not so much a continuation as an addition to the previous one. In the introduction, the author expands upon Old Testament prophecies in general and — without naming it explicitly — on those of the book of Daniel in particular. With the death of Alexander the Great and the division of his kingdom then begins the narrative. A list of the Seleucids up to Antiochus Epiphanes is followed by a retelling of the content of the first and third books of Maccabees, separated by a discussion of the idea that everything God has done to Israel is a prophetic reference to the calling of the Gentiles. After Johannan has explained his intention to break off the detailed account of the events of pre-Christian times, he concludes with a list of the rulers of the Jewish people from Judas the Maccabee to Herod the Great.
• Book V is intended to deal with the influence of demons on mankind as a counterpart to the work of God recognizable in the history of Israel, which demons, with Satan at the head, Johanan divides into three orders. This purely theological explanation concludes with an overview of the worldviews, cults, and vices of various pagan peoples.
• Book VI opens an overview of the Old Testament revelation. At the top is Johannan's list of books recognized by the Nestorian Church of his day as Old Testament scriptures. After stating that these writings have by no means been preserved in their entirety as they were written, and Ezra's editing of the canon provide further material for preliminary remarks of a general nature - Adam, Seth, Noah, Abraham, the Law and the Prophets - he leads to a discussion of the Pentateuch. After the content of the first two books is given in detail and that of the third and fourth is at least briefly indicated, the conclusion is a presentation of the prophetic content, namely Genesis. The promise to Abraham Gen. XII 3, the sacrifice of Ishaq, the sacrifice of Melchizedeq, the story of Joseph, the blessing of Israel and the prophecy of Bi'lam find a particularly detailed treatment in the sense of the typology of Theodore of Mopsuestia and his school.
• Book VII moves on in the path taken by the previous one. The Exodus of Israel from Egypt, the personalities of Moses and Joshua and the Old Testament priesthood are interpreted typologically. The typos is then contrasted with prophecy, the mysterious event with the prophesying word. This is said to have its place chiefly in the Psalter. A detailed explanation of Psalms II, VIII and XLIV is intended to prove this. Finally, the messianic interpretation of the third of these Psalms gives the author the opportunity to present his doctrine of the Trinity and Christology systematically.
• Book VIII first finishes the explanation of Psalm XLIV. The main subject of discussion here, however, is the connection between typos and prophecy, as it appears in the works and writings of the prophets. The explanation of Na'aman's leprosy, Psalm CIV with reference to Melchizedeq, the stories of Elijah and Jonah are treated as prime examples.
• Book IX treats Egyptians, Krionos, Zeus, Demeter, Persephone, Pluton, Dionysus, Aphrodite, Artemis and Apollon, on the other hand Isis, Osiris and Typhon are discussed. Shorter remarks apply to the religions of the "Chaldeans" and the "magicians", the most succinct imaginable to the cults of other peoples, among whom only Edomites and Romans are mentioned by name. Explanations of a purely theologically edifying nature close the most interesting section of the entire work for non-theologians.
• Book X begins the narrative of the life of Christ, which it continues until the beginning of his public teaching. A moving praise of divine mercy and the answering of the dogmatic questions of who Christ is and why he came into the world form the introduction.
• Book XI is dedicated to Christ's public activity, suffering and death, and resurrection. The now fulfilled Old Testament types and prophecies are consistently compiled. It concludes with a discussion of the difficulty arising from Matt. XII 40 compared with the actual dates of death and resurrection.
• Book XII guides the reader from Christ's resurrection until the destruction of Jerusalem by Titus. The apparition of the angels at the Ascension gives the author cause to expand extensively on other New Testament apparitions of angels. After this digression he picks up the thread of profane history where he left it in Book III. From Alexander the Great onward, he reports that the rule of the Hellenistic kings was succeeded by that of the Romans, beginning with C. Julius Caesar, and then gives a chronographic list of the Roman emperors from Augustus to Vespasian, not without repeating the main events, to commemorate New Testament history. The last part of the book is filled with the account of the Jewish war, followed by a review of the prophetic predictions of what has just been told.
• Book XIII deals with the history of the apostles after a broad recapitulation of the previous content of the work. A mention of the magician Simon, which leaves no doubt that the author was familiar with the Roman legend of Peter and Simon, concludes the praxeis of I-X in the first half of these Books. The rest brings legendary information about the origin of the gospels, the missionary activities of the individual apostles and their setting.
• Book XIV outlines the history of Christianity from the death of the apostles to the victory of Islam in Asia. Johannan speaks quite extensively, but in quite general terms, of the Roman persecutions of Christians, briefly of Constantine the Great, in order then to go on to the history of the Church in Persia. The political antagonism between the Roman and Persian empires had long ago led to the bishop of Ctesiphon-Seleukeia being granted an independent position vis-à-vis the Church of the West. The great Persian persecution of Christians then began with Sabur's accession to the throne. After this and the simultaneous Roman-Persian war have been reported, the history of the Arian turmoil and the Council of Nicaea, Julian the Apostata and his successor Jovian follow, introduced by an overview of the heresies from the older Gnostics to Apollinaris and the Macedonians. Below this, after a period of 70 years, the Persian persecution comes to an end after the Romans cede Nisibis to the Persians. Since then the Church in the East has enjoyed peace. In the west, the Arian persecution follows under Valentinian I and Valens, and after a short period of calm under Theodosius and his immediate successors, comes the great christological religious controversy - which is naturally reported with biased one-sidedness. A survey of the dogmas of the three denominations which emerged from the struggle — Nestorians, Chalcedonians, Monophysites — closes the history of these turmoils, and the Councils of Ephesus and Chalcedon. A few words follow about the origin of monasticism in Egypt and an equally vague account of the fall of the Persian Empire and the victorious course of the Arabs, which ends in a description of the extent of the new Mohammedan world-empire.

... I'm skipping Baumstark's loooong summary on Book XV since we know that already; in my opinion he were better to have translated it himself instead.

Baumstark lists some parallels, which Bar Penkaye may have used. Baumstark doesn't come up with much. Book XII used Josephus' Jewish War. We own Josephus' Book VI in Syriac as "5 Maccabees", at the Biblioteca Ambrosiana in Milan: Bedjan (1905), 770-837; also cf. footnotes 32-4. Bedjan thought that the Milan translation was poor. Maybe Bar Penkaye, who knew Josephus for Josephus, owned a better translation. One does wonder about which Josephus.

Baumstark noted also a pile of Christian apologetic: Aristeides c. 9-12; Justin Apol. I c. 54; Tatian c. 8-10, 21, 32; Athenagoras c. 17-22, 28-30; Ambrosius (?) Logos pros Hellenas c. 1-3 (Spic. Syr. 38-41), Ps.-Meliton Spic. Syr. 24 f.; Quadratus may be here as well, and of course Theodore of Mopsuestia. We may assume Bar Penkaye had all of it via Syriac or through a Syriac intermediary.

John bar Penkaye's other work

As noted Baumstark continues:

Any data about his other works leave much to be desired in terms of clarity. In addition to epistles and answers to questions, a distinction can be made between: an ascetic main work in seven volumes, of which the last two were subsequently added as a "supplement"; a "book of the seven trade-speeches" (= "the seven eyes of the Lord"?) also of monastic-ascetic content; a two-volume "book against the (non-Christian or heretical?) cults"; and a book about Kindererziehung [childrearing and/or paedagogy].

A composition in poetic form is moreover preserved in a memra of seven-syllable meter against the moral decline of monasticism or "about the fear of God" (="about the perfection of divine conduct"). This rests upon a confusion with John of Dalyata (35e), although the ascetic legacy of the so-called "spiritual elder" was used also for Bar Penkaye.

Also to be distinguished from [our topic] is a John Dailomaya, d. 737/8 aged allegedly 122 years: native to Hedatta, this [John] entered the monastery in early youth, was kidnapped in later age by robbers into the land of Dailam on the Caspian Sea, where he founded a Syrian monastery. Author of "(eight or) nine Memre" of certainly ascetic content, which do not seem to have survived; he is met in further(?) transmission as such also of a Teshbohta and diaconal litany forms, while his own life story is the subject of an anonymous memra in twelve-syllable meter from an unknown period.

Of these, epistles and Q-n'-A are commonly mined for contemporary conditions, as we saw with Isho'yahb III a generation prior and, over West, with contemporary-ish Athanasius patriarch of Antioch (Hoyland, 147-9) and more so Jacob/James bishop of Edessa (ibidem, 160-7). Baumstark's footnote to that is just 'Aî, again. I hope we find these, somewhere, someday.

There has, indeed, been found "the Book of the Merchant"; and it is being edited - so I won't bother. And I'd not allow John bar Penkaye anywhere near any underaged relative of mine. Someone else can hunt around the manuscripts for any of that.

UPDATE 1/24: Then there's the ascetic work. The memra the Library Of Congress tags as such... ain't it. That's the #24-26-40 thing in footnote 6: worth a separate post. Also: those Kulte.

UPDATE 1/26: Here's the footnote #2 on that "ascetic main work": Biography. In 'Abd-Isho', the one mentioned in the fifth place seems to correspond to the kitâb, Dessare wad-Eshumlaya (de vinculis et de perfectione?), whereby the second part of the title then would needs be rendered by "and the supplement". Azz from it are maybe two "Discourse on the Cellule and the Trisagion" in the Hs: Seert 123. App. 2°.

Baumstark on the Main Points MSS

Anton Baumstark (1922), 210-11:

Johannan bar Penkaye, named for his home village of Penek in Bet Zabdai, lived as a monk in the monastery of a Johannan Kamulaya and as a hermit near that of a Mar Bassima, supposedly to finish up in one of Bet Dalyata. From his prose writings leads the unique work Book of the Main Points of the History of the Temporal World: between world history and theologically-oriented philosophy of history, in 15 chapters down to the [A.D.] year 686.

The Note 14 lists, after 'Aî in its second section - the authors'-catalogue by 'Abdisho b Berika vg. p. 325 Ak. 2, aka Ebedjesu - the MSS:

• Mosul 26 (1874/5).
• N-Dsém 25 (1882).
• Urmia 218 (1889, from 1261/2 Vorlage).
• 140 (1890).
• The University Library in Strassburg (1897), sold by the compiler in 1917.
• One mentioned by G Diettrich, NGWG 1909, 161 (from same Vorlage as Urm 218).

Then publications:

• A Baumstark, RQs 15, 273-80.
• Collection of the second part (chs 10-15): A Mingana, Sources syriaques 1, 1*-171*, a section of the first: Ketabona de-Partute (Urmia: 1898), 295-302, part of 15.
• Bs. Gismondi² 148-58. Übs of 15.
• Bs: Mingana a.a. O. 172*-97*.

I'll get to the rest, later on. If you're looking to edit this text for yourself, you are better off with Yulia Furman's list of sources at least onetwo of which are now online.

Saturn's clay

We have a couple comments about the Carbonaceous Chrondrites on this blog. Most important for us is how they got over here, given that Chicxulub looks like one of them. Jupiter nudged a few, last I looked, into Earth-crossing orbits, very early in the Solar System's life.

A few days ago, when I was busy with other things, we got a report on where they came from originally. They think: about where Saturn is at now, or beyond, so 10+ AU.

The problem with the Carbonaceous Chrondrites we've found so far is that they are not enriched in volatiles (water, ammonia, CO₂, methane . . .), like those iceballs orbiting Saturn, which iceballs probably formed beyond 10 AU to oust the system Saturn formed with. The solution is that entry into Earth's orbit baked the clay. I'd add that hangin' around an Earth-crossing orbit before actually, like, crossing Earth might also take in some irradiation and bake-off if orbiting a few million years, which will correspond to a few million orbits - divided by 4.6 if a Ceres-like.

On topic of Ceres here's another takeaway: the surface materials of asteroids having 3.1 μm absorption features and CCs can originate from different regions of a single, water-rock-differentiated parent body. So: a doomed protoplanet like Theia but forming (even) further out, launching into the inner system, then breaking against something like Vesta...?

More Syriac-sources

John bar Penkaye's last five chapters turns out to be a second volume. Alphonse Mingana's first volume started with the Arbela Chronicle, now-called, which this ?editor ascribed to one Mšiḥa-zkha. This text has earned... a reputation. Roger Pearse has left most of this for later - probably, never. Be nice if that 1985 Króll translation ever gets out here for free, tho'.

Mingana followed up the Arbela, with this (my translation):

We desired to follow Mšiḥa-zkha’s text with a history in verse from the convent of Sabrisoʿ of Beth Koka. As this convent is located in Adiabene and its ruins can still be seen today very close to the great Zab, at seven hours west of Arbela, this second document will be a sort of complement to the first, by the frequent mention he makes of the bishops of that great metropolis.

As we prepared to deliver the manuscript to print, we have learned from the excellent analysis of Mgr. A. Scher that the same story existed in a manuscript from the convent of Our Lady of the Seeds; we hoped to collate our manuscript upon the latter, but the variants we have been able to identify are very few. Our manuscript which belongs to the church of Guessa (Kurdistan) is dated to the year 1928 of the Greeks (1617) and that of the convent of Alkoche is dated to the year 2007 (1696): “This book was completed by the help of Our Lord and of Our God and by the help of His strength, May 19, 2007 of the Greeks. It was copied by Ablahad, son of the deceased Hormizd, a native of Amed, a renowned city, and of the blessed village of Sarokhyé”. We have not taken into account the manuscript of Seert which only partially contains our document and arrives only as far as Rabban Prancé.

The document was composed in the very convent of Mar Sabrisoʿ, as the title and the frequently used phrases indicate: “came hither to our convent… this convent... he listened to us with benevolence.”

Our author was not inspired, in his composition, either by the monastic history of Thomas of Marga, nor by the Book of Chastity by Isoʿ-dnah of Basra; but these three authors drew, each on his own part, from ancient sources we no longer have today. Thus, for our part, how we would establish the chronology for these three historians: around 820 our anonymous author; from 832 to 850 Thomas of Marga; around 900 Isoʿ-dnah of Basra. The reasons which make us follow this order as well as the new data by which this document enriches our knowledge, are set forth in the footnotes we have placed at the bottom of the pages.

Nobody doubts this authenticity (like they don't doubt Bar Penkaye). It helps, of course, that other MSS exist, without Mingana's manhandling. Admittedly the document is ninth-century . . . but, what we may have here, is another Synoptic Problem. Maybe something of use for the early eighth-century!

We may end up disappointed. All three MSS are summarised, together, in Robert Hoyland's Seeing Islam, 209-11 / 211-13 / 213-15. Where each speaks of Arabs, each rarely speaks of the same Arabs. Mingana's text seems most descriptive until 'Abbasid times, when Thomas of Marga will step in. Mingana says much of a Maran'emmeh but this may not be the same Maran'emmeh - metropolitan of Salah - whose prophecy of Hatim bar Salih features in Thomas.

One exception. Isoʿ-dnah will speak (in #126) of Joseph called the Seer (ḥazzaya). Mingana p. 248 notes a "Jacques [Jacob] the Prophet" - offhand. The Seer is noted also by Thomas of Marga, it seems also offhand. As Hoyland noted, Joseph's work hasn't been entirely published as of yet; some of it is relevant for 'Abbasid studies and, perhaps, for Christian theology. Emiliano Fiori has been working toward the Questions And Answers (pdf).

Also noted here and there is Isaac of Nineveh.

So why bother?

I did John bar Penkaye a courtesy that closed-minded nincompoop would never, in life, have done for me: translate some of his stuff. So: why did I do that? I mean, apart from that I promised in writing to do it, and that I wanted into the language...

I'll admit that three-to-four weeks of learning Syriac, and from written material only at that, wasn't enough to get the perfect handle on the text, nor even a good handle. Partly, I think, I just wanted to shame professional scholars of Syriana, because they hadn't translated this particular section. I have translated this badly, as a beginner. That's better than anyone who has not translated this at all, in whose ranks belongs Alphonse Mingana. If you will pardon me.

As Yulia Furman pointed out, John is a guide into the Syriac portion (only) of Sabrisho's library. The reception-history of these tomes is valuable.

For us Christians anyway, the most valuable part of the fourteenth chapter will be what that chapter says about Eastern reception of Nestorius' creeds. Historians of Islam have focused on the fifteenth chapter; Islam-skeptics especially focus on that chapter. But as a Christian I suggest we pay more attention to the Christian creeds, which lie in the fourteenth. Thanks to Sebastian Brock we (well, those of us who bought his essays - I haven't) can read the creeds' originals. But we also want to engage with a lower-IQ reader of those creeds, on how they are used against us. Also I suspect John was quoting the cliff-notes.

John's sources for chapter 14

If nobody minds, I'm filling up this evening with footnotes to this project. Here, we'll talk about John bar Penkaye's sources.

First up: he used the Syriac language. This is a variant he shared with Sabrisho' the master of his abbey up in northern Mesopotamia. I don't know how it was spoken in his days, since I don't think we have a seventh-century AD copy, but we have plenty of copies from the 1800s and early 1900s, among which Alphonse Mingana's handcopied (but published!) partial edition should count. And of course it's in the eastern script.

As for what taught me this script and this language, I have to say, W.M. Thackston's Introduction to Syriac worked wonders. Had some slight problems with the vocabulary. For that, I went with the Vocabulaire usuel. This was, admittedly, for the Western dialect on the one side and French on the other. We just needs convert û to "ou" and the occasional "a" to "o"; usually we'll get it.

John's main literary source was - drumroll please - the Bible. Elsewhere Yulia Furman's two 2014 essays, in Syrians and the Others, directed me to the Peshitta. For the New Testament, that's Dukhrana. Old Testament was a little trickier to find; in fact - as of 1922 - there was no critical text. That means I'd have to pay a lot of money and/or find an excellent library. Then I figured - do I really want a critical text? - or do I want some vulgata / textus-receptus likely to be used in northern Mesopotamia from the end of the seventh century AD until Bar Penkaye quit getting copied longhand. For that, the Mosul edition comes recommended. Someone doing philology on the Biblical text itself can go spend the money and/or do that job, that is, the job which isn't mine. I figured that where I was translating from Mosul, I'd quote George Lamsa for the English.

Another source for this side of John's text would be the creeds. I struggled with the text here until I dug up online quotes from Syriac translations of Nestorius' livre d'Heraclide de Damas. French again! - although, thanks to Roger Pearse over at Tertullian.org, this is available to everyone in English as well. Also invaluable - although taken with some natric-chloride - was Sebastian Brock's 1985 translation of several creeds in "Christology of the Church of the East", which I found excerpted (Google Books) in Doctrinal Diversity (Garland, 1999), including much technical Syriac jargon. Kyana, qnoma, dilayat, sebyana and lots of words ending -uta. UPDATE 1/30: The warning comes from Stephen Gero, “The See of Peter in Babylon: Western Influences on the Ecclesiology of Early Persian Christianity”. On the other hand: Babay, Liber de Unione: mšihā d-aitūhi trēn kyanē ū-trēn qnomē b-had parsōpā d-barutā as an antiChalcedonian mantra (pdf). And here's Lulyane.

The "something by Jubal" parallels a comment by the "Cave of Treasures". Jubal, as descendate of Cain, is considered part of the corrupted generation prior to the Flood. Jubal's compositions were anti-Psalms, if you like. ON FURTHER RESEARCH 1/22: Furman offers Bar Penkaye's sources for 2/9ths of the first 9/15ths of the book: Jubal appears at the end of the first. Furman doesn't cite "the Cave" in there - which, we must remember, was a Miaphysite text. However, I cannot rule out East Syrian use of Miaphysite lore perhaps laundered through some homily or other. Bar Penkaye himself insinuates Theodore of Mopsuestia, who did indeed write a commentary.

What I do not find in this (admittedly brief) extract is reference to ... any Syriac historiography after, if I can trust Mingana's sidebars, emperors Jovian and Theodosius I. Who were Roman. So where's Acacius? Where's Aba? AD 424-484 might have been a dark-age but the two centuries afterward were not. That might be due to the focus on the crimes of the Ephesians and the failures of Chalcedon, as our man saw them. This is a personal disappointment, I must say.

Finally, there's the personal touch, by our fine historian. Nah, I'm being sarcastic: John bar Penkaye was a bigot who never bothered even to learn Greek, and it likely would have killed him to learn Coptic or (ugh) Armenian. In this he contrasts poorly not just with the later Zuqnîn chronicler but also with the contemporary Pseudo Methodius of Sinjar, who made an especial point not to alienate other Christians.

John, further, was a blowhard. This actually helps when translating him because he's got a number of verbal mannerisms that he's going to repeat in what few chapters have been translated already. If nothing else his rants flag where we're safe in skipping over some text. Mingana himself couldn't stomach this bore so skipped everything up to chapter 14.

John bar Penkaye speaks

[ed. note: Alphonse Mingana, Sources Syriaques (1907) 2.137f. This isn't all John's fourteenth chapter but runs as far as I care to translate for now; Sebastian Brock concluded it here.]

... As for that second synod so convened, at the city Chalcedon. When they gave evidence, that is, about a certain monk Eutyches: it confirmed us about the wickedness of the Egyptian-spawn. Where Cyril planted and Eutyches watered, Satan flourished.

Here then let no man be hesitant over the delay of God's spirit, nor be indignant when he see "a multitude which deviates from justice" to side with sacrilege. What does the breath of the Law testify? do not answer "in a lawsuit so as to pervert justice, in order to side with a multitude which deviates from justice". More! shall one be considered with that multitude destroyed by the Deluge, or with Noah? For my part, my choice is with Lot alone and not with the myriads of the Sodomites. To dwell with Abraham as a foreigner, and not with the multitude of Amorites. To repent with Elijah at Carmel, and not with the thousands of Ba'al's prophets. And to be crucified alone with Christ, and not crowded about the cross. And to be hounded out with Nestorius, and not involved with the endless myriads of the slanderers. For God, who accepts are as minor things. The truth is seen by the few, not by the multitudes. And the road is strait and narrow for the few made to walk by it - so the word of our Lord. Now, to be shown: be not surprised if the many be found wanting. Let us return to the topic of our course.

So when the bishops assembled to the city Chalcedon: they made inquiry about the Theotokos; and about Divine patheia on humankind, as if to bring about its establishment. They reaffirmed the dogma; and they extinguished fire by fire, more that they replaced falsehood by falsehood. And when they confessed her whom they received as if she were the Master from the start: they reverted vainly to make via her of one physis, two natures. They did not distinguish the nature without physis. Instead they were content to confess that for two natures, two physeis: leaving nothing of Nestorius' scheme to forbid, as the queen Pulcheria was commanding. For they loved "the honor of men more than the glory of God". Moreover they banned Eutyches as a bad gardener. But for the Egyptian [Cyril]'s sprouting evil, this they accepted diabolically. Additionally they placed and confirmed under the ban all the wise teachers who ever manifested: I mean, Diodore [of Tarsus] and Theodore [of Mopsuestia], and other such luminaries. And the divided unity of the infant's sentence was split and confirmed. And they unified thusly [the church] of monophysis: when something spoken goes unacknowledged, it is as nothing to contest about. But on account of this, it's time for the dispute to be told as follows: indeed our narrative is for the sake of the dispute; if not as deeds in the abiding church of Christ. Let us return to the run of our course; as among those anticipating the end of days, likewise let us end this narrative so as not to overstep the boundary.

During these two divisive assemblies the blessed Nestorius was slandered and ousted from his seat; and he ended his life in the waste of Awasa. The Church of the East meanwhile was freed entirely from the impiety of these two festivals: by it, the true creed of the 318 was established, and stayed established: and rejected alongside [our church] was that of patheia and of monophysis. [Our church] received thereby those of Diodore's school as being bound by the apostolic creed. From that time our corporeal church is split into three divisions. The easterners confess: God and the Son of Man are one Son of God. The son of man was made God; and God was made son of man. Two natures, two physeis; in unity: one prosôpon of the sonship. When are preserved their characteristics: they have accomplished salvation on behalf of our redemption. It is this prosôpon of united will from two natures, which is lord Christ, and God over all. So much for the easterners. As for the west, is a certain dogma seeking patheia and death, or what name I know not. There is also: of the two natures on the one hand but one physeis when they left - i.e. from that, of two physeis - they spoke with no comprehension about two sons. And they did not understand what would be the nature if so: is it that of the physis able to be acted on? Whatever; the three are divided from then until now - and behold, our masters are like something by Jubal.

The Egyptian however is renowned for his sorceries, of afflictions as much as of astrology - I mean the hermits of the Egyptian desert and the churches and monasteries. In short: Egypt was agreed on all his impiety. Once he crossed the aeon of time for eternal torment, he left behind him evil inheritors, for the evils of evil spirits: by pleasant words and by the sorceries of the belly, these were led astray into the great cupidities of the simple-minded. As for the rest of the Chalcedonians, these were set to follow the former. These took three sects thence until the reign of Kusro king of kings; likewise in the Romans' kingdom, as far as its authority was successful. Little of much was refuted worthy of heresy; but unabandoned were the calumnies [against Nestorius] which clearly should be raised as worthy of that. So from them the next root of evil declared from their evil - I mean here the impious Lulyane. Thus he affirmed his accursed and impious dogma over the salvation of our Lord. Grace ejected it upon a people thick of heart: the Armenian heretics. From them thus was accepted the return of this impiety.

Our barycentre

Our planets might affect also the Sun. They do this by shifting the centre of mass for the entire Solar System, which shift then churns up the Sun's interior. So claimed PD Jose in 1965 for the planets then known - excluding the ninth planet of the day, the Pluto-Charon duet, at the time unconstrained and in anycase resonant with Neptune.

Now cometh Ian R. Edmonds of Brisbane. (Good eye, Turtle!) Edmonds implicates the Brown-Batygin Planet Nine, specifically in the solar cycles Hallstaatt (2400 years) and Gleissberg (88 years). There's also Jose's own 177 year periodicity; this, Edmonds erases by Phase Modulation, to which concept I confess ignorance.

Edmonds is able to improve predictability of the solar cycles, which is awesome for satellites and future spacecraft.

Also, heliographic longitude has increased from 50° in 1965 to 53° in 2022. It might constrain where we look. Although I am unsold that the orbit be circular.

To be reminded, Planet Nine may or may not have seen in the early 1980s, for its part at a high ecliptic latitude - although I haven't seen followups yet. If not Planet Nine herself (the likeliest name will be Proserpine, which is even likelier now) this body may at least be some resonant like Pluto for Neptune.

Please take this seriously

OregonMuse of AoSHQ thought that the virus reportage was Panic Porn and objected to vax mandates. This, 20 December 2022. Over January, the site chronicled OregonMuse's struggle with the disease which the TrumpVax was meant to counter. Today we got the awful news.

Consider, that when Biden is attacked for his high case-count and death-rate, that this spread is driven by people who do not support Biden, and oppose "vax mandates" and, indeed, The Vax itself.

Read Ron Unz. He's still alive.

REDDIT 10/4/23: Just found out about the Herman Cain awards. Also found out the Right doesn't mind gloating about Left victims of Left policies - BECAUSE HIPPOCRASY, or something. I don't care. I'm consistent!

Ramscoop in the atmospheric boundary

ToughSf dug up a 1958 study (pdf) on a ramscoop over Earth at 100-300 km. This is where oxygen and hydrogen are both ionic. They're a pain to deal with for orbiting craft; but if you have a ramscoop, that is now a feature: collect these gases and recombine them, releasing ~3 MJ/kg energy and produce net positive thrust to allow for propellantless low orbit propulsion. UPDATE 1/13/23 He's linking similar over Mars (pdf).

Note, not ramjet; it's able to provide energy by mixing the ions together.

First, of course, 1958 NASA had to get that scoop up there, which still isn't trivial. I do wonder if 100-300 km be a viable layer for that lightcraft; this was done, exactly, to push something to Mach 25 in the highest atmosphere.

I also wonder about Venus of course. There's a hydrogen / oxygen ionic stew above that planet too. To be as consistent as over Earth, the ramscoop must run orthogonal to the Venus-Sun line (i.e. it's polar). I suppose if going equatorial you just have to expect different conditions as you go along, although that looks like a complex problem.

The race

The sun will get too hot someday. Also worrisome is that the core is cooling... faster than we'd thought.

The study is based on various minerals we have in our mantle. Not Olivine Websterite as I'd expected but bridgmanite, which turns into the mineral post-perovskite when it cools. Both conduct heat, the latter even more so.

MORE 1/22: I'd be interested in what thermodynamics should conclude, as the heat from the core radiates more efficiently. It would go into the mantle-plumes, I should imagine.

For Earth, keeping our pleasant atmosphere and our ability to survive on the surface depend, both, upon both our core-driven dynamo and on Solar irradiance. We need that orbital ring.

Nero's fire

Over the last few days Vridar has been investigating the "Neronian Fire", as the Senatorial party nicknamed it under Domitian. Vridar does not see anybody outside the Senate blaming Nero until then.

For one, Josephus Flavius - tied with Domitian's family, not with the Senate - is not a Nero fanboy but to blame the fire upon that one never crossed his mind. We start seeing that blame being cast with Cassius Dio, Suetonius, and some poets. Also Tacitus of course. If we trust Tacitus. Vridar does not trust Tacitus.

Unlike Vridar I am prepared to trust Tacitus - at least as a transmitter of his sources. Tacitus' friends, like the younger Pliny, were aware of Christianity at least as practiced in Asia Minor.

I find feasible that there was an anti-Domitian faction among the Christians just as among the Senators. Also, inasmuch as Christians anticipate Christ's return, if they had to compete with a faction anticipating Nero's return, which in Asia Minor they did, then they had that much more motive to do Nero down.

Tacitus as a good Senator despised Nero anyway, and transmitted anti-Neronian slanders from whatever source. If other historians and biographers didn't transmit such, it might be because the slanders were just that obvious, so unfit for print. Until the Christians, at last, took over.

Hunga Tonga

Looks like a VEI 4 went off underwater in Tonga waterspace, 4 UTC Saturday (so late the prior night, MST - I'm backdating, from 3:30 PM Saturday).

Based on the map, it's a bit north of the main Tonga island-pair (with Eua); surrounded by Fiji (which provides the kingdom's internet), Willis-and-Futuna (which I know nothing about), the two Samoas, and Niue (about which I also know nothing).

It's 21° south so, its ejecta won't be affecting the northern hemisphere. The tsunami, however, has affected ... pretty much all the Pacific.

New Zealand are scrambling to help out, which is good of them. All these islands seem like they'd be at risk.

Rosary

Catholics pray the Rosary. Muslims also have a rosary - the subḥa; this is to recite the hundred names of God. Orthodoxy has the chotki.

Saint Paul of Thebes, whose biography Jerome wrote, used used pebbles and knotted cord - if I am to believe JereMiles Hardy, "Invention of the Rosary" ed. Great Events In Religion (and wiki). Note: I cannot find this in Jerome's text. Gertrude of Nivelles used beads for prayer; she died in AD 659. Gertrude was contemporary with the "Ave Maria" in the Advent Mass.

Overall the Rosary as Christians know it seems of the Latin West. It looks female-driven; plus maybe Jerome. As one might expect of occidentals . . .

I poked around for Syriac rosary, and there is one - for Maronites. Of course Matthew's "Lord's Prayer" has been in Syriac maybe even before they had Matthew, or the Diatesseron, in Syriac. Of Syriac use of the "Hail Mary", I am less sure.

'Tis on-brand for our post-Jerome Church that we venerate Mary to such degree whilst falling short of monophysitism. Incoherent, but on-brand. Also on-brand is for the Orthodox to dismiss Latin pietas out of hand even where they're in agreement. It's just sad.

Although, I don't expect anything like this Rosary among the Nestorians.

Bad arguments against the rosary

The Syrian Orthodox do not pray our Mary-focused rosary despite that they follow the dogma of had qnoma so accept Mary as (literal) Mother Of God. Sometimes we ask them about it; at least one guy has responded. Unfortunately his response isn't good.

The argument goes that Orthodoxy doesn't go for "mental imagery". The argument further dismisses the rosary-associated visits of the Virgin, which were Western.

I must say, that church so famed for iconodoulism whose spokesman has actually dared name himself "Syriacorthodoxicons" is making an astoundingly poor argument against "mental imagery". As for Marian apparitions: one wonders what that author would make of this page including several Late-Antique apparitions in Egypt and Syria. It isn't Marian apparitions as such, which S.O.I. rejects.

This fellow proceeds to recommend the kamboskini / mequetaria. Which is a... rosary. But with different regular prayers!

S.O.I. overall gives off the impression that we in the West cannot have our own tradition, because we're a pack of Gaulish barbarians or something. I mean... yeah, he's probably right. But does a Syrian have much standing against Western barbarism in this past decade . . . ?

Our rarified neighbourhood

I've known about the Local Bubble since 1994's Guide to the Galaxy.

By happenstance, we're in a hole in space - "we" being the hole which our own Sun has inflated, inside that hole. Surrounding the solar bubble is a heliopause and, in the direction of our Sun's motion, a bow shock. Still, the interstellar gas around us is more vacuum-ey even than normal. As a result, Bussard doesn't work well here - so, that's out for the Proxima mission. Although we do get a fine view of stars in the bubble since there aren't so many clouds here. I guess that's what defines a "nearby" star from one that isn't, like TOI-2257 at "only" 188 light years.

The latest study on the Bubble now has the Bubble formed fourteen millions of years ago, from supernovae - plural. We're in the middle of where those suns went boom. So how come we're even... here? Because of that bow shock I mentioned: we are moving through space and, when those stars blew up, we weren't here yet. Now, after passing that wall, here we are.

That wall around the bubble has been forming new stars of its own. In fact, I wonder if the first bang seeded more mass into nearby stars, also not small, which also went bang. And/or those stars had been formed together in a wave of their own bubble-wall, having formed 14 million years before that.

At 1000 light years away, maximum, those stars we can see are massive too: the cycle stands to repeat, possibly starting with Betelgeuse already gone red. Maximum, because that 14 Mya star-formation (they say) accounts for ALL the biggies: Betelgeuse, and Rigel, Bellatrix and so on. Stands to reason the largest stars would have formed closer to the event when the shockwave was hardest. It might be we lucked out of one massive set of explosions just to fall victim to the aftershock.

The Jovian football

In exoplanet news, the Universitäts of Bern and Geneva report on a rugby-ball planet. You can tell they're Euros . . .

This planet, 1.5 Jupiter mass, transits WASP-103 relative to us so has a tightly-bound orbit. They can tell its shape from its shadow: it is elongated toward the edges of its sun's disc. So it is pointed toward the sun (and away from it). Tidal forces, then; like those predicted near an Event Horizon: the central body pulls harder on the orbiter's near side than on the far side. Just like how our own Moon draws the ocean's tides toward itself as it runs around Earth (and away from it).

The rocks on Earth don't feel these lunar tides - thankfully. (You gotta go to Io for that.) One Augustus E. H. Love floated a constant for various materials which decides to what extent a ball of that material will react to a given tidal force. This is called, naturally, the Love Number. WASP-103b's Love looks like Jupiter's. With that 1.5J mass it should be denser than Jupiter assuming the same substance... but, it is hotter where WASP-103b is at, than Jupiter is 5.2 AU from our sun. That must be inflating the football. Unlike Io and Earth, the tides should be constant so they don't add to the heat so much. I trust they've done the maths although, they admit, there's still an error-bar here.

The Swiss want to use the James Webb to learn more. Which luckily for them, is now unfolded and just needs to be inserted into L2 for cooldown.

Cooper-pairing in rebco

ScienceDaily flooded the place yesterday, to which I'll catch up tonight. We'll start with the "strange metals" and how they conduct electricity. Brown University in the Providence Plantation has the story.

Contrary to headline these are hardly "newly discovered". They're cuprates from around 1992 - so say Brown. Actually a few years before that. We're familiar with them at this blog as the copper-oxides: all that stuff with -co at the end, like bisco and various rebco's. That's right: they're the high-temp superconductors, which we keep running into around here for distributed-power aircraft and for the Ring Of Iron. The article focuses on the yttrium class of rebco, the ybco.

Brown University are, understandably, curious as to how these magic superconductors work. Back in the dark-age of niobium, we had a decent handle on how those worked... at 23 K. The electrons formed "Cooper Pairs" which acted like bosons - like a photon. Sort of like holes in the lattice although those were ionic. Cooper-pair quasibosons are resistant, above superconductive point, linearly with temperature. In normal metals there's some "Fermi liquid" theory that just says, "here's its resistance, for any temperature, until it flat-out melts".

Brown are looking into ybco above the superconducting point, where they're just metals. They say that rebco's are not normal metals; they are "strange". The cooper-pair linear model didn't seem to work. Unless - they say - they open up those holes in the lattice.

Did I understand any of what I just posted? Er... not really. But Brown hope to understand it.

Peter to Philip

Another text shared between Tchacos and Nag Hammadi is a work claimed from Peter to Philip. Sadly there's no Greek to triangulate the Coptic; but here's Nag Hammadi's take.

It only starts with the letter; most of it is about yet another appearance by Jesus to the Apostles, whom Peter leads. The core of it concerns the same gnostic myth we see in the apocalypse of James - probably why the two shared Tchacos. Although it's in a different volume over in Nag Hammadi. Also like Tchacos-James, it's subordinationist, although without James' Arian jargon.

The main myth here is that a feminine force - the Mother - in her folly, disobeyed the Father. She wanted to "raise up aeons" but made mistakes which the Arrogant One, which I assume is Yaltabaoth from the Johannine apocraphon I mean apocryphon, seized upon. I don't see where this is Biblical in the slightest so I file it as voodoo, like Enoch. Note the misogynic tendency in gnosticism traceable even to the Gospel of Thomas.

The Philip tradition seems more in tune with the feminine, as in the Gospel associated with him (which is in Nag Hammadi) and the Gospel of Mary (which is not). The latter shows Peter in a bad light, for its part.

This short revelation's content is relevant to Tchacos, where Nag Hammadi treated this as a tack-on. I'd further thought, and I suspect most of us think, that Tchacos has the original for ApJames. Tchacos-Peter, here, disappoints me. Peter's theme is human suffering. In this it echoes the first letter ascribed to Peter in our New Testament. Where Nag Hammadi's Jesus was a stranger to suffering, Tchacos would swap with that Jesus is a stranger to death.

As a work about pain here is a creed about the Passion, with the crown first and then the purple as John 19:2 (and not Mark 15:17). Philip's prominence is likewise Johannine although Philip does get noted in the Synoptics as well. Jesus' parting words on "peace" (for believers) and his command "fear not" look like John 14:27.

Besides 1 Peter and John, "behold I am with you always" looks to translate Matthew 28:20. John 14:16 instead has Jesus promise that the Paraclete will be with you always.

Interestingly Origen hits out at a Johannine-inspired notion that Jesus ever promised not to judge [guilty] those who believed in his name. For John 3:18 - Origen points out - you must believe in Jesus, in order for Jesus not to judge you. The names of Jesus are important to Tchacos-James, as I noted yesterday; the Father can be only "He Who Is" but the Son's names are passwords. (Remember, Nag Hammadi's edition is late and bad.)

This "Peter" text serves to unite Peter's community with John's, on Peter's terms.

Christian Egypt's first runs at forgery

Even if the so-called "Gospel of Thomas" does turn out to belong to the late first century, as I doubt; I will not mock the scholars who pin it after Tatian. There's too much record of forgery and other textual shenanigans in the whole Egyptian-apocryphal corpus. So now, let's talk about the "Gospel of Judas". Rather, about the codex it's in: the Tchacos.

"Judas" sits alongside several other Coptic concoctions which haven't enjoyed the same press, because - their text exists elsewhere. Those pique the interest of scholars looking at reception-history, of the works now known to have spread outside a single volume. As it happens Nag Hammadi is rife with one-shot texts like the "Apocryphon of James". Tchacos thus corroborates the "Apocalypse of James" (which is all over the 'web) and the "Letter of Peter to Philip".

It turns out, that the texts diverge. They're not even in the same dialect. Lance Jenott is looking at "James".

Jenott was unaware in 2017 of the contemporary Greek discovery: Sackler Library at Oxford University, recovered from Oxy 1904/05. That's -Rhynchos, not -Contin... allegedly. Geoffrey Smith and Brent Landau were promising to publish this via the Egypt Exploration Society, Greco Roman Memoirs; so, LXXXI or later. I can't find it online so - maybe LXXXIII.

And THERE's a rabbit hole. The fragments were re(?)discovered... in Dr Dirk Obbink's office. There's a question on that; nobody much trusts the Sacklers, for a start. Obbink himself parted from Oxford last year, the Exploration Society heaved him out, and he's even been fitted for an orange suit. Last I heard, last month, the man got sued (by Hobby Lobby *sigh*). Anyway Obbink, convicted fraudster, wanted to call this "the Gospel of James". We may doubt it will be easing his way past his final court date . . .

Back to Tchacos. This didn't even label "James", so we do not know if its editor cast it as an apocalypse (as Nag Hammadi did). It could be another secret booke like that apocryphon from Nag Hammadi. Although unlike that "James", our [two] "James" is/aren't laundered through ahadith about ancient homilies.

Neither text of "James" has anti-Chalcedonian nor even pro-Ephesus jargon so they're considered antenicene. Jenott ponders, however, a parallel with Arius' subordinationist Christology. I don't see anti-Nicaea here. However, instead, later on in the Nag Hammadi translation (for what that's worth), I do see some hints at persecution, which might be a lingering bruise from Diocletian's heavy hand, which he'd laid upon Egypt in particular. Is all this scribal activity under Emperor Constantius? In his reign Nicaea was a dead letter. Those Christians loyal to Constantius would have considered Nicaea a false council - like Second Ephesus. How many Christians today know about Second Ephesus?

So let's compare. Nag Hammadi: Nothing existed except He Who Is. He is unnamable and ineffable. I too, I am unnamable, from He Who Is. Tchacos: Nothing existed except He Who Is. He is [un]nameble (ⲡⲉⲧϣⲟⲟⲡ ⲟ[ⲩⲁⲧϯ]ⲣⲁⲛ) and he is ineffable[among those that] are or will be. Now I, I am from He Who Is, and he is unnamable (ⲡⲉⲧϣⲟⲟⲡ ⲁⲩⲱ ⲟⲩⲁⲧϯⲣⲁⲛ). Tchacos is more prolix, so perhaps shows intertextual strain. But maybe that's just the English.

Both versions share ⲉⲃⲟⲗ ϩⲙ̄ ⲡⲉⲧϣⲟⲟⲡ, I am from He Who Is; also, Jesus is an "image" of He Who Is. In this respect, Tchacos-James adheres consistently to subordinationism. The Nag Hammadi version has Jesus claim himself as unnameable just like the Father (Jenott, 70).

Even if we didn't have the Greek (Jenott didn't have the Greek, and I didn't either until I looked around for it); I'd suspect Tchacos has the true, Mesokemic Eunomian text. At Nag Hammadi, this got adapted to Ephesian Miaphysitism (and not third-century "Monarchianism"). Tchachos, then, isn't just the sole outing of "Judas"; it is the sole outing of the real translation of "James". It's been noted that the Greek has made its own evolution, "holy seed" > "holy spirit", tho' otherwise closer to Tchacos. Does seem that Jenott was overcautious.

Simplisme

I hold as rule-of-thumb that when an academic derides a theory as "simplistic", the theory was probably true. Saraceni today directs us to an analysis of drought-resistant crops among the Maya and associates.

The claim here, by UC Riverside archaeologist Scott Fedick and plant physiologist Louis Santiago, is that all the various "Maya" had enough variety in their crops that a drought would, still, spare enough crop for the farms to get by. The standard Mesoamerican chol package was (and is) maize and beans. If the irrigation canals run low, these two point out that the peasants can switch to (say) cassava. Thus Fedick: One thing we do know is the overly simplistic explanation of drought leading to agricultural collapse is probably not true.

Fair enough: the "Maya" won't die. The Maya haven't died, from the true ones in the north to the Quiche in the south. Not even the Choltal languages in between are quite dead. Linda Schele was telling us this decades ago and she was right. But. Those languages are not anymore dominant.

This tells me that although the people could survive a drought, those dependent upon a chol economy will be abandoning that economy. The civilisation will collapse. With a few outlying exceptions, of course. Literally: the centre cannot hold.

And what do we find among the ruins of Choltal-speaking civilisations but a mix of other languages, often related to Choltal but... not very related. The Lacandon, the only true Maya here, traipsed in all the way from the Yucatan. The mountain men - Mam, Quiche et al. expanded their control.

UPDATE 4/7/23: Destablisation.

Brayton

With a hat-tip to ToughSf from 2016, here is where KAIST is at 2020 with their supercritical-Carbon-Dioxide nuclear reactor. The coolant cycle which the RMBK of unblessed memory used was the Rankine, using water. The thorium reactor uses liquid salt. The Koreans' CO₂ process is the Brayton.

I like it for planets where water or even hydrogen is scarce, and carbon abundant. (I think our dry Moon might, also, be carbon-poor.) Mars of course, and the inner asteroids. Maybe Venus' clouds and low orbit.

The algebraic revolution

Algebra, when invented, existed not to deliver proofs, but to help translate the description of proofs. The actual proofs were geometric. We didn't get an algebraic reformulation of geometry for many, many centuries. Why not? What separated DaVinci from Kepler?

I observe, as a computer programmer, that algebra works for solving equations, but - absent a TRS-80 Model 2 computer - is impractical for difficult equations.

First, multiplication and more so the Long Division is a O(N²) algorithm so a pain in every problem-solver's rear. And then, in the end, you got the Squaring The Circle problem, with pi. You could literally waste an eternity calculating decimal places and not finish your proof. But with geometry: state your case, draw a few circles and lines and Q.E.D.

For day to day work, that putative Middle Egyptian drew out his equation just as far as he needed, to get the immediate job done, and then he prayed to Bas that it wouldn't blow up in his patron's face until he was safely retired in some other province. And so it went until Kepler came to Prague. Geometry and rough calculations were good enough for the pyramids. For Notre Dame Cathedral, too.

Not so much for the exact positions of the planets against the sidereal field over time. By 1600, they had a new tool, though: the logarithmic table. Base ten or base two, as long as we all agreed on the same base, O(N²) became O(N). Calculations to arbitrary precision became faster and less prone to error along the way. Algebra became practical.

Which meant that algebra grew popular. It could be expanded to proofs hitherto not considered by geometers.

Algebra as translation-aid

To follow up on Islam as the religion of mathematicians, lately I stumbled upon an Andalusi known as Ibn Badr. As the son of an Ismail, he's been deemed an Arab heir to Euclid. He was one of those guys whom the Andalus spat out, like Ibn Hazm and Maimonides; we can read about that elsewhere. Looking abroad I came across Jeffrey A. Oaks, "Medieval Arabic Algebra as an Artificial Language". It seems that the Muslims invented algebra and... didn't use it.

Rather, the Muslims didn't use it as we use it, for mathematical proof directly. They did use it for solving equations. Oaks says, also, that algebra was a constructed language. That piques my curiosity.

The king of mathematical proof, before algebra was known, was geometry. You state in Middle Egyptian how to bisect an angle (say), and then you illustrate that according to your instructions. Then some Greek like Euclid comes along and states the same thing in his language; followed by some Syrian, and finally an Arab.

As time went on, especially out east, not all Muslims wanted Arabic. An Arab-reading Choresmian is sick of translating all this stuff, and also finds the longhand to be a chore and a waste of good parchment. He sees that the illustrations haven't changed in three thousand years. So he puts most of the verbiage down in a few common symbols.

This means the maths can be speed-read in Arabic ... or Middle Persian ... or Sanskrit. Parchment is conserved, as well. (Paper is on its way, but I am unsure - until AD 1600 - how cheap that ever was along the Silk Road between Gansu and Araby.)

Yet even with good mathematical notation, the Ibn Badrs out west stuck with Euclid's method which was geometry. Oats says: so did the Europeans, until the 17th century AD. That's ... exactly when Kepler came to Prague.

President Biden speaks

I am not getting my heat turned back on because President Joseph Biden is up the Appia rise delivering some opinions. Climate change, and the failure of Build Back Better blah blah blah.

All I know about the climate right now is the climate in my house which is 45°F. I'll admit this improves over last night's 39°F. So, six more degrees of hot air - thank you Joe.

Get boosted if you're pushing 50

Back in the old country, here's where critical care is at.

As I read this chart: first off, the initial vaccine works and is awesome (dat 60s histo doe). If you are under 40, Teh Boost is a waste of your time and of available booster product. Over 50 - consider it (but it is still of marginal utility). In your forties . . . ehh. If you're obese and/or immunocompromised, good idea.

Either way, masks are - at this point - marginal.

The Darkener Age

I've long had an interest in that "Late Antiquity" / "Dark Age" dichotomy. Late Antiquity for Syrians; Dark Age for Europeans... and Greeks... and Iranians. Fun times for Vikings, Arabs, and Avars tho'.

The Dark Age and, for that matter, the Arabs and even the Talmud didn't come out of nowhere. I am pondering how Late Antique thought led into this total collapse of reason and international trust, finally of peace. In that light, let's consider what the Copts were doing.

Maybe Ehrman is right about an Orthodox Corruption Of Scripture. But that's only because Greek and Latin scripture got copied in Greek and Latin. The Copts had their own orthodoxy whose adherents made their own copies: at least two major editions of Sahidic Mark are known. If those copies don't survive we must consider for our first explanation that Sahidic overall did not survive as the Copts' main tongue. So: how did Sahidic-speaking Egyptians do, as transmitters of ancient lore.

Athanasius warned us in "Thirty-Ninth Festal Letter", ed. Perikles-Petros Joannou, Fonti, Fasciolo IX: Discipline générale antique (II^e–IX^e s.), vol. 2: Les canons des pères grecs (Rome: Tipographia Italo-Orientale S.Nilo, 1963), 72 that his contemporaries churned out work after work of lies.

Here's Alin Suciu on the context of Berlin 22220, Mirecki's Gospel of the Saviour. It turns out that Athanasius was right, at least about the Sahidic monks. Chalcedon occasioned - in reaction - a new Nile of forged New Testament literature. Usually the miaphysites laundered their tripe through sermons claiming textual support from documents found in the Jerusalem area; some of those sermons being pseudepigraphal themselves, foisted upon Cyril's opponent John Chrysostom for one (ironic) example. All very Morton Smith - which has made many scholars wonder if Smith himself was running a parody.

As the late liar Harry Reid would say it worked, didn't it. Imagine if the Copts had expended this energy on mathematics, astronomy, and hydro-engineering. Imagine if they'd just transcribed their own Demotic library - and despair.

What I am saying is that, as of the time of the Talmud, was also the time of Chalcedon; few hands were clean. If Jews thought contemporary Coptic clerics (for one) were a gang of devious and disgusting liars, and unintelligent at that given they couldn't even lie well - frankly, they'll hear no argument from this blog.

War between the US deepstate and Russia

Via Richard Hanania, here is a sober-ish take on Kazakhstan. Basically instead of Van Der Schtupf and Bungborough at the CIA meddling in secret, now it's Gershman and Weinstein at the NED meddling in full view. I don't know about "Pepe Escobar" so here is a dumbed-down take from Andrew Anglin. Adjust for Anglinisms accordingly.

I cannot see Biden or even Harris supporting this blatant interference in Russia's near-abroad directly. There's no way Trump would have supported this, either. This, I am afraid, is The Swamp; doin' what it does.

I do not like Putin and what the Russian military just did in Near Earth Orbit was a crime against all humanity. But hey, it was deniable. Now, the US deepstate can claim deniability on the distraction it just did against Russia, down here on Earth.

Likewise deniable is Glenn Reynolds endorsement. And now I must ponder if Borat was a psyop all along.

If a war breaks out between Russia and the US, the correct response by the citizens of either nation is - sit this one out. Catholics, for a start, can assuredly claim religious-exemption: Orthodox Russia versus ... well, let's just say, the US deepstate ain't exactly Council-of-Trent. Not our fight.

EPILOG 1/11: Russia won this fight. With Armenia's help, I note. Maybe the Armenians actually learnt summat, about the hand whot feeds 'em.