The Ephesian matron

Of some interest to Matthew's source for the Empty Tomb should be the Kiwi Hellenist last July especially 28 July. This comments upon some Hansen folklore, in its Roman-occupation Hellenic form for instance Phaedrus. One might consider the folklore deutero-Aesopic - or, given the misogyny, -Hesiodic.

The K.H. doesn't respect Neil Godfrey despite that Vridar's 2019 take... doesn't even touch on K.H.'s argument, as far as I can read both. At the time I bravely chose not to comment, lacking the competence. There's much on Vridar's site that irritates me but there's much more to be said for picking one's battles.

Anyway since Mark (as far as we know) doesn't mention a guard at the Tomb, I doubt he owes anything to the fable, and K.H. seems to back away from that too. Mark cared solely to establish the chain-of-custody; and Mark also couldn't have Peter there, likely for the simple reason all Christendom knew that Peter was not there. Matthew is he who introduced the guard. (Or Q. If you believe in Q. I don't.)

Rapture

One of Ehrman's missteps in his Revelation work is that he claimed the word "rapture" is not in the whole Bible. He wins through technicalities in English - and in the original Greek - for the Revelation, Greek "Apocalypse". He is however wrong in the Latin for Paul, in which language and in whose writings "rapture" actually exists.

A rapturus is one about to be taken. 1 Thessalonians 4:17 in the Vulgate indeed reads rapiemur cum illis in nubibus obviam Christo in aëra. That's literally the futuretense passivevoice plural of rapio, my amici. We may see a synonym with assumpturus.

I'm bringing this up because Ehrman's target is, exactly, this intersection of the Revelation with Saint Paul, upon where the former's Tribulation might sit with the latter's Rapture. Indeed the Latin tradition does (on occasion) preach a pretrib Rapture, along the way toward preaching the Revelation generally. h/t Roger Pearse this teaching is often ascribed to Ephrem Syros; although I don't know where Ephrem himself ever cared for the Apocalypse, being a Syrian, quite a bit of Greek got ascribed to him including on the Rapture. More so in Latin.

Anyway one of many PseudoEphrem speeches can be found at soothkeep.info with commentary, and a sketch of PseudoEphrem's thought.

Someone else might want to go through this material to figure out what lore derived whence. Origen is supposed to have composed sermons on the Apocalypse, now lost; likewise Nepos of Egypt. Maybe some of their work ended up under Ephrem's name. Pearse surmised that De fine mundi came from Emperor Marcian's Constantinople. That would put its sources rather earlier. It is difficult to say absent the extensive current-events we find in, say, PseudoMethodius.

Again: you, dear readers, don't have to take PseudoEphrem seriously and I am not asking you to read the Revelation in any language. I do however suggest to Bart Ehrman that he read this stuff, since he's supposed to be an expert charging money for his expertise, not just one of us cranks with free blogs.

Proliferation

If we're talking ever-smaller reactors, then our energy needs will require more reactors. That's just maths. If down to metastable americium, we will be having many more reactors.

Luckily metastable americium is set to be expensive and, one assumes, rare. As in, military applications and space travel.

Hala Sultan Tekke

Peter Fischer last month put out an excellent survey of an Alasiyan port, near the Hala Sultan Tekke aeroport in the non-Turkish side of the island. h/t Saraceni.

We learn this wasn't the Greek side of the island at the time. Around 1200 BC - about when the Hittites abandoned Hattusas - this port could trade only with Egypt and the Levant. I suppose Ugarit might have had trouble around then as well. Anyway: seems an embargo was in place against the Sea Peoples, possibly by Suppiluliama's order. If you're proposing that then you'd better plan to protect your property against non-trade bids.

Kition seems to have weathered the anarchy better so perhaps some survivors moved over there.

I don't know the language but I would guess at Etewo Cypriot. This isn't well preserved and I don't know that any of it is preserved from the Bronze Age. It may be that business was conducted in west-Semitic.

As chronology goes, the port is only really a thing from the 15th century BC on. That's long past longdisputed Thera so, Late Minoan IB and II. Late Helladic IIA is represented, expanding to IIB as the Greeks were taking Knossos. Perhaps when the Minoans were in full swing prior to that blowup, the ports were on the west of the island.

Associated with LH-IIIB, the pinnacle of Mycenaean civilisation, is Sardinian pottery. The Sherden! Fischer speculates that the Sherdens' import was likely not pottery (nor whatever was in the pots) but lumber.

Dyson

Paul Sutter asks about assembling a Dyson around our Sun built from our home. I don't think that's happening... ever.

I mean sure: absent a megaproject, we're doomed here, from the sun heating up by itself on its way to gianthood. But we can do megaprojects like ringing Earth (and Venus and Mars). Dyson is, like... a gigaproject. And we'll want to keep Earth just because it's a museumpiece.

Dysons outside this system, to be built around nearby stars, seem more plausible. I don't think anyone's using the TRAPPIST system. There's lots of raw-material there and to coat a colder surface they'll need less of that material.

Hammer, hammer, hammer

Radiohead and Killers considered harmful.

James warned us (no, not THAT James . . .): music has a hypnotic effect and, if already insecure, it resonates.

"Creep" was never my jam, and I suppose I got to "Mr Brightside" too late in life for that to have affected me. I do however wonder if I were ever wise to have listened to the "Disintegration", "Closer", and "Mezcal Head" albums.

Will we find Christian scrolls in Herculaneum?

Just askin' qweschinz, here. I mean - seriously: Herculaneum didn't do codices, but (papyrus) scrolls only, upon abandonment. When people passed correspondence around this was also scroll-by-scroll. The Jews and Samaritans famously retained a scroll culture. The first Christians more-famously weren't far distinguished from Jews; scroll-culture remains assumed in John's Apocalypse.

Herculaneum's abandonment like Pompeii's was incomplete when the volcano exploded which was year 79 in our calendar, in which calendar Paul was active in, what, the 40s and 50s. Paul should have been using (short) scrolls. Same with his copyists.

We have an argument from Luke Stevens on "The Two-Volume Archetype of the Pauline Corpus". Volumes, here, being scrolls, on account a single codex can easily hold the whole set of Pauline writings, but maybe not - if papyrus - a single scroll. Parchment is a thing for the Old Testament but not (yet) the New. Going by Stevens' abstract which is all I got: Codex Vaticanus aka "B" or "03", although of course a codex itself, bears witness to this division of scrolls.

Here in B the Epistles weren't supplied with headings(!). If they were, they'd go: Romans, 1-2 Corinthians, Galatians... then it gets weird. It's Ephesians, Philippians, Colossians, 1-2 Thessalonians, Hebrews up to 9:13. The rest is missing - in the codex. (The codex was apparently broken at the end and resupplied - mediaevally - with the rest of Hebrews then the Revelation.) But in that surviving ancient codex is an enumeration which seems to skip between Galatians and Ephesians; with the enumeration running from Hebrews(!!).

Stevens believes that the classic Romans-Corinthians-Galatians formed the first scroll, with Hebrews introduced to the top of the second scroll containing the rest. I am unaware even in "liberal" Pauline scholarship of challenges against Philippians, Philemon, or 1 Thessalonians. Interesting that Ephesians is here already (although not as "to Ephesians" yet). How about Titus? 2 Timothy? 1 Timothy, I dunno, may or may not be in the base scroll although I'm sure it made the codex on account 2 Peter is in there. Was 2 Thessalonians in the base scroll? ...The Letter Of Tears . . .?

Stevens thinks Saint Luke himself assembled the two scrolls. Did this first scroll continue to the long (canon) ending of Romans; or did it truncate this, as Marcion found it? I doubt Luke's party included the full text of Romans. Mark might. Anyway truncation is easiest concluding a document, which in this scroll Romans does not conclude.

I am open to Lukan compilation of the second scroll however, especially if it did start at Hebrews. Reading Hebrews as Pauline would shift focus away from the Kingdom toward the Priesthood - toward the virgin Mary. Stevens instead muses whether 2 Peter formed the appendix to the second scroll.

I was going to leave Stevens alone - I've bothered him enough this morning - except that the Koreans think he's onto something.

I'll lay this down: the second scroll will be difficult to locate, if it existed. The first scroll on the other hand looks like the essential "Book Of Paul" (before Luke!). 1 Clement knew Galatians / Corinthians / Romans in whatever order; I think that so did 2 Clement, and everyone agrees upon Ignatius and Polycarp.

If we find this first scroll in Herculaneum - well, we can hope. I much doubt that 2 Peter existed in AD 79 however; any more than 1 ClementBarnabas or the rest. CARRIER 12/10/23: Okay, I've been convinced of 1 Clement...

Pierius against Papias

Pierius of Alexandria did not include all he knew from his sources. Stevens flags, in particular, Papias' account of John's martyrdom and Papias' claim that John of Patmos was also the Evangelist. Also absent is Papias' citation of Revelation 12:9. Eusebius of Caesarea should have noted some of this lore if his sources had informed him; that he did not note this lore implies that his sources did not inform him, starting with Pierius. This leads to the next question: why wouldn't Pierius inform him?

In the Johannine same-author case I submit that Pierius had so informed Eusebius. Eusebius is aware that John the Evangelist was sent to an island. The obvious island would be Patmos. Eusebius here cites Irenaeus and Clement. It is just that Eusebius, firstly, has no need of Pierius where others preceded him; secondly, he prefers Dionysius' reading which he quotes in extenso.

Although questions remain over how Pierius had informed Eusebius. I cannot rule out that Pierius agreed with Dionysius (and with me) against Papias (and against Irenaeus, Clement, Origen... probably Nepos). This would explain some of the Eusebian "lacunae".

Pierius perhaps even incorporated a similar rebuttal as Dionysius' (although Dionysius does not name Papias nor Pierius). This might be one of those anti-Apocalypse "commentaries" from which Dionysius will draw.

Pierius

Luke Stevens' work on Papias is coming to light; specifically Papias' intermediary for the postNicaean Patristics. He argued Eusebius used Pierius; lately we're hearing this of Athanasius of Sinai also.

Pierius was a philologer in Alexandria. Like Dionysius he was a student of Origen (especially for his Hexapla) and of Clement. This means allegory. (So much allegory . . .) Various scholiasts credit Stevens' man with a church history, a commentary on Matthew, and an ... Easter homily.

Cyril of Alexandria thought Pierius went too far. But the Eusebii - of Emesa and of Caesarea - mined Pierius extensively, likely (already!) lacking Pierius' sources, most-especially Papias. Athanasius appreciated Pierius' study of Genesis for its own sake, using this in his Hexaemeron.

As for those Pierian sources: If the mediaeval manuscript-hunters had honestly seen Papias in Latin, then by Pierius' time Papias in Greek could be found only at Rome anymore, and eventually not even there. Pierius further used Irenaeus' Demonstratio also, it seems, swiftly lost in Greek (and in Latin); although in this case the Armenians saved it for us. Of Hegesippus (e.g. Hypomnemata), I know less; I wonder if Pierius had him directly, or else from-and-through Julius Africanus. That so many citers of Pierius focus on Genesis implies - to Stevens - that Pierius made heavy use of Origen's commentary upon that book. Maybe this formed the preface to the church-history? John bar Penkaye started his own Main Points with Creation.

Touching the Word

Early textual witnesses to the postResurrection appearances don't all insist a somatic experience. Josephus and the Longer Ending Of Mark use verbs of appearance. Matthew glides it over; and if Rodgers is right (and that "if" is massive) then so does that projection of UrMark.

Somatic Christ is manifest in Luke 24 and John 20, and which - from a third Gospel - Ignatius preaches to Smyrna. UPDATE 4/8: For John, more than we know...

Atkins notes that asomatic Christ is preached in the Acts of John, in the Second Apocalypse of John, and by Clement Alexandrine as Cassidorus translated in Adumbrations. These, Atkins claims, derive from 1 John 1:1. This author introduces Ὃ ἦν ἀπ' ἀρχῆς, which we have heard but then - which we have seen with our eyes and... which our hands have felt, concerning the Word Of Life. This begs: how tactile, is a Logos?

The Johannine material in the Johannine Acts

Given that The Johannine Acts' Section B knew Luke: B might have known that author's second volume. Atkins argues that B's Ascension parallels Acts 1:9. He might suggest further that famed link Acts 4:20 / 1 John 1:3. We today might not accept that link; but I expect that B accepted it, explaining Johannine themes as - in fact - involving the Disciple John. Clearly 1 John was part of the shared library; Atkins in fact argues for the Johannine Acts a docetic interest in 1 John 1:1 (shared with two other, independent exegetes).

Now, whether that implies the full Johannine Gospel as we own it today... such presents an altogether more-annoying matter.

Where we own Luke’s sources we don’t own John’s; making difficult to see what is the author’s hand and what is less-somatically “Johannine”. About all anyone will accept is that John 1-20 came to the Johannines in that form first; ch. 21 is an appendix with some backreference (but from what nonJohannine sources?).

Atkins handles the Gospel in subchapter 7.2.1, at least chs. 1 and 20-1 thereof. Unfortunately my access to Atkins has failed me. Page 297 introduces 88.1-8/John 21:25 – and then I cannot read p. 298; I just get the backreference p. 303. Page 299-300 moves on to John 1. But what if the Gospel is a meditation upon John 1? What if John 20 exists to correct docetic readings of John 1 and 1 John 1 both?

I would love to read Atkins on John 21 on account Atkins has earlier noted that B’s symposium-scene rejected John 21’s fishery. Similarly I am interested in Ignatius’ gospel and its relationship to B.

This implies that the "Elder" of 2 John passed along the Gospel as, although not bothering with docetism itself, useful for antidocetists. This has implications for how Ignatius used his now-lost gospel against the docetists in Smyrna.

Except that I think that Ignatius' Gospel is confronting a rival tradition, now found (only) in that MS of Vienna. Also Atkins' third chapter smells off to me: I don't see first gnostics using Luke. Outsiders might have numerous problems with Luke's second book especially: the Holy Spirit is going to Rome (contrary to Paul!) and there is a time-limit for Christ's sojourn on Earth (contra the Secret Book of James).

The Levites' prayer

Back in 2018 - best I can read - Hava Shalom-Guy (delightful name btw) argued for redactional work upon Nehemiah 9:13-14. But who redacted what?

Some points to be injected here: Nehemiah is late. It seems an expansion of a protoEzra. I do think the book, second-volume rather, was accepted by 4Q365's Temple-Scroll community; although by itself, Nehemiah hasn't turned up in those Q caves, 4th or otherwise. Gili Kugler had argued that Nehemiah 9 reads as truly ancient, Transitional if not Classical Biblical Hebrew: “Present Affliation Affects the Representation of the Past: An Alternative Dating of the Levitical Prayer in Nehemiah 9”, VT 63 (2013), 605-26.

Shalom-Guy more assumes Sara Japhet, “What May Be Learned from Ezra-Nehemiah about the Composition of the Pentateuch” ed. Jan C. Gertz, Bernard M. Levinson, Dalit Rom-Shiloni, Konrad Schmid The Formation of the Pentateuch: Bridging the Academic Cultures of Europe, Israel, and North America (Tübingen: Mohr Siebeck, 2016). Japhet had sketched that Nehemiah assumes a Pentateuch much like Jews know it today: Creation first, and other affinities including Deuteronomy's ban on intermarriage. So why wouldn't Nehemiah assume that this Pentateuch was, in fact, Moses' Torah?

Because Moses' Torah wasn't yet Moses' Torah. Such was 1 Enoch's answer - up to the Animal Apocalypse. Nehemiah's very existence until 4Q365 seems questionable. Although the Temple Scroll is very-much aware of a Torah to Moses which - to that author - includes Jubilees; Jubilees itself is a self-aware Mosaic lex tertia, if that's a term. All this allowed I suspect that Shalom-Guy is right: somebody altered a prayer now in Nehemiah. So: who might do that?

Nehemiah starts out his book with a prayer which v. 7 notes the commands, decrees and laws you gave your servant Moses. 9:14b simply refers to that. Nobody is saying that Nehemiah's first chapter is interpolated.

So: Nehemiah must be the interpolator into the Levitic prayer now 9:14 in his book. Shalom-Guy has argued this point “The Confessional Prayer in Nehemiah 9: 6–37: A Literary–Historical Consideration”, Shnaton 24 (2016), 103–27 in... Hebrew (abstract pdf). She seems to be arguing it harder in Undercurrents in Restoration Literature, that the prayer is Abrahamic (so includes the Samaritans!) so not Nehemiahvic.

Die Sauerstoffionbatterie

In other Viennese news, the oxygen battery. Technically a lanthanum battery, so still rare-earth. You have to read the fineprint in these things.

And it's thrice as inefficient as the usual lithium.

The good news: it wears out in (much) longer than thrice the lifespan. Also it doesn't erupt in eternal flames like your Tesla will. This goes for large installations of power-storage, so links up with those "renewable" sources which, in the greater Germania, means forests.

Life gets interesting

As to the end of the Boring Billion, Junyao Kang has an answer: nitrates.

The Boring Billion was when prokaryotes and (1342 Mya) chloroplasts sat around the ponds being pond scum and doing little else. Eukaryotes are the life we care about, heading toward Ediacara. Usually the palaeos have been looking into phosphour, as the press-release notes. I'd actually thought that eukies started 1650 Mya but . . .

Anyway Nanjing University (and Virginia Tech) went up north to the craton there, which was a seabed starting from 1000 Mya. They noted (elsewhere) the eu-eu-karyotes starting 820 Mya. In North China the nitrates start 800 Mya.

They're part of the "Fralin Life Sciences Institute’s Global Change Center" which points to an alliance with the antinitrogen movement (coauthor Rachel Reid looking particularly sus here). So the research is a spinoff of politics. I'll just say I hope that the findings are peer-reviewed.

Prehistoric Tibet

Several rumblings around genetics Twitter have come along this week concerning Hongru Wang's protohistory of Tibet. Tonight we'll consider Bernard Sécher. Not all of it at once; it's a massive blog which even the Turtle cannot digest as of yet.

First up: all the ancient Tibetans come from a genetic mixture between an ancient population of northeast Asia (90%) and an old population not yet identified (10%). Is that missing tenth the indigenous Stone-Age human population? Are these the humans who mixed with the Denisovans, with the newcomers subsequently mostly-swamping sometimes-mixing with these? That "Sino-Tibetan" language-family: likewise from the northeast? - I consider that last as probable.

Starting "5260" years ago so, I guess, 3240 BC the source population of Tibet was in place, complete with that one Denisovan gene for the high life. This was still prior to wheat and barley agriculture (maybe they had millet?). Then the Tibetans started mutually differentiating. Sécher transmits a fine map to explain Where and Who. Nagpu is the centre. Lhasa-plus-Shannan is south by southwest (as it were). Chamdo is southeast. Rounding it out: Ngari far west, whence the Yarlung Tsangpo flows down to Lhasa; and Yushu far northeast. So five clusters.

Implicitly Lajia around 2200 BC introduced the cereals but without introducing notable genetics. Yay trade!

Up to 500 BC, in Nagpu, the locals there were like those of Chamdo. But by the early AD 400s Lhasa had extended its (different) population into this centre of the plateau. That move encroaches upon the Gansu trade. To Sécher, this was intentional and implies the Tibetan Empire.

So Yushu would be, what exactly: Tanggut?

The predocetic Luke

I am still processing István Czachesz's bombshell on the Viennese Acts of John. The main followup to the Acts' claims about Jesus' asomatism would appear to be Atkins' dissertation. This is now a book: The Doubt of the Apostles and the Resurrection Faith of the Early Church (2019). There's a preview; and some book-reviews here and there, but most are paywalled (not all!). So I'm going with Google Books.

Atkins argued and still argues that Luke 24 and John 20 do not exist to refute Docetism. Sarx, a word dear to John 1 (carne in Spanish) and to 2 John, is not used in John 20. John 21 is considered an appendix to John but it might be a very early one (we'll get to this).

For the "Gospel of the Acts of John" in the Vindobonensis we care about section B chs 87-93, 103-105; section C is 94-102 but also ch. 109 in the canon. For splitting them into multiple sections this evidence is internal-only on account Second Nicaea witnesses to all sections. Consensus argues for two separate authors for B and C, against Czachesz 2007; Atkins accepts consensus.

Sections A+B were docetic but not necessarily gnostic; C brought pre-Valentinian Syrian gnosticism into the mix, like that infamous hymn ch. 94. Atkins 7n.8 registers continuing questions about whether C was the final editor or if that final editor took a separate (early) gnostic source as to compile chs. 87-105. We care here about B.

Atkins 7.2.1 handles B’s parallels with Luke. For Atkins' text, Google Books only allowed me pp. 292 and 296 but I can extend the arguments 291b-3a, 295b-6 covering three parallels. Here at n.33 Atkins argues that B (ch 88) parallels Luke 5:11's fishery against (say) John 21's (and Tertullian leaves Marcion unchallenged Adv. Marcion. 4.9.9-10). Atkins’ next parallel is that Jesus ate with the Pharisees; which Jesus does thrice in Luke (here too Marcion’s gospel, per Epiphanius’ scholion 10 and Tertullian 4.27) but never in Mark or Matthew. Atkins notes here that B assumes that Jesus is attending Pharisaic symposia, often (ei dé pote); using Luke 7:36-50 as a template. For the final parallel: that Jesus in Transfiguration prays (ch. 90) must reflect Luke 9:28-9.

Evan Powell aside, most solutions of the synoptic Quellenfrage would attribute these Lukan pluses to that authorial hand. Even this incomplete reading convinces me that B used Luke. Marcion – and the western-text – seem to bystand here. Specifically: B confronts Luke, to introduce docetism.

A dispassionate Passion

Yesterday, rooting around the various Acts and what they might contain, I ran across PJ Lalleman (1998) on the Johannine Acts chs. 87–105. This led me to István Czachesz (2009). Utterly mindblowing.

These chapters are in Codex Vindobonensis historicus graecus 63 (1319 or 1324) - alone. In this form the chapters had been attached to the aforementioned Acts, whereafter ch. 109 refers back to chs. 94-102 and wherein (somewhere) Second Nicaea found most of them (among other likely witnesses: Philip). But then some copyist(s) up to the fourteenth-century yanked chs. 87–105(?) and assembled them separately. The longer-Acts subsequently got lost. In 1897 when MR James restored "chs. 87–105" to the Acts, this location was simply his best-guess. Although Lalleman defends that decision.

Czachesz argues the chapters originally came from a Johannine community; or perhaps from a parallel community which the longer-Acts' author immediately noticed as close to 1 John (and to the Gospel). So this last copyist had restored its original's intent, against the longer-Acts. James Barker (2022) would agree at least insofar as we should quit pretending that the Acts of John are somehow unfit to be considered part of the Johannine Corpus.

How come nobody told me? Is "Czachesz" too hard to spell? Dude - use the ctl-C and ctl-V method.

Anyway: Lalleman had drawn up a synopsis, upon which Czachesz relies. As the Johannine narratives go, the synopsis boils down to the Transfiguration, the multiplication of bread, and the ... Ascension.

That's key. Already to be noted is that the empty-tomb narratives, although shared by the canonical four (and by Peter, and by anybody orthodox AD second-century AD) are absent from: Paul's letters; Ignatius' letters; Barnabas; Aristides; nor John 3:14+12:34 nor Q if we're moving to speculation. As Philippians 2:5-11 (and Thomas) against 1 Cor 15:1-4(!), there isn't even a burial. Yikes! One wonders about Egerton . . .

The Acts' Jesus, further, is a polymorph. Sometimes his flesh is soft; sometimes it is - er - woody and thick (hylódes kai pachýs). No I am not making this up. Oh and sometimes his substance was immaterial and bodiless. The "asomatic" Christ is exactly what Ignatius' Gospel is refuting, which refutation Ignatius recites for the Smyrnaeans. 2 John refutes the same, in Johannine language no less.

MORE DETAIL 3/21: Structure and other sources. Leaving aside the Johannine parallels, for now.

Orthodox SIDS

"Woke Beria", who may or may not be a Stalinist himself, explains why villagers accepted Stalin. This despite the famines - which might have been forgiven in part because of the Beria purges. Answer: before the Soviets, life on the farm was terrible. Yes even post-serfdom.

I recommend every "pro-life" Catholic in Colorado read this before attending their scheduled Federally-administered beatdown 4 April. From which whoopin', this Bishop will abandon you.

Woke Beria warns that Olga Tian-Shanskaia's 1902 ethnography, translated as Village Life in Late Tsarist Russia (after 1917 one assumes) is a damned grim read and, if the Twitter thread is anything to go by, we're Not Disappointed. Alexander II left the Russian peasantry better than they were under serfdom but the bar was just THAT low. And that was just on the face of things. Over the next - and last - Tsars after him came a lot of maternal suffocation.

For fin-de-siècle Russia, contraception and even abortion weren't so much a moral issue. Promiscuity remained a moral issue but, by that token, uncommon in the villages. It was more that these methods flat didn't work. Honestly, most of the problems started with the legal husband (how good has a vodka-drunk ever been with a condom?). As for "Plan B" up-to-three-months before ensoulment is Justinianic, so it was more that abortion was simply unavailable out in the deep woods and frozen steppe.

The witches-brew in Russian-peasantry Fail would appear to be, in reverse order: the poor options aforementioned; alcohol; a culture of self-loathing amongst the poor. I'd add: improved childrens' health and better farming. Before Alexander II's reforms (and the late-19th-century's revolution in hygiene) marginally-healthy children would simply die on their own; now they'd live, only to impoverish their families. Unless mummy-dearest accidentally misplaced the pillow.

The road to the pillow, I suspect, ran from the psychic ruin of the Russian rural soul.

The Orthodox Church didn't attend Trent. The people still believed in indulgences, their Orthodox equivalent anyway. The aristos and the Tsar kept up the churches; the poor could not. Whether or not the Orthodox priesthood admitted as much - and many saints did try to help or at least minister to the rural poor - the rich were lauded and the poor felt like a burden. This led to booze. Tian-Shanskaia mostly blames the men but if someone really dug for it, they might find some less-documented dysfunction amongst the women as well.

Payloads

Considering James and Hegesippus, I am now considering in what form a pseudepigraphon might circulate. We'll start with stuff nobody accepts today.

Looking around: The Acts of John bears a Johannine "Hymn of Jesus". The Acts of Peter and Paul contains a "Letter of Pilate to Claudius". The Acts of Paul (alone - and swiftly disgraced) contains "3 Corinthians". Note that Tertullian objected only to the Acts' Thecla lore (as we'd expect); not to the epistle therein which he simply ignored.

Of these "3 Corinthians" survives independently of its (Pauline) Acts most-notably in the papyrus Bodmer X. Wikipedia understands this epistle to have existed before the Acts which Acts have incorporated it (clumsily). That provides a precedent, at least, for scholars to conjecture that the "Hymn of Jesus" likewise preceded its own Acts here Johannine.

I gather that where some community had inherited an unprovenanced scrap of hymnody or some pseudepigraphon under attack from skeptics, one way of preserving the sus-amogus text would be to include such in a fictional narrative. Those who would like to keep reading this stuff, can keep reading it; to those who don't well er um we were only kidding!

... but then there's that penchant of ancient historians simply to cook up the dialog. Luke is (today) notorious for this, casting Pauline propaganda as if Peter uttered them.

Now I wonder if an "Acts of James" was circulating, with that letter as payload. Hegesippus' copious Jacobine lore would paraphrase the narrative; other communities kept the letter.

John's Apocalypse in the Delta

Let's talk Apocalypse. This is called Revelatio in Latin but today I'd consider its reception in Greek Aigyptos.

I have here Jonathan Kirsch's History of the End of the World and John Crossan's Render Unto Caesar. Saturday I leafed through (but didn't buy) Bart Ehrman's Armageddon. Would've poasted then, but got sidetracked.

I cannot review this full book; I confess I leafed mostly past one chapter. That's the chapter on how Problematic is John for the modern world, the only real world for Ehrman. Dispensationalists, you see, tend not to care about "climate". In other words Bart Ehrman's chief problem with John's eschatology is that it competes with Bart's. I have no respect for this attitude so refuse, on principle, to trade coin for such as evangelise for it. THIS TOO 3/30: "the word rapture isn't in [the Bible]". Here Ehrman might even be lying.

Still: where Ehrman stays in his own lane, which is scholarship, he always has something new and important to offer. (I do wonder when 6 Ezra will start making its way into Apocalypse commentary.) For this book, there's glimpses at a history of... ancient Apocalypse commentary.

One form of commentary is, as the Muslims point out, translation. For the Revelation, Latin came first - followed, I understand, by Coptic. Its original Greek, as Dionysius of Alexandria pointed out over the AD 250s, is barbarous. Ehrman holds its Greek as the worst in the New Testament, which is saying something for a collection which still (somehow) includes most of Mark. I take it that the Latins found a translator who made Revelation read like it does in the KJV: a rhetorical monument. (I still cannot speak for Coptic.)

Accordingly this Revelation's first readers trended Western. Irenaeus accepted it; Hippolytus even commented upon it although we seem to have lost this work. Still extant is Victorinus AD 260.

But our John's reception wasn't just Western; some Greeks - Papias foremost - could be found to forgive his prose and accept his wahy. Over in Alexandria, Clement accepted John as the Apostle and occasionally cited his Apocalypse as "The Prophet". We are told that his disciple Origen (d. AD 253) composed homilies upon this text (also in Greek); twelve of which circulated in one tome although this has got lost too. Among the Monophysites the Sahidic tradition went its own way as seen Pseudo-Cyril (pdf).

So: Dionysius. We are told that Dionysius was a student of Origen; this may or may not be true, but as an Alexandrine, Dionysius could hardly avoid him. Dionysius' books do not survive on their own but Eusebius - himself no fan of the Apocalypse - did posterity the great favour of reprinting the bulk of his rebuttal of chialism. Dionysius, as the local archbishop not to say pope, found one Coracion expounding a book by one Nepos, by then an Egyptian saint.

Coracion was active in the Arsinoë praefecture. Dionysius was able, through sheer reason, to rebut Nepos' book to Coracion's satisfaction, and apparently to other Hellenophones' to the point Nepos' book went uncopied (unless PsCyril will use it). Dionysius treats the Apocalypse similarly: with respect to John's holiness, but not allowing his status as Apostolic. As Eusebius has framed Dionysius' excerpts, he implies that Dionysius associated Nepos with an Apostolic reading of the Apocalypse, i.e. that Johanan bar Zebedaya composed it. As noted Apostolic authorship of the Apocalypse was the mainstream Alexandrine opinion since Clement.

It might be from Nepos that we own "Pseudo-Origenic Scholia" upon the Apocalypse. Contrariwise, note how Dionysius bears witness to anticommentary upon the Apocalypse, apparently book-by-book. Eusebius will report that Dionysius has his own book-by-book summary. It may well have quoted from the Apocalypse's enemies (SPECULATE 3/26: Pierius?). But Eusebius won't share what Dionysius had said! Reminds me of his Serapion extract, on "Peter". Sigh.

Of side-interest: Dionysius makes great use of the Johannine Gospel (chs. 1-20) and of the Catholic Epistle - and (quietly) of Luke's Acts, on the assumption that these "Johannines" belong to the Apostle. Dionysius knows 2-3 John as letters by "The Elder"; but he does not deal with them further, instead returning to 1 John as the Epistle. Clement and Origen could be foremost whom Dionysius considers many brethren who value [Rev.] highly (so not just Nepos and Coracion). Clement had probably accepted 2 John; Origen seems to have questioned it (and 3 John); ditto Pierius. Dionysius, I think, is being discreet and allowing for Origen.

Clement of Alexandria read 2 John

Looking around the Johannine corpus I found an exegesis of 2 John in Cassiodorus. This is claimed part of Clement of Alexandria's adumbrationes in epistolis canonicis. I'll attempt the Latin:

It begins the same in the second letter of John the Evangelist. The second letter of John, written to the virgins, is quite simple. This indeed was written to a certain Babylonia, under the name Electa which signifies the election of the holy Ecclesia. In this epistle he asserted that the perfection of faith is not outside Caritas, and that no one should divide Jesus Christ, but that one should believe that Jesus Christ had come in the flesh; for he who has the Son perceptibly in the intellect, and knows the Father also, and the greatness of His power; without holding works from the beginning of time consciously in mind. Si quis venit ad vos - he says [v. 10-11] - et hanc doctrinam non portat, non suscipiatis eum in domum et ave ne dixeritis ei; qui enim dixerit ave, communicat operibus eius malignis. He forbids such people to be greeted and received into hospitality; for this is not inhumane in such a way; but he admonishes them neither to inquire nor to dispute with such as cannot handle divine things intelligibly, and be seduced from the doctrine of truth, led by similar reasonings of the truth. But I think that it is necessary not to pray with such people, since in prayer, when one is at home, after he gets up from praying, is a greeting of joy as a sign of peace.

Zahn expended some ink on Babylonia. Zahn saw 1 Peter 5:13 intruding here and saw evidence that the author of this Adumbration - or at least Cassiodorus - thought that such letters were written, literally, to Parthian Babylon. So this just means "female Babylonian". I agree with that much. But.

It may otherwise be that the author is reading the Revelation=Apocalypse into this text, wherein "Babylon" is Rome. This would mean the author accepted that the Apocalypse was by John the Apostle. Not all Christians did!

This belief was however widely shared in the West, presumably including Cassiodorus. So: as I've been so bold, the quote from vv. 10-11 is not Vulgata Latin. I like to think that if Cassiodorus or any late-Latin had forged this Adumbration he'd just have used that. I am tempted to see a freeform translation of some Greek Vorlage. It turns out that Clement of Alexandria shared this Apostolic reading of the Johannines.

Although I've argued for early 2 John I wasn't aware that Clement knew it. This translation into Latin does point to that. Unless Morton Smith was at work back then too.

Of wind and warmth

Anti-green Buck Throckmorton is still at it, now hitting wind. This mainly relies upon CFact, which Buck consolidates with a 2014 piece by SciAm. Wind, slowing down at the surface, means less local cooling.

Local warming of course means the site isn't good for measuring global anymore. Just a reminder for those ClimateGate veterans. Also I imagine that burning battery-cells might be warming things up a bit too.

Unlike Buck I see local warming (which isn't fire) as a local opportunity - dependent upon WHERE you erect the windfarm. I expected less wind, also, to mean less evaporation as a rule but apparently not. Still: there might be places already too cold and dry which we'll want warmer. This looks great for, say, sea-salt. Elsewhere the warming might be at the still-cool level where it doesn't dry out the soil.

I think windpower might be best in the Antarctic Dry Valleys where is katabasis. We won't want it where the skiing is but we might consider it for where it already isn't, like on the east side of various high mountains. Boulder Valley has already figured this out.

The same problem still applies to East Texas, that the local warming won't happen when the ice freezes the fans. So it's no mitigant for that...

Further afield, yeah, it's a local warming problem for the station I want at Maxwell Montes - so, better keep that some distance from the airconditioning units.

pc/ly

GalaxyMap asks: parsec or lightyear. - and why?

Light's time-of-travel goes toward communication across relativistic space. This is most-practical for the systems nearest each other. Traditionally we've favoured Alpha-Centauri and Sol.

Where GalaxyMap hits a nerve is that the parsec has its own arguments-in-favour, for near distances. The parsec is based on parallax in milliarcseconds, against our Earth's (half)year. It's most-accurate, closest-to. Once we lose reliance upon lightspeed communications (that is: we're on the Enterprise, or an Imperial Star Destroyer) then it would seem that the lightyear obsolesces. The parsec becomes king.

As a hard-SF converso (no marrano!) I prefer the lightyear. I like to imagine communicating with the Belter colonies around ε Eridani (and not 40/ο Eridani) and 55 Cancri; or at least with the ark-ship on the way thither. But by that same token we're still stuck on one planet such that I prefer SF at interplanetary levels.

So mostly I'm still working in astronomical-units. Once we're off the 0.7-5.3 AU range I suggest, for communications, the lighthour. This goes up to Neptune's resonant kingdom in the inner Kuiper. Scatter'disc could go to the lightday.

Justin's Acti

In 2007, Charles E Hill argued that Justin Martyr had the Gospel of John. Justin didn't use much Johannine material but then, he also didn't use much of Mark, which Gospel we absolutely know was extant.

Since then, Scott Manor has debunked that Alogoi ever existed. Some communities did exist as didn't use John's Gospel, like the Lucan community which produced Marcion, and like those Ebionites recently noted here. But these sects weren't mainstream and also weren't on mutual speaking-terms with each other. Elsewhere Origen, himself not exactly mainstream, thought (on his own) that John wasn't perfect. Ergo: Epiphanius invented an "Alogoi" group toward a slur against (mainly) Origen.

Back to Hill: Justin for his "Gospel Material", as Koester put it, credited "Apostolic Memoir" (this term applied to what little Justin did use of Mark) and Acti (Latin!) of the time of Pontius Pilate. The Acti were unrelated to the Gospel of Nicodemus so must be something else.

Hill seems consensus now. Nicholas Perrin endorses Hill in "Tracing the Trajectory" ed. Crawford & Zola, The Gospel of Tatian 93f. Perrin didn't, strictly-speaking, need Hill, for that argument; which may explain why he simply let Hill's argument stand, rather than buttressing it further.

This blog has had a longstanding nitpick inasmuch as a written commentary upon (say) Matthew which brings in other lore from the Synoptic tradition might, through Justin's sieve, look like a "harmony" but not technically be one. I have in mind for analogy: Muqâtil. But hey.

My main critique of Hill is that the nails used to pierce our Lord's hands and feet are not Johannine alone. Nails (rather than, say, hooks) are attested in Ignatius' letter to the Smyrnaeans as well. Ignatius did not use John 1-20 here; this source supported Peter. UPDATE 3/20 Maybe even against a Johannine tradition . . .

Secondarily I wonder if the hymn in John 1 counted as part of that gospel, in Justin's day. Jesus' incarnation (as John would put it in Latin) could not occur as Acti under Pilate: Jesus became bodily flesh some three decades prior, under King Herod if Ignatius knew Matthew's Gospel. Justin accordingly assigns this event to the "Memoirs". Hill might read Justin such that full John 1-20 (or 1-21) was the "Memoir", with 2-20/21 counted as Acti within it.

Also difficult is to see the parallels with John as specifically Johannine. The incarnation motif has been made Johannine; but it agrees just as well with antidocetism, as in the prooftext which Ignatius had read. (And maybe not in John 3:14+12:34 which predicts the Ascension only, from the Cross.)

I prefer more work be done, and maybe more sources found, before I can be confident as Hill in ascribing Justin's parallels to John, to John.

The Ebionites did not venerate Mary

Epiphanius claimed in Panarion ch.30 that the "Gospel of the Ebionites" (which he sometimes conflated with "of the Hebrews") omitted Matthew's genealogy of Christ from that gospel's start. This looks more like what one might find in a physical copy of Matthew, not in some marginalia somewhere. Maybe a sheet or two fell off some Matthew's front, like some argue the postresurrection fell off Mark's back. Maybe.

In mainstream Christology Matthew's genealogy presents a Problematic: inasmuch as it culminates at Joseph. This implies Joseph as the natural father of Jesus. Justin didn't use it, preferring Luke's which ends up at Mary. Mark Goodacre would have us believe that Luke consciously rejected Matthew here, including his Marian genealogy as alternative. But.

How is Matthew's son-of-man a problem for Hebrews? Coogan last year pointed out that some Christians did insist upon the human parents of Christ. But not the Ebionites.

One might bring up analogies from elsewhere. Certain Nestorians and perhaps Jerome himself - and certain Muslims - insisted on a piety of Mary; as some means to assure the Believers that they were no Jews who intended any disrespect for the Vessel of the Christ. Nestorius just could not beg the intercession of the "Mother of God".

In this reading, the Ebionites might have dropped Matthew's genealogy in appeal to a growing consensus on the miracle of Jesus' Divine conception. The Muslims will insist upon this much as well; putting these together, the Muslims implicitly endorse Luke's family line.

I conclude that the Ebionites did not care for Our Lady as these Muslims do.

Gospel of the Hebrews

Last July Jeremiah Coogan wrote about the "Gospel of the Hebrews". Coogan argued that this was a construct of the haeresiologists. Irenaeus didn't see daylight between this and the version of Matthew he owned. Some "Hebrews" variants are also in Old Latin, presumably available to Irenaeus who lived in the Latin town Lyons. Other such variants are noted as scholia on Matthew as from the "Judaicon".

Elsewhere we own a "Western" text of Luke (and Acts... and 1 Corinthians) widely disseminated among Latins at the time; if anything Tertullian blamed the heretics for what differences were found. Coogan concludes that the "Gospel of the Hebrews" is a similarly-wild edition of Matthew; just one that - unlike the Western Luke - did not get flagged as specific to a known "Haeretical" community. (One wonders if Marcion's church, at least, might have come to ascribe Western-Luke to "the Tertullianists".)

Michael Kok at The Jesus Memoirs then offered a (partial) rebuttal. Kok has a book of his own on the topic of Matthew's Gospel which he argues as already a coherent text by the time of Papias.

As for Jerome's "Hebrews", pace Kok I do not see much of Matthew in the post-resurrection to Peter. But... maybe "Synoptic", inasmuch as only John 1-20 has a real problem with Peter. This gives an impression that by Jerome's day, "The Judaicon" was just whatever scholia as a scholar like him might have gleaned, from wherever. Maybe some of it came from some edition of Matthew; for instance, such editions as (discreetly?) omitted the opening genealogy.

But maybe most such edition(s) never got made, at least not in Greek. If so the scholia drifted into Jerome's cognisance (and the Old Latin) from collections of logia such as we read in Papias (who himself only knew "Matthew" as a clutter of logia) or the Gospel-of-Thomas.

The delay of Egyptian Christendom

Peter Rodgers more-recently posed that the Alexandrian text be Ephesian. This constrains Bart Ehrman's proposal that the Alexandrian type has an earlier and a later stage: for Rodgers, only the later stage is truly Alexandrine.

Much of this is argument-from-silence. But the silence has been getting louder, over the last century of digging at, especially, Oxyrhynchus. Sure: Oxyrhynchus is not Alexandria; this one is approaching Memphis. But the two Greek-speaking towns were close-enough that some Alexandrines should have boated their way up there. Christian texts like Oxyrhynchus #840 and the spectacular #1 (Thomas!) only show up in the Severan Age. Christians as people aren't mentioned in the saecular corpus until then, either.

[INTERJECT 5/3: Vridar recalls that a massive pogrom scoured lower Egypt under Trajan. Greek pagans would have united with the natives, to regard gentile Christians as race-traitors.]

We might also ask after any mention of Alexandrine Christians in contemporary Christian literature like, oh, Justin and Polycarp. We hear much from Ephesus, Rome, even Sinope; not from Egypt so much...

...unless we count Basilides. Irenaeus from Lyons will have much to say on him. Oddly Tertullian - African-Punic, from Carthage - didn't comment, far as I can find; but a "Pseudo-Tertullian" will, as will Clement "of Alexandria" (possibly an Athenaean himself) and the Roman Hippolytus. Basilides is considered to have founded his church under the Antonines in the AD 120s-30s. Carpocrates and his son Epiphanes were also considered Alexandrine of this time, to Clement's chagrin.

My suspicion pace Rodgers is that that Gnosticism was the face of Christianity in Egypt. I garner from Lucian and Celsus that Gnosticism had a bad odour among philosophers, who disliked Christianity generally, and picked on the Gnostics as the worst of the bunch. This might be because Christian Gnostics appealed, exactly, to Middle-Platonists like Numerius; pure Platonists would consider them rivals, and antiPlatonists like Lucian would naturally despise the lot. Such a Christian in Egypt might have to keep quiet about it, and not move too far afield; for fear of a lynching.

The more-sober lower-case gnosticism of a Clement would make Egypt more amenable to Christianity generally, and that is when Christians started making inroads among first the Copts and then all the upper-Nile dialects. These Christians were still gnostic however.

All this tl;dr means that I think Rodgers has run ahead of his waterskis again. He needed to create a focused study upon to what degree, and to what Christianity, Christians spread in Alexandria; and beyond. Only then can he pose a theory on what Bible(s) they had.

(And, seriously: papyrus-to-Egypt just reads like a coal-to-Newcastle argument, generally.)

Bridge

Last January the Evangelical Textual Critics directed their readership to Peter Rodgers 2021, reconstructing Mark's longer ending.

Matthew used Mark up to Mark's ending 16:8... and keeps going. Most would assume that Matthew relied upon a side-tradition "M", as he does for so much other material not in Mark. Much of this tends to be included in "Q" but Rodgers doesn't care about Q here, just Marcan Priority. Rodgers instead points to Markan themes which Matthew, normally, edits-out; but Matthew is now at the end of his Gospel, so isn't as careful as usual.

First step: in the seventh verse of both Mark 16 and Matthew 28, the women are instructed to tell the disciples "and", for Mark, Peter (who there considers himself disgraced from the company); in the eighth shared verse the women flee Jesus' Empty Tomb, afraid. In Mark the women "told no-one". Then/instead at Matthew 28:8b the women ran to tell "his disciples".

Rodgers notes that this "his" (autou) qualifier was vital in relating Jesus' early career when various Pharisees and John of the Jordan-baptism have their own disciples. But once Jesus isn't in a competition with other group-leaders anymore, "his" is redundant; accordingly, Matthew from chapter 13 on prefers to drop it. Also, it turns out that some Matthew MSS have "and when they went to tell his disciples..." in 28:9. Rodgers sees this variant as a typically-Marcan redundancy which copyists - including Matthew himself - would normally drop. He proposes that Matthew this time did not drop it. It is therefore a witness to *Mark 16:9a.

A mild problematic comes inasmuch as, for canon Mark 16:1-8, although the white-robed youth (angel?) has instructed the women to tell the disciples, they implicitly don't. I've supposed a harmonist would assure us that the women did not tell anyone as they were running toward the disciples. [ACTUAL FACT 4/8/23 It happens the Arabic harmony brings Mark 16:9 to introduce the Magdalene; Tatian having set John's Mary at the tomb, which Mary Ephrem interprets as Jesus' mother. For Tatian's school: Mark 16:1-8 is the spurious side of Scripture, and it is from v. 9 where Mark 16 counts!]

I don't know to what degree canon Matthew 28:9-10 reflects any Mark; although here Jesus' request to go to Galilee and "be not afraid" seem like the sort of thing Mark's Jesus would say. Mark, we remember from Evan Powell, is chiastic; we expect Jesus and the disciples - especially Peter - to meet again in Galilee. Is Peter with Matthew's group of disciples? I suspect Matthew is being coy here. Which puts another Problematic on Matthew 28:9-10 as an honest transcription of its source, a more-serious one I think.

Rodgers makes his strongest case for Matthew 28:11-15 as a "sandwich", between the women informing some subset of His disciples and the final meeting in Galilee. This, Matthew has backdated to the time of the womens' run. Here at v. 13 is where the chief-priests order the soldiers say: that (hoti) his disciples came during the night .... First are invoked "his disciples" again but - hey, it fits here. More the point hoti is redundant, normally excised by Matthew.

As noted Rodgers doesn't engage Powell, not over John 21 and not over Powell's Mark>Luke>Matthew alternative to Q. But Rodgers doesn't have to. Rodgers, I think, makes a fair case that Matthew has transmitted some authentic Mark up to Matthew 28:15. (Rodgers and I assuredly would agree that "Pilate to Claudius" is a forgery postMarcan probably postMatthean.)

Mark 16:9f., per Rodgers' reconstruction, didn't have the women scattering madly in Peter-like cowardice; the women went as instructed, to some core of Jesus' still-loyal disciples. Meanwhile Mark, and not Matthew, posed the earlier defence against claims that the disciples had burgled Jesus' tomb - viz. that the impartial witnesses got instructed toward perjury. Rodgers would add that the Commission for "baptism into (eis) the Name" be Marcan.

Even assuming Rodgers be right, other aspects of the Markan minus I submit we do not know, where the elements in Matthew 28 aren't specifically Marcan. I don't know which disciples the women met - the "and Peter" in Mark 16:7 rather implies that Peter is self-separated from them. I don't know if the women met these men in Jerusalem or in Galilee or at some waypoint between. (It follows, from both, there's no question of an interdisciplinary footrace.) I don't know if - meanwhile - the potential outside witnesses were bribed by the chief-priests of the Jews; or if the Romans' commander had simply delivered a command - in fact I don't know if Mark ever suggested any direct witnesses since, Matthew 27:62-6 owns no Marcan backup. Also I don't know if Mark's baptismal formula was Trinitarian.

Metastable helium

ToughSf points to a patent (pdf) for metastable helium. At first I thought that was the nucleus but, no, not this time. This is the sort where one electron (or maybe muon or antiproton) is in the low state; the other electron higher. Chemically this helium is now ionic, acting like an alkali metal or like hydrogen.

News to me is that we don't need an antiproton or a muon to form a metastable helium ion. Such actually gets formed in helium-heavy planets, like WASP-107b; here on Earth the patent suggests discharge-methods corona or radio-frequency.

These ions last for 8000 seconds = 2.2 hours thus the metastability: "He_m". Meanwhile the ion is, well, ionic so reactive. The patent suggests mixing the excited helium with ammonia and freakin' magnets.

Let's contrast what we got now, in the world of chemistry. Liquid hydrox - considered the highest Isp - is 32 kcal/g so exhaust-velocity 5180 m/s, 528 (N/N)s although space-shuttle only got 453 s. In practice hydrox has proven godawful to work with. Most rockets use kerosene (353 s); the Raptor is methane promising 382 s.

Atomic (ionic) hydrogen is the usual science-fiction upgrade at 2100 "seconds" but it's... science-fiction. Metastable helium would be 3100 "s", ejecta 30 km/s. The patent is claiming that this isn't science-fiction.

Ammonia-helium_m would still be a pain-in-the-posterior to work with. Also it's unfit for propulsion much longer after the initial thrust given that, after two hours, it's just good for making clown balloons anymore.

I take it the patent hopes the posterior-pain would match that of the old hydrox. In return we get almost an order-of-magnitude better than what we've seen from kerosene or methane, and five times better than unlamented hydrox. Also - like hydrox - we're not coating everything and the air and LEO with soot. And still no nukes; so it's permissible for equatorial launches from Earth.

How expensive is it to make, I wonder. More expensive than the antiproton variant? (We've agreed to ignore millisecond muons.) The antiproton variant looks to stick around longer. Which means it doesn't have to be made in Boca Chica and used immediately. Also I expect the antiproton variant to be heavier, cutting down on the tank-size.

Artificially-empeakened oil

"Peak oil" doesn't mean we've run out of oil; it means the supply is falling behind demand. Conoco has been warning that shale is topping out.

So, that is, it goes for the shale in places it's "legal" to drill. Much shale exists in Federal land which the Progressives wrested back from several Western states in the early 1900s. States have to beg the Feds for permission to drill there. More oil exists up in Alberta but Americans need a pipeline or trucks for that. The Biden Administration has blocked the Keystone pipeline.

Americans (and western Canadans) could use a pipeline or ships to get oil out of Alaska, sort of the neo-Western state. This Administration looks to be blocking that too UPDATE 3/12 or not, who knows, I don't.

The Baghestan is (generally) a pro-nuclear blog so I don't much mind that oil isn't drilled-for. However. Where is that nuclear-power?

Also: the fracking we've done so far should be good for expanding the reach of geothermal beyond Idaho / Wyoming / Montana (and Alaska again). Where's that?

Oil is going to be with us for awhile so if we're concerned about wildlife-preserves then how about: free up preserve A with the oil and create a new preserve B where the oil isn't economic anymore. Or maybe this plan makes too much sense for clownworld.

Silicon Valley's anti-banking society

If you had your savings in the SVB, you might be okay. If you had your payroll in there, there's a chance you're getting The Hose. Zimmerman notes that several space companies are involved.

This might explain the rumour that Elon Musk is thinking of buying it, at its current fire-sale price. In the wake of USDC.

This is beginning to look like Elon is constructing a parallel United States, with its own space-programme and first-amendment, each rather stronger than what the "legal" United States is presently offering. Now Elon is looking to reconstruct PayPal but more so.

I suggest to Elon that he meditate upon the qirâa now stored in the closing-verses of sura 28.

Based Corinthians

Joseph Wilson has defended Saint Paul from the charge of sexism before Timothy O'Neill; based on Wilson's paper (pdf).

Wilson starts by passing on the consensus against 1 Timothy as Pauline; although allowing Tatian that Titus be authentic, and Origen on 2 Timothy. Absent "based" 1 Timothy, Wilson can move on to 1 Corinthians 14:34-5 and 36. Wilson accepts that vv. 34-5 isn't Pauline either. But it's been part of the letter in every transmission, including Marcion's. Tertullian, always keen-eyed for inepti readings, finds this sexist doublet ineptus for Marcion (as with several other Marcionite inclusions). Tertullian makes this doublet a centrepiece of his antiMarcionite argument, here that Marcion lets women speak in church. The man had kind of a bug about that.

Wilson argues that the question in antiquity never was "does 14:34-5 belong in 1 Corinthians". Everyone agreed that it did. The question, rather, was over whether it belongs in vv. 34-5. A "Western" text-type exists wherein this doublet floated out of context[; UPDATE 4/7 not Bezae but Claromontanus D^P/06, also 010 and 012]. Tertullian used that D^P/06-aligned text, accusing Marcion of floating the couplet before our v. 36. He used it in "On the veiling of virgins" also.

Reading the text after our v. 36 (now v. 34), as opposed to deleting it, forces its reading as Paul's opinion. If one reads it before v. 36, some might read it as the opinion of Corinth which Paul then follows v. 36 with an expletive. "LOLWUT" as some might translate. It's not that 1 Cor 14:34-5 is antiPaul; it's that Paul is anti-vv.-34-5...

Wilson holds that the Western type, which became - in large part thanks to Tertullian - also the pre-Vulgate vetus-latina, was a minority-report. Most Greek Paul-containing codices sided with Marcion. Even such harsh misogynes as the Egyptian Gnostic monks translated from the standard.

My first critique, in the spirit of Wilson's saving "the Jews" from the charge of sexism, is to narrow the critique against "the West". Rome had a patriarchy but women enjoyed many rights there, and during the later Severan age would enjoy power as well. Tertullian was in fact not an Italian at all but an African who self-identified as Punic. As a sexist one is tempted to take him at his word not being a Berber. Historically most on either side of the Western Med have tended more egalitarian in these matters. See also the Severan women.

I also must ponder how the Old Syriac got hold of this "occidental" text given that Syriac is, er, oriental. If Tatian (say) didn't like 1 Timothy then how would he approve the disassociation of 1 Cor 14:34-5? ANSWER 3/23 - because Old Syriac did not go Western here! See Stuttgart 4th ed. (1994) footnote. PALAESTINA 5/1 - Climaci Rescriptus follows majority-text here too.

Tertullian famously had praise for Prisc[ill]a and Maximilla the Montanist prophetesses. Earlier generations thought that Tertullian became a Montanist himself although nowadays since 2001 this is doubted. (Also I must wonder if Saint Luke be somehow involved with this or that Prisca.) Concerning Wilson's case: what matters is that Tertullian accepted the preaching of Prisca and Maximilla. They can preach God's Word outside the Church but... not in it? LOLWUT

Lastly, for the sake of Christian doctrine: not all Christians have historically accepted Paul. Our Church already concedes the fallibility of certain of Paul's writings by accepting "James" ... and indeed "1 Timothy". As modern witness to Paul's error, Vox Day offers Bishop Karen Oliveto.

Wiser Christians might consider canonising 1 Cor 14:34-5 as a lost-scripture of the Church of Corinth.

Rebel and Imam

I looked around for what Dr Najam Haider has been up to, since Origins of the Shi'a; this turned up The Rebel and the Imam in Early Islam. I leafed through what text Google Books would offer; also read a review and an interview.

As with Origins, Rebel and Imam delves into test-cases, from which the book can extrapolate a general-impression. These cases are the Mukhtâr in al-Kûfa, the biography of the seventh imâm Mûsâ, and accounts of the last years of the Zaydî imâm Yahyâ. The last may prove most-valuable to the casual reader on account the Zaydiya (like the Ibadiya) has been understudied, not just by us infidels but also by most Muslims.

Or... it may not. I have some Concerns. Haider seems to have acquired an apologetic focus not evident in his earlier work. Mainly he sees the Islamic historiography as a creature of rhetoric, without the fact-focused concerns of a Herodotus or other classical authors of that sort.

I mean: sure, Tacitus had his biases. So did Herodian, and Procopius; and Thucydides for that matter. But these generally tried to deliver the facts as they understood them. For full rhetoric in late-antiquity we'd have to go with someone like Theophylact of Simocatta or John bar Penkaye. Is Bar Penkaye's tiresome preaching the sort of history we want? is it the sort a Muslim wants to pose as the best in the field?

I think Muslims deserve better. I know Muslims have done better, from Khwarezmi's sober chronicle to the ethnographies coming out of mediaeval Central Asia.

I don't claim expertise in 'Abbâsid-era Shî'ism, Zaydî or otherwise. I do claim to have read summat upon al-Mukhtâr and his role in the Zubayrid Fitna. So here's why this post has harped on Bar Penkaye: because he was a northern 'Iraqi who wrote his own account of the events, as a Christian eyewitness. Yes yes I've already complained about his style and total lack of impartiality. However: Najam can't. Dr Haider's whole point is the religious-rhetorical nature of the sources. I'd hope that even if Haider dismisses Bar Penkaye is a dishonest skunk (I share some sympathy to this view) at least Haider could contrast his skunkery to others'.

I don't own the book, as noted, but Google Books offers a search. I did not find "Penkaye", "Penkaya" - or "Brock" or "Mingana". Haider is aware of Hoyland's Seeing Islam. Why didn't he use it?

As noted - Concerns. This book worries me.

Superconductive hype

University of Rochester has outdone itself with this release. Better keep all that hot air away from the 294 K 10 kbar superconductor they've brought to Nature.

Don't get me wrong - 294 K is great. It's a nice spring day in Denver. The pressure is however... not so Coloradan. 10 kbar is a gigapascal where we're 100 kilopascals and Venus(!) in the low megapascals.

Where would we even use this, where gigapascal pressure is cheaper than just buying some liquid nitrogen? The New Yorkers say - where you need magnets at high(ish) temperatures. They came up with the tokamak, for magnetic containment of a fusion reaction. Well maybe. Assuming we even wanted to do that anymore.

To sum up I do not see where the gigapascal superconductor justifies the volume of fanfare which Rochester has blasted for it.

Mars and Ceres together

As long as we are what-iffing about Mark, Stephen Kane proposes a what-if about Mars - or rather SuperCeres. I'd started this essay yesterday but waited for more outside commentary before continuing; Paul Gilster thankfully got in on it this morning.

We seem to inhabit an anthropic-principle system wherein, if something more muscular than Ceres and her girlfriends had run into 2 or 3.7 AU for any extent of time... Earth be doomed. SuperVesta and SuperCybele each nudge Jupiter too much. Oddly the 3.7 AU superultraCybele spares Mars. Otherwise both these orbits pull Venus and Earth for eccentricity, so ejecting Mercury before finally dooming Earth.

Let's simplify things: protoplanetary disc doesn't form actual Mars, for a bit. Meanwhile Ceres and Hygiea and so-on find their way into this Belt, earlier. A core then forms at 2.8 AU where it can keep its ice, and wax larger.

I'd counter-argue Kane that even if we tack on extra mass to this chimera, our system might not own sufficient material between 1-5 AU to form a superEarth or, even, an Earth-mass planet. A worldbuilder can tweak Jupiter (and Saturn) to orbit a little further away. And, maybe, let Jupiter be bigger; Saturn smaller. But must he?

This Mars-Ceres hybrid should have eccentricity oh, 0.085 by now, let's say. Total mass maybe 50% Earth's (this is generous: Mars' is only like 10%). Density 3000 kg/m³; differentiated so - fairly high albedo (and we do not name this after our blood god). Core is Marslike maybe a little bigger having sucked in Vesta etc. I don't think it keeps its magnetic field but it might not have to, at this irradiance and greater mass.

Moons: insignificant. Ring-system: possible, mostly ice.

Thick nitrogen atmosphere. Thin CO₂ / H₂O vapour clouds. The greenhouse and the pressure are together insufficient to allow liquid anything on the surface. No subsurface ocean.

I've got this world pulling ice and silicates from where Theia should have formed so, Earth doesn't get as big a Moon.

RELATIVITY 3/9 Another point: relativistic effects on Mercury, as its orbit gets elongated so perihelion shorter. The first planet doesn't trade energy as fast as has been thought. As our system is stable up to the heat-death of its Sun; so would this alt-system be.

SUPERTITAN 5/27 Oh yeah, it'll be carbon-dominant.

The secret letter of James

The catholic epistle "James" came to orthodoxy late. It was not in the Old Syriac; it didn't enter the Muratorian canon, and Jerome noted that it was disputed as late as his own day. A synod at Laodicea accepted it AD 360 and that's likely about when it started trickling into Latin and Syriac NTs. So far so Beduhn.

Now, the argument-from-silence is rarely a good argument. Take the Gospels - also not extant in Syriac, in those Diatesseronic days. Here out West it's been noted for maybe a century (including this very blog) that we'd find difficult to accept Mark as early, given how thoroughly Matthew supplanted it. My own Church has historically asserted that Mark is later than Matthew. But, pardon my Galileianism - Mark is early. Helmut Koester thought that James behaves like 1 Clement in citing sayings of our Lord from the nebulous "oral tradition", namely not directly from a Gospel. Still. There are some intriguing dogs not barking in this night.

This post will call this author "James" to honour his pseudonym, and to save time; like I have no problem with calling the author of Isaiah 40-55 "Isaiah". Always keeping in mind that we aren't assuming their real names.

Everyone has noticed that James is a nomian; this author approves Torah and (more so) the wisdom-tradition interpretation thereof, from Ben Sira to Dennis Prager. Underappreciated is that this author likes the Septuagint's torah. Even Paul preferred a protoMT text for instance his citation of Jeremiah 16 against the idolaters. Josephus and pseudo-Philo also went with MT-leaning Greek, like when reciting the David / Goliath story. Maybe these Hellenophone Jews were not prepared to do the full Aquila; but certainly they followed the Lucian / kaige / Theodotion revisions. James might have been a Judaeophile but he doesn't read like a post-9-Av Jew.

Also what strikes me is that James doesn't wax on about circumcision, as we'd expect from a contemporary opponent to Paul. James seems to be reacting to a Paul-ism, as might be found amongst, well, the extreme Lutherans. Marcion comes to mind; and that Lucan faction which led to him.

Wikipedia wants me to read James as a followup to 1 Peter. I am less certain James wants us to read him so, contrast 2 Peter with the Apocalypse. James wants us to think he relies upon the "paraenetic tradition" common to the community; as did 1 Clement and probably 1 Peter too.

James 5:10-11 diverges from 1 Peter in suggesting Job (in Greek!) as the model of patience in adversity. As Udo Schnelle has asked - why not Christ. James' church had no crucifix behind its altar. To the extent we are not meditating upon the Cross; we read this sentiment also in 2 Thessalonians and in the Gospel of Thomas.

This bizarre mix of post-Pauline and maybe even post-Lucan controversy, coupled with a paraenesis avoiding ascription to Christ, to my mind is best-resolved as a pseudepigraphy. Someone in the pseudo-Clementine milieu opposed the Paulines and Lucans (although perhaps not Marcion yet), by "anticipating" their antinomianism. This was done by a letter from Jesus' inner circle purporting from when the Lord still lived. The Abgar legend proposes that Jesus Himself corresponded with the court of Edessa Callirrhoë.

The "Epistle of James" does not dare this. But he can certainly piggyback off Jesus' family name. He could base this from the letters he'd read from Paul, which was probably all of them, including the Pastorals. In parallel consider Hegesippus.

UPDATE 3/8 - Thinking this through, I now think we are dealing with a "preëmptive" strike against Marcion. James' defence of Torah-based ethics is really a defence of using the Torah at all. Paul and Luke still own a Bible, their writings making little sense without it; and feel no need to argue the point.

Saint Jude shall be avenged

Over the early 2010s one Jörg Frey wrote a commentary upon 2 Peter (and Jude). In 2015ish Frey built upon the work of Tobais Nicklas and others especially Wolfgang Grünstäudl, arguing for the Ethiopic Apocalypse of Peter as a canonical Petrine work (in Greek) as of the early second-century AD, from which assumption 2 Peter used this apocalypse as its own "1 Peter". This flips Richard Bauchman's direction-of-dependence. (Also makes Joel Thomas, Eleutheria, and Liberty "University" all look silly.)

Nicklas's own oeuvre has mainly gone to bolstering Montague Rhodes James that the Akhmîm fragments represent the already-tattered Gospel of Peter, itself secondary to the Apocalypse.

Among the Frey arguments I caught, before Google Books refused my reading further, is that where 2 Peter refactors Jude, the Apocalypse shares no common text with Jude except inasmuch as both rely upon prior literature, such as the visions in Book of Watchers, 1 Enoch 1-36 in Ethiopic. Frey has floated other arguments in interviews.

Now a book exists reviewing that lecture; which itself has acquired some reviews. Bauchman himself dropped by that collection, eating a partial helping of crow such that the Apocalypse could not have used this Epistle. Instead Bauchman would plead that these works shared sources - like 1 Enoch 1-36, one imagines.

Most essays nitpick side-comments in Frey's essay, which at seventy-odd pages will be making a few of those. I've already picked the imprecision-in-language concerning Jude and the Apocalypse. Also Frey could have bolstered his argument by reminding the reader that 2 Peter did not enter the Peshitta until late; e.g. Isho'yahb III and John bar Penkaye do not quote it. We also have a Coptic "Epistle of Peter", which is just our 1 Peter, but not called "the first Epistle" as should be expected.

Where Frey downplays this letter's links with 1 Peter David Nienhuis argues for 2 Peter as 1 Peter's bridge to 1 John, even 1-3 John. Martin Ruf contrasts that 2 Peter is no bridge to source Jude, which rival 2 Peter aims to supplant.

I agree with Bauchman on a Problematic when two documents share common innovations. If 2 Peter borrowed from the Apocalypse, say about the coming Deluge Of Fire; then whence did the Apocalypse get the idea? I wonder if Bauchman could have added, as a shared source, the teaching of John the Baptiser, that where he baptises in water someone else will come to baptise in fire. This sort of talk should naturally give rise to sermons on the Flood to presage a prediction of a coming Fire. Everyone seems to agree that 2 Peter and the Apocalypse both knew Matthew's Gospel (and not John's, Nienhuis notwithstanding).

Overall it looks to me like Frey is winning this one. I don't know how Christian homilists can keep using 2 Peter without a massive asterisk. Were I Pope, I should strike it from the lectionaries. It would be only just, for a work as tried to do just that to Jude.

Perhaps-ironically Terrance Callan seems the most conservative of the responders. I recall the Campus Crusade arguing that 2 Peter had confronted the Gnostics. It seems modern scholarship does not argue this, and indeed Frey dismisses this. Callan would restore this, against Basilides in particular; and would restore that 2 Peter had Josephus as well. Nicklas also notes Basilides, claiming the Coptic Apocalypse of Peter as from his school - and as dependent upon 2 Peter. I suppose that's an avenue for future discussion between Nicklas and Callan. As a word-of-warning: Coptic literature tends to rework its themes and sources, especially once the Miaphysite debates got started.

Fotosíntesis

Spark it up, pendejos: the new habitable-zone. Sadly: not as wide as we'd hope. At least: not around those M stars for which we'd been finding HZ planets so far.

Basically plants' chloroplasts don't drink the infrared wavelengths of light; they drink the visible spectra. We'd already got hints at poor lighting-conditions in those "goldilocks" zones around K stars. Moreover the HZ around red-dwarf suns is so close to those suns that the planets are tidally-locked. So those planets don't get a lot of surface-area for photosynthesis even to start [PACE 3/16 this nonsense].

That rules out those Trappist-1 planets. Looking at these planets' sheer closeness to the star - innermost comparable to Jupiter / Callisto - I'd wondered if the star's magnetic field might be irradiating the planet as well.

So: what's left. Cassandra Hall, P. C. Stancil, J. P. Terry, and C. K. Ellison suggest five Kepler mission planets: 452 b, 1638 b, 1544 b, and 62 e+f. These are transits; in a long field-of-sight.

The first one 452 b is at 1800 ly away. This was just a lucky find, we guess. The planet is also larger than Earth taking about the same irradiant "flux" if not more.

Honestly I prefer closer stars. But as I've noted before here: 1 AU, high-parallax, low-mass... pick two. The nice planets may exist near to us, but we won't see them from here.

Italy's false refuge

Few days ago Max Planck Institute came out with some impressive new papers on post-Aurignac pre-LGM Europe. (Meanwhile the late-50s-kBC Aurignacian sweep from Sundaland remains consensus.)

From LGM west-Europe Southern Spain was a refuge: 21kBC genes there descend from a "Gravettian" Belgian(!) trace 33kBC. But North Africa was no such refuge, not from Europe anyway, perhaps because pre-Solutrean watercraft weren't yet up to it. Italy proved a false refuge for these Europeans; its Ice-Age population got replaced, one must assume by force.

From 30kBC on, those between Belgium and Spain shared the Gravettian Culture with those doomed Italians and also with Bohemians. These three populations despite sharing the same tech were genetically different. It was the westerners who gave rise to the Solutrean, across the LGM 23-17 kBC. I am less sure about Magdalenian.

I'd thought the Gravettians were an "interlude" between the Aurignacians (aka Cromags) and the Magdalenians (neoAurignacians basically, their genetic descendents). Maybe it depends where you look, like in the DNA. Aurignacian DNA hung on - out east I must induce - borrowing the Gravettian culture, like the Navajo took from the Hopi.

"Epigravettians" who were, by blood, eastern Aurignacian throwbacks, having taken over Italy, subsequently spread back north 12 kBC. These trounced their still-Magdalenian cousins. Kind of like the Romans will to their own Gaulish cousins, some twelve millennia later.

Lenovo / Windows takes a dump

Three swift bluescreens this morning on wifi and battery-power; C:\WINDOWS\MEMORY.DMP is where the "dump" got dumped. At well over a gigabyte. After these three, a shutdown and restart seemed to get it better again... until now. nvlddmkm.sys Thread Exception Not Handled. This is usually blamed on NVIDIA. NVIDIA got updated 28 February "531.18" although dxdiag says 23 Feb.

This started with the 2 March round of updates featuring KB5022913 for 22H2. But "only" one crash happened yesterday.

CONTROL PANEL 11:35 AM: After reinstalling NVIDIA, after like ten minutes nvlddmkm threadaborted again. So, I've set CPU for preferred physics and Integrated Graphics for general stuff. Which means nogaymz; excepting dosbox stuff and int-fiction, until NVIDIA get their crap together sufficiently.

BACKSTOP 3/8: I believe I got a clue. A temporary clue...

My Plan A was to scannow, and yes the windows \Logs\CBS\CBS.log did show I'd fixed some corrupted files. That didn't help however.

I pondered underclocking the CPU and/or NVIDIA; but I decided not to do this. Not least b/c I know not how. But meanwhile I had a feeling that this very browser - Brave - was associated with the NVIDIA crashes.

Brave was updated 2/23 over here. Also there was that bandwidth improvement. But I got the same problem in a coffee-hut. So I doubt either that particular update, nor the recent bandwidth firehose, caused this problem.

So I went to the NVIDIA display-panel to check up (via "Desktop" menu) on GPU Activity. Indeed Brave was running on the GPU. But whhyyyy?! - I never run games in the browser (and if I did they'd probably be tiny javascript or even int-fiction games). I suppose streaming can happen; but podcasts and even video don't really need the level of hardcore maths we get in a game.

Anyway having better Internet suggests I can, now, skimp on performance in the browser. In the win11 System app: Display > Graphics allowed me to add Brave to "power saving".

Long-term I have few illusions that my nvlddmkm problem is solved. Actual games will, I fear, not work well on this machine in future. DOSBOX, Ur-Quan Masters, other retro crap like that are already powersaved but what if I want some Halo in future?