Inonu cave is Palaic, not Kaska

Bulent Ecevi university are looking at Cro-Inonu at Karadeniz Eregli in Zonguldak, near Heraclea Pontica. They've found signs of sentient life during around what would be the Hittite period.

This article from Türkiye Today is poorly edited. Although I do appreciate Gordon Doherty's map. Very late-1990s amateur 2e-D&D. I might have drawn some maps like that myself.

The region could be protoPhygrian (Thracian), or Mycenaean (Greek). I take it they've ruled out these cultures. Native to northwest Anatolia, this is about where I'd expect Palaic. Apparently they're ruling these out too. Left are those dirty woodwoses and troglodytes whom the Hittites named "Kaska", of whom all we know from their personal names is they're not Palaic or Greek.

I've heard musings the Kaskians might be the original Hatti; expelled from Hattus and Nerik (and Sapinuwa which just means "Divine City" in Hattic).

The problem I got is that even the map is suggesting that the Kaska clustered around the mouth of the Red River later named (after old Hattus) Halys, spreading east. Even Nerik was pretty far west of the core Kaska-land... which is why the Hittites were able to retake it. The cave is far westward of Nerik, across the river.

PostKurgan gylanism

As Marija Gimbutas and Merlin Stone noted, there never was a matriarchy. Matrilocality, by contrast, may be seen in a belt across the Bantu southern regions of the African continent. Here's Lara M. Cassidy et al. arguing for its existence in old Prydain.

The Celtic/Volcae Netherlands were in close contact with what's now southern England, including Cornwall. North of that, the Britons tended not to move abroad much. The solution stumbled upon, was to define "wealth" as "this land". A man who wanted wealth and status had to marry the land (as documented in Holy Grail). That meant he had to move abroad. This kept inbreeding low-enough for the locals to survive and not to war upon each other too much. It also avoided the queen's brothers muscling in, to get their own daughters on the throne in place of the queen's... therefore, really their daughters' brothers: the word for that is "avunculate". Instead I think we're looking at anarchosyndicalism, the only "communism" as can possibly work.

The system contrasted with the Gauls and Aquitanians in what's now France. The mainland grew more urban. The weather was better and it has more navigable rivers, plus some of those rivers drained into the Med.

With the Gaulish (or Belgaic?) to-and-fro, it may be that the Celtic of southern Britain had to shift to be more Gaulish, notably taking on the q>p shift of the Greeks (like Oscans did). Cornovia and Cambria, both rather marginal, would have lagged. Roman influence in Gaul sidelined Gaulish, so the southern Britons simply spoke Gaulish Trade Latin. Ireland meanwhile was less tied with the Gaulish/Greek world; when it got Med visitors, the visitors were Latins who never did q>p, so the Irish didn't either.

Maybe Hezeqiah wasn't rescued

As followup to this piece, I'll bring in Johanna Markind. The claim is that Exodus' core narratives, around Moses being drawn from the Nile and then drawing water abroad, and around Moses striking the overseer, and about the Nile flowing with blood, are legends like what Sargon II spread about his heroic Akkadian namesake. Traditionally Genesis 13; Exodus 16, 22-3; and Isaiah 30 had thought of Egypt as a refuge. And so modern-day Egyptian apologist Henry Aubin in The Rescue of Jerusalem.

But then Sennacherib shut Hezeqiah in Jerusalem "like a bird in his cage". The siege was lifted; but Sennacherib doesn't seem aware that Egypt had helped much. Markind, against Aubin, argues for a Surrender of Jerusalem. If the Assyrians would just content themselves with a garrison and an alliance, against the Nubians calling themselves Pharaoh (like the Ramessides did); Hezeqiah could stay on his throne.

If the Exodus 1-16 be antiEgyptian propaganda, this may go to explain how it wasn't always canon in Egyptian Judaism, which maintained the old Pesach as having nothing to do with any earlier "sojourn" by the Nile. And why nonJewish Egyptians don't seem to know the tale until Ptolemy of Mendes, Agartharch, and others. That half of the book would then fall along with Isaiah 9 and 19.

If the tale is from Hezeqiah, that is after the northern kingdom fell. There's no Elohist up to Exodus 16; green and blue here be merged. If to this farrago there be earlier sources in Hebrew, we can't get at them.

BACKDATE 1/16

Lead pipes again

Here's the latest on the muh-lead-pipes canard. The good news, I guess, is they're not talking about the piping.

They are talking about the process of smelting which brings lead into the air.

They may also mention the lead "silver" ware, actually mostly pewter. This is fine for water cups too. But less fine for acidic drinks like, er, wine. Also I think lead was sometimes used in sweeteners.

Psalter pscholarship

Open-access journal on Biblical translations on Ancient World Online. This concerns this Psalter.

First up, the Psalter tends to be the most-copied book in any language. From John Lee, the Greek Psalter was late-Ptolemaic, second-century B.C. This is bourne out by its deviations from the Hebrew ("MT") which Emmanuel Tov count as hardly any. They even resist fixing that Elohist nonsense.

Although there do exist some Greek changes; nine years back I'd noted Hebrew Psalm 130 "fear of God" against the Greek #129 "law [*torah] of God". And wasn't there Hellenistic south-Syrian jargon not used in Egypt? If the Psalter be Ptolemaic I think it was, nonetheless, done in the Ptolemaic Judaia. (We are here ignoring the three Christian interpolations; after all, the Ethiopian Christians ignored two of 'em.)

Peshitta started as a translation of the MT, although Christians did 1 Isaiah. Van Peurson notes they did the Psalter too. (When the Jews were called in, they did Matthew - which I find ironic.) Later Peshitta MSS have some "corrections" toward the Greek, although not much changing the Christian elements. Of course meanwhile the "kaige" lads were correcting the Greek toward the MT, although with the Psalter they had little to do.

On topic of Aramaic, this article is Greek-focused - we are not here looking at the Targum, either Palaestinian or Iraqi or Late Jewish Literary. Although I understand the Jews fell under heavy Syriac influence when they got past Torah, especially Proverbs.

The Arabic Psalter was Melkite so done from Greek. Later the Muslims will make a run at Psalm One, possibly from Peshitta. I assume Quranic vocabulary slips into all this. Score another W for Sidney Griffith.

For comparison with the Greek MT, Michael Segal brings the Ode of Hannah. This actually does have variations. Psalm 113 may depend on this.

This brings to mind, what about the "variant Psalter". Emmanuel Tov says there wasn't one. Where we see variants as in Qumran, these weren't competitors to the canon. 11QPsAp/11Q11's use of Psalm 91 is a case-in-point. Van Peurson agrees: those extra psalms found in Syriac like 152-155 may have been dug out of the caves, during Timothy I's papacy/catholicate. Qumran's paraPsalters were done for the liturgy; they could be considered lectionaries. Like the Odes, which the Greeks compiled as separate from the Psalter although sometimes attached. Psalm 151 may well have started as Ode.

City of exiles

Every few years I get back into Cucuteni. Anyway Dawn of Everything is in the news again.

The theory here is that Cucuteni - a Romanian site - was indeed an egalitarian town with, in the centre... nothing. The town-commons, in Yankee / Anglian terms. Maybe it was an agora with temporary tents. Maybe it was for town meetings. Maybe they just grazed sheep there. Or choose-your-own-adventure.

But before the culture ended, it changed. (That happens a lot.) The villages emptied (one final ritual burn); the people, however, moved. They moved ... trans-dnestrovie. The big cities are in what's now western Ukraine. All this before the IndoEuropean irruption, Corded-Ware and all that; maybe some of those had moved into Anatolia and/or Tocharia.

Maidanetske 3800 BC - some time after the big farms, and the mouse - has a 200-hectare "megasite" which they don't (yet) want to call a city, given that the Cucuteni towns before it are difficult to define as such. But it has larger buildings. They don't know - yet - if these are what we'd call public, or if they're temples, or palaces. (I doubt festhalls, those seem more IndoEuropean.) Either way they should class as urban, so their "megasites" as urbes.

There's guff about Climate but I doubt this. Climate crises would be 6200 BC then that nasty Bronze Age 22nd-C BC. In between, things should have been fine. Excepting the 3400 BC yersinia which hit the Ukraine-now-urban. Maybe because they'd not been doing the burn ritual anymore.

Karl Popper's other philosophy

Since we've been looking into historian philosophy... why not political. George Soros has one: he claims Karl Popper's. We've dealt with Popper's inductive reasoning; Soros more concerns the Open Society. There are those who think little of Soros. For now we'll start with that run on the Bank of England / "Sterling" he did, under PM John Major.

Dropping out of the Euro allowed Britain to get out from under the Thatcher / Major recession. Yes, that was $3G-1993 lost, from which Soros took $1G. Overall Britain bought, with that money, some prosperity. We can discuss how Major and his successors have handled that prosperity, some other time.

Opposed to Popper are the likes of Putin and Xi, and here Maduro and Ortega. Popper's most coherent proponent these days seems to be Richard Hanania.

Britain basically cannot run herself so requires that outside billionaires intervene to help. It is exactly Popper's Open-Society that saved the Brits under Major, and is attempting to save them under Starmer. If Brits find this "unsporting", they should elect a better King.

Soros' main fault, meanwhile, is that since his good work in Britain, he has failed Popper.

Direct-democracy doesn't work with Democrats

We are told not to blame Los Angelenos for what is happening. We are told to blame the Snail Darter (in CA, in the form of Delta Smelt) and the courts, DEI hiring (leading to insufficient boats and reservoirs), Trump - for being annoying, or the weather. Suppose, however, that Californians did choose some parts of their fate. California allows for voter-initiatives, a form of Direct Democracy.

Among these initiatives is Proposition 103 which declared that insurers can't hire actuaries. I'm serious. Another one was Proposition 47 which lightened sentences for Quality Of Life offences like Urban Camping.

Even if California politicos would like to bring back insurers and to keep mentally-unfit and angry people off the streets, they... can't.

These Props are not on Mayor Karen Bass, disappointing as she has been (I recall Sailer and Cole, both famously #based, as more-or-less supportive, years back). These are on you. Likewise on you is all that NIMBY against doing the Israel on the potential water-supply off the shore. As Cerno has noted, Maslow was wrong: most people freed of Problem A won't solve Problem B, they'll - literally - Problematise what is good.

My suggestion to the incoming Administration and to Congress is that, when California sends Representatives with their hands out, to tie some serious strings around those hands. To whit: Federalise the coast from somewhere south of the SF Bay all the way to Tijuana. Make that strip a Territory, with some name taken from an Indigenous pre-Uto-Aztecan tribe like the Chumash. If these people are simply not in California anymore, they're not ruled by those stupid Propositions.

(Incidentally this is why I haven't bothered with Romania lately. If you vote for a joke, get treated like a joke.)

The antimessianic prooftext

Psalm 91 was constructed as an apotropaic prayer to relieve suffering from the afflicted. And so the Jews have used it. Muslims claim that it was messianic like Psalm 22. Although some Christians - like Augustine - have shoehorned it into the Ecclesiatical History; most Christians have observed that no Jew has ever read this messianically. But... what if the Jews, opposite our Muslims, used it antiMessianically?

I have in mind the tradition where a protoChristian holy man was thrown from a high roof. This is what Hegesippus said of Saint James, Jesu's brother. The Gospel of Matthew has brought a parallel into Jesus' temptations which we shall commemorate in Lent. Here the Devil, no less, brings Psalm 91 as relevant Scripture. Jesus doesn't exactly deny this - the Passion had already brought Psalms like 2 and 22 - instead, countering its abrogation with Deuteronomy, "do not put the Lord-your-God to the test".

Matthew will present a nondocetic Crucifixion, more so than Mark by the way; so Matthew already knew that Psalm 91 was not a relevant Scripture. I would even venture Matthew was structuring a Gospel that excludes Psalm 91 from consideration.

I think we're missing a scene from the oral-tradition around James where Psalm 91 was used against James' claim to be the heir to the Messiah, therefore the Messiah of his day. But the Jews had not thought to use it against Jesus. Jesus wasn't killed in that way and it hadn't occurred to Jesus, nor to his immediate followers, to use Psalm 91 for their own cause. Matthew was safeguarding not just Jesus, but also James.

The separated Gospels in Syriac

I went looking up Syriac Gospel studies over the past year. I don't know that David Taylor has yet published New Finds 37+39 or the Sinaiticus. I did however see Haelewyck's 2017 Status Quaestionis. Done with knowledge of New Finds; but before the bolsterment of the Curetonian Gospels.

We do get the Palaestinian Jargon of Joosten, bolstered by Lyon 1994. Only the lyt thing seems overthrown.

Baethgen 1885(!) remains the textbook for how Curetonian (alone) went about translating the Greek Gospels, presumably before those later tweaks which have plagued the text on its way to us. The translation is not Aquila. The Matthew, in particular, has taken on glosses to tell us which personage is meant by a pronoun. So word order and prepositions are not to be trusted; but whole omissions are to be trusted. Intergospel harmonies might point to the Diatesseron.

The Acts of Thomas, by the way, quotes the Lord's Prayer from the Curetonian Matthew... not Peshitta. The Diatesseron has the same text but the Acts - developing its own harmonies of content - doesn't use Diatesseron there. Use of harmonised text can actually be tested: not just against other witnesses to Diatesseron, but also against Aphrahat.

Sinaiticus is considered oldest, as the freest translation, even by comparison with Curetonian. S also lacks that Marcan ending; that might be because S's base text had bracketed out that sus passage, but still - the bracketing would have to be early.

On topic of the four gospels: Hjelt 1903 found the Sinaiticus was translated by four people who did not have access to one anothers' work. Matthew's translator, furthermore, was a Jew by upbringing perhaps still trying to evangelise Jews, based on the glosses.

Lagrange 1920-1 claimed all four were done in Egypt, explaining how they did not get accepted by Aphrahat or Ephrem even if they'd already existed. Maybe. Acts of Thomas would suggest at least Matthew did get over at least to west-Syria, in its Curetonian form.

Although most seem to think Diatesseron preceded Curetonian, we may still have debate about where earlier Sinaiticus sits. Also at issue is if gospel-harmonies preceded the Diatesseron. I'd wait for Taylor's publications.

India today

The western Right has been arguing with itself about the H1B Visa, which I think is hyphenated H1-B sigh, H-1B. As opposed to the O-1, which brings to us the top talent; H-1B is argued to bring over talent which we hope will become top. There's a lot riding on that hope. Elon Musk likes the H-1B. Musk's main platform, X, has people in it who are autist enough to look into the H-1B, who's using it and how much and what they're bringing.

This is all happening whilst Canada and Australia, smaller nations than the US, have been dealing with the sudden irruption of Indian males (and not females, females are always less migratory). Also going on is the resurrection of the Rotherham issue in the UK. Which discussion is also happening on X.

Leaving aside all that, we should like to know more about where India is going. (We know where Pakistan is going - to Taliban invasion and tribal-war.) So: here are some observations on Modi-ism. Last month we got a shufty on Indian culture.

How these factors intersect, would be the issue. India still has problems. Is Modi, at least, going to face these problems honestly? Or is he going to blame the West and push the West toward Indian interests against Western interests?

For now this blog will err on the side of caution. We will assert that, if you disapprove Modi: then you should expect few good things from Modi-supporters abroad. You might be able to work with, say, the Sikhs.

Positivism

Vridar offers a few observations. Past the theatrical land-acknowledgement headtilting, we learn of Positivism. I haven't really evolved a philosophy of history; just hearing about Foucault last year.

For Vridar, Positivism comes from Hempel. Hempel argued to discover predictable cause-effect relationships. The aim is for historical laws. If such laws exist... first up, that's Asimovian psychohistory, so woohoo. But also we can apply Bayes' theorem to solve ancient mysteries like, was Henry Beauclerc of the Normans aware that brother William II Rufus was about to die.

For Vridar, at stake is if we can say anything about the historical Jesus. He's in a conflict with Richard Carrier. Carrier is a Positivist. Carrier suggests that the Jewish Scriptural Canon, as of our first century, was already setting up messianic expectations. Maybe the Psalter wasn't intended as prophecy, but prophets were already mining, say, Psalm 72.

All this, Vridar warns, means that a hero was being set up. We barely need the man. This is what Life of Brian was getting across, that even a total loser could be imbued with the mantle, whether he wanted it or not. The Joke^TM was that this was happening to luckless Brian in his own time, the Romans reacting with trademark semiïnformed callous brutality.

Tarshish and Sheba

Today was the vigil for Epiphany. I am unsure if this means the display of Christ to the world, or the manifestation of the Divine in Christ - the latter implies a holdover of Adoptionism. Anyway. Psalm/OT correlation!

The Psalm was #72-MT, "Elohist". This prays God to grant judgement to the king and righteousness to the king's son. Christians, I think, read this as God the Dayyan, advised by a more idealistic crown prince who might see extenuations as the king missed. A Protestant would dislike this psalm on account it implies one can intercede with the king: here through his son, but why not his mother or any other saint.

Also interesting is the hope that this royal family will rule all the nations as trade with the king, from Tarshish (Tartessos) to Saba.

Old-Testament was Isaiah 60. Many themes of the psalm recur here: Saba bringing gifts, and then Tarshish is mentioned. Classically Psalm 72 would be considered Davidic such that Isaiah himself postdated it. Nowadays I don't know if Psalm 72 be dated prior to king Hezeqiah. I do know that Isaiah 60 is considered far, far posterior: scholarship has marked it after the second Isaiah 40-55 which hails shah Cyrus II. And then later psalms will use TritoIsaiah.

Simushir

Simushir blew up AD 1831. This solves a longstanding question about a bad Northern winter that seems less bad south of the Equator; implying something like Hekla. Tropical blasts like Tamboro (spellings vary) tend toward global problems.

On the other side of our globe, a New Zealander blast like Taupo would appear to inflict minimal damage up north. Although the Hatepe eruption was spectacular. This coincides, within two decades, with shah Ardashir I and the abortive reign of Alexander Severus. Was the German invasion driven by poor weather?

In AD 1831 nothing happened on Iceland, forcing research afield. Out East, nobody lived on Simushir who survived; nobody lives there today, although the Russians claim it. There also seems not to have been a tsunami. So we don't get - say - Japanese records or Native tradition such as AD 1700.

Aleutian and Kuril volcanism seems understudied. Alaska is doing a bit better, witness Aniakchak II 1628 BC. It may be political inasmuch as disputed territories present a visa nightmare. Also who wants to spend much time in a semitundra volcano.

BACKDATE 1/6

The universe exists for the Sabbath

I was pondering lately the structure Genesis One. Cody Moser is talking about Myth as Model: origin myths in general ... provide shared narrative frameworks for aligning and coordinating members of a group. What better time to poast than before reading the thesis...

Genesis One starts the whole Bible, not just for Jews and Samaritans but also for Christians. Muslims are aware of an origin-story - sura 7 sort-of prologues it all - but that's secondary to its revelation to the Prophet.

With Genesis-One, Judaism and Samaritanism ties the seven day week with the foundation of the universe. This is at tension with... Judaism and Samaritanism, inasmuch as even the basest fundamentalist intuits that humans came to the scene after the scene was already set, with night, day, sun, moon, oceans, sea creatures, and birds(!). It is on Day Six when animals finally get out onto land and stay there. (Dinosaurs before even reptiles is an... odd flex.) On Day Seven, Walton says that's when God ascendeth the Throne, misinterpreted as a snooze.

As a summary of Creation, 'tis flawed. And as justification for solar-calendar, projected to 364 days, it's off by a bit. On the other hand the dynamicists tell us that the days will become longer relative to the year (also lengthening) so... maybe it's prophecy.

Where Genesis One does serve, is as parable. Of Cosmic Order, of the duties of a state-founder, and of the centrality of a calendar. We get six days to work, and one day off (or at least set-aside for administrivia). This has proven to work well for populations as have adopted it.

Christians can point to other myths, like that in Paradise Lost. These myths cannot tie the seven day week with the Big Bang and, honestly, not even with our Solar System; I don't know that any myth can.

In the "Orange Catholic Bible", perhaps the Sabbath could instead be delayed: as God relenting from some of the punishments inflicted after Eden.

Before the Targum

In lieu of a New Year resolution, I'll just continue my thoughts on Jewish Aramaic. I just remembered it precedes the Targum. In fact the Dead Sea Scrolls include a couple of translations: one of the Yom Kippur ritual from Leviticus (perhaps done as a florilegium rather than actual Torah); and one of Job. We lack sufficient evidence to decide if the former competed with the Targum genre. The latter on the other hand...

Gavin Mcdowell (pdf) offers some insights, garnered from David Shepherd 2002 among others. He points out that the Targum genre was midrashic. It took the text, which (usually) it didn't override, instead adding content to explain the meaning. As a translation, compare Theodotion even Aquila in Greek. As to the expository content, the Targum acts more like... the Septuagint, or the Samaritan expansions, excepting that the additions were all Aramaic and not dragged in from other spots of the Hebrew Tanakh. Muqatil bin Sulayman seems to have had a similar attitude in his tafsir of Quran. And then there's that old Latin Quran...

Qumran's Job, by contrast, is a paraphrase. The attempt is to get across the meaning of the book without transmitting word-for-word Hebrew. At least here, the translator figured he could do good-enough. Here wasn't a legal principle, nor the word of G-d as might be delivered to (say) Isaiah; just the book's philosophy. This is like how that book got translated into Syriac (independently).

I understand that the Greek of Job is pretty-much a different book entirely, forcing Job to be a good deal more patient than he was in Hebrew or Aramaic.