Anaphora

Greek ana- had something of the same valence as Latin re-. The former really means "up" and the latter, "back". But it can also mean "again". Greek palin- is supposed to have that meaning but it seems koine used ana a lot, as seen in the Johannine Gospel anothen. This is why it got so annoying to translate Hebrews' "anastaurism". Today we're looking at Christian anaphora.

That's repetition. Easter attendants will know "This Is The Night"; also extant are several "Negro" spiritual classics. In the Greek East, they still own anaphorai of John Chrysostom.

The Romanians are now comparing John's anaphora with Basil's... and with Theodore's. Theodore, of Mopsuestia, is considered a heretic today because, uh, he kind of was. But he was one of John's closest confidants until John's death AD 407. 'Tis possible John's successors among the Orthodox dialed back some of Theodore's special flourishes. 'Tis impossible Nestorius got involved becau HERESY *BLAM* *BLAM*.

What seems most likely, to Benedict Vesa, is that the basic anaphora was already extant for these two men to learn it in Antioch. John took it to Constantinople, as Patriarch; Theodore remained around Antioch, preaching to Syrians. Maybe developing some of those ideas which made him so detested in the Ephesian Councils.

As to who came up with the baseline, that looks like Diodore of Tarsus. This one was ordained AD 360ish; didn't object to the Council of Theodosius Constantinople; passed away AD 390. The baseline looks explicitly Trinitarian, with a focus on Christ's saving sacrifice; but without comment on Christ's physis. It looks to me like a statement against the Eunomians who might not believe in a proper Trinity, or anyway could be painted suchways by an opponent.

Qapla', Jeremiah!

Michael Shepherd has a backtranslation of the Greek Jeremiah into Hebrew. In TC, Matthew B. Quintana presents a "review article".

A review article is more than a review. Think less Roger Ebert; think more Theodor Nöldeke on Schulthess, or Maria Conterno on Hoyland. They're really articles of their own. Also as Nöldeke can attest, they're not necessarily hitpieces; nobody blamed Schulthess that his sources misled him on Umayya the poet.

Unfortunately in Shepherd's case, Quintana argues the man overstepped. And Quintana seems to be right: we are not ready for a backtranslation of Jeremiah In The Original Klingon, from its nonoriginal Greek.

A collection of articles relating Greek-Jeremiah to Ezekiel and 2 Isaiah would have got the same job done. Backtranslation, frankly, is for the popular market, as was done for 1 Maccabees.

PBS serves up the blue pill

PBS would refute Vox Day, and others, on the concept of the α. PBS is arguing that this figure and his dynamic exist only among wolves cooped in a mid twentieth-century zoo. Out in the wild, a wolf pack is a family. Its α is, then, literal dad. His "patriarchy" becomes matricentric the moment bestgirldoggy becomes the mater. A pack may extend protection over some useful adoptees; we might consider Winterfell in early A Game of Thrones. Hierarchy in the Starks' domus is familial, and in extension reciprocal.

Where hierarchy is based on force and submission, as was seen in that zoo, that is prison dynamic. You're not stuck there with your (criminal) peers because you want to be there.

Vox Day and much of 4chan have grown out of seeing "Chad" - the Alpha - as a bully, however. Most agree that Chad is just Chad, enjoying life. Chad is going to get married and start a pack of his own. Which makes PBS' argument a straw one.

Or just wrong. Schools and workplaces, too often, are in fact run like prisons. So where the alpha-as-dominus is natural, as in Antoninus Pius' world; many of us are trapped in Domitian's twisted Dominate. The α caricature is reality for such. Note how Alpha discourse tracks in popularity with the 2014-24 reign of Equity.

PBS cannot call this reality a "lie". PBS mistakes "is" with "ought". I doubt this is an accident - in which case, who's lying?

Who were the Emishi?

I am pondering "Japan": not as an archipelago of land, but as zones of sea.

The southern Japanese islands, and the south half of Honshu, is Yayoi/Jomon. This is where Nipponese was ancestrally spoken; "Yamato" is a term sometimes used. Also wider Japonic south to Okinawa...

...and part of Korea. When Japonic was purged off of Korea remains a question, I believe. Clearly Korea was the Yayoi homeland, even Kofun. Once "Cipan-guo" was its own empire, its interests in the peninsula conflicted with the Tang interests; which the Tang won. What I don't know is if those Japanese interests were a colony, or local holdouts who naturally kept ties over the strait. I expect, the latter (I have my eye on Gaya). So there's one zone: the Korea-Honshu sea zone.

Ainu when first noted (by Russians!) was spoken along north Hokkaido, Sakhalin, and the Kurils. That's another sea zone.

Last March, I was considering the Matsumae holding in south Hokkaido. Now: the Matsumae considered themselves full Japanese. They spoke that language, were the Yayoi/Jomon mix, bowed to the Emperor, all-o'-that. By then they knew of Ainu north of them and that they were different. So even in the nineteenth century (as we term it), when all Japanese claimed the same culture, those up in that north island weren't integrated into the tax system. This Matsumae autonomy could be possible only by geography, and the technology at the time. I think we have here an intervening sea zone: between southern Hokkaido, and northern Honshu. If the shogun had trouble controlling this far with eighteenth-century tech; how well could the emperor control it with eighth-century tech?

In the Middle Ages, before the Matsumae, south Hokkaido and north Honshu were controlled by "Emishi". The old (south) Japanese - the Yamato - considered them like the Chinese or the Russians considered tatars. Like barbarians.

I don't think the Emishi were Ainu. I think the Yamato-Japanese at the time had boats and could meet some Ainu, up north; so saw, likewise, that the Emishi didn't behave like the Ainu, anymore than either of them behaved like Koreans or Chinese. You would think, otherwise, that the Japanese should have lumped the Emishi with the Ainu together - at that time, not now.

So what language did the Emishi speak? What was their culture other than "fighting the Yamato"? Maybe the Emishi were the indigenes of Honshu, before the Kofun came. Maybe what we call "Japanese" is the old Gaya language. In this case the Emishi were simply crushed between the new Japanese empire, and the Ainu of north Hokkaido.

Iceland's people before they were founded on

A couple weeks ago I was alerted to Kurt H. Kjær et al., "Environmental DNA Reveals Reykjavík’s Human and Ecological History". I didn't know what to make of this account at the time. Icelanders today focus on Ingolfr Arnarson, the jarl who came in the AD 870s and made a self-sufficient nation of the place. But Kjær's crew is saying it had been settled for a few generations prior already.

I was pretty sure some Irish monks had found "Thule" and settled hermitages there. But even a hermit expects guests, or else - in Christianity anyway - he has failed The Great Commission. Iceland, if known (I think it was known) was hardly worth the visit, especially after the Roman Optimum of the Antonines. So visitable "Thule" out northwest, after the Romans tightened their metaphysical belts, might mean the Føroyar. Or even closer home, like the Hebrides. Also, hermits don't breed.

Geoff is alerting us, among his geographic focus, of a nonhermit named [Hrafna-]Flóki. Flóki was there in the 840s. In fact, he'd even named the place. His settlement was going great guns in the summer but he'd failed to prepare for a winter without grass, so: there went the livestock. As Geoff points out, hay is for horses... in winter. After barely getting through all that, Flóki went home to Scandinavia and reported this place was an ice land not worth the bother.

Kjær, it seems, is rounding that out: that Flóki's people nonetheless stayed when their worthless coward of a leader went back. So when Ingolfr came, he found some folk awaiting him. In this case he didn't make himself their king because... he couldn't. But at least he didn't press the issue and, since they figured out they weren't getting looted, the people were doubtless glad to have trade restarted and to meet new people.

He set up the Thing, the "parliament" as Normans term it, simply to formalise the self-government already there, because hey, international relations require something to make deals wit'.

Nick Reiner enforces equity

Obama's second Presidential election went against a wealthy man born to a whites-only sect, to which that man's father - also once a Governor - also belonged. Obama won, and I don't see where anyone-serious questions that #winning. Obama's Administration then decided we had too many white men in prestigious fields.

Robert Reiner, meanwhile, had devoted his life to spreading just about that same gospel to the masses. Obama may hold him partly responsible at least for his earlier victory (against McCain, but really against née-Heath Palin).

It happens that one such prestige field, in Obamaworld, is entertainment. Could Reiner justify his position in that field? If not now; then for how long before the Wokening?

Rob Reiner has now been retired from that field. Those mourning him should instead celebrate.

The prodigal

On a day we must relearn how so many Christian parables fail Torah, let's talk The Prodigal Son. In the Gospels we know, this anecdote exists in one of the four: canon Luke. Maybe not even that.

The basis is a beloved son of the landlord, who then goes out to fritter his inheritance. In Luke's sources, the landlord is God and the son is Christ. But note! that, for this parable, I used an indefinite for the singular. Here we read of plural sons - two, for the narrative purity.

The tale wasn't in Marcion's Luke. Once more we confront inter-Lukan variance across MSS. We are somewhat used to this, with Bezae and others.

Marcion was happy to tell of God's mercy and desire to regather His sheep, relating similar immediately prior. Hence why the story got tacked where it did, where other attempted additions like the Adulterix ended up floating elsewhere. As to its content, I suggest there's more to The Prodigal than God's mercy. I suggest this story had a more-particular object in mind.

In this particular, I ponder if we are looking at Peter. Peter is the locus for many Gospel tales, as the favoured disciple who betrays his trust. The decision of John 1-20 was to give up on Peter - it shifts to the Beloved (we'll get back to him), to be associated with the Blessed Mother (because mommy). But we know from Paul that Peter did not lose his station, so, you know, John did not win his war. The Johannines would find John 21 foisted upon his very Gospel.

The proPetrine faction, which is Mark's and Matthew's faction, knew Peter wasn't done wit'. But despite reciting much Petrine apologetic, they missed this one. I've noted last month that defending Peter wasn't Luke's focus; Luke's focus is to defend all the Disciples, whom Luke is setting up to receive the Spirit. This parable leaves the jealous other son(s) outside the feast.

I suspect Marcion was right inasmuch as the story wasn't in Luke, although his opponent Tertullian knew it - from somewhere. The story was a tradition spread among Peter's defenders. It may even defend against the Gospel of John itself. Marcion - or his followers - continued to resist the story because, as we all must know, Marcion is all about Paul, and his followers hardened that position even unto Peter's expense (thus downplaying Acts).

Victor Davis Hanson lost his war

Victor Davis Hanson, or "VDH" as he's known, is a longtime contributor, directly or not, to the Instapundit / pjMedia side of "conservatism". Bret Devereaux is, over the past weeks, taking him down. And taking some of his fellow neocons like Kagan with him although I am not entirely against Kagan, pace Vox Day.

Devereaux claims to keep politics out of his takedown - to which I call shens. What I can report is that VDH is at heart a Jeffersonian: a believer in the pastoral Small Farmer. Of course Jefferson himself was hardly a small farmer; he was a Virginian aristocrat. Jefferson's ideal wasn't his life... and that ideal didn't ever really exist.

Classical Greece didn't scale to Virginia anyhow. What Greeks had instead was what Soviets call the kulak. Greece had enough of these to support forces of kitted-infantrymen, bearers of ὅπλον. The polis (city-state) guaranteed to the landowners they'd not be subjected to populism - they'd call it "democracy" - as long as they agreed to use their resources to defend the politic interest. This wasn't so different to how it went with the Franks and their chivalry.

VDH based his military-history analysis on a British strain which goes back, as does so much interwar Brittery, to the nineteenth-century Prussians. And Devereaux gives to the Prussians their due: they studied the craft, they mastered the craft (for nineteenth-century tech), and as historians they used the available evidence as best they could. But 400 BC wasn't 1872 AD. (1914 AD wouldn't be 1872 either BUT ANYWAY.)

Devereaux accepts that the Shield Wall existed in antiquity. The Romans designed their shields for "Tortoise" closed-formation; we all saw the Vikings do the same in Last Kingdom. The hoplites, plural hoplitai, also could form shield-wall. But that was more a thing in the grind-out battles of the 300s BC, and beyond. To be a hoplite was mostly just to be a well-kitted infantryman and those fought in whatever formation the battle required.

Although Frankish-style noble ideals existed in Greece, especially in the Homeric era; the late-Frankish - the properly French - Tournament, or Xōchiyāōyōtl, is not translatable into classical Greek. This system was of planned near-mock battles, where the losers were captured, maybe ransomed. This did not exist in classical Greece.

In place of The Western Way of War, Devereaux would revive Snodgrass.

Victor Davis Hanson's "Western Way" is not Western

Bret Devereaux has Comments on Victor Davis Hanson, mispelt "Hansen". Devereaux notes Hanson's debt to scholarship of the Teutons circa-AD-1900. They were - yes - racists. Devereaux therefrom insinuates.

VDH's Western Way of War goes more to the Tournament: of the High Middle Ages, crossing linguistic bounds... and, further, a feature of Nahua-speaking Mesoamerica. The Tournament did exist and seems to be transoceanic without regard to race.

May as well ponder why Devereaux himself is now endorsed by Vox Day.

An antiArian church-history of Alexandria

Alessandro Bossi promised in 2011 an edition of a Ge'ez/Latin synopsis. He and Alberto Camplani published this in 2016.

I am coming into this a bit "cold". I only just found out Camplani's avertissiment. I gather at the time this was going to be Bossi's baby but that Camplani provided so much help that Bossi - graciously! - provided cowriter credit. It seems a real tangle to me, so - well done to both o' youse... as Italian-Americans might say.

The synopsis, they say, extends to the end of the fourth century AD which in local terms would be about the start of the second c. anno Diocletiani (~384). That's Theodosius I, nailing down the Nicene Creed in Constantinople. So the "Miaphysitism" shouldn't much be in play, yet. It seems the (false) saint Cyril sent a copy to Rome where it got Latinised. It also circulated in its native Greek and in west-Syriac, and straight from Greek to the Ethiopians got it. Rarely - the latter got it without the medium of Arabic, nor it seems even of any Coptic.

Camplani also brings Timothy Aelurus, who wrote about the 400s AD more than about the 300s. But Caplani argues this later guy drew much imagery from our 300s AD history. There's also a [Sahid-]Coptic history up to Aelurus, itself translated from Greek (after that Greek had already sailed up to Ethiopia) and now fragmentary. That last is what's in the (in)famous Chronicle of the Patriarchs.

Is the history (thus reconstrued) any... good? - it seems not. It gave rise to the conflation of Arius the disciple of Melitius the Lycopolitan - who plagued the Nile - and Arius the haeresiarch. Thence, to Sozumen; and to many, many histories to come including, sigh, Gonick's cartoons.

This history is, however, the best game in town for events after Peter I's death, or "martyrdom" if you're a Copt. This goes on from Nicaea to the forgotten Council of Serdica, which Constans of Rome convened in AD 343 to bridge the East. This Council is today agreed as a failure. This history, closer to events, deems Serdica as a valiant defence of the Orthodox against such Eunomians as, well, that other emperor, Constantius II. Also of interest: no monks. Monks assuredly existed but had no clout in Alexandria as of The First Century Of Diocletian's Martyrs. They'll show up in that later Coptic history.

The canonisation of Ibn Hisham

CIRA hosts Jay Smith. This parallels Ibn Warraq on how we can't trust Guillaume's Sira, on account it translates Ibn Hishâm. Smith digs deeper to find that "Ibn Hisham" here was that edited by Heinrich Ferdinand Wüstenfeld in the 1800s. Wüstenfeld might not have had all the best MSS.

Fuat Sezgin has since produced a Maghrebi recension, in 1967. So... compare and contrast?

The Malikis - interestingly, predominant in Maghreb - rate his source Ibn Ishâq as a liar. So it interests me to see how the Sezgin edition handles Maliki critique. Ibn Ishâq might represent Sufyân al-Thawrî and al-Awzaî, that Umayyad dark-matter behind the classical madhâhib.

Wâqidî was ashamed to use Ibn Ishâq too. Wâqidî actually was a liar, refusing to acknowledge his debt to that man; Ibn Sa'd's Tabaqât is from him.

Modern scholarship doesn't... much care. It has generally endorsed Wüstenfeld > Guillaume. Scholars pull up Tabarî next to him for the synopsis, and where they agree they call out "Ibn Ishâq!" and deem it good-enough, for that one. As Maghâzî goes they can also turn to Ma'mar bin Râshid.

Before Wüstenfeld, I am unsure how many Muslims cared about Ibn Hishâm. A lot of them were illiterate, remember. They just got the kiddie version from the local imam. The imam - mediaevally - had summaries from the likes of post-post-Malikites such as Ibn Kathîr. Ibn Hishâm was copied, but not too well, as I noted; Tabarî himself only resurfaced in the 1800s. Ditto Ma'mar (through 'Abd al-Razzâq).

Also I don't know how much traxion Ibn Ishâq gained among the Shî'a. All the people taking hadith from him, however honestly, roamed about the Sunnites.

To sum up, Smith is overstating the problems with the English-language Sîra. It is a close-enough approximation to consensus among Sunnis.

Planetary cores

The Core aside, we can't actually get a ship to burrow into our Earth's inner core; and we can't do it for Uranus either. (Maybe your mom's. ... sorry) So today ScienceDaily offers content for terrestrials-with-magnetics, and for ice giants. Although some of this stuff has been knocking about for awhile.

I'm interested in why Earth gets a core with magic ionic carbon, protecting us (and LEO) from cosmic and solar radiation; but Venus our sister does not. At least Mars has the excuse there's only a tenth the mass such that its core is more predictable... and ineffectual.

As for the "Ice Giants" - that, I was a little more prepared-for. Those "mini neptunes" in other systems are solid rock, or molten rock, with obscurant clouds. There's probably a lot of queer-state liquid silicates below the supercritical ice in actual-Neptune.

We'd like more missions out there, but we'll unfortunately not get them for some time.

Joe Atwill, our new Constantine

I'd alluded to Joseph Atwill early this month, from a summary reaction by Laurent Guyénot. I'd noted that I hadn't read any Atwill so was holding my fire. "Yesterday", "Joe" raised a post at, uh, Unz.

What Atwill provides here (if not elsewhere) of use to Constantinian historians (I consider myself a postJustinian historian, centuries later) is the knowledge that Constantine I tied his house with that of the Flavians. We've seen the Severans like Caracalla tie themselves with the Antonines. All the emperors were we-wuzzers of some stripe or other. Guyénot is aware of some of this, but downplays it. Atwill argues to lean harder into it.

I do wonder if Atwill is wasting time on this one though. What Constantine says two centuries too late isn't much better than what Guyénot or Atwill might say sixteen centuries (or more) too late. Atwill is sounding like Andrew Wilson. Tip for debaters: when your opponent has scored small points, even points on a foul: don't run out the clock. 'Abd Qays could have told y'all that it doesn't much help to unscore those points.

What matters more for Atwill is this: Constantine choose the bizarre pseudo-Judaism because he knew that its scripture had been designed to cryptically worship Caesar. I dispute Constantine could know that, even if true. What Constantine could know, is the canon NT text: of the gospel ascribed to Luke and the Acts of the Apostles. There, many reputable scholars - not me, not Atwill, not Guyénot - agree that the Luke-Acts project exists as a biography (if the word can apply) of the Holy Spirit: until its descent upon Rome. For Constantine at Milan, Luke-Acts served perfectly.

(And then Constantine moved to Byzantium and, a Eusebian might suppose, brought the Spirit thither.)

Where I'm running into obstacles is that I don't think Luke-Acts ... worked. I think Luke-Acts ended in Marcion. Atwill should expect the second-century Emperors, Flavian or Antonine, implicated in Marcion or at least in Luke. But I don't see that: not in contemporary histories, which are still good up to Cassius Dio and maybe even Herodian; and not in the Church writings, which start getting good in the late second-century AD. We do have Josephus, who seems to align with Luke and (Atwill argues) John. But we own four gospels - and that's just in the canon. Luke finished, at best, in third place (behind Mark and probably Matthew, I'd add Peter). Also we have the Revelation at Patmos which is no proRoman text.

The Christian Church is not something an Emperor can much control. The Constantines made some effort, and they may even have believed that the Flavians had endorsed Luke-Acts, confusing that with the other way 'round; but the Constantines' Christendom descended into Arius' Eunomianism and down to failure. Maybe Theodosius I?

UPDATE 12/11

Alexandrinus is Alexandrine

This blog has assumed codex A/02, for "Alexandrinus" (like B/03 is for Ватиканус) to be, in fact, Alexandrine. One hiccup was A's Gospel foursome which proved less Sinaitic/Vaticanic, than Byzantine - like, KJV-style. I've been seeing hints in the past four years the codex might actually be Ephesian, and brought to Egypt under some Byzantine deal.

Although not impossible... I was never seeing how likely the Ephesian theory be. Constantinople worried about an attack from the Muslims. Why not just send the thing to Rome, where the Muslims weren't? or to, I dunno... Vienna. So I hadn't poasted.

Brett Nongbri might be offkilter on the B / 𝔓⁷⁵ side, but now he's been reporting on the A/02: Mina Monier. Monier is the real deal on MSS scholarship.

The argument is that A/02 was kept by Copts. It then went to the Melkites: I am unsure why, but it may be that Melkites were Graeco/Arabs in a land where Copts were Aegypto/Arabs, who were (then) seeing Greek as the thirdplace loser. Coptic enjoyed a surgence in the AD 700s, when Greek was stuck in Anatolia, embargoed from Islamic supremacy, and associated with an iconoclasm Copts didn't want. After the 700s, the Greeks started doing rather better, but now they were an existential enemy to Islam. As far as Copts went, meanwhile, their decline started in earnest I think around the 1000s. But after that they'd probably be better off with Latin than with Greek.

Monier points to all the "paratext" in the codex, the scribblings which the readers stuck on the pages over the generations. Which show Coptic and Egyptian Melkite culture, none of it west-Anatolian.

BACKDATE 12/11

Jehu, ben Omri

The last book of Reigns describes the fall of Jezebel's kingdom to Jehu. The book (famously) has no chariot in this race so treats everyone horribly; it treats the queen mother as a virago and Jehu as an upstart, which he was. But how upstart? What did Jehu call himself?

In the ancient world, which is not so different from our world, nobles tended to be related to the King. Later, Darius on taking over Iran will tout himself as an "Achaemenid" cousin to dear Cyrus II.

Back to Jehu, the Bible gives some genealogy: son of Jehoshaphat son of Nimshi, no Omri in sight. But when the Assyrians demanded tribute they got it from the "Son Of Omri". This is usually considered a mistake. The assumption of any erreur is that the errateur didn't much care. However late last month, we were reminded that the Assyrians did care - if they were dealing with a man of little repute, they'd say so for the insult. Hazael to them was "son of nobody".

This suggests that Nimshi may have been a son of Omri shunted aside in the succession; equally (perhaps more) likely, an Omride daughter or granddaughter might have entered that line. Ahab would have kept this branch around in the court, in case Jezebel wasn't providing sons. Jezebel was not the sort of queen who would permit other girls into Ahab's chambers; and indeed, nobody calls Jehu "ben Ahab". But outside Ahab: this woman had all motive to distrust Omri's clan.

BACKDATE 12/11

The spread of the weekly Sabbath

In the last Seleucid year, 2 Kanun, I was pondering the Seven Day Week. This exists in tension with the lunar month, which is not 28 days. A strict seven day week would force the Sabbaths out of sync with the month. Ganzel and Safford the prior September (I didn't know) had presented the evidences. Nice to have it for free.

The world of 1-4 Reigns may have been monthly. I haven't looked into it. Anyway after that: the Exile happened. So that's what we're discussing today.

Elephantine, it seems, had a seven day week reserving one day for rest, sbt. That doesn't mean "seven", sb'; although I imagine wordplay at work. "Elishavath" - "my God is rest" - seems a better word than "my God is seven (אֱלִישֶׁבַע)". The Babylonians preferred four days a month, usually seven day divisions but at least once eight. The Ganzel-Safford use that to introduce the paper's main argument, which is the Iraqi-Jewish name "Shabbataya". This is surely the origin of messiah Shabtai and could well be the true origin to our Ἐλισάβετ.

For the paper, Shabbataya came to the Jews under the Achaemenids. Not Cyrus; the paper goes with "mid-fifth century BCE". The name appears with Darius I and beyond, so the authors may mean sixth when people started taking that name. It's with Darius that the Elephantine settlement gets Persian protection, given how said settlement was surrounded by angry Egyptians. Nobody is called "Šapattāya" which, to Ganzel-Safford, means it wasn't a name for Babylonians. This is the Jewish Shabbat, not the Iraqi Šapatta.

It has long been argued that Genesis One appropriates Babylonian tropes, for a nonBabylonian mythos. Here we may have motive: to force the week, no matter what month it was. This seems a nod more to Egypt, once Egypt and Iraq were united in this empire.

As a side-note, all this should interest Yonatan Adler: as evidence for Genesis One's spread among international Jewry (if I may). It's not all the kosher codes, which as Adler notes was likely just for (Egypt-influenced) priests at the time. But the week was incumbent upon Creation. Ezra, Nehemiah, and all of them might be able to enforce their writ upon Jerusalem, but their influence abroad would have to be through persuasion. Genesis One's stentorious prose is nothing if not effective rhetoric.

Bring back the sun!

As opposed to the sensationalism of impact-theory, better evidence exists for a cooling 2910 BC. This is associated with a one-time ritual in Denmark. The locals (Celtic or German) buried some rocks... etched with solar patterns. They didn't do it before and they wouldn't do it later.

So Rune Iversen et al., from the beginning of this year. I didn't know about it until flagged by Razib's X.

The cooling is rated on par with the 43 BC winter. In the past five years, that scholarship has withstood; the dimming is now rated worse than even Tambura. Iversen's scholarship looks like that will probably hold, as well.

Kennett III

James Kennett is still pushing press releases through Santa Barbara. I'd thought his Hammam stuff already got debunkled. Leading to serious questions about the Dryas event. I guess we gotta do this biannually.

I am by no means an anti-catastrophist; everyone knows those Dryas spores and pollen didn't come out of nowhere. But the causes of catastrophe need more care than is given.

Need I mention that Avraham Loeb is now near-univerally dismissed as a crank given his stupidities about the 3I/Atlas comet. Kennett looks like he's headed down that same road. I feel bad for his co-authors.

The Indian monkey trade

Excavations continue at Berenice, that Nullarbor of Egypt. These days the Aussies are struggling to supply what they hope will become a spaceport. In Roman days, the struggle was to supply a stopover and naval-station halfway down the Red Sea. They'd tried taking the moister Arabian side; it didn't work.

Anyway: the local troops got bored and wanted company. Some of them figured a barrel of monkeys would be fun. Or piglets; omnivores, basically, who might live on scraps.

These monkeys were Indian, it seems: rhesus and bonnet. Barbary monkeys indigenous to Africa also existed but they weren't here (those could be found at Pompeii though!).

Although the monkeys were well loved - they had human-tier burials, and given kittens and piglets as playmates - they didn't eat well. India simply offers more resources than the freakin' eastern Sahara.

Guyénot hits mythicism

Laurent Guyénot, returning from his thorough spanking on chronology-denial, is back; this time confronting a sect of denier. These deniers include Earl Doherty, no longer alive to continue his case; and Richard Carrier, much cited on this here blog lately. Did Jesus Exist? - asks M. Guyénot.

Guyénot may be loopy, but he does at least assemble facts - however he might sort them. He's amenable to the counter-denialism: against Pauline authorship of the mainline Epistles (you know the ones: the big four plus 1 Thess plus Philippians). Luckily he's not dying on that hill. He's steelmanning Carrier to allow that Paul did write those six, plus or minus certain couplets. Guyénot is showing more respect to Carrier than are Ehrman and O'Neill, which is already earning for him some points in my ledger.

If Jesus existed on Earth, the mythicists say; why does Paul, and we can throw in 1 Clement and Hebrews and even 1 Peter, say so little about Jesus on Earth. Guyénot counters that the past is another country. The "classical" - specifically Hellenistic - mind envisioned that several elden gods were human heroes who'd been raised to Divinity by their followers. Philosophers had already applied this theory to Dionysus and Zalmoxis by the reign of Augustus; Augustus himself was deifying his uncle Gaius Julius Caesar. Tiberius would, I think, do the same for Augustus. And these philosophers and emperors weren't ... wrong: it had been a tradition of the Hittites to say that their best kings had become gods in death. And what of Egypt?

Guyénot brings up Mark's Gospel, which a mythicist would agree was well-versed in the Pauline literature and likely 1 Peter too. It promotes a Christology: adoptionism. The Nativity is assumed - namely Paul's; Mark supplies the name of the woman from whom Jesus was born. So the mythicists claim. Guyénot thinks Mark might be relying on a side-tradition, also. Guyénot brings Charlemagne's vita, which is full of cods, allowing that Mark might also be full of cods, but nobody (except maybe Guyénot a decade ago... sorry) thinks Charlemagne didn't exist just because some goof wrote a bad bio of him. I could bring here John Malalas, the Historia Augusta, and Moses Khorenatsi, who also wrote terrible histories, but we don't deny the overall sweep of Late Antiquity for their sakes.

(Guyénot goes on to Atwill, which I'll ignore for this post, on account I haven't read him like I've read Carrier.)

Deification of mortals is, I think, a fair argument. Where it falters is that, for Charlemagne, and for that matter for all the Late Antique victims of Malalas and his ilk, we own side-sources. Charlemagne had contemporary attestation among the Popes in Italy, whom he didn't entirely approve, so must endure their more jaundiced view of his reign and adventures. I think some of the Anglo Saxons saw what he was about, as well; and the Byzantines, who were clambering out of their eighth-century slump at the time. Certainly Malalas can be checked against other Greek and Syriac chroniclers, and we've long recommended comparing the HA to John the Deacon's epitome of Victor, not to mention Herodian and Ammianus. Ubi sunt such side-evidence for Christ? - and don't tell Carrier "Tacitus and Pliny!"; he'll retort they're as late as the Gospels.

Anyway, overall, I'm glad Guyénot is making the effort. He might consider a stronger effort.

The binding of a story

For whatever reason TheTorah.com is running the table on "the Akedah" lately - which indie gamers might know as the Binding of Isaac. A professor with a career all over the greater Germania holding the improbable name "Christoph Levin" is discussing its intertext, hoping to garner how the tale was coagulated. I think something be missing.

In 1997/8ish I stumbled onto an account that suspected the story was composed, at first, for offering one's first born to the Temple. In old Canaan that was often for sacrifice. Carthage - Tyre's colony - famously was big on this. In fact it may have been so big on this that the colony ended up not Tyrian at all: genetics and personal names show Barqi Graeco-Berbers (like Hannibal), or various Sardinians and Sicels, or their own hinterland Libyco-Berbers. Back to Abraham, the story has Abraham and Isaac go up the mount and only Abraham return.

Meanwhile... where's Sarah? Genesis doesn't have her dying until after this event. Most Christians and Muslims hold Sarah as a type for Mary; Jews don't. In fact Genesis=Bereshit Rabba in some recensions has Sarah dying of a broken heart. Not so in the Gospel of John!

So if Levin is opening the Akedah to deeper excavation: verse 22:19 in blue is indeed a deep text, "zeroth" composition or first revision. But the black verses where ram is swapped in for Isaac have to come later and should not be black.