Noah as the new Adam

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

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

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

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

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

The counter-coup

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

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

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

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

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

Baetica's shifting economy

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

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

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

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

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