Enclitic -na

TheTorah is discussing Hebrew נָא. The Rabbis treat it as a "please", as does mah boi Jerome. Steven Fassberg thinks it is a consecutive.

That it is a suffix hints at something like how Greeks use de or oun, or maybe Latins with -que. Among the Semites, Arabic doesn't use it at all; but if Fassberg be right then fa- is bearing this weight over there. Some Arabic Jews, not yet accepting Talmud, thought it was like Arabic alân "now".

The נָא examples brought are all in dialogue segments. The Bible treats it as spoken Hebrew, not literary. God uses it Micah 6:5 (I had to hunt this up; Micah 6-7 may be Persian-era); usually it is the people using it, for requests. This may explain the Rabbis.

The examples cluster 1-4 Samuel/Reigns, Genesis, and Judges; we also have Micah (elsewhere), Deuteronomy 3 ("Moses"), and Ezekiel. In language, these contexts are later stages of Classical. Micah's king Hezeqiah also uses נָא; its Greek (in narrative passages) is kaige, so the translation is late, but the story is I think considered ancient and near-authentic.

Perhaps נָא is an archaism. It is common in all languages for dialogue to be constructed as if it were "authentic".

Ezekiel v. Trito-Isaiah

Let's talk Ezekiel 40-48. Whatever we may or may not say of Ez 36 or Ez 38-9; this proposal for the Temple follows up Ez 37.

Lenny Prado's bit - that Ez 44:15-16 does not belong to Ezekiel - assumes Joachim Schaper, Priester und Leviten im achämenidischen Juda: Studien zur Kult- und Sozialgeschichte Israels in persischer Zeit, FAT 31 (Tübingen: Mohr Siebeck, 2000). Schaper went on to argue that the rest of Ez 44 indeed belongs to Ez 40-8 and that Trito-Isaiah (Is 56f) is based upon that.

I recently got hold of Nathan MacDonald, Priestly Rule (de Gruyter, 2015). This argues the reverse of Schaper: that Ezekiel 44 used Isaiah 56 - actually, rebutted it. Overall it is a development of Michael Fishbane: Ezekiel 44 is an exegetical oracle. If it's that late then maybe vv. 15-16 isn't intrusive.

MacDonald would shift the intrusions mostly elsewhere than Schaper - and far more thoroughgoing. Immediately before, chapter 1.2.5 argues Ez 44:10-14 has blended Numbers 18 and Ez 14. MacDonald sees a core instead within v. 15: But the Levitical priests, ... will come near to me to minister to me and they will stand before me to offer to me fat and blood – declaration of Lord YHWH. The Zadokites since intrude into v. 15 and then inject the whole of v. 16. As well as vv. 8, 10-14.

The core, for MacDonald, had constructed its anti-Isaiah-56 rebuttal from Lev 1-7 and Deuteronomy. As to the canon: the expansion's use of Numbers is suggestive of a very late date, for which MacDonald cites Achenbach, Die Vollendung der Tora as published (Wiesbaden: Harrassowitz, 2003) unavailable to his colinguist Schaper in 2000.

That assessment of Numbers runs against the ABH language of the Balaam poems' language, and the Josiah-era dating of the poem of Sihon. On the other hand... ABH poetry elsewhere lingered until Habakkuk, and Wellhausen had proposed Numbers 13-14 for the "J" source.

Lord of the Rings is not pagan

Jack Posobiec has revived a scholarly argument about the paganism of Tolkien's work. It is not entirely a stupid argument. Posobiec (and del Arroz) should know, however, that this argument has already been had. The pagans lost.

Lord of the Rings is to be understood as Mel Gibson intended Apocalypto. This is a world before Christ, and before the Flood; a Hyborean age if you will (the canon Unwin maps even look similar to Howard's). Gibson's "Icon" production-company, in the Maya world, had a pregnant character appeal to a blessed Mother-Virgin. She does not know Mary, but she still knows deep down she intercedes.

As such, no Tolkien character can refer to Scripture - unless that Scripture be the Silmarillion. The characters can, however, prefigure Douay-Rheims and the Vulgate. Aragorn heals the sick of Gondor as will the secret Markan messiah. Samwise calls upon Elbereth to retrieve the elven rope. One can go on and on here: down to Mairon's presence as the twentieth-century war engineer, doing Melkor's will perhaps against his own instinct. (Mairon - Sauron - consciously had spread a Melkor cult in Anadûnê; but I suspect that from malice, because Númenor stood in Sauron's way.)

As to del Arroz, he has shifted to defending Posobiec from himself. My thought is that Vox Day needs to wrangle his 'tard.

Here comes the Neander diversity

HBDChick alerted us to Charoula M. Fotiadou, Jesper Borre Pedersen, Hélène Rougier, and Cosimo Posth: a "diversification" event within the Neander community of Europe ~63kBC during Marine Isotope ("MIS")-3. That doesn't mean their genetics were becoming more diverse, through intermarriage with their neighbours. Oh no.

This is a demic replacement of mtDNA lineages, in favour of one lineage: an Aquitanian lineage, to be exact.

That means the Neanders of Aquitaine went out to conquer those neighbours' land, after which that group's women followed their warriors. What happened to those ex-neighbours, seems about what happened to the Omanis of Zanzibar in Africa Addio. Nice to know it's not just us "sapiens" doing it - to our Neander relatives, or to each other this time.

The victorious Aquitanians - "Mousterian", in material culture - carried on carryin' on for another 20ky. They saw off the Neronian colony and, 43kBC, even Bacho Kiro. But also 43kBC, came the Laschamps flip and the Châtelperronians; the Neanders subsequently endured three millennia of population decline. Generally thought to be Sapiens' first (successful) "Cro-Magnon" intrusion.

Ge'ez and Armenian

Armenian in typescript today looks like it could be modern Cyrillic. But it is not. Cyrillic is pretty much an update of Byzantine Greek to fit the Slavic voice, with maybe a few nods to Latin (like the Cyrillic D), and (some say) old-school takings from runes and Glagolitic. Armenian by contrast looks like a cypher.

Apparently - I didn't know - some observers thought old Armenian looked like Ethiopic. But false-friends abound; even some Linear B can be abused to look like Greek with sufficient wishful-thinking. But lately announced, someone's run it through AI.

If we are to believe this, we must ask: why. The Hayots "Armenian" language is enough like Greek (or like old Bactrian for that matter) you'd think that, if you lived there and you were sick of the Pahlavi system, you'd just use some assemblage of Greek and Bactrian, analogous to what the Slavs would use. Like the Copts abandoned their serviceable-for-centuries Demotic, for that Greek alphabet; and Egyptian was nothing like Greek or Bactrian or Armenian in-between.

Here is one point: politics. The Iranian overlords REALLY did not like Greek, nor Latin for that matter. Armenians seen writing in the western scripts would be accused of western sympathy. The Sasanians further made a push to Aryanise the culture; they tolerated the 'Iraq as Aniran but not Armenia. Bactria kept its Greek alphabet basically because it's Afghanistan, which half the time the Sasanians abandoned to the Huns. The Romans when and where in charge simply didn't care as much; they'd just say "learn Greek bro".

For Armenian patriots, a None Of The Above script had to do. Aramaic scripts were available, like that used for Hebrew; but they went in the wrong direction and were designed for Semitic languages which do not include Armenian. As none-of-the-above, anyone looking for inspiration might have to go afield. Hey, like to where Glagolitic was used! - except by now these Armenians were Christians. To the Holy Land it was, then.

I do wonder if we are talking about Ge'ez proper, or to South Arabian and/or "Thamudic" scripts. I understand that Safaitic and Hismaic were no longer in use, but the musnads were still running strong in Saba.

Sumerian bacon

Abu Tbeirah was probably Sumerian, south of Lagash and Ur as it was. I don't know if it was a canal city, but I am pretty sure it had a wharf until 3500 BC. What we do not know, yet, is what these Sumerians named their own city.

The period is 2900–2350 BC, which is called "Early Dynastic". They don't have documents, but they do have a menu. Usually we get some clue from bones - carbon and nitrogen isotopes get skewed for seafood-eaters (which famously annoys carbon-daters); ideal would be coprolites. But marshy lower Iraq tends to be bad at preserving either; and in a city context, likely the honey wagon is taking potential copro's back to the fields. So the scholars're looking at zinc in the teeth. Of course cereals were a big part of their diet, why else live here.

A surprise, to me, is that they didn't eat fish. They ate pork, and imported other meats from the hills. As to why no fish, uh. Maybe the swamps had been drained and the only fishwater was irrigation-water, which got fertilizer-runoff. Whatever fish could survive in what is basically a sewer, I'd not recommend frying up.

Dryas platinum

ScienceDaily was breathlessly boasting they'd "solved" the Younger Dryas. What seems done instead is to rule out an option. The platinum at the time is ruled volcanic. And happened 45 years into the event.

So, no dramatic meteors. No Larcher See, neither - at least for the platinum; this was a low-metal mountain. Iceland has the metals.

The YD proper might have been from a low-metal mountain itself however. Also those Black Mats weren't addressed.

Naboth and Jezebel, at Jezreel

Last December I discussed Jehu "ben Omri", suggesting a power-struggle between the nephew and the queen. Paul Davidson had, beforehand, discussed the queen.

Most of our lore is contested between the traditions of 1 Kings in the MT, 3 Reigns in the "LXX" Greek, and the Chronicler. The Chronicler has no stake in the Jezebel lore. This whole bit in Greek would fall within the 3 Reigns 2:12ff γγ section. This survived the "kaige" revisions, revisions which hit other books at Naḥal Ḥever / R-Text. But not γγ: so our story retains early features, likely preMT. (3 Reigns 22 onward gets KAIGE'd again.)

Jezebel probably did exist. All the royals of the time would have needed strong internal relationships against Shalmaneser. Somebody was getting married to a Lebanese in Psalm 45. 1 Kings 16:31 survives uncontested in the crossover verses MT/LXX. If the Chronicler ignored this, it wouldn't matter.

Paul D is saying that had all that Jezebel / Naboth lore featured in the original, the Chronicler couldn't have ignored it like he could ignore stray 1 Kings 16:31. Somebody was spinning tales during the late Persian era. Paul D notes parallels to the Bathsheba episode... which in Greek falls in Kaige, so we haven't a "second opinion" on that. Nonetheless Paul D thinks the Bathsheba lore be early.

Michinmahuida

In the 9000s BC, Michinmahuida erupted and coated the Chilean side of Patagonia with ash. Prevailing winds pushed that cloud against the Andes so it might not have affected the planet beyond that.

It's in the news now because its ash is the floor - not ceiling - for Chile's Vermont or, in Spanish, Monte Verde. Tom Dillehay had touted this one over the 1990s as the Clovis-killer: it was, he claimed, inhabited long long before the 9000s and the Clovis culture. Proof of human expansion past the Darien Gap.

If the ash is from Michinmahuida, then this isn't true. The artifacts aren't preClovis; they are merely ignorant of Clovis. Maybe they didn't need Clovis tech down there (which has the function of Solutrean tech, famously). Also the artifacts in question are perishables: nets, wooden wall-planks, and the like. The new study claims that to the extent they look lower-tier (older), it's because they were swept down a river and buried in anoxic conditions. Which is fortunate for diggers, since that is how they were preserved from rot.

It does make stratigraphy something of a bad joke however. On any side.

Can the wood be wigglematched? At least to disprove dates around one of those elder Miyake events?

Judges replaced Jashar

As I'm going back in time through Paul Davidson's blog, here he proposes the book of Judges - and maybe Joshua - as Hellenistic-era additions to our Bible. Paul D doesn't see where any text in our Bible refers back to these heroes (who aren't judges) until Ruth. And Ben-Sira.

Some are warlords or, in Deborah's case, war-ladies; Gideon and Abimelech were failed kings. But the roaming justices show up only with Samuel. Samson, and "Shamgar", act more like Conan of Cimmeria; Paul Davidson gives to them about as much historical credence. Those stumbling upon Judges' translation in Greek would immediately think of Heracles.

To be noted, the song of Deborah is I think in ABH, unlike some songs we could note. I don't know if Solomon's song - which the Greek cites from Jashar - is ABH, but it is short and not all the Hebrew survives.

I get the impression however that as Shamgar seems Hurrian / Horite, which language is pretty-much gone from the scene by the time of Josiah; and since Judges 5 is ABH, that a lot of these heroic tales are indeed old. As Judges 4 attempts a narrative of Judges 5; the ancient lays may have sung of Gideon, and of Jephthah and certainly Samson.

"Judges", for Davidson, is - then - a postHellenic answer to Hesiod and, perhaps more-so, Alexandrene summarisers of ancient myths (think, Robert Graves).

The song of Sihon

Last month I looked at some Archaic Hebrew songs in the Classical era. Among those songs quoted in our "Numbers" not in ABH is 21:27-30... which is also cited in MT Jeremiah 48. Looks like it might refer to the king "Amon", who preceded Josiah. (Catching up on Davidson's site, here.)

When I saw the name "Amon" I'd thought this was some Egyptian motif. Paul D, however, notes that it is spelt "Ammon" in Greek and by Josephus. Based on this and on certain other motifs, Giovanni Garbini concluded that this wasn't a king at all, but a kingdom: that of Ammon. The real king then would have been he whom the song names: Sihon.

Sihon cast rather a shadow on Josiah-era Hebrew literature, such as the Psalms and the Prophets. He might also be mentioned in Deuteronomy and in that paraDeuteronomy. Also one must consider times when Judah was a vassal to the northern kingdom, or to Gath, or to Hazael of Damascus who destroyed Gath. Why not Ammon?

BACKDATE 2/23

The Talmud versus the MT

What we call "Judaism" is associated with a Biblical text which descends from the pre-Revolt era. This text supplied all translations of the Middle Ages except for the Greeks', and a few Greek-based translations like the Sahidic and some Syriac. Tradition claims the Masoretes, for this. It was the primary source for the Qaraiya sect of the Jews.

Mainline Jews, famously, use besides their Bible (which is MT) another text: "The Talmud" - specifically, that of Babylonia. This is a difficult text to pin down. It might not have been intended as a final compilation, although it has become one.

The Talmud is aware of the MT but perhaps only as the default Bible. A Karaite would refuse Ben Sira out of hand; the Talmud cites it, and arguably treats it with more respect than (say) Clement was treating "The Gospel Of Thomas". The Talmud is aware of variants in the accepted canon as well, usually ascribed to those pesty Septuagints (in east-Aramaic?) but TheTorah.com cannot rule out old Tanakh scrolls from the Seleucid era. Variants lingered in the Rabbinic tradition even after the Talmud.

It may be that the MT attracted errors which later copyists had to ratchet back - which could end up canonising some errors, rather than fixing them. Similar has happened to the Peshitta which is why Syriac scholars are looking into the earliest Arabic translations.

The Peshitta is, mind, a Christian translation - or has become one. Naturally Jews desired their own Arabic translations. Saadya Gaon created a quick-n'-dirty translation using some Jewish Aramaic lore, which strikes me as creating a Jewish Arabic Peshitta himself. Naturally the Karaites hated it, so redid their own Bible from Ebrea Sola - if I may.

The Cyzicene History

Speaking as a Dyothelete, 'tis nice to see work composed to support the Chalcedon decisions of AD 453. Such is the history of Cyzicus composed a few decades after that. We now have a modern translation and (mostly) commentary. Karl Dahm is reviewing it.

The history's proem seems to note Zeno, chief wimp of Constantinople AD 475-90. He'll be succeeded AD 491 by Anastasius who will outright overturn Chalcedon. The anonymous Cyzicene wrote to "update" prior historians' work to support Chalcedon more firmly, against the Monophysite threats which Zeno was allowing to fester and which will erupt under Anastasius.

Chief of those prior historians was Gelasius of Caesarea. In fact the confusion between the two led some of our late-antique historians to ascribe this latter one to the phantom "Gelasius of Cyzicus". We still don't know who our boy was - except that he lived in Cyzicus, on the south Marmaran coast west of Nicaea.

That this historian tampered with the text is unfortunate, thus forcing us back on other sources for the immediate postNicene era when the Empire was Eunomian. Possibly why Anastasius felt free to dismiss such savants as ahistorical liars and why our historians have mostly dismissed it too.

Pirenne in the Rhineland

A few years ago I linked to this meme on Roman coinage versus late-Antique coinage. O'Neill, he don' like it but the Damascene casbah can't be rocked. Couldn't from Europe and North-Africa, anyway. Instead, the centre of traffic shifted to the Rhineland.

On that topic, Berber S. van der Meulen-van der Veen since wrote a book about Germania Secunda. Craig Davis, one of the best of Bryn Mawr's crew, is reviewing it. The thesis is that this frontier wasn't invaded as such; it was always porous so always involved a negotiation between the Roman army out there (not all of them Italian) and the locals, whom we'd recognise as German since at least the rampage of Germanicus. (I remain unsure where Arminius' Cherusci sat, on this division.)

I could add that, in turn, the Romans retained "embassies" - fully armed - deep beyond the Rhine. As long as they weren't overstepping like Varus overstepped, the Germans tolerated this presence.

This Austrasian borderland got wealthy and powerful enough it could fuel rival Emperors long before Childeric AD 463 "governed" on behalf of... well, it wasn't Majorian. I had to look it up: Libius Severus or "Severus III". Pretty much Ricimer, then. Anyway if Domitian II could be laughed off, Constantine III and Macsen Wledig could not.

This suggests that some "barbarian invasions" might have been viewed, by the barbarians themselves, as Avitus viewed himself: a Roman provincial rebellion then expanding its territory at the expense of other dubiously-Roman "governors" - read, fellow warlords. How well was Ricimer speaking Latin?

BACKDATE 3/20

Not-𝔊967

I learnt about 𝔊967 last week. This is a version of Ezekiel which did not make the Hexapla. Its (Greek) basis had meanwhile made its way into Latin - in the "Wirceburg" parchment copied in the fifth century but assuredly translated before Jerome, who rejected it. (That parchment was subsequently written over, which palimpsest got sent to Wirceburg.) The subset of Biblical scholars who care about Ezekiel (who aren't many) need to deal with it. Tracy McKenzie is dealing with it. It doesn't have Ez 36:23bβ–38.

Even before this (rare) 𝔊967 text was found in these two languages, scholars had noted its minus Ez 36:23bβ–38 as being... different, in our Greek. In 1903 Thackeray called it out as "Theodotionic" - which means late. Was anyone aware of this passage when the rest of Ezekiel was being translated? Johann Lust thought not.

Some scholars think Lust went too far. Absent the minus, which is "plus" in our canon, Ez 36:16–23bα remains as abnormally short for an oracle. Also the full Ez 36 is extant in Masada, along with other MT-like Biblical text.

McKenzie's main argument is a commentary upon MT / Theo Ez 36:23bβ–38. This uses the water-shedding of Numbers 19:13,20 (zrq; usually the Bible would have the shedding be of blood); along with other Ezekielian tropes. She backs up Lust inasmuch the passage be late. Then the question turns to what comes after v. 23bα, if not bβ+.

𝔊967 follows Ez 36:16–23bα immediately with 38:1. McKenzie notes this means the defilement of Israel may be cleansed only by Gog and Magog, whom Lord God YHWH is summoning upon the defilers. The dry-bones of our Ez 37 must await the end of our 38-39. Interestingly McKenzie doesn't like that, either. She follows "Tooman 2010" here, that Ez 38-39 is a floating oracle like so many PseudoEzekiels in Qumran. In that case Ez 37 is where it should be. The (in)famous Ez 40-48 block, by our count, would then follow Ez 37 directly, its own self.

The bibliography fails us for Tooman; I suspect McKenzie refers here to Gog of Magog. Not everybody approves the extremity of Tooman's late date, but even Tooman's harshest critic (pdf) agrees Ez 38-39 were/was fathered upon the prophet by someone else.

A more nagging problem is that we don't own any ur-text. We have 𝔊967 which smells like an apocalyptic rant; and we have our MT (and Jerome, and Peshitta et al.), which like McKenzie would dismiss the apocalypse... but they still have 38-39 too. Why not just refuse 'em? Jeremiah LXX merrily refused a lot of MT additions until the end. On the other-side to this day the Jews refuse the Greeks' Daniel (as they should), as well as Tobit (ditto).

Barbie's world

"Insurrection Barbie" a couple weeks back posted a (long) comment calling out, sigh, Russian Interference. The claim is that Orthodox circles close to Putin have been running an op against American Evangelicals, with the aim to pull them away from the Jews as a people and Israel as a nation-state. This piece has bubbled up to Rafael "Ted" Cruz which kind-of makes it personal, inasmuch as I helped secure his nomination in my state in 2016.

Much of I.B.'s essay (or rant, or screed perhaps) reads like Scott Hahn and Ben Wiker poisoning the well against the Higher Critics. I.B. also distrusts the Higher Critics. As before happened to the elder generation of late-mediaeval Catholics; this younger generation of Protestants has received content critiquing the now-Protestant reading of our shared (Christian) scripture. Leaving this, they swapped one foundation for another;—emdash— in I.B.'s words. That other foundation would be patristic Christianity: either in Orthodox form, or in the form of some of the spicier Catholics like pope Pius X.

To the extent I.B. wants to talk theology - and I say this as a Zionist - she should know that evangelical sola scriptura failed because it was malum in se. Hahn has been derided as "the American Pope" exactly because he heads up a traditionalist wing; he too couldn't refute what the critics were saying in the AD 1200s, so had to cowrite a (long) book with that creationist clown Wiker to attack the critics. This tack is not going to work better for I.B. when anybody can drop in on an Ehrman vid online or, worse, Tovia Singer. And if you don't like Ehrman (or Singer), we Zionists are really going to dislike what's coming from the likes of Vridar and Richard Carrier.

If sola scriptura be no basis, luckily other base-eeze exist. One might even be muscular Singerite Judaism. Now, these Scriptures have problems too. So... come Orthodoxy, whose foundations build from Clement of Rome (or of Syracuse, whatever), and (later) Mark and Ignatius.

In Orthodox teaching, or at least the old Chalcedonian formulae as restrict Orthodoxy to the filioque and pope Martin's Lateran synod, we do have a distinction between the Church and the State, in Martin's days protected by the Empire (Constans II... based outta Syracuse, again). The state however must work in harmony with the Church. IB calls this "integralism", anyway a straw version of this which she credits to Vermeule, Ahmari, Deneen (and to Pappin whoever that is). Deneen shouldn't count and Ahmari is just some dude saying things on the Internet. Vermeule might be serious. Even here I get the impression I.B. relies upon Jason Blakely: Integralism seeks to subordinate temporal power to spiritual power — or, more specifically, the modern state to the Catholic Church. If true, that would indeed entail a resurfacing of Constans' monothelete heresy. But I.B. is writing a polemic, as was Blakely. The purpose is to paint traditionalists like Deneen with Vermeule on the way to run both of them off polite society.

I repeat: I support the preservation of the Jewish state upon the Jewish heartland. But I don't do this from the evangelical standpoint, because that standpoint is rotten and was falling apart even before various tradbros picked up on dubious Catholic teachings (honestly, Hahn wasn't even helping). Overall I do not believe that I must take I.B.'s standpoint. Christians can find (and have found) other arguments. If I.B. wants us to go back to John Hagee sermons, she may succeed in running us off... but many of us may simply conclude that there is nothing for us in any Jewish / Christian alliance.

GRIFTER 7:20 PM MST: I.B. is Irina Pavchinskaya-Cedano. Disbarred from Illinois; and although, you know, blue-state Bar associations generally suck, in this case the disbarment happened because she did a felony.

The intragalactic hegira

A theory was mooted that our sun came from 10000 ly closer coreward than it is now. I wasn't aware of the theory - and it seems not all those aware really thought much of it, because it ran against some dynamical constraints. Maybe not though.

The notion is, so I take it, that our rarified arm of the Milky Way doesn't cook up many highish-metallicity G stars on-up, on its own. Alpha-Centauri aside, mostly around here we got K and M. But there survive "twins", other 4.6Gy stars of more-or-less the same composition headed in the same general orbit. They only go as heavy as F of course because anything more would have red-gianted by now, like Sirius B.

The range chosen was 1000 ly / 300 pc, a reasonable-enough allowance for drift over five billion years. Usually mooted around here are HD 162826 (110 ly, Herculi) and more-so HD 186302 (184, Pavo). They found 6594 "twins" in toto.

Daisuke Taniguchi's team recently calculates the effect to which the central bar of this galaxy might lever smaller stars (than the bar) onto higher orbits. Close to home this might also have affected the higher planetary orbits, from Jupiter to beyond.

Two Temples

Lisbeth Fried discusses two temple plans: one Near Eastern, one Greek. In the Near East, a temple is where the god makes his real home on Earth. This is somewhat the theory behind the Christian martyrion, or merthyr in Welsh. Most Greeks, instead, understood the gods to live in Olympus. Men communicated with those gods via altars in the open. It follows up this piece.

Fried sees the Deuteronomy-based literature and the Holiness Code, and Priestly literature generally, to be classically Near Eastern. If there wasn't a Temple, at least there could be a tent with the Ark set up in the place of glory. This is the tabernacle.

Fried distinguishes between the Deuteronomic / Holiness view; and 1-6 Ezra. Fried thinks 1-6 Ezra / 1 Esdras was Hellenistic. Ezra 3:6 has that Zerubbabel on return to Zion built an altar but did not (re)build the Temple. Supposedly Zerubbabel was a Babylonian who should have just got to building.

I've already asked if the Greek way - permanent altars, with temples as afterthought - be (east)IndoEuropean. Although this might exclude the Persian (and Avestan) respect for fire thus refusal of holocaust.

Either way, it's postExilic. Fried points out the innumerable tales in our Torah where some patriarch sets up an altar and not a temple. These are typically allotted to "J", or maybe sometimes "E". Most would say that this was a means for the Temple societies of king Josiah and certain stray northerners to claim the land but not yet the temples, which temples were inaugurated by the post-Torah kingdoms. Fried thinks that the means which the Torah chooses to lay this claim, be Greek like Ezra (or at least not Semitic).

I get the impression that Arabs, also, preferred the outdoor altar - at first. But then our records cluster around Nabataea, and surrounding Safa and Hisma (once Moab and Edom). The Nabat was quite Hellenised, by the time those Arabs' ancestors trickled through aforementioned Moab and Edom. Not for them, the reactionary record-keeping of the Jews and Samaritans.

The Athribis surge

Davila reports: 3000 more ostraca are found in the upper Nile city Athribis.

Not to be confused with the Delta city, this Athribis is in the Sohag region, which came to host a monastery complex. It is very close to Akhmim which has its own monastic tradition. It hosted its own dialect of Coptic, related to Sahidic.

The ostraca now number the highest collection in Egypt. Most of them are, naturally, Egyptian. I don't know exactly how they estimate 60-75% Demotic though, as compared with the 15-30% Greek. We know why there's Greek here: Ptolemy VII Euergetes ("Benefactor" in Latin) did a lot of work on the temples, as the family must, as known from Rosetta. Some demotic might be hard to distinguish from Arabic; some Greek is assuredly hard to distinguish from Coptic. Because Arabic and Coptic do round it all out, along with some hieratic and hieroglyphic. Also some of these are writing exercises: what's the difference between a Coptic "A" and an alpha?

Most valuable may be the scraps of hymnody, assuredly part of the writing exercises, or maybe just crib sheets (lol).

KBo 18.151 again

Last July, we brought an Old Hittite tablet, KBo 18.151. Most documents in Hattus(as) and Sapinuwa got written in "Nesili", the Anatolian language of old Kanesh. Hattusa and Sapinuwa, however, were not founded by the men of Kanesh. They occupied a nonAnatolian space - and the Hittites knew it, calling that language "Hattili". But Anatolians lived there too, whose language ended up taking on more Hattili than their descendents believed they should.

A lot of that was because of the history. The first kings of Hattusa were booted out, during the Thera era. On the glorious procession of the later kings back through the Lion Gate, they seem less-interested in local colour. Less Hattic; more Luwian and Hurrian.

Petra Goedegebuure has a followup. In her view KBo 18.151 is a draft. The king - Hattusili I - had asked a wise woman for divinations. The wise woman dictated her response. The draft was in poor Nesili. So a better edition (perhaps in proper dialect) was made for the king. We own only this draft. Goedegebuure is mostly using Soysal's work from the 2000s.

This new article argues for a Hattic case-system, suffixing. It's not just Indo-European, or that Anatolian sister-branch; Etruscan did this too. There are also genders. It is just that the genders differ, between Hattili and Nesili. Goedegebuure argues that KBo 18.151 - drafted in ostensible Nesili - is behaving too much like Hattili here.

Goedegebuure thinks the wise woman was a Nesili-as-a-second-language speaker. Alternatively, this draft was a team effort: the woman spoke her native Hattic whence her translator did a patchwork job, their scribe basically transliterating. The scribe then went home and fixed it up (this is the edition we don't got).

Back to the Mesolithic

For Mardin / Tur Abdin: the 10000s-8000s BC. Scholars slot these millennia into the Mesolithic-now-called-Epipaleolithic, and beyond. In Turkish, since this language has displaced the native Syriac, the complex is "Şika Rika". We don't know what the locals then spoke, maybe Hurri.

The Şika Rika culture, or cultures, number about twenty nearby villages. Cities wouldn't be a thing until later. Their existence looks to start with Younger Dryas 10900 BC, which they outlasted past 9600 BC. Their tools were flint and whatever pottery they had was aceramic. Among this pottery were stone pestles; some mortars were carved from the bedrock directly.

This means the culture made porridge, maybe even tortilla. It also means they were sedentary, at least seasonally, when cereals could be gathered. This is all too early for millet and I don't think they were farming, as such; plucking local barleycorn seems likely (and avoiding rye, that weed). Herding goat be possible.

For reference, Göbekli Tepe sprouts up ~9500 BC after the Earth warmed back up. This is what kicks off the Neolithic.

For the Younger Dryas epoch, though... might we be seeing the term "Mesolithic" return to grace? One (reasonable) argument for knocking it off was that we simply didn't have the data for that timespan leading to the Neolithic agriculture. Now, we might.

The New Jerusalem

Since the DJD deigned publish Aramaic content from Qumrân 2001 and 2009, over the last couple decades scholars have gathered a genre. This genre gathers "Aramaic Levi" and "Tobit". Among these texts as did not escape Qumrân is the "New Jerusalem".

People like to say that the Aramaic literature is not "sectarian". This holds for this literature's relationship with the Damascus Document, the Temple Scroll and the Community Rule - sectarian, all. More-correct would be to assert the Aramaic content for its own sect. These were Levides (not just "Levites"!), making the case for their Divine vocation as an inbred priestly caste. It is just that this sect invited other Jews to join them - in the laity; the Qumran sect had given up on wider Jewry.

Yesterday I brought Predo for Babylonian Jewry's dismissal of the Levi case, who rallied around Ezekiel. But Ezekiel's book got interpolated, to except the Zadok clan (or "exempt" maybe). "New Jerusalem" hits Ezekiel's beats on the new Temple. Admittedly the Aramaic text is in fragments, but I don't know that it mentions Zadok.

It may be that the Levi tribe wrote this text to steal from Ezekiel's own case. If it were revealed to, oh, Noah or to Levi himself; the Levites / Levists could turn around to accuse Ezekiel of conducting the plagiary.

Thus saith the Lord

Since we've mooted ol' Zeke, Dr Lenny Prado for TheTorah reports on the controversy over the Levites. Ezekiel relayed a command כֹּה אָמַר יְ־הוָה: the Levites had failed. They should not hold any priestly authority upon the return of the Temple.

Readers of Torah will be perplexed to hear this, on account Levi were the great stalwarts, the Phineas Priests avant-la-lettre, at the Sinai. On the other hand... Sigmund Freud himself has noted that the Levites were no Semites, but Egyptians; circumcision notwithstanding. Ezekiel 44 takes a hard stance against goys administering the Temple. Even if they claim to be of Israel, their blood remains bny-nkr.

Ezekiel used the Holiness Code now in Leviticus 17-26; Ezekiel was also a Deuteronomist in his view of history (which to me makes sense; the HC was Deuteronomist itself). Although Ezekiel may have read all of these texts; these texts may not have (yet) been assembled into one Torah, in which case Ezekiel was resisting that assemblage. Nathan MacDonald is writing that Ez 44 takes time to trash our Isaiah 56 as well; again, all "Isaiah" might be open to him, but Ezekiel refuses their assemblage.

Somewhere around here, Prado brings Ez 44:15-16. This exempts the Zadok clan from the Lord's ban against the Levite tribe. The Dead Sea Scrolls do not extend to chapter 44 - except when they quote it. Papyrus 𝔊967 is a Greek translation of a different edition which we'll get to; for now Ez 41-8, with which we deal, remains uncontested in extant text.

As a Zadokite, the famous Damascus Document cites Ez 44:15. I think this may be the first external reference to our Ez 44.

The Levites clearly survived the Exile and felt no real desire to canonise Ezekiel. The Maccabees, aiming to usurp the priesthood from them toward their own (Hasmonaean) family, had more motive to raise Ezekiel's profile. I wonder if, however, some Levites pondered the utility of appealing to the cheap-seats in a play for primacy within that priesthood, against the Hasmonaeans. Ezekiel with these verses' interpolation could serve.

Charles Cutler Torrey a century ago suggested that our Ezekiel is just that: a post-Maccabean production to lay claim to the Temple. For Torrey, our "Ezekiel" adapted an earlier Ezekielian apocryphon, which we no longer own.

I dunno. The rabbis used to warn against studying Ezekiel too hard until we got to our forties. (Kind of like how Catholics warn about John's Revelation.) Ez 44:15-16 does look sus tho'.

Chabad, and stuff

Chabad, which means "Chariot" in Ezekiel, has been coming under some scrutiny. Some would see it as something of a gurdwara for Jews, which Semitic subgroup would include me by their own law. We may ignore Tucker Carlson; I am unsure we may ignore Vrillium.

These guys came out of mediaeval messianism, and feel alien to me. But if, like me, you prefer ℭ𝔥𝔯𝔦𝔰𝔱𝔢𝔫𝔱𝔲𝔪; the two of us may have to step back and ponder if Christianity itself is some outgrowth - of Roman-era messianism. Suppose a parallel Europe had embraced, oh, the Mandaeans. If you were some basic Episcopalian or megachurch evangelical dropped into that world; would you fare better than a Chabadnik would?

I feel somewhat bad for my brethren-by-blood, as compared against the Catholics (or Orthodox). My brethren-in-faith haven't changed all THAT much since Ignatius of Antioch, architecture aside. When some holy man (or woman!) shows up, we tend either to recognise him(/her) as a saint or to kick it out, like Mani. Jews have followed some supreme weirdos, like Shabtai Svi.

The Valediction defended

In 2022 when I first heard of Shapira's Valediction of Moses, I didn't want to touch it. Back then, Na'ama Pat-El was defending her touch of it. The battle was hashed on Academia.edu; I take it that this be Pat-El's last word.

Pat-El is a serious scholar, whom we cannot dismiss as some crank blogger... not that we have many of those around here.

Perhaps Idan Dershowitz has saved Shapira's personal integrity. That just pushes the crime anterior to Shapira himself; he may have been duped. Along similar lines: his "Valediction" might be false, whoever did it; but Benjamin Suchard the wrong scholar to make that judgement.

Likewise where Jeffery Stackert argues that the "Valediction" comes from the Pentateuch more-or-less as the 72 found it in Alexandria, or even protoMT; Friedburg and Hoppe are lately pointing to the Valediction's "Midianite episode" as pulling from Numbers 25's source and not from that chapter in our text.

Ex-Presidencies

Against Matt Mehan, Yglesias yesterday about 6 PM UTC: Most ex-presidents are either old (Reagan, Eisenhower) or unpopular (W, GHW Bush, Carter, Nixon, LBJ) or both (Biden) but it’s normal for a young and popular ex-president (Clinton) to stay in the mix.

I'd add here Carter (especially) but even Nixon stayed in the mix. Nixon didn't much defend himself over Watergate as I recall; but he absolutely defended his decision to prop up South Vietnam. He was kind of a Pournelle in that regard. In retrospect, I suggest Nixon should have hit Watergate, harder; it might have given some pause to the later excesses of Obama and Biden.

Really the model for the ex-presidency is Carter. I used to argue for Clinton 1993-4 as Carter's third term. After the loss of Congress we couldn't say that anymore as Clinton shifted Right (to save his Party; but I don't need to ramble on past-1995). But Carter was constantly injecting himself and continued to do so after 1995, most-egregiously over "Palestine".

Should linguists drop in on exorcisms?

With due apologies for titling a post with a question, which I rarely approve for others; here's Shawn Ryan's interview with Fr. Chad Ripperger. Father Chad is a local boy, up here (Casper-to-Denver) where the oxygen is 5/6. The bishop of Tulsa chartered? ordained? this priest to exorcise demons.

Father Chad is also a Trump guy. On the minus side, Chad has run up against Trent Horn who questions whether these demons are, like, real even if they don't approve this Administration. "Extraordinary claims" and all that. There's also the anti-evolution stuff.

We are here for the claim that one of the demons spoke a 1500 BC form of "Phoenician". Chad got this from some kid who wasn't even much for high-school. So how would such a one know Canaanite from before Amarna? I can think of a few "shibboleths" - no a>o shift, no ha- article (or, it's still han-), Aramaic-like 'abd connotation...

Recordings of post-Thera Canaanite would be a true gift for the Northwest Semitic linguists. I am not being facetious:

I believe that this poor kid was going schizophrenic and, as they do, look up Secret Knowledge. If he's smart, which I concede is rare for schizophrenics (as opposed to us autists); he might be reading old prayers in Ugaritic, Hebrew, Aramaic and Akkadian. The human brain might make interconnexions. Intuitively, the young brain is plastic for that.

To be remembered, language isn't a cipher. Language is used for daily interaction with peers. Language is not supposed to be hard for the in-group, and we have a pleasantly large dataset for Bronze Age Semitics what with the Ugaritic archive.

Professional linguists tend not to be overly-impressionable sixteen year olds anymore (David Stuart aside). Perhaps the pros should listen in. It might even give these kids some help.

Four Heavens

David Stuart the Mayanist has a book out, The Four Heavens: A New History of the Ancient Maya. American Scholar has hosted Ilan Stavans' review. Nature since has posted Andrew Robinson's, but since it is not open access I'm not linking it.

Personally I had a problem with Dr Stuart turning his classmates out for Obama in 2008; which I saw in light of minority populations in central America not least the Chorti of western Honduras. I didn't think Obama would be good for them. I didn't think Stuart was good for our discourse (also see, McGaugh's "Triton Station" 2020 - or, indeed, Nature itself). But hey. For Stuart it's been eighteen years.

By this book Stuart has stepped forth as Michael Coe's heir. Although as Stavans points out, Stuart doesn't touch sociology - or, more worryingly, the economy. Coe, revising a 1966 text, initially started with material culture, since he simply could not then read the elites' words.

For sociology, I must be more lenient than Stavans. It might be that Stuart is not the man to do it.

I am unsure what Stavans wants from terms like "race" in a Maya context. One can imagine a local response to foreign leadership. The Maya endured a lot of that, starting with Striking-Owl from that land of reeds which Aztecs will name the "Teotihuacan". Some of Palenque's ahauob were Yucatec, from its north. Later classic-Maya kings are also western and depicted in foreign trappings, of course not then Teotihuacano. The true Maya in the north are, later, famously depicted like Toltecs. And as they all sometimes bore foreign lords, the classic- and postclassic-Maya all had neighbours, starting with Maya cousins whose languages may or may not be depicted in the hieroglyphs. We would love to know how the Chorti understood closely-related Tzeltal, or the more distant Mam up the hills. Or, for Copan, the Honduran Lenca, or what happened to the Xinca after the Ilopango eruption. Can foreigners be depicted as slaves?

Sex relations (we're not just talking the bedroom) might also be of interest. We have a real literature on that for Assyrians, Greeks, Hittites, Romans... Chinese, arguably the Aztecs if only via Gary Jennings. Can such an essay be written for the Maya? Hittites and Muslims have given us law-codes. The Spanish related one for the Aztecs. I don't know we have that for the Maya.

I'll throw in, the animal kingdom, as well. They raised dogs and rabbits, and tamed monkeys, and respected the jaguar; the owl, perhaps, was held in honour more elsewhere.

Such might have to come to us via the myths. Again, though, I am unsure to what extent we have those myths. It is like reconstructing the old Arabic creation-myth from graffiti-references, architecture and statuary. A "Popol Vuh" exists; but I see this as a reaction to the classic myths, like the Quran is to the (then mostly-Syriac) Bibles. Or, heavens, like our Bible reacts to... itself, and to the Canaanites before it.

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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