tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-21068194593907888072024-03-28T20:34:47.784-06:00BaghistanDarayvushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/17973750966981889517noreply@blogger.comBlogger2567125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2106819459390788807.post-59460586289614853572024-03-28T20:24:00.005-06:002024-03-28T20:30:02.944-06:00You would have crucified him too<p>Earlier today I dealt with a couple of lies - and by pre-dating those posts, technically I committed two of mine own (OPSEC and all) - so, tonight, I shall deliver the Truth. Andrew Torba comes close to it, announcing for <i>tabsheer</i> that old redundancy that <a href="https://news.gab.com/2024/03/christ-is-king-and-i-dont-care-if-that-makes-me-antisemitic/">Christ is King</a>.</p><p>Where my brother in Christ sets feet slightly off-track is where he concentrates on the Jews as Christ's killers. He veers into abject haeresis when he says <q>you cannot pick and choose which parts of God’s Word you want to defend and believe in</q>. Self-contradiction in fact: Torba has picked 1 Thessalonians 2:14-15 in preference to Saint Mark. That's not God's Word; <a href="/2023/12/more-impositions-between-luke-and.html">it's probably not even Paul's</a>.</p>
<p>The core of truth behind the hostility against Judaism is that when God looked upon this world, observing the civilisations upon it, He could have chosen to make His point in Egypt at the time of the Ramessides, or China under the Han, or Persia under Darius I. He did not. He chose Judaea, and not even that of the Hasmonaeans but the subject province under the scheming overlordship of Sejanus.</p>
<p>We're not even here to answer, why then and there. We are here to ask ourselves, if Christ had appeared under <a href="https://www.hebrewsurnames.com/TORBA">Torba's possible ancestors</a>, the Turks, preaching His message - would the great khagan have treated Him any better? how about Slavs?</p>
<p>How about the Cherusci under Arminius? Were the Germans at the time any better than the Jews? (Are they <i>now</i>?) What would shah Darius have made of a pretender to the House of Babylon? We don't even need <i>ask</i> him; he told us all an earful at Behistun.</p>
<p>No: God chose the Jews, at least to set the stage for His passion-play. For that, we get to bear Christians' blame (and Muslims').</p>
<p>If we are to pray for the salvation of the Jews, I agree it will come through Christ; but it will not come through Torba.</p>Darayvushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/17973750966981889517noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2106819459390788807.post-16389182959494957812024-03-28T18:00:00.075-06:002024-03-28T18:00:00.135-06:00Rennin<p>Rennet is used by cheesemakers (<a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NFPIGNua5WM">blessed be they</a>) to curdle milk. Vox Day and other members <a href="https://greenmedinfo.com/content/90-us-cheese-contains-gmo-made-pfizer">of <i>that</i> side of the 'Web</a> have noticed that most rennet <a href="https://shelburnefarms.org/about/news-and-stories/demystifying-rennet-key-ingredient-cheesemaking">is now a GMO</a>. By Pfizer. BOOO</p>
<p>Er, except that this has been going on since 1990. Paul Shapiro recalls the 1980s movement toward less-cruelty against domestic animals, which <a href="https://paulshapiro.medium.com/how-animal-advocates-inadvertently-helped-launch-synthetic-biology-rennet-in-cheese-8ddc140abd6a">forced food-producers to find alternatives</a>. Once we got those alternatives, like fermentation-produced chymosin / rennin, nobody cared that this was GMO except Pfizer-haters, on the far fringe of Big Granola. Then came the 2019 lableak. Note that this leak wasn't even from Pfizer's lab; all Pfizer did was create a safe and effective vaccine <i>against</i> it.</p>
<p>What smarter nonleftists used to say in the 1990s, to the extent it was even on the radar (it wasn't on mine) was that synthetic rennet was a huge win for vegetarians (like me this month). We now didn't have to worry about animals being harmed for the product. At least - not as much; we take victories against cruelty where we can find them.</p>
<p>Not that Theodore Beale ever cared about cruelty, or basic honesty.</p>
<p>Having scotched one talking-point, I now have to ask if Pfizer still holds the "90%" chymosin monopoly we're being quoted. Shapiro lists some competitors here: some of them powerful (like Dupont) some smaller ("organic"?); some not even using chymosin. At least <i>animal</i> rennet is no longer the monopolist.</p>Darayvushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/17973750966981889517noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2106819459390788807.post-39560715232719289262024-03-28T17:30:00.190-06:002024-03-28T20:34:16.394-06:00Yes, hash-Shem was in the Old Testament<p><a href="https://voxday.net/2024/03/28/archeology-and-the-sacred-name-of-god/">Vox Popoli</a> has been laundering a load of disinformatsiya lately, so tonight this blog will address some of that. For now: <a href='https://remnantradio.org/Archives/articles/sacred_name.htm'><q>The YHWH word did not appear in any Old Testament text until the Masoretic Text of 1000AD!</q></a>. <i>Quite</i> a take.</p>
<p>This take is false.</p>
<p>It should have been debunked in 2005 when R.H. at "remnantradio" posted it. I suppose we must do that here - so, Vridar: <a href='https://vridar.org/2024/03/26/before-the-bibles-religion-there-was-yahweh/'>Before “Biblical Israel” there was Yahweh</a>. (Godfrey posted that all of two days ago.) Before AD 1000 we could look to "Jehovah" in Saint Jerome's text, hardly a name mah boi would make up for himself; that doesn't really dispute R.H.'s point but it does show that the MT is no product of AD 1000. For the Tetragrammaton being treated as a <i>nomen sacrum</i>: that <i>pesher</i> on Habbakuk 1-2 called "1QpHab" used the Canaani "palaeoHebrew" script for the Name in the main text, with circumlocutions in the tafsîr.</p>
<p>At least 1QpHab was published in AD 1951; R.H. is aware of such Dead Sea scrolls. R.H. is further aware that the northwestern Semitic kingdoms in the times of Judah and Israel were <i>rife</i> with theophoronyms, like "Hazael" among the Canaanites and Aramaeans. Israel had names ending -<i>yw</i> where Judah, speaking almost the same language, had -<i>yhw</i>. This is, like, Biblical Archaeology 101 so it's good that R.H. knows it. R.H. also knows that the Jews' sacralisation of the name came later.</p>
<p>R.H.'s rambling shouty 2005 mess implies - I cannot say "argues" - that the Septuagint came first and that the M.T. (and S.T.!) were translations therefrom. I don't know that even such <a href="/2022/10/genesis-one-as-platonist-myth.html">Gmirkinites</a> as at Vridar claim that. To that point: early <a href="https://eliyah.com/tetragrammaton-found-in-earliest-copies-of-the-septuagint/">Greek manuscripts of the Prophets and Job bear the Four Letters</a>, in Canaani.</p>
<p>As for Christ - that our Lord avoided some Helleno-Aramaic vocalisation of "YHWH" puts him alongside that commentator upon Habbakuk. The Gospels had Jesus say "kyrie" which just translates <i>adon[ai]</i>. Jesus (or, if you're Godfrey or Carrier, Jesu's inventor) assuredly had the Bible in Hebrew and in its (Aramaic) targums. That Jesus used "Father" also is notable; but not unknown to <a href="https://biblethingsinbibleways.wordpress.com/2013/12/29/was-god-known-as-father-in-the-old-testament/">Jewish prophets such as Jeremiah</a>, Malachi, and trito-Isaiah.</p>
<p>It is difficult to tease out what R.H. was arguing, or if he even holds any of those positions today. Overall I catch the scent of an essay which was much more sure of itself back when it was, er, wrong; and later, as facts trickled in, it got revised... and revised again. R.H. could either admit he was on the wrong trail and delete the thing, or he could puke what he had onto remnantradio's badly-formatted website with le IT JUST IS, OKAY wojack-face.</p>
<p>American Christians, amirite. Sigh.</p>Darayvushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/17973750966981889517noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2106819459390788807.post-75774629947548275802024-03-27T17:30:00.047-06:002024-03-28T07:50:57.465-06:00Quantum gravity constrained<p>Another of those article-headings I dislike came in. "<a href="https://science.ku.dk/english/press/news/2024/scientists-on-the-hunt-for-evidence-of-quantum-gravitys-existence-at-the-south-pole/">Scientists on the hunt</a>" at the mainline; blah blah question mark over at Science Daily. This one is about neutrinos being affected by quantum gravity. NOT</p>
<p>The neutrinos most people want come from, like, supernovae or quasars or neutronstar-mergers. Most neutrinos are simply created right above us when a hypervelocity ion ("<a href="/2021/04/the-hydrogen-ion-speed-limit.html">cosmic ray</a>") whacks our atmosphere. Luckily these hit us from all directions so, if the detector is somewhere nobody else lives - like our south pole - it can pick up neutrinos from through our earth. Even potentially the NORTH pole. Tom Stuttard's team pondered if, over 12700 kilometers, neutrinos might experience quantum gravity to the degree they could see it.</p>
<p>After a lot of blah blah and 300000 neutrinos later, the article finally allows Stuttard to admit <q>the fact that we didn’t see them [effects]</q>. It seems 12,700 km is insufficient km to notice a quantum gravity effect. That's... something, I concede. Doesn't really merit the headlines tho'.</p>
<p>Where would be a better producer of atmospheric neutrino? Saturn from the perspective of Mimas' orbit? A floater atop Uranus? Maybe that's where the next experiment needs setting up.</p>Darayvushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/17973750966981889517noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2106819459390788807.post-9449529219946091162024-03-26T19:30:00.007-06:002024-03-28T07:46:15.107-06:00starquaKe<p>Epsilon Indi A at 3.6 pc owns a superSaturn at 11 AU - thrice Jupiter mass; also <a href="/2023/01/epsilon-indi.html">that browndwarf binary (Ba/b)</a> out at 11600 AU.</p>
<p>Projected temperature of the planet, at 4 Gy, is 200 K so is an infrared opportunity - that is, Webb. The planet's orbit is eccentric. This leapyearday another reading picked up a ten-Jovian mass, maybe a <a href="https://www.stsci.edu/jwst/science-execution/program-information?id=5037">second</a> planet.</p>
<p>ε Indi itself just made news for <a href="https://www.birmingham.ac.uk/news/2024/tiniest-starquake-ever-detected-new-study">quaking</a>. This was not spotted by the JWST. Rather: <q>the ESPRESSO spectrograph, mounted at the European Southern Observatory’s (ESO) Very Large Telescope (VLT)</q>. The team, headed by Tiago Campante and Bill Chaplin, hit the stellar temperature at 4500 K (we're 5500). The quake stands to get us a look at the star's innards. Constraining this star stands to help constrain main-sequence K stars... everywhere.</p>
<p>Chaplin reports a discrepancy <q>between the predicted and observed sizes</q>. I didn't know that K stars had been predicted wrong - we're right next to one, orbiting Alpha Centauri, so I thought we knew more about them. But maybe our observations are outdated and/or distorted by the main α.</p>Darayvushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/17973750966981889517noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2106819459390788807.post-13421384108009323172024-03-25T17:30:00.064-06:002024-03-25T17:30:00.126-06:00Shinfa<p>The Longhorns came to graze at the Atbara source Shinfa, northwestern Ethiopia. They were looking at 72kBC. <a href="https://news.utexas.edu/2024/03/20/surviving-a-volcanic-supereruption-may-have-facilitated-human-dispersal-out-of-africa/">They found the Toba layer.</a></p>
<p>The map is in conflict with what I see in Wiki. Atbara is not the Blue Nile. Atbara goes to... Atbara; the Blue Nile goes to Khartoum upstream. There've been dams, in the meantime. And <a href='https://foreignpolicy.com/2024/03/06/ethiopia-amhara-conflict-civil-war/'>anarchy in the region</a>, namely Tigray; and in good parts of Sudan over the border.</p>
<p>Back to 72kBC: the Texans think that the Nilotes here experienced a drought. This led to easier fishin' ... at the truncated waterholes. So they taught themselves archery to go after smaller and quicker game they couldn't trap and weren't going to (what was left of) the waterholes.</p>
<p>Also suspected is migration. These are not our ancestors; for one, our ancestors may not have learnt archery (<a href="/2023/12/the-bow.html">the New World had to learn this independently</a>). So the Texans (must) speculate: migrations east of this watershed, where they haven't done digs.</p>Darayvushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/17973750966981889517noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2106819459390788807.post-26262120320845830982024-03-24T09:24:00.003-06:002024-03-24T09:24:34.362-06:00Upload #211: can I get a witness<p>Since <a href="/2024/03/upload-210-signs-of-times.html">the last upload</a> I returned to how "Sodom's Elephant" was dating sura 105. Since I've been on an Arab-poet kick, I pondered if we could find any of that as might be relevant. I got as far as the poetry in Jahiz' book on animals, and in Ibn Hisham's relation from Ibn Ishaq. Then I gave up. I'm yanking that project.</p>
<p>We need a project on that poetry. To follow up on <a href='/2023/01/following-basic-class.html'>W1</a>, I propose to explore the "Songs of the Meccan Hanifa".</p>
<p>I've also tweaked "Without Peer" (bringing in Jeffery's "Foreign Vocabulary"), "Jesus' Arraignment", and "Daniel's Main Points".</p>
<p><a href='https://sites.google.com/site/zimrielproject/the-madrassa/'>Madrassa</a>.</p>Darayvushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/17973750966981889517noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2106819459390788807.post-61738531839922281302024-03-24T08:12:00.044-06:002024-03-24T08:12:00.138-06:00Fusion pulse rocket<p>Whilst the Saturnbros are <a href="/2023/05/the-dragonfly-shouldnt-fly.html">awaiting Direct Fusion from Princeton</a>, a few days ago various outlets have been relaying some press-releases about <a href="https://www.globenewswire.com/news-release/2024/03/20/2849624/0/en/RocketStar-Announces-Successful-Demonstration-of-Fusion-Enhanced-Pulsed-Plasma-Electric-Propulsion.html">the FireStar from RocketStar</a>. Where Direct Fusion is NERVA-ish, FireStar is <q>Fusion-Enhanced Pulsed Plasma Electric Propulsion</q> - so, more Orion-ish. The (boron) fusion is happening in its afterburner.</p>
<p>As <a href="https://acecomments.mu.nu/?post=408929">Pixy</a> pointed out yesterday, <q>the device does spray ionising radiation all over the place</q>. Keyword, in his Kiwi dialect: "ionising"; that is: not neutrons. (Yay boron!) Ions, we can handle, with magnets.</p>
<p>Now, I don't think anyone will allow RocketStar to use this to get us off of Earth, for the usual test-ban reasons. But limited Orion above the Van Allens might not face the same regulatory hurdles.</p>
<p>So first we need <a href="https://behindtheblack.com/behind-the-black/points-of-information/spacexs-next-superheavy-starship-launch-according-to-spacex/">to get this stuff up there</a>.</p>Darayvushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/17973750966981889517noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2106819459390788807.post-32551344279977398432024-03-23T07:05:00.014-06:002024-03-23T07:05:00.238-06:00The excruciator<p>We Latins talk about "excruciating" pain, as did <a href="https://www.languagerealm.com/hplang/unforgivable_curses.php"><cite>Harry Potter</cite> readers</a> when they were <a href="https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2024/03/22/jk-rowling-police-scotland-gender-trans/">still allowed to do that</a>. I'd figured it was a mediaeval figure of speech. So I was surprised to find <i>cruciaverunt</i> in <a href="https://www.drbo.org/drl/chapter/73011.htm">Revelation 11:10</a>, to translate the annoyance (ἐβασάνισαν) which the two prophets caused... to sinners (<i>Quoniam hi duo Prophetae cruciaverunt eos...</i>). When did Latins start using <i>crucio</i> so casually?</p>
<p>I can firstly reassure my readers, my boi Jerome dindu-nuffin. <i>Vetus Latina</i> precedes the venerable doctor here.</p>
<p>One such (pre-)text can be had from the <a href="http://www.prague.net/blog/article/174/devils-bible-codex-gigas-in-klementinum">Gigas</a>. This "giant" codex is <a href="https://academic.oup.com/book/12425/chapter/162898271#426362695">mostly</a> Vulgate, excepting "Laodiceans" - and Acts, and the Revelation. These latter two are not in Vulgate form. Vogels' intro to the <a href="https://www.google.com/books/edition/Untersuchungen_zur_Geschichte_der_latein/UTDmAAAAMAAJ">1920 edition</a> argued for Gigas as preserving the V.L.; we now call that texttype, "I". Vogels deemed Vulgate a revision of that. In fact Jerome's quotes from the book are from "I". (One wonders if Jerome even did the edits or if his students did.)</p>
<p>The Vulgate, and one presumes "I", translate the Sinaiticus ℵ/01 - so far, so Nestle-Aland. Vogels p. 169 has <i>cruciaverunt</i> just like Vulgate does.</p>
<p>I don't know if <i>veterior</i> is a word so... is there a <i>senior</i>, to "I"? I looked at <a href="view-source:https://www.newadvent.org/fathers/0712.htm">Victorinus</a> and did not find that he'd commented on verse 11:10. I don't own Gryson's reconstruction of Ticonius; nor Gumerlock's translation. Some commentaries act like this verse isn't even there, like the Irish <a href='https://scholarworks.wmich.edu/mip_teamscs/8/'><i>De enigmatibus ex Apocalypsi Johannis</i></a>.</p>
<p>I do have <a href="https://la.wikisource.org/wiki/Expositio_in_Apocalypsim_Ioannis">Augustine</a>. Augustine's 11:10 reads the exact same as Vulgate's. He cited from the same text VL 74 cites in parallel, given that VL 74 is a lectionary which restricts itself to 20:11-21:7. Augustine depended also on Ticonius - famously. (I always did say <a href="/2023/07/donatus-before-maximus.html">the Donatists were dyotheletes</a> <i>avant le lettre</i>.) Primasius ("C") <a href="https://www.roger-pearse.com/weblog/2019/06/28/primasius-and-his-commentary-on-revelation/">hasn't been edited lately</a> (and the <a href="https://digital.bodleian.ox.ac.uk/objects/65ddd007-4da9-4887-aba7-88e64ca624d4/">MS</a> is unreachable) but at least we have <a href="https://archive.org/details/patrologiaecurs57unkngoog/page/n418/mode/2up">Migne</a>: <i>cruciaverunt</i>. Mind: Primasius used Augustine.</p>
<p>So the earliest notes of ApJohn 11:10 I can find are: that translation of ℵ's texttype called "I", and that text behind Augustine(>Primasius) and VL 74 - probably also ℵ. The questions I have for 11:10, are: (1) was this verse even in the earliest Latin translations, (2) where's the first mention with or without <i>cruciaverunt</i>, (3) was every Greek instance ἐβασάνισαν?</p>Darayvushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/17973750966981889517noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2106819459390788807.post-6951203794000673012024-03-22T17:30:00.039-06:002024-03-22T17:30:00.249-06:00Assembling a galaxy<p>I <a href="/2024/03/dark-matter-under-question.html">expressed a lack of enthusiasm</a> earlier this week for the latest scheme to rid us of dark matter. It pulls the universe's age too early. Any real determination must, I think, first constrain the age of our own galaxy.</p>
<p>To that end, we'd pick apart where our galaxy has ingested other galaxies - like <a href="/2020/11/the-milky-way-before-us.html">the Kraken, 11 Gya</a>. We now may have the merger which shared it all, a billion or two years before that: <a href='https://www.mpia.de/news/science/2024-05-shakti-shiva'>Shakti and Shiva</a>.</p>
<p>As an aside, if dark matter does exist, here are <a href='https://news.clemson.edu/clemson-astrophysicists-research-could-provide-a-hint-in-the-search-for-dark-matter/'>yet more constraints</a>. On the other hand... they may have constrained that it does exist (which, for one, Milgrom <i>et al.</i> failed to prove for <a href="/2023/12/mogging-milgrom.html">Modified Newton</a>).</p>Darayvushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/17973750966981889517noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2106819459390788807.post-5332758325008154632024-03-21T17:30:00.209-06:002024-03-22T22:28:58.677-06:00Pharaoh Ishmael<p>Ahmed Bahador's "<a href='https://www.google.com/books/edition/A_Series_of_Essays_on_the_Life_of_Mohamm/Q58IAAAAQAAJ?hl=en&gbpv=1&pg=RA9-PP1&printsec=frontcover'>Essay on the Prophecies Respecting Mohammed as Contained in Both the Old and the New Testament</a>" laid out the case for Islam as the inheritance from Abraham. Sha'i ben-Tekoa counterargues that, <a href="https://www.americanthinker.com/articles/2024/03/exploding_the_myth_that_islam_is_an_abrahamic_religion.html">from a Jewish perspective</a>. I predict that ben-Tekoa will convince <a href="/2020/10/the-mathematical-civilisation.html">zero</a> Muslims.</p>
<p>Ben-Tekoa points out that Jews hold genetics from the mother. He traces ancestry back to the Ark. There, he has a problem. The impartial judge would admit that these three sons of Noah had wives, which women they did not share in common. If these women are so important to The <i>Dên</i> Of Noah ... what are their <i>names</i>?</p>
<p>For Noah himself, ben-Tekoa must read "Noah's wife"; or, perhaps, "Umm Sarah", like <a href="https://arkencounter.com/blog/2018/07/12/meet-ladies-noahs-family/">Jubilees</a> (for her birthname, Naamah seems popular). For Shem he'd read "Shem's wife". On topic of Jubilees, this one is big on supplying the names which Torah omits: the mother of Shem's children, here, was Sedeqetelebab.</p>
<p>Ben-Tekoa's next problem that he does not accept Jubilees, despite its existence as a Hebrew text (<a href="/2023/06/the-first-man-in-jubilees.html">this or that chapter aside</a>) at the Dead Sea. He dismisses <a href="/2023/12/the-hanukkah-bible.html">1 Maccabees</a> as "Koine" where it was, in fact, Hebrew too and has been made (great in) Hebrew again. (The <A href='/2024/03/esthers-first-revision.html'>additions to Esther</a> don't look Christian, either.) A <i>kafir</i> of Jubilees must fall back upon the Torah.</p>
<p>The Torah has patriarchal origins and that is why, unlike Jubilees, it doesn't bother with all the womens' names - these were not matriarchs. Islam, like the Mormons, has taken a different reading than is done among the Jews.</p>
<p>A Jew would shift his stance, then, <a href="/2023/06/when-jews-disliked-their-own-torah.html">upon "the oral Torah"</a>. I concede - this existed, supplying lore to preQumranian text like Jubilees (and Tobit), despite such text's heresies (like incest). But when did this Tradition exist? Yonatan Adler elsewhere is saying <a href="https://vridar.org/2024/03/20/most-ways-of-dating-the-old-testament-older-than-300-bce-are-flawed/">the very Torah didn't exist before Ptolemy I Lagides</a>. The <a href="https://www.ancientjewreview.com/read/2024/3/13/ep-sanders-my-guide-in-the-field-of-rabbinics">quotidian praxis</a> of what the Maccabees have dubbed "Judaism", and the oral lore around that praxis, would be datable to ... 1 Maccabees.</p>
<p>Some apologists for Jewish tradition will include the preservation of the text. I <i>hope</i> Ben-Tekoa does not take this to the same conclusion as we Catholics do for our own New Testament, because this just takes us back to those Ptolemies. To such apologists: Jews preserved <i>a</i> Torah. The Samaritans and the Greek Jews of Egypt preserved recognisable <i>Tawrât</i> also; mostly inferior, yes, but not in all places, which is why biblical-critics still get paid. (<i>and as transmitters i'll put up, say, the greeks' jeremiah against the masoretic scramble any day, come @ me bro</i>)</p>
<p>As for Ishmael as a Hamite: I'll spot him one and <a href='https://www.thetorah.com/article/why-moses-lost-the-high-priesthood'>not mention the ancestry of Zipporah</a>. I'm more concerned with Moses' whole tribe, that of Levi. This tribe in general proliferated with Egyptian names. Manetho came right out and said it, to Ptolemy of Mendes: Egyptian heretics, not Jews, ran <a href="/2023/07/the-jewish-mosque.html">the Tabernacle</a>. The Banu Levi were at least as Egyptian and "Hamite" as are the Banu Ishmael.</p>
<p>In short, Ishmaelite Arabs' reading of this text is at least as valid as is Ben-Tekoa's and if he doesn't like it, too bad for him.</p>Darayvushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/17973750966981889517noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2106819459390788807.post-86812012292326281052024-03-20T18:30:00.085-06:002024-03-22T12:18:59.565-06:00Esther's first revision<p>The book of Esther was cited in our New Testament - for as long and wherever 1 Clement was copied. Jesus, Paul, and the Evangelists didn't use it (although maybe a narrative trope or two got into that Herod and John story). The Jews of Judaea didn't use it either. But Esther was wildly popular out east and, well, the orientals did the Talmud. So a local Jewish story in Susa became the basis of Purim, in Esther 9: bringing into Judaism <a href="https://www.academia.edu/37943005/A_New_Hypothesis_The_Behistun_Inscription_as_Imperial_Calendar">the Achaemenid Bonfire-Night</a>, Herodotus' Magiphonia.</p>
<p>Esther took on many accoutrements to become worthy of the pious west of Babylon. As far as I know, 1 Clement was the first to cite the story; if he had it in Greek, he had an expanded version, still in force among the Orthodox. Josephus, later and more-proudly Jewish, also <a href="https://josephus.org/Esther.htm">accepted it</a>.</p>
<p><a href='https://www.thetorah.com/article/the-story-of-esther-revised-to-furnish-purim-with-a-history'>David Frankel</a> thinks Esther was <i>already</i> being expanded in Hebrew. Esther was not intended to support Achaemenid brutality against rebels - at first. But as a rule throughout any empire, the saecular court could <a href="https://vridar.org/2024/03/19/were-jews-in-the-babylonian-exile-pining-for-home-in-israel-judah-and-a-reformed-religion/">expect the "exile" population to support him</a> over the natives and his own priesthood. So in Susa, Jews supported the shah against Elamites and the <i>magoi</i>. In Esther's text, was how they did it. Outright Achaemenid proclamations <a href="/2022/10/haifa-december.html">made it out to Elephantine up the Nile</a> and even, at home, into Ezra's book.</p>
<p>Later on at home, one imagines that most western Jews should have soured on Empire, in its Italian form. But, well... Josephi gotta Joseph.</p>Darayvushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/17973750966981889517noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2106819459390788807.post-46443260548106674992024-03-19T18:00:00.060-06:002024-03-21T17:42:58.113-06:00The Awza'iya and free-will<p>Among the letters which Michael Cook presented in <cite>Early Muslim Dogma</cite> was a <i>risala</i> against the free-will doctrine espoused among the Mutazila. This was ascribed to no less than 'Umar al-Thani the caliph. If we wanted the full text, we of little <i>Deutsch</i> had to find van Ess' German (somewhere) and run it through Google Translate. Belatedly, Sean Anthony has supplied us with <a href="https://www.academia.edu/116480791/Umar_Qadariyyah_docx">a new translation</a> into English.</p>
<p>The letter is a <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=H6yQOs93Cgg">faaake</a>. It is at least falsely ascribed; it quotes a Kufan hadith from al-A'mash which 'Umar shouldn't have known, and four (out of seven) also transmitted by al-Awza'i (AD 707-74). One tradition looks like something Awza'i cooked up himself, given it is first heard from his lips.</p>
<p>My suspicions were already raised by the letter's citations from suras like 23 and 44, which I deem late.</p>
<p>Awza'i happened to be an Umayyad diehard. It's within possibility that something like this Letter went out from caliph Hisham's court or maybe by authoritarian dissidents against al-Walid II or Yazid III. Awza'i would have been in his middle thirties, which is young, but not too much so for a "young-turk" intellect (especially if he left his own name off it!). And I don't have a problem with a full Quran, even an "'Uthmanic" text, in Hisham's time.</p>
<p>But <i>this</i> letter is not 'Umar's. The ascription to him would have suggested itself to one appealing to a wider audience, 'Umar being more popular than Hisham and also from an earlier time.</p>
<p>BACKDATE 3/21.</p>Darayvushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/17973750966981889517noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2106819459390788807.post-19028159144874926892024-03-18T17:30:00.002-06:002024-03-27T07:49:21.598-06:00Dark matter under question<p>We keep <a href="https://dispatchesfromturtleisland.blogspot.com/2024/03/dark-matter-is-not-made-up-of.html">ruling out candidates for dark-matter</a>. One remaining support for its existence as something, <i>any</i>thing is the 13.7 billion year universe. If it were, oh, 26.7 Gy then it wouldn't be needed. <a href='https://www.uottawa.ca/about-us/media/news/new-research-suggests-our-universe-has-no-dark-matter'>Rajendra Gupta, supporting the older universe</a>, is dismissing dark-matter.</p>
<p>Gupta combines <q>how the forces of nature decrease over cosmic time</q> (covarying coupling constants) and <q>about light losing energy when it travels a long distance</q> (tired light).</p>
<p>I'd still like to know why unseen mass is inferrable for some galaxies (like ours) where not for others. And I'd like to know where are the stars or whitedwarfs in our Milky Way <a href="https://www.centauri-dreams.org/2024/03/20/another-conundrum-how-long-do-white-dwarfs-live/">older</a> than 14 Gy. Last time we looked at candidates (which were too light for main-sequence), <a href="/2021/12/low-mass-white-dwarf.html">these were too young</a>. Light losing energy over distance suggests it experiences <i>time</i>, like <a href="/2023/05/neutrino-mass.html">neutrinos</a>. This doesn't seem Einstein-compliant, but maybe it experiences <i>spacetime</i>; consider, it has momentum without mass. Or does each photon spread out over distance, like groups of photons in reciprocal-square?</p>Darayvushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/17973750966981889517noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2106819459390788807.post-60694287659505254492024-03-17T09:15:00.041-06:002024-03-19T12:12:22.488-06:00Dioscorus<p>When we compare Ephesus I, Ephesus II, and Chalcedon - we see vast differences in how they are remembered. <a href="/2023/07/miraculous-curses.html">The mob</a> ruled Ephesus I. The <i>mafia</i> ran Ephesus II. As for Chalcedon, the Empire oversaw it - but did not direct it. As Ch happened only two years after E2 - it is through Ch, how E2 went down in History - as the monster of Dioscorus of Alexandria. Nobody contested the content of Chalcedon's <i>minutes</i>; but Chalcedon effected an overhaul of E2's minutes. <a href="/2023/07/the-world-can-wait.html">Michael Gaddis</a> takes Chalcedon at its face. Should he?</p>
<p>Critiquing these latter events, Volker Menze is pleading patriarch Dioscorus' case. Colin Behrens has a <a href='https://bmcr.brynmawr.edu/2024/2024.03.16/'>review</a>. Menze presents an excellent case for stripping Cyril of sainthood among the Copts, let alone the rest of us. But Dioscorus will probably not be sainted anytime soon, himself.</p>
<p>Cyril corrupted his Church toward the aim of ruling the Church abroad. He had also bankrupted it. Dioscorus was elected to clean house; Menze claims he did this, Behrens is less sure. As far as politics abroad, he submitted himself to Theodosius II. This, I gather, because he had no choice; Behrens seems correct here, that our man was less a fighter of corruption and more a cats-paw in Imperial consolidation.</p>
<p>Dioscorus was, at least, sincere. In the circus which was that second Ephesian Council, Menze presents Dioscorus as not the ringleader. He was rather the emperor's "henchman" - one among many. When Imperial policy changed, under Marcian, the Chalcedonians couldn't (yet) blame the prior emperor, and didn't feel up to blaming all Theodosius' <i>very</i> willing stooges. <a href="/2023/07/the-priest-king-of-edessa-callirrho.html">Some were still popular at home.</a> Dioscorus was the most-prominent Robber of that Council, still willing to defend it at Chalcedon. The new emperor now had what he needed: a fall-guy. He got Dioscorus' surviving allies to pin it all on him.</p>
<p>BACKDATE 3/19</p>Darayvushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/17973750966981889517noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2106819459390788807.post-17431495981034683502024-03-16T07:30:00.002-06:002024-03-19T11:53:14.819-06:00The stiffening of knees<p>TheTorah posts about <a href="https://www.thetorah.com/article/prostration-to-god-and-humans-a-biblical-practice">prostration in Judaism</a>. Once upon a time Judaism was an Oriental religion; Orientals do kowtow. The Romans and Greeks had a tradition of personal or at least familial/political independence. Upon taking the Orient, first the Greeks and then the Romans accepted some Oriental practice. Some Orientals under their sway bent the knee to them. Others figured they should reserve this to G-d.</p>
<p>Judaism went in the other direction - the Western direction, yea even unto their Lord. <i>How</i> they went, <a href="https://vridar.org/2024/03/14/the-hebrew-bible-composed-only-300-years-before-christ/">is the debate</a>. Jews in the Iranians' Eraq - like Hidyab / Adiabene - maintained a culture of kowtow, for more practices. Western Jews abandoned kowtow; one presumes that so did Samaritans.</p>
<p>We Catholics, thoroughly Western and Latin, have the priest kowtow only on Easter and Christmas as far as I know. Maybe monasteries do more. The congregation doesn't do it; we've designed our pews not to allow it. We do kneel and bow; but in Arabic that is only <i>ruku'</i>, not <i>sajda</i>.</p>
<p>So - um. Arabic! Their religious sites were <i>masgi<u>d</u>a</i> in Aramaic transcription as witnessed in Greek and Georgian, from the start. "Place of prostration"; not "<i>marki'a</i>". If Western Jews weren't doing <i>sajda</i> and Western Christians were doing it only sparingly - whence the idea?</p>
<p>I suspect the Muslims inherited it from the Yemen, maybe that Eraq. Yemen had a Sasanian occupation, when it wasn't under the thumb of Axsum. Neither of these nations were keeping up with Roman or Greek fashions.</p>Darayvushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/17973750966981889517noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2106819459390788807.post-18634283712473196772024-03-15T17:30:00.000-06:002024-03-15T17:30:00.207-06:00Scalable corn-monitoring<p>As we're learning about farming in space, one issue is how to check on the farms when humans aren't present. So: <a href='https://news.illinois.edu/view/6367/306078368'>Ying Diao and Andrew Leakey</a>.</p>
<p>The breakthrough here is a new sensor, with transmission; from the world of wearable electronics.</p>
<p>Near-term, we can have a satellite space-farm without humans at all. This would tell us how plants grow in space, before any humans have to rely upon them. Longer-term, these sensors should increase the ratio of plants-per-farmer. Every gram counts.</p>
<p>Right now it's corn but later this is needed for <a href="/2024/01/dinners-on.html">kale and other vegetable "superfoods"</a> which astronauts might want to eat.</p>Darayvushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/17973750966981889517noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2106819459390788807.post-39101490829027940762024-03-15T17:15:00.005-06:002024-03-15T17:15:00.203-06:00The whistle<p>The skinsuit of Matt Drudge isn't letting Elon have his W (even with-reservations). It links (I won't) to Obama mouthing-off about "hrrr fix Erf first before Mars". Classic Obama gaslighting, and a sideswipe against Musk through his statements rather than <a href="/2024/03/the-bird-in-flight.html">his achievements</a>; nobody serious is talking Mars. For Starship we're talking <i>orbit</i>. <a href="/2024/03/foiling-muaddib.html">We need orbit now.</a></p>
<p>(Between here and Mars, maybe asteroids: <a href='https://behindtheblack.com/behind-the-black/points-of-information/lucys-first-encounter-with-an-asteroid-produced-surprises/'>here's some dark-and-stony</a>, en route to Jupiter. Maybe the Moon: although <a href="https://behindtheblack.com/behind-the-black/points-of-information/there-likely-is-little-or-no-ice-in-the-moons-permanently-shadowed-craters/">the Lunar Pole</a> isn't looking great.)</p>
<p>Drudge's main link on that day was that de-Kessler'd spacejunk <a href="https://metro.co.uk/2024/03/14/dead-satellites-falling-earth-weaken-magnetic-field-20462546/">might cut our magnetic field</a>, beyond <a href='/2023/10/heavy-metal-2023.html'>the usual metal worries</a>. This, from a nonreviewed paper; it may as well be a blog. Drudge is gambling for political winds as will take this space junk to publication. I fear Drudge is (politically) correct, now that he's pushed it to media attention. Journals will be fighting over each other to put it out, and <a href="https://www.msn.com/en-us/news/crime/ar-BB1jPvVu">nobody wants aligned with "the Alt Right"</a>.</p>
<p>I doubt Obama's statement is even meant to be taken seriously. It's a whistle for his army of Organiserz. They're the ones doing the lawfare down South Texas. It's a message to his holdovers in the "Biden" Administration as well.</p>Darayvushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/17973750966981889517noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2106819459390788807.post-34967593985172461302024-03-14T17:30:00.125-06:002024-03-14T17:30:00.137-06:00The bird in flight<p>Today's Space Day. Hope we all got up early to watch the <a href='https://behindtheblack.com/behind-the-black/points-of-information/spacex-announces-launch-time-tomorrow-for-3rd-superheavy-starship-launch/'>7 AM CST launch (with potential fireworks)</a> - which happened more like 8:30. Our Boulder-Denver area is blizzardy and under a Xfinity / power warning so this poast has been prepared in advance . . .</p>
<p>The launch of Starship into space went without fireworks. For the SuperHeavy it went without... relit engines; and the Starship r.u.d.'d <a href="https://www.cnbc.com/2024/03/14/spacex-starship-rocket-third-test-flight-launch.html">over the Indian Ocean</a> before orbit. I hope neither poses problem for the FAA; the Plan B was to splash into the Gulf and/or the World-Ocean, so here "and" is the keyword.</p>
<p>Americans are experiencing a race between freedom (misnamed "capitalism") and corporatism, the latter being done in Japan and China. Or <a href="https://behindtheblack.com/behind-the-black/points-of-information/the-investors-behind-space-one-the-japanese-commercial-rocket-company-that-had-a-launch-failure-yesterday/">committed</a>, a Japanese or <a href="https://behindtheblack.com/behind-the-black/points-of-information/china-has-launch-failure-2/">Chinese</a> "Milei" might say.</p>Darayvushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/17973750966981889517noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2106819459390788807.post-40217260974872633472024-03-14T17:15:00.001-06:002024-03-14T18:15:19.962-06:00Foiling Muaddib<p>Last Wednesday was noted that <a href="/2024/03/sons-of-atreus.html">the Arrakis Strait</a> <a href="https://interconnect.substack.com/p/when-the-houthis-found-the-cloud?publication_id=1084918&post_id=142557206&isFreemail=true&r=9bg2k&triedRedirect=true">cannot be used for communications no more</a>. I was pondering if the Saudis could just run cable across the Empty Quarter. But also, <a href="https://spacenews.com/global-communications-under-attack-optical-satellite-networks-bolster/">satellites</a>; especially <a href="/2024/03/the-bird-in-flight.html">if</a> we can put larger cargo in orbit for cheaper.</p>
<p>We still have problems in shipping but I am hoping that supply-chains can be improved by making more Stuff, at-home; and by mutual trade with bordering and friendly neighbours. I leave to my readers which candidate for President, the former or the incumbent, owns the better record on that, over their respective four years.</p>Darayvushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/17973750966981889517noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2106819459390788807.post-29120101496338916962024-03-13T17:30:00.074-06:002024-03-14T08:29:49.000-06:00EP Sanders' legacy<p>Ancient Jew Review is posting memoria to EP Sanders. Annette Reed is talking the Second Temple, wherein Sanders forced other scholars <a href="https://www.ancientjewreview.com/read/2024/3/11/e-p-sanders-and-his-impact-on-the-study-of-second-temple-judaism">to consider Judaism as actually practiced</a>. Matthew Novenson dilates upon <a href="https://www.ancientjewreview.com/read/2024/3/13/paul-the-apostle-and-sanders-the-critic">Judaism as <i>justified</i></a> at the time - whether we are fair to call it "legalism".</p>
<p>Sanders' findings appear to have crossed over to researchers into Second Temple Judaism itself, such that now Yonatan Adler can doubt that the average Judaean monotheist even practiced this until the Hasmonaeans. It also appears that Sanders' intent was not to discredit Judaism but to defend it against the bugaboo of his time, namely the 1950s-era Sunday-School canard that Judaism was stagnant and text-based.</p>
<p>For the biblical-maximalists, Sanders forced Joslin McDowell to read Jewish sources, and to disseminate their existence among the Christians. McDowell, no antisemite himself, judged the best form of Judaism - Conservatism as of the late 1970s - as an imperfect Christianity. He might even have been right.</p>
<p>Sanders' influence, I think, went a bit far, to introduce modern canards into Sunday-Schools (thank <i>you</i>, Shelby Spong). Inasmuch as Gospel attacks on "Pharisees" read like strawmen, Saint Mark is in the company <a href="/2024/02/the-education-of-jesus-christ.html">of the Rabbinic sages themselves</a>. Sadducees existed, as did Qumran, and Samaritans, and Shammai and Ben Peraḥya deep in the rabbinic community itself. If you can read the Damascus Document and <i>not</i> immediately think "he's a legalist" then I cannot help you.</p>
<p>Also I wonder if Sanders (accidentally) ended up inspiring modern Unz-style antiJudaism anyway. His work gave a second-wind to the Muslims, who figure that the Jews misinterpreted G-d's Torah, even falsified it; Unz's antisemites have read Vridar and <a href="https://vridar.org/2023/10/10/unspeakable/">correctly</a> <a href="https://vridar.org/2023/10/29/gaza-in-context/">interpret</a> an alliance between biblical-minimalists and quranic-maximalists. Christians thereby got into the Toledoth and Paul Schäfer's "Jesus in the Talmud". Some of those reading all this got further into Talmud, at least <a href="/2023/06/the-jewish-reliance-of-traveler.html">as summarised in <cite>Shulhan Aruch</cite></a>. Again: Judaism <i>as actually practiced</i>, not Judaism as "logically-" determined (by goys) nor Judaism as Spong and, perhaps, Sanders would wish it to be.</p>Darayvushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/17973750966981889517noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2106819459390788807.post-33224739682674300792024-03-12T17:30:00.049-06:002024-03-13T08:03:15.703-06:00The effects of Egyptian dialect on Late-Antique literature<p>One issue as is had in "Syriac" studies is dialect. This is acute when people start talking about the Qurân and Islamic literature generally, where it takes in loanwords as are Aramaic. <i>Which</i> Aramaic, Alphonse Mingana's readers should have shouted at him. Palaestinian Aramaic flutters around the edges of the essays in <cite>Christmas in the Koran</cite> but otherwise little consistent and serious has been done on these dialects until, I think, van Putten in 2020ish. Dialect also affects how the Christian Bible entered into Aramaic, and if a Jewish Bible preceded it; Joosten has been working this angle.</p>
<p>Anyway: <a href="https://onepeterfive.com/coptic-orthodox-expose-vaticans-naked-modernism/">the Copts</a>. This blog doesn't recommend oecumenical dialogue with Miaphysites. However there do exist in Egypt, Catholic brethren as well, and some pay respect to the indigenous Christian language. But then comes the next question - <a href="https://www.ancientjewreview.com/read/2023/12/30/coptic-a-grammar-of-its-six-major-dialects">which</a>?</p>
<p>Coptic is negligible in Quran as compared with Syriac, even Latin (<i>qasr</i>, <i>sirât</i>, I'd add <i>burûj</i>). What Coptic does affect, is the translation-history of the Bible in Egypt, alongside apocryphal texts like "Thomas" (the upstream monks were... lax, on the distinction). What was the state of the <i>Greek</i> Bible, when it got up there? Also: we might be interested in the Coptic which formed the basis of the Patriarch histories, or of John of Nikiu.</p>Darayvushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/17973750966981889517noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2106819459390788807.post-47939997934108692772024-03-11T18:30:00.026-06:002024-03-21T12:44:18.149-06:00Ḥnanišoʿ's episcopal court<p>I don't have much so I'll google-translate <a href="https://www.academia.edu/113567244/La_justice_des_%C3%89glises_syriaques_en_terre_d_Islam_VIIe_IXe_si%C3%A8cle_">this from Mathieu Tillier</a>, 205-21; 2.1.209:</p>
<blockquote><p>Since the disappearance of the Sassanid Empire in the 7th century, ecclesiastical authors like Simeon of Rev-Ardašir took for granted that it was up to the bishop to resolve conflicts between Christians. The synods which succeeded one another in the Sufyānid period (660-683), notably that of George I, held in 676 in Darai/Dirin, affirmed that Christians must bring trials (dine) within the Church and submit their quarrels (ḥeryane) to priests – or, possibly, lay people – appointed as judges by their bishop. The latter exercised restrained justice and could be seized by a litigant who did not wish to address his priest. The ecclesiastical magistrate was therefore not an arbiter freely chosen by the litigants, but a judge established by a hierarchical authority claiming a monopoly of Justice.</p><p>
If the practices of priests and bishops are poorly documented, a corpus of letters attributed to Ḥenanišoʿ I sheds some light on the judicial role of the catholicos at the end of the 7th century. The latter received the litigants in audience at the seat of the patriarchate, al-Madāʾin/Ctesiphon. Very often, the applicant appeared alone, his opponent having refused to accompany him. The catholicos could render a judgment or transfer the trial to a delegated authority (ecclesiastical or secular), in the locality of the plaintiff. The rescript he sent to the lower judge could contain a conditional judgment, depending on the result of the recipient's investigations. When the Catholicos already had evidence, he issued an unconditional verdict which he charged his addressee to apply.</p></blockquote>
<p>I was dimly aware of this first Ḥnanišoʿ from <cite>Seeing Islam</cite>. He was catholicos from AD 686-91 (about when John bar Penkaye is bemoaning... everything); then in exile until 693 when ʿAbd al-Malik relented and let him back on the cathedra. Per Hoyland, 200-3: Hajjâj announced the office "abolished" in 695 - but our man lasted until 698, running things from his monastery. He wrote copiously, like Išoʿyahb III before him; and like that one, did not say much about the "shultane de-ʿalma". His (fragmentary, then or at least now) commentary on (Peshitta-) Matthew has a slight reference to the "folly" that Christ was a mere man, which credal statement was of utmost importance to ʿAbd al-Malik as the newly-anointed "David" in Jerusalem.</p>
<p>Islam being slightly weak in the 690s Orient, those lands having had to be reconquered, and its peoples still highly Christian, it makes sense that the Christians' courts were ... Christian. Ḥnanišoʿ, it seems, was well-regarded among the Christians as of AD 691, more so than <a href="https://www.academia.edu/100970710/%C4%AA%C5%A1%C5%8D%CA%BFyahb_the_Great">Išoʿyahb "<i>le grand</i>"</a> had been. Hence, the caliph's attempt to domesticate this Christianity, as a subbranch of Islam; hence, <a href="https://pjmedia.com/robert-spencer/2024/03/11/china-plans-to-sinicize-islam-we-can-learn-from-this-but-not-in-the-way-you-might-think-n4927191">why that didn't work</a>.</p>
<p>Ḥnanišoʿ wrote an argument for schools as the basis of Christian education. We fellow-dyotheletes in the Occident can assuredly appreciate the thought; Ḥnanišo himself perhaps just <a href='/2020/12/bar-sauma-protestant.html'>needed the schools dependent upon his cathedra</a>. Beyond that his thought is had from his correspondence which I haven't read.</p>Darayvushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/17973750966981889517noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2106819459390788807.post-58611043540654230092024-03-10T08:41:00.150-06:002024-03-14T09:39:19.092-06:00The Talmud in Late-Antiquity<p>It wouldn't be a Talmud without mutual arguments, so - <a href='https://bmcr.brynmawr.edu/2024/2024.03.06/'>Noah Benjamin Bickart versus Monika Amsler</a>, on the Bavli / Iraqi compilation. Bickart seems less prickly than (say) Jacob Neusner.</p>
<p>Current Talmud scholarly-consensus is that Bavli is mostly Sasanian, with some <a href="/2020/11/witness-to-early-western-islam.html">sprinkles of post-Islam</a>; much like <a href="https://bmcr.brynmawr.edu/2024/2024.03.03/">that <cite>Iliad</cite> consensus</a> that this epic-poem is mostly Archaic, with a few chapters spliced in later like book 10. (We're not here <a href="https://www.academia.edu/28566483/The_case_of_Book_Ten_and_the_unity_of_the_Iliad_plot_in_ancient_scholarship_The_case_of_Book_Ten_and_the_unity_of_the_Iliad_plot_in_ancient_scholarship">to argue</a> <cite>Iliad</cite>.)</p>
<p>Bickart points out that if the Iraqi Jews had the Talmud, they weren't using it. Hey, much like Yonatan Adler is arguing for <i>the Torah itself</i>, under the Ptolemies! Although, I'd add to Bickart (I haven't read Amsler): the Talmudists were drawing from the same interpretive-tradition and popular-culture, as we see in <a href="/2023/02/the-bible-in-bowls.html">Iraqi divination-bowls and ostraca</a>.</p>
<p>Some of the pericopae are constructed according to Aristotelian norms, even Cicero. I didn't know they had Cicero or Seneca or other Latins in the 'Iraq. It is well known that the Syriac world had <a href="https://www.philosophisingin.com/post/philosophy-in-syriac">Aristotle in Edessene Syriac</a>, which along with its Hatrene predecessor was intelligible to Iraqi Jews. Admittedly our copies come from Qenneshre which was the region around Antioch, the westernmost reach of Syriac and Miaphysite at that. But the political <i>limes</i> had been erased by then if not the religious ones.</p>
<p>These Jews also had medical texts. The Qinnashrin Christians had Galen in translation; Masarjawayh was an Iraqi Jew who had Ahrun's Pandects, from Egypt. Amsler dares reconstruct a medical text from its excerpts in Talmud.</p>
<p>This blog has long argued for crisis, as motive, for the Jewish sages to compile what "Judaism" even meant anymore. Much like those Zoroastrian texts, among the Aryans. It's just that we've <a href="/2020/12/reform.html">pinned it on the AD 530s-40s solar blackout</a>. Amsler would have me pull back the clock by a century, <q>before the middle of the fifth century</q>. This Talmud was done after the Jerusalem Talmud; Amsler says, in response.</p>
<p>That means: before Yazdegird II. A writing around the time of Yazdegird I would put it alongside the Christian synod of 410 which brought the Church of the East in full communion with the Roman Church (until Theodosius II and Pulcheria ruined everything). So the "crisis" would simply be <i>competition</i>.</p>
<p>If fifthcentury maybe that's exactly why Iraqi Jews didn't at first accept it. They deemed it a me-too and an exercise in scribal hometown-spirit. A work of vanity, in effect.</p>
<p>Of interest (to me) is the Talmud's arrangement of text by keyword. The same phenomenon Neil Robinson has noted in the Quran, sura-internally and across suwar throughout the "'Uthmanic" text. Thus the McDowell-ish arguments to which Raymond Farrin has subjected us, and to a less-annoying extent Michel Cuypers. I've argued keywording holds for Ibn Mas'ûd and Ubay as well, also the Sana' 1; which suffices to refute such apologetics, but remains a valid observation and technique, as Robinson had intended in the first place. Were the Jerusalem Talmudists doing the same?</p>
<p>BACKDATE 3/14</p>Darayvushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/17973750966981889517noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2106819459390788807.post-39734455236908900092024-03-09T17:00:00.000-07:002024-03-14T12:49:35.020-06:00A Scar is made (not born)<p>Patric Gagne (should be "Patrice" <i>en française, non</i>?) writes about <a href="https://www.wsj.com/health/wellness/i-always-knew-i-was-different-i-just-didnt-know-i-was-a-sociopath-68ebe08b">being a snake from toddler-age</a>. This seems like opposite of <a href="https://voxday.net/2024/03/12/testimonials-to-the-power/">the Gamma</a>. The Gamma isn't born; he's <i>spoiled</i>.</p>
<p>And it's hard to unspoil something. It's likely impossible to alter a sociopath; her settings are Factory. By contrast the Gamma isn't a sociopath. The Gamma <i>wants</i> approval, in all senses of "want".</p>
<p>But the Gamma has a hard time getting that by merit. It isn't (anymore) natural for the Gamma to behave as people respect. And the Gamma likely has had a history of failing-at-it, thus ensuring he's been cold-shouldered early-on. How's he fixing this? If he's been ousted from the Cool People Table, with the Alpha and his Bravo betae (<i>bayût</i>?), naïfs imagine he could try another table; but now all the other tables see him as an upstart loser. Any attempt to rise above is getting snapped back, even by those he thought might be his friends.</p>
<p>So <cite>Can't Buy Me Love</cite>, if a real story, would frontload Dempsey's fall to the first day of school; like <cite>The Karate Kid</cite> did. The former film works mainly as parable cautionary for the Bravo-curious Delta (until the ending which is copout and Cope). Most Deltas don't dare that journey to Bravo, because they instinctively know to hit up the lower-status table first. And Omegas... <a href="https://sigmagame.substack.com/p/dont-pity-the-poor-omega">well, whatever</a>.</p>
<p>The Gamma has a ready solution against resigning himself to Omega status or trying harder with the Deltas: he can retreat into fantasy. He's Alpha in his own mind. He's Aragorn, <a href="https://sigmagame.substack.com/p/when-the-secret-king-wins-again">just living out his Sigma phase</a>. He interprets sympathy, or at least indifference, as friendship - that's as close as he gets. He convinces... himself. <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=my7sxZ0KfHU">Everyone else knows (miles) better.</a></p>
<p>As to whether it's easier to fix the sociopath or the Gamma: who knows. They have to do it themselves. They have to desire it. The sociopath can at least fake caring for others, although <a href="https://sigmagame.substack.com/p/ask-the-sigma-the-alphas-widow">not always longterm</a>. The Gamma has to fight the urge to retreat or to overstep, every single day.</p>
<p>BACKDATE 3/14: not my bravest slot of poastage, mayhap.</p>Darayvushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/17973750966981889517noreply@blogger.com0