Dienswasser

China went looking for water-ice in the Martian tropics and didn't find none. Zimmerman has been suggesting that we look to the glaciers instead.

Yesterday we got major news from the south pole. Not just water ice; actual fluid.

At some point I need to run some sums on an Ice Gun in the Martian antarctic, aiming just as high as Phobos, or a reasonable Zylon dangle therefrom.

DIG MOAR 10/28: big ice blocks from 20 meters under Amazonis. That's 25° north. In fairness to the Chinese a meteor had to find it for us.

The Otomí pyramids

Today we hear of a 950 year old mummy... buried ~AD 540 (longcount 9.5.5.x.x). Yes, THAT era. The mum (literal XX!) was buried in a pyramid. So she was actually born 400 BC so, like, 6.18.0.0.0.

The locals are your standard altiplano Otomí / Nahua mix today so, the archaeologists (mostly local Mexican citizens) suspect the leaders were Otomí then - Nahua being, you know, northern. But the local genetics of the pyramid don't help - they were a mix. Mostly northwestern (Nahuas, Purépecha, Tarahumara) but there's Maya there too. Also to be kept in mind is that first the Triple Alliance and then the Spanish Conquest since brought Otomí and Nahua both into vast lands as were neither Otomí nor Nahua before AD 1441 = 11.11.0.0.0. And I remain skeptical as to when the Otomí arrived before that.

AD 540 was, as David Keys could tell you, significant, including in Mesoamerica. It wasn't long after this that a revolution overturned what the Maya called the Place Of Reeds. The Place Of Reeds was a polyglot concern. But this pyramid doesn't look Teo\huacano.

'Tain't Maya neither. No written records - at least, nothing chiseled. Wonder how long that will last? The Maya could write; and some of them did graffiti at the Place Of Reeds.

Burisma blowed up the pipeline

On the one hand, we have Biden promising to blow up the pipeline, and some Polish politicians thanking Biden for blowing up the pipeline.

And then there's Brennan out blaming the Russians.

However Biden seems sincere that he didn't expect this to happen. I don't think this is just a Biden problem; Biden's inner circle overall looks like it wasn't on a Need To Know Basis.

Brennan knows, I am certain. What Brennan says goes the opposite.

THE ACE VIEW 9/30: Post-Soviet engineering. To whit: the craftsmanship might have been shoddy to the point where somebody had to do regular maintenance on the thing. When the Russians were told to leave, they... left.

Plausible. This may be our way to save face, here in the West. I say run with it. I don't believe it but - I'll not argue the point.

ACE WAS WRONG 2/8/23: And I call on him to admit it. The lie was arguably noble but, as with Ozymandias in The Watchmen, it was still a lie, and lies get uncovered eventually.

For my part I'd underestimated Biden's complicity (although not Burisma's). Keeping in mind that Seymour Hersh might be holding back.

Zenobia 2015

I didn't go to Nederland Inferior in 2015; I went to IQSA in Atlanta instead (at risk of life and vehicle). Apparently the proceedings got published three years later - which nobody read, because it was in Dutch. Most of that, recently, is now translated to our language.

Seven years on we can ponder if this is all so dated. The reviewer David Woods disapproves the (English) title: most these essays are not, and never were, about Late Antique responses to the Arab conquests. In fairness back in 2018 they weren't about Mohammed en de Late Oudheid either.

Well, okay. I do see some Sura 30 in here. I've agreed to let the scholars just have this one, because I always suspected this one was early. Maybe even authentic to "Mohammed" . . . but, by that token, too difficult to interrogate for historicity.

I see some Motzki in here (zt''l); also van Bladel and al-Jallad. Although I suspect their essays have been floated in academia.edu since '15 or - worse - superceded by later work.

Of most interest to me is sura 16. Johan Weststeijn has thoughts about v. 67 in a Late Oudheid context. I admit - back in 2015 I don't know if I'd even dared sura 16 yet. I'm glad to have this article however belatedly.

Gnosticism against homosexuality

Dr Will Roscoe wrote this about the Gospel of Judas.

This blog you're reading now hasn't engaged the Judas Gospel - directly. (We do appreciate the Tchacos Codex here and we're glad we now own it.) We generally have associated the Judas Gospel with its namesake from Not The Nine O' Clock News (specifically the Beeb's Not 1982 calendar spinoff). Also the first Judas translations were ... unfit for purpose. (Since 2007 we might be better off.)

But, as the anti-Thomas people like to point out that fake gospel's anti-feminism; here Roscoe would point us to Judas' anti-homosexuality.

Roscoe believes that behind the polemic of Judas is an illumination of Judas' opponents - who are, as they must be, the other eleven disciples. If Judas condemns homosexuality and Judaism, this points to a pro-Jewish and pro-"Queer" (Roscoe's words) earliest, or at least earlier, Christianity. Judas meanwhile uses Pauline language as Paul did - as insults: arsenokoitēs.

Roscoe concludes, implies anyway, that James and Peter and The Twelve had set up a boys'-own society. The Carpocratians held best to the Apostles' vision - by way of Saint Mark, as Morton Smith has transmitted him. Paul resisted this and his "Homophobia" (Roscoe's word, again) has carried the day. But before Paul became orthodox, heterodox cults also adopted Paul - like the Valentinians. Judas represents a Sethian cult, also adopting Paul.

Of interest is that The Expanse proposes a future Christianity (based on Augustine) whose marriages shall be between a woman and a... woman. It's progressive Christianity today but four centuries from now, it may just be Christianity.

Eusebius of Emesa

I hear that Ishoʿdad cited one Eusebius of Emesa, Arabically Ḥimṣ. I think this town was Arabic-speaking already by Eusebius' AD fourth-century / AG seventh-century. Although: what dialect?

Eusebius himself spurned Arabic. Eusebius didn't approve Greek, either; he was a man Jerome would have approved, a Hebrew enjoyer. To that end Eusebius made a strong play for Biblical "Syriac", as he called it (ho Suros). "Syria" in his days expanded into Emesa on past Damascus. To narrow this down: from the quotations he makes therefrom (against the Greek), our scholars tend to see ho Suros as an ancestor to Peshitta. That's the Edessene language, not the Palaestinian language.

To narrow this in time: the Peshitta like the Vulgate is famously post-Masoretic. I conclude that Syriac had already displaced more-Palaestinian Aramaics at Ḥimṣ, among Christians, by the 300s / 600s.

Ishoʿdad of Merv

h/t Davila, whilst I recover from the massive hike I just did: Schmidt's translation of Ishoʿdad Marwazi on Daniel.

Ishoʿdad has, best I can tell, an Iranian name (and the man is traditionally thought to have come from the Margiana) but he settled as bishop of al-Ḥadītha over the first half of the ninth century AD so the middle 1100s AG. As an East-Syrian who didn't limit himself to East-Syrian exegesis, and as a fairly intelligent specimen of the breed, West-Syrians paid him the tribute of citing his work in turn.

Ishoʿdad's old-testament has been published before but, I guess, Schmidt felt he could do better with the Daniel part. And C. Van den Eynde's translation was in French.

Daniel is important for students of apocalyptic and, the ʿAbbasī era certainly raised up a lot of that. Ishoʿdad piques interest inasmuch as he rejects apocalyptic. He couches his study of Daniel such that Daniel's "prophecies" although true prophecies were all fulfilled in the Maccabean era. Which is the churchman's politically-correct dodge around Daniel's clear status as a Maccabean forgery.

Ishoʿdad is also, thereby, able to tell his fellow Christians to quit citing Daniel against the ʿAbbasid sultans. Which makes his commentary, perhaps, not terribly useful for Islam As Others Saw It... directly. Although one wonders if one might spot Daniel-based anti-Islam apocalypse in this book's shadow.