Mark in the wilderness

Twelve years ago Dr. Mark Goodacre lectured about what life would look like without his namesake Gospel. Somehow it took until last year before an essay made it into publication.

One contrafactual is, what if nobody ever wrote that particular defence of Mar Kepha. This much is difficult even to comprehend, if Christianity existed only upon the backs of James, John, Paul and maybe Thomas; would "Gospels" even exist? There'd be a biographical tradition but what would it look like?

The other contrafactual, which this post can ponder, is: suppose Mark went the way of Egerton and of the Gospel of Hebrews. That is: it was composed. The later New Testament cited it, or didn't; starting with Matthew and Luke (and Acts). Then it was lost. How was it lost, and how far can it be lost?

Goodacre of course has his reasons, as Fuller had his reasons. I must disclose mine own biases, being Catholic. But here, I am most intrigued by the opportunity to play the What If... game. Permit me to map early Christian literature as close to the mainline as possible. Spoiler: the Church endures.

I allow early-Patristics retained hold on Mark, directly or indirectly. 2 Clement 2:4 is usually cited here, as quoting Mark 2:17 ουκ ηλθον καλεσαι δικαιους αλλα αμαρτωλους; as now, without the metanoia, although 2 Clement 8 will get around to that. Papias still contrasts Mark's memoirs of Peter against Matthew's Hebrew-language tradition. The Muratorian Canon as today is mutilated before mention of Mark or Matthew, and may or may not count four gospels.

But by the time of Irenaeus nobody important is proposing Mark-as-we-know-it as one of the canon Gospels, and no commentaries ever get composed.

The key moment in my calculus is at Antioch, whose bishop Serapion notes our Mark as like to the "Gospel of Peter", to reject all such. Similar moves are made in Egypt, Edessa, and the Latin West. Absent our Mark's nigh apocalypticism, the mainline Church's eschaton shifts to the more staid accounts in what we call "Matthew" (more on this anon) and "Luke".

As to the main alteration from the Church as we know it I expect a richer trade in the additional Agrapha, those sayings cited "from the Lord" but not (anymore) known by which isnad. In our world Papias and Hegesippus may even have done their work exactly because their audience found difficult to get copies of our Mark or else didn't trust this Mark. In the alt-world: copies of Papias and maybe Hegesippus get made early on, exactly because no proper Christian can find Mark, so needs bridge this gap amongst all the early-Patristics' parallel-readings. These extraneous traditions are assumed from Matthew where not ascribed to John and other "Elders". From Papias' influence that pro-Peter gospel which we now call "Matthew" is subsequently associated with Mark and takes that title.

Expelled from Antioch, our crippled paraMarkan gospel limps its way up rural Anatolia - to die. Mainline haeresiology - lookin' at Tertullian here - mentions the Montanists' "false" Markan gospel; at the same time as the Church Fathers note Marcion's false Luke with truncated "Romans".

2 Clement's variants are assumed paraphrase to the alt-known three-gospel canon, not witnesses. Justin Martyr's parallels: likewise; and all this stuff in Arabic. The Diatesseron is remembered as the Diatreion or something like that, maybe the "Tripod"; but still bears Markan readings, here and there. Most churchmen assume these wild readings come from Papias or someone like that.

A whisper persists. Tertullian, who knew the Montanism best, notes a few Marcan readings in their bible; other Fathers comment on the Carpocratians. Epiphanius devotes a (very) few paragraphs to the Montanists' Mark knowing only as much as Tertullian knew. These sparse notes trickle along the sidelines.

With more respect for Papias and so on, comes more heated controversy against nonorthodox gospel sayings-tradition like in GosThomas. Either translations creep into Latin and Syriac; or else they never creep into Coptic. I'll assume that Thomas and others go like they do here: fragmentary Greek, full Coptic, only found lately.

All this amounts to a Western Christendom vaguely aware of a variant Mark; but this lore makes little difference to orthodoxy, aware also of variant Luke. Of more impact to Church history is Papias as a more-copied Apostolic Father. The Protestant Reformation rejects Papias and burns his works.

It is for modern times when Mark Goodacre would lift the embargo: first at Oxyrhynchus, I guess, with fragments of "proto-Mark" (i.e. Mark) then up river, a full codex in Sahidic. In the late 1940s we next catch rumour of Geez, Syriac, Arabic, and/or Latin MSS here and there but their publication is delayed, for the same stupid and venal reasons as plagued "Judas".

Meanwhile (as real-1950) Morton Smith proposes Clement of Alexandria as witness to the Carpocratians' secret Mark. You know - the "gay" one, with the ephebe. Smith muddies the well and induces great skepticism that the newly-found Mark is real in the slightest anywhere.

Also as here, the Nubian Mark (with Luke!) from Sunnarti is published in the 1980s. That might be the point at which Pope John Paul II must decide what to do with this thing. In the midst of the Scandals.

The Caribbean salt islands

As I was banging around Google Maps today I came across the major northern Caribbean / Antilles islands. The Turks-and-Caicos caught my eye, and Inagua. Despite Inagua's large area (if you count that lake) it didn't look like many people lived on it. I mean - it's behind that strait between Haïti and Cuba, not exactly prime real-estate today, but what about the Age Of Exploration? The Smithsonian might have the answer: salt.

Europeans and sailors deal with months on end without fresh food. Not-so-fresh food can be made edible, for that bit longer, by drying it out, and/or preserving it in ice or in salt. Historically Europeans have mined salt, hence towns with names like "Salzburg" and "Halstatt". It can also be taken from the ocean but first you have to dry out the brine.

Enter Turks-and-Caicos; which is exactly what the explorers did. These islands are not very wet and they seem not to host much in the way of forests, compared (say) with the Dominican Republic. Saltwater washes ashore, especially after tropical-storms and tsunamis, and dries out. Europeans figured pretty early that with just a few strategically-placed levees/levies and gates they could trap brine in high tides and (literally) rake in the profit after a sunny day and lowtide.

And this stuff was precious. The very Latin "salary" derives from this root. In English, White Gold they called it; and, yes, the English by the mid-AD-1600s owned Bermuda, Bahamas, and Barbados (and in 1655 would wrest Jamaica from Spain). By laws of economic-advantage, Turks-and-Caicos were off the usual seaways, but were close-enough those seaways to sell the salt.

Salt-raking was one of the easier Caribbean jobs, easier than cane-cutting anyway, so tended something sailors would do in between voyages. Of course slavery existed too at this time but there was always a problem with pirates, French Tortuga in particular being not far enough away, which pirates had the bad habit of stealing the slaves as well as the salt. This also encouraged a lack of the local investment which better-defended Cuba and Barbados got. Seasonal harvests; seasonal people, mostly men.

This strange claimed-but-barely-settled status led to some fascinating rivalries between the various British islands as to who got to collect the rents off of the salt trade. Bahamas were closest; they claimed the territory. But Nassau liked home in Nassau and never cared to invest in Turks-Caicos. Bermuda had the closest ties I guess because Bermuda was itself in the middle of nowhere and had fewer better options. Eventually Turks-Caicos said screw-this-noise and tied itself with Jamaica, across the strait. The Bahamas chain finally took upon itself to invest in its own salt island - namely Inagua. There went Turks-Caicos' market.

Madhu Thangavelu's lunar winnebago

When Portree poasts his blog, I (now) know to look to see if it be a repoast so: Nomad. This was Madhu Thangavelu's 1992 movable base on the moon.

The idea was to scout around for a suitable location before marking down stakes. Settling some waterless irradiated region with nothing but that horrible dust about would be a waste. Ideally you'd want a lavatube too. In the early 1990s we hadn't yet mapped the Moon as well as we might. We did know that we didn't like the dust. So: the mobile-home, without spacesuits.

One problem I see straightaway is - how are we LEAVING the Moon, if we've roved 10 km away from the rocket. Also Portree's commenters point out that tugging the power-supply, probably plutonium, along with a big wire cable is purest cods. I mean, really.

Points-for-trying, I guess.

If Apollo 18 or Artemis or whatever intends to scout for a permanent base then they should scout with satellites, or with various drones. If there is a human crew having landed on the Moon already, then: Hop David's hoppity pogo sticks (unmanned of course).

I am not seeing Moon Winnebago as a starter, unless the whole point is to move the plutonium reactor itself, from Base A (having spare plutonium) to Base B (not having plutonium). Along with the plutonium experts. Like I said: not a starter.

Although now I am wondering if The Martian took inspiration from this paper.

The argon bath

Earlier I'd noted dust-repelling surfaces. I wondered if that was possible or always desirable, to make all surfaces dust-repellant. Today we have the excellent news that liquid-nitrogen might wash it all away.

One problem is that nitrogen isn't common where is also regolith. Earth would have to ship canisters to the Moon and to near-Earth asteroids. Maybe Venus could ship it too but they'd be short on canisters and, of course, further down the Solar well. Out where nitrogen is common again, like around Saturn, there's no regolith to worry about.

The nitrogen is presumably compressed from the air that's already been shipped to the station, which structure is sealed, so the gas shouldn't be lost for reuse. Mars cares less about this on account they can just pull more nitrogen from the (admittedly thin) atmosphere.

Mars might be best of all the dusty worlds: half the atmosphere happens to be argon, which goes liquid at a higher-temperature than nitrogen. This means if the Martians (somehow) cool a chamber to about 85 K it should become a literal bath-room of argon in a nitrogen atmosphere. I am unsure how good argon is as a solvent; as documented here, it dissolves better than nitrogen in oils. But with regolith and Martian dust I don't hear anyone calling for solvents, just something reasonably-inert as will wash suits.

Another point-of-interest is that this 85 K bathroom's atmo, in Mars, defaults to 2:1 nitrox. 33% oxygen seems uncomfortably flammable - but is eminently breathable; so, maybe can be allowed to be lower-pressure, saving costs. I'd advise some warming-apparatus before ingesting this air into lungs. Also if the Martians have been breathing natural argox in their suits then they're getting the ol' Grecian Bends herein, which isn't a joke where sequestered from the rest of the habitat. Suits can be loaded up with pure nitrox for the outdoors, so they get The Bends out of the way before they even start.

Move over, xenon: III

SpaceX aren't waiting for the not-Hall for their sat-thrusters and are just going to use Hall with argon. Bold move (Cotton). This was all over space-twitter last Sunday, LouGrims yesterday offering about the best take. With maths.

Basically the cost of xenon and even of krypton is no joke. I never thought it was a joke but, yesterday LouGrims was telling me why. These noble-gasses were mined in, er, the Ukraine. Either-way: argon by contrast is 1% air-liquide: $30-50k savings in propellant. Even if Ukraine and Russia suddenly made up tomorrow and started Eastern Europe's biggest neon-lit gay orgy they still cannot make those gasses that much cheaper.

50% efficiency is great; I didn't think we could have this with a classic Hall using argon. ToughSF chimes in that SpaceX does 1000 W/kg against DART-C 342 (a third the alpha!).

The empty tomb as Marcan ineptum

First thing this morning I happened upon Vridar concerning Michael Duncan's brilliant 2022 book, Rhetoric and the Synoptic Problem. The Gospel take on Christ's famed tomb, absent Christ, intrigues me.

The Baghestan is Tertullianist in its approach to Christ's biography - it holds to the Dissimilarity Principle. We should entertain a gospel claim when said claim is ineptus against the Gospel, of Jesus as the Christ and living Lord. I hold three such claims as troubling for historic Christianity: the virgin-birth, the baptism by John, and the Cross itself. On reading Duncan one might be tempted to add the empty tomb - for Mark and Matthew, anyway.

Since Duncan has disclosed his biases, I shall do likewise: unlike Duncan, I am a Christian. I am "however" also a Catholic who does not necessarily agree with every word of the canon text. I will exercise my right to bring in Patristic evidence, starting with Ignatius and Jerome (setting aside for now the Epistula Apostolorum).

Matthew is a pro-Peter gospel. Duncan sees Mark as instead pro-Paul. But Evan Powell back in the 1990s found that Mark, like Matthew, supported Peter; namely against John 1-20, or against John's source (Evan's already un-spliced one chapter, the rest of us may as well go all-in). A direct Petrine witness to Jesus' resurrection should serve Mark's purpose best. Inasmuch as Mark doesn't claim this, the scene of an empty tomb with said tomb discovered by Mary of the Tower and maybe other women (who aren't Peter by definition) is ineptus to Mark. Epistula Apostolorum's account even refutes Mark, if we believed it.

Powell might claim Duncan's reading as vindication: if someone not Peter (like Mary) claimed to meet the risen Lord first, this forced all the Petrines into the fallback position: of denying direct access to this first post-resurrection appearance, from anybody. Mind, Powell would have to explain John 20's infamous footrace between Peter and the Beloved Disciple, which only exists due to the assumption of an empty tomb. Recall that Powell recognises only a diatesseronic Christian transposition upon John 1-20, not any Johannine redaction of a prior now-lost gospel. Duncan can explain this footrace as John reacting to Mark [UPDATE 2/28 or, er, to canonical Luke]. But this just makes Powell's problem into Duncan's problem: who came up with the tomb first, and why?

Maybe Powell would allow Paul's ἐτάφη. To that there are burials and there are burials. John 19:41-20:1 / Mark 15:46 depict a μνημεῖον: hewn from the rock and intended for someone else, not dug from the ground as if to dispose of rubbish.

Another possible subtext presents itself: claims that Jesus had no μνημεῖον. In parallel Ignatius offers his own pro-Peter take, in his letter to the faithful in Smyrna. Jerome will flag this as a citation of the "Gospel of the Hebrews". Ignatius cares that Jesus came in the flesh, after his body was nailed to the cross. We care that Ignatius, whether Christ was ἐτάφη or not, doesn't mention the tomb. Ignatius was responding to a docetic narrative, which docetism may - like John 3:14+12:34, and Sura 4 v. 157 - imply only an Ascension. But before all that, must have been talk that the Romans (and/or Jews) simply took Jesus' body away for the ravens, stray dogs and buzzards.

If this Ascension tradition be earliest, then the empty-tomb is no more ineptum for Mark. The four canon evangelists' shared problem is the lack of a chain-of-custody for the crucified Christ, prior to his appearance before Peter or Paul or even Thomas. (Evans argued that John 21 is this chapter missing in Mark; Duncan might bring Paul's claims in the epistles.) The empty tomb is how they keep Jesus' body safe from their rivals, which rivals start with the ... well, with the Jews.

More Doppling

Katherine Laliotis et al. have/has flushed neo-Vulcan for good and all. Besides HD 26965 / 40 Eri; HD 114613, and HDs 20794 and 85512 as published in the same paper, got buhleeted. I feel most sorry for F. Pepe and his 2011 crew.

I guess this happens when you spot a 40 day periodicity for three-four cycles. You cannot sit by the 'scope forever.

But the news is not all bad news.

The paper's abstract raises Delta Pavonis, HD 190248 to its friends. This is out at 164 mas parallax so 6.1 pc from us, so quite close; and it's almost exactly one solar mass at G8IV. If the periodicity be a planet its mass would be quite a bit less than Saturn's 95 Earth mass (69 Earths) at a very Saturnlike 11 AU from the star. Eitherway this rules out any Jovians nor even Saturns interior to that.

Strangely δPav didn't make the Discussion at the paper's end. This made more of the three Neptunians aroud HD 69830, and of Gliese 688's spectroscopic-binary "SB1"; both herein constrained. GJ 688 is also here marked (as K2.5V) so - I dunno. Is that companion a dim red dwarf? Why is it so dim that it can't be constrained even in mass? even from 11 parsecs?

Elsewhere 61 Virginis' three planets, or HD 115617 if you're them, got constrained. The outer one "d" is confirmed. Mind, the star is 0.82 L_☉ and this planet is at, what, 0.476 AU. Assuming rough coplanarity its inclination won't be much less 75° so mass not much more than 10.82/0.96592583 = 11.2 Earth masses. Looks beyond Venus; looks like a Sudarsky III. And its Hill might crowd out an Earth in the Habitable-Zone especially as coupled with the gravitational effects of the planets inward even of that.

Science-fiction authors should get quite a bit out of all this. They don't prove Earths in any of these HZs but also (61 Vir aside) don't rule them out, inasmuch as they've ruled out Neptunelikes in these HZs.