How to make a sundial

There are lots of articles on how to make a sundial. It is really quite complex to manage it for any given time of year or latitude. Why am I asking?

I am reading Marcus Tomalin's book. Telling the Time in British Literature, 1675-1830, Hours of Folly? (Routledge 2020).

In chapter 4 on Sundials, he shows the respect for Archbishop James Ussher, who "was described (metaphorically) as 'the Sun_dial by which all great Scholars set their watches' (Barksdale 1661, 128)"

You can get an idea of how much harder it is to make a sundial than sticking a straw through a paper plate from the article here. (Images do not show well on a phone.)

The state of intellectual achievement, whether in ancient Egypt or the long 18th century, is still very complex even if we disagree about the age of the earth. I think we might have a hard time passing their exams or following their thoughts.

Tomalin also cites Robert Boyle (signing himself as T. E. a layman).

"... as I make use of my Watch to estimate Time, when ever the Sun is absent or clouded, but when he shines clearly forth, I scruple not to correct and adjust my Watch by his Beams cast on a Dial; so, wherever no better Light is to be had, I estimate Truth by my own Reason; but where Divine Revelation can be consulted, I willingly submit my fallible Reason to the sure Informations afforded by Celestial Light."

Ah, Judgment. 

Who can say (on what errand the insolent emu walks between morning and night on the edge of the plain?) Any appeal to 'Divine' renders the argument unprovable.

We are flightless birds, and yet we claim to know the bright wings of the Spirit. Persistence, another name for the faith that names things, may yet provide us wings.

I recommend Marcus's book. It is a delightful recapitulation of the canon of poetry, science, and literature that we grew up with.

Reflections on the upcoming Biblical Studies carnival

 It is a pleasure and a surprise to immerse myself again in the community of scholars, pastors, and teachers who post on Biblical things during the month. Studies - my title says. And studiousness is part of it, but I ask myself at the beginning of each month whether my focus will be too narrow or too wide or what will emerge as a theme for the month and so on.

It is a bit like composing. Will this piece be andante, or minimalist, or contrapuntal, or homophonic, and what stray instruments or obligato will emerge during the process. 

Some scholarship is long winded, some short. Some takes years to develop, some is twitter like, trying to capture a thought for the ages. One of the books I am currently reading has little if anything to do with Biblical Studies (though not so little as one might think). This is Telling the Time in British Literature, 1675 - 1830 Hours of Folly? by Marcus Tomalin. It is under the banner of British Literature in Context in the Long Eighteenth Century. The words on the cover alone take some reflection. Just what is the Long Eighteenth Century?

We are in some long years at the moment. Perhaps some years last for ever. Perhaps as Herbert reminds us, there is only one day, let alone year, and that one ever. The Tomalin book is a product of years of research stemming from Hazlitt's 'On a Sun-Dial' that Marcus had lectured on in 2012 at the Hazlitt Day School under the title 'Hazlittian Horology'. (Who knew Hazlitt was so important!) The overture-like introduction, like those in many commentaries, has more citations and references than I can count at a glance (just under 100). Yes this is scholarship. And now you know that I know what it is - so I am without excuse.

If I can recognize scholarship, does that give me leave to include in a BS carnival some works that may not be scholarly? This tension is often hard to resolve. Biblical encompasses such a wide area of interest, it is somewhat less focused than horology. But it is difficult to read a truly focused work especially if one might be blinded by the intensity of the lense. Does this mean a carnival will be difficult to read? Perhaps.

A theme is emerging this month - that of tongues. By this I mean languages in general and the problems with converting from one to the other through translation. This theme is always present to some extent in any carnival, but the number of posts this month exceeds the usual. Along with the theme, I divide the carnival as is customary into Tanakh and New Testament. I have let the tongues theme suffer a little incoherence to include everything else that cannot easily fit into TNK or NT 'exclusively'. 

For new carnival hosts, structurally, I include also a section on those related to Biblical Studies who die during the month - a short or long In Memoriam section. I am sure I miss some because my reach is not huge and many of the 200+ blogs that I follow are no longer posting much. There is also a final section on upcoming carnivals and a shout out to Phillip Long who manages the BS Carnivals. 

Besides the study of the Biblical content, any BS carnival may include books beyond the various canons, subjects like archaeology, music, reception history and theology and any number of what might seem peripheral issues, liturgical calendars, feasts, poetry. It is an inexhaustible list of potential subjects.  

Also, a carnival is supposed to be a fun thing. Most of us these days are wondering what that is exactly. In these days of tragedy, threats, lies, and mock trials, tribalism, famine, fraud, and armed violence against humanity on many fronts, it is hard to think about the partying of Purim, or the traditional February carnivals like Mardi Gras, which is today, as it happens.

With words too, we all tend to defend our chosen phrases, our in-group language. What shibboleth will I violate if I am serious, or if I make a joke? Can I even make a joke? Maybe. 

Very seriously, I read this morning about 'the word of God', the 'personal knowledge of Jesus Christ', and several other specifics identifying the two. I also read about many other Biblical things. It led me to meditate on a number of issues: formula, pattern memorization (there is a legitimate need here), knowledge of character, revealing of that character in action, illness, kindness, reconciliation, is knowledge only personal, use of power or openness, freedom and criminal behaviour (reflecting another post from today), ultimate conflict, aural and visual approaches to language (reflecting my own difficulty in learning without aural immersion).

Some posts need to be attenuated to give them a necessary foundation, an appeal beyond the reach of mere power or tribe. The post raised this question (and others) for me: to what extent does the character of Yahweh reflect that of Jesus and vice versa, and if so, why do we not see this more clearly. What of such character are we seeing today? And just what do we say with the word Christ in a sentence?

If you have any posts, please let me know. Recommend others or your own. Leave a comment or tweet me @drmacdonald. The carnival is not short of posts even now, but I would welcome finding out about bloggers I have not got on my lists. If you get to this post, please look around. I have been busy this month.

Reviewing a review of Burns, words, only words

BURNS, J. — The Music of the Psalms, Proverbs and Job in the Hebrew Bible. (Jüdische Musik, 9). Verlag Otto Harrassowitz, Wiesbaden, 2011. (30 cm, XIII, 495). ISBN 978-3-447-06191-9. ISSN 1613-7493. / 68,- in BIBLIOTHECA ORIENTALIS LXX N° 1-2, januari-april 2013 p 192

I don't have the subject text or 68 Euros to spare. But I was curious if the statistics implied in Raymond de Hoop's review hold up in my data.

De Hoop writes:

In this chapter he emphasizes the strong relationship between a disjunctive accent and its regular preceding disjunctive, like for instance tifcha-atnach or pashta-zaqef, a relationship, which is also mentioned in the grammar of Joüon-Muraoka (§15i).3 ) More revolutionary is that he refers to the fact that in such regular combination the preceding (“intermediary”) disjunctive might in addition have its own regular preceding disjunctive (“prefix” disjunctive), resulting in combinations like for instance tvir-tifcha-atnach or geresh-pashta-zaqef.

Can you believe anyone here is writing about music?

The first question this raises for me is, How often does tifcha-atnach or pashta-zaqef occur in this sequence? Let's remind ourselves what these signs are. Tifcha is g#, atnach is A. And yes they frequently occur in this sequence, 8,733 times. The pair is very frequent in the approach to the subdominant (as a musician would expect). They are both sub-lineal signs.

Pashta is the prose version of qadma. They are both supra-lineal signs. They have differing placement. ב֙ ב֨. Haïk-Vantoura interprets each as a single note above the reciting note. One could think of it as an inverted mordent. Zaqef, roughly speaking is its opposite, though there are two the lesser and the greater and her interpretation of them is not quite the same. So how often do these occur in sequence? I count 320 matches for pashta zaqef-gadol and 6532 for qadma zaqef-gadol. So they are each relatively frequent.

Now what about the intermediary disjunctive, tvir-tifcha-atnach? d g A occurs 589 times.

geresh-pashta-zaqef? no matches, geresh-qadma-zaqef 4 verses only. E.g. Numbers 14:19.

What is frequent when there are 23197 verses? Apart from the last one which is obviously rare, the others run from less than 2.5%, hardly significant, to about 30 up to 40% of the verses, relatively frequent but not overwhelmingly so.

But who would explain music with such statistics? Even the musician Burns writes: “we must assume that the Biblical text contains all essential information for its performance – and consequently any elements that it does not contain – like the exact performance of melodies, which, today, vary from one locality to another – are unessential".

This is a very disappointing assumption. We do not need to assume any such thing. We do need to use all the information at hand to figure out what we have. We have melody by a set of inferences on the number and placement of signs below the text. Haïk-Vantoura's key is the best use of Occam's razor in the analysis of the accents that we have seen in 1000 years. We do not have an indication of mode. SHV herself said it takes musical judgment. We all must learn to judge with what we have and weigh the consequences. The possibilities for musical development are extensive. That is our gift.

As for de Hoop's conclusion,

I regret to say that the book is too obvious an “Unvollendete”. Only for those readers who are really acquainted with the Masoretic accentuation the book might offer some interesting insights for study.

There is no 'finished' book on the accents in the commonly accepted literature that I have come across. Haïk-Vantoura's book demonstrates the beauty of the musical possibilities. I have put out on the web 929 files that allow one to examine the music of each chapter as music and to develop further music. I have written a short book that attempts to tell the Scriptural story in music and clearly explains Haïk-Vantoura's inferences. I have seen no adequate view of the history of the signs. Older manuscripts than Aleppo are needed. Mitchell's book is the clearest I have read.

I am totally biased against studying the existing terminology of disjunctive and conjunctive. Those who 'are really acquainted' with these are lost. The terms are useless when describing music. In the confused literature on the accents of the last 1000 years, they are explained in contradictory ways. The musical phrase never conflicts with parallelism or word recurrence. It is the musical phrase that resolves the problems of understanding prosody in the Hebrew Scriptures. There are plenty of performed examples available from the last link on the music page.

Literature I have referenced on this subject:

Adler, Cyrus, and Cohen, Francis L. http://jewishencyclopedia.com/articles/3986-cantillation.

Anonymous. 1744. The Majesty and Singular copiousness of the Hebrew Language Asserted and Illustrated. In Eighteenth Century Collections Online, via the University of Victoria Library.

Behrens, Kenneth. 1990s. The Vowel Mantra of the Gospel to the Egyptians and the interpretation of the Masoretic te'amim and other ancient cryptic symbols as musical notation, unpublished manuscript.

DeHoop, Raymond, 2013. The System of Masoretic Accentuation and Colometry in the Hebrew Bible. Oudewater, The Netherlands. https://www.academia.edu/1468512/The_System_of_the_Masoretic_Accentuation_in_the_Hebrew_Bible.

DeCaen, Vincent. 2005. On the distribution of Major and Minor Pause in Tiberian Hebrew in the Light of the Variants of the Second Person Independent Pronouns. Journal of Semitic Studies L/2.

Dotan, A. 1967. The Diqduqé Hatt’amim of Aharon ben Moshe ben Asher. Jerusalem, Masorah, EJ 16, 1401-82.

Dresher, Bezalel Elan. 1994. The Prosodic Basis of the Tiberian Hebrew System of Accents, Linguistic Society of America, Language, Vol. 70, No. 1.

General synod of the Anglican Church of Canada. 1963. The Canadian Psalter.

Gesenius, Kautzsch, Cowley. 1909. Hebrew Grammar.

Haïk-Vantoura, Suzanne. 1976. The Music of the Bible Revealed: The Deciphering of a Millenary Notation (in French).

– 1991. The Music of the Bible Revealed: The Deciphering of a Millenary Notation. John Wheeler (Editor), Denis Weber (Translator).

Heller, Charles. 2006. What to Listen for in Jewish Music. Ecanthus Press.

Jacobson, Joshua R. 2002. Chanting the Hebrew Bible, The Complete Guide to the Art of Cantillation, The Jewish Publication Society.

Kugel, James L. 1981. The Idea of Biblical Poetry, Parallelism and its history. Yale University Press.

Levin, Saul. 1994. The מתג according to the practice of the early vocalizers. State University of New York at Binghampton.

– 1998. The Masoretic Chant of the Hebrew Bible. AJS Review 23 (1). [Cambridge University Press, Association for Jewish Studies]: 112–16. http://www.jstor.org/stable/1486738.

Levy, Elizabeth and Robinson, David. 2002. The Masoretes and the Punctuation of Biblical Hebrew, British and Foreign Bible Society. http://lc.bfbs.org.uk/e107_files/downloads/masoretes.pdf

MacDonald, Bob. 2013. Seeing the Psalter, Patterns of Recurrence in the Poetry of the Psalms, Energion Publications.

– 2014. “Using Software to Analyse Patterns of Recurrence in the Poetry of the Psalms”, Journal of Religion, Media and Digital Culture 3(3), pp.129-148. [online] Available at: http://jrmdc.com/papers-archive/volume-3-issue-3-december- 2014/.

Margolis, Max L. 1911. The Place of the Word-Accent in Hebrew, Journal of Biblical Literature, Vol. 30, No. 1. http://www.jstor.org/stable/3259030.

Martín-Contreras, Elvira and Miralles-Maciá, Lorena. 2014. The text of the Hebrew Bible: From the Rabbis to the Masoretes, Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht.

Mitchell, David. 2012. http://home.scarlet.be/~tsf07148/theo/Resinging.pdf, published in the Journal for the Study of the Old Testament 36/3.

– 2013. How can we sing the Lord’s Song? Deciphering the Masoretic Cantillation in Jewish and Christian Approaches to the Psalms: Conflict and Convergence, ed. Susan Gillingham, OUP.

– 2015. The Songs of Ascents: Psalms 120 to 134 in the Worship of Jerusalem's Temples, Campbell Publications.

Mulder, Martin Jan and Sysling, Harry (ed.). 2004. Mikra, Text, Translation, Reading and Interpretation of the Hebrew Bible in Ancient Judaism and Early Christianity. Hendrickson.

Reuchlin, Johann. 1518. De accentibus, et orthographia, lingua Hebraicae, à Iohanne Reuchlin Phorcensi … libri tres cardinali Adriano dicati, https://archive.org/details/bub_gb_vCxCn36grhYC.

Revell, E.J. 1971. The Oldest Evidence for the Hebrew Accent System. Bulletin of the John Rylands University Library of Manchester, Volume 54. http://www.jstor.org/stable/416739.

– 1976. Biblical Punctuation and Chant in the Second Temple Period. Journal for the Study of Judaism, Vol. VII, No. 2.

– 2012. The occurrence of Pausal Forms. Journal of Semitic Studies LVIII.2.

Richter, Helmut. http://www.mechon-mamre.org/c/hr/intro.htm#purp.

Rubin, Emmanuel. http://scholarworks.umass.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=1000&context=music_faculty_pubs.

The Hebrew Student 2 (5/6). 1883. Antiquity and Authority of the Hebrew Accents. University of Chicago Press: 164–69. http://www.jstor.org/stable/3156048.

Tomalin, Marcus. 2009. Contextualising Accents And Alphabets In The Work Of Christopher Smart, The Review of English Studies, 11/2009, Volume 60, Issue 247. http://www.jstor.org/stable/405771.

Weil, Daniel Meir. 1995. The Masoretic Chant of the Hebrew Bible. Jerusalem: Rubin Mass.

Werner, Eric. 1982. Review of: La musique de la bible révélée; une notation millénaire décryptée, premier recueil: 14 mélodies essentielles, accompagnement pour cordes pincées. Notes 38 (4). Music Library Association: 923–24. doi:10.2307/939998. http://www.jstor.org/stable/939998

Wickes, William. 1881, 1887. 1970. Two treatises on the accentuation of the Old Testament. Ed. Orlinsky, with a prolegomenon by Aron Dotan.

Yarchin, William. 2015. Were the Psalms Collections at Qumran true Psalters? In Journal of Biblical Literature, 134, no. 4.

Biblical Studies Carnival - September 2016 is available

A BS Carnival is a selection of posts related to Biblical Studies in the inter-blogger-webo-twit-face-sphere for the month of October 2017. (Social Media moniker is from the Crusty Old Dean.)

The old sole-sources are defunct - the biblioblog list is always empty these days, the blogosphere has morphed to social media and likely plenty of places I don't follow, some of which I probably have an account on but I rarely look at.

I will be doing the BS carnival for October - let me know what posts you find that you think would fit. You can reach me via a tweet @drmacdonald.

You will find the September carnival from Randy McCracken here.  If you want to learn a little Hebrew, this Abbot and Costello skit is a hoot!  Similar to the Jack Junks Opinion of the French Language. (Thanks to Marcus Tomalin, The French Language and British Literature, Routledge 2016, for the image idea.)

A suitable warning

This quote might have come from Doug Saunders in a Globe editorial on the fear of refugees, but instead it is from a book I have just taken up, The French Language and British Literature, 1756-1830, British Literature in Context in the Long Eighteenth Century, by Marcus Tomalin.

From the Introduction, page 2: "Whenever nationalism and foreignness are contested, appearance and reality are frequently divergent."

How does Arabic poetry behave as rhetoric compared to Hebrew poetry?

Y'all know of course that Arabic and Hebrew are cognate languages.

Many Arabic and Hebrew words are the same. The prepositions and pronouns behave similarly, and verbal forms are not too dissimilar. E.g. your house:

Modern Standard Arabic certainly contains enclitic pronouns. These are pronouns that function syntactically like independent morphemes but which are phonologically dependent upon other morphemes. Enclitics come after their host morpheme (as opposed to proclitics and mesoclitics which do what their names imply). So, in Arabic you have bayt-u-ka (house-Nominative-marker-2nd person masculine singular pronoun) = your house. [from Dr. Marcus Tomalin via email.]

Another example is seen in the first word below: bismi - in the name of bi-sm-i. prefix b, the same as Hebrew meaning 'in', root sm, similar to the Hebrew shem, suffix i, like the Hebrew construct. The text below is the first four words of the Koran. In English: In the name of Allah, compassionate, merciful. [updated]

Over the past several weeks I have had conversations with a colleague about Arabic so I have begun to experiment a little. I have organized my software to present Arabic in its tables (having learned a little about the alphabet over the last week or two) so that I can perform some rhetorical analysis on the words, somewhat like this.

Word	1	2	3	Vs	Root
بِسْمِ	░			1	سمو
اللَّهِ		░		1	اله
الرَّحْمَنِ			░	1	رحم
الرَّحِيمِ			░	1	رحم

I haven't much data yet.  If you would like to submit some data, please leave me a comment. I need about 70 words to do a proper experiment. For each Arabic word, I need the word, and the root of the word in Arabic and in transcription (or do just the Arabic - I may be able to figure the transcription out myself - good exercise).