Reading Noah

So I was reading the Noah story in an interlinear with the Hebrew, and it just sounds totally different.

There’s a ton about how humanity ( ‘adam) is doing bad things, which affects all flesh (kal bashar, meaning humans but also implying animals), and how the face of the soil (p’ne ha-‘adama) needs to have the evil wiped off ( ’emkhe).

The main reason is that both humans and all flesh have ruined (various forms of the verb shakhet) the land, but also that they have ruined God’s road through the land. Which seems to be the last straw.

So therefore all flesh and humans will be ruined in the same way that the land was ruined, and that will be the end of all flesh, and all this mess will then be “wiped off” by the flood of waters.

However, the story is almost entirely about “the land,” (ha- ‘arets, or the rootword ‘erets) which in the Bible means Israel. There’s almost nothing to say that the rest of the world is getting flooded, other than that the Ark fetches up in Ararat, in Armenia.

(But arguably, the whole “river to sea” definition of Israel could include Ararat and Armenia, and there was historically a lot of trade and travel between Israel and Armenia. The kingdom of Urartu, aka Armenia, was a very big deal in the ancient Middle East, and a lot of Mesopotamian rivers started in Armenia’s mountains near Mount Ararat… including the Euphrates, which was “the river” in God’s definition of the full extent of Israel.)

All of this, of course, continues the Genesis/Eden story. Noah is cast as the natural successor to Enoch and the unfallen Adam, because he’s righteous and walks with God. His father named him Noah, while prophesying that he would be a “naham,” comfort, to humans while toiling over the soil.

The interesting bit is that, earlier in the chapter, God says that His spirit will not “rule” (din in Hebrew) or “abide” (katameino in Greek) in humans forever, because they are flesh too. So the maximum span of life will now be 120 years… but Noah is already 200 years old. So again, Noah is kind of a cosmic throwback to the earlier patriarchs with extremely long lives. (The Ignatius Study Bible notes that Moses is the first big patriarch who only lived to be 120. So there’s a theory that God gave humans 120 years of deadline to clean up their act, from the time that sons of Seth started intermarrying with daughters of Cain, and that that’s the real meaning of the passage.)

The various categories of animals get listed again (beasts, birds/flying things, livestock, creeping things), and we first hear about clean and unclean animals.

The idea seems to be that the Ark is a new “Eden on a ship,” or even a floating Cosmic Temple of God, just like Noah is the new Adam. An example of every kind of animal will be saved, and Noah will feed the animals and himself with the food he brings along. After the land is wiped clean and everything fixed by water, the new Eden will come to shore, and the land will be resettled by both humans and animals. The plants will take care of themselves or be brought to the land by birds – which means, they’ll go to other lands that weren’t flooded.

The LXX Greek generally goes along with this. But it sometimes translates “the face of the soil” as “on the earth,” just the same as they translate “in the land” as “on the earth.” So again, this probably contributes to confusion about worldwide vs. Israel-wide flooding.

Anyway… the point seems to be that “the land” is special, because that’s where God’s holy mountain and God’s holy garden and God’s holy road are. So just like it was particularly a sin to break the only law that forbade anything in Eden to the use of Adam and Eve, it’s particularly bad to have evil “on the face of the soil” in “the land.”

Probably none of this is a particularly new thought, but I was thinking about it this weekend, because somebody on the Catholicism subreddit was asking about the story.

Amelia: The UK’s Digital Aisling

Amelia escaped the UK government’s propaganda videogame, Pathways, and has become a meme supreme. She has inspired a score of other meme ladies for other countries.

But Ireland… already had hers. Heh. It’s okay that she looks different now, and it’s okay that she has a ton of different names. Because she always did.

She’s a sovereignty figure, representing a sovereign kingdom or over-kingdom in Ireland. The king would ritually marry her, usually, and poets would have dreams and visions of talking to her.

The vision of a sovereignty figure by an Irish poet is called an “aisling.”

The old format was that a poet would write about meeting a beautiful woman, who would talk to him and tell him her troubles (or he would tell his to her). Gradually the poet would realize that the lady is Ireland, and that she needs to be helped or freed.

One of the biggest aisling poets was Eoghan Rua O Suilleabhain. Another was Aodhagan O Rathaille. Domhnall Macarthaigh Mor also wrote an aisling poem.

A big free book of Eoghan Rua’s aisling poems. NOT WORK SAFE. Yes, 18th century guys were sometimes NOT WORK SAFE.

Anyway, the aisling song that you’re most likely to have heard in modern Irish music is “Mo Ghile Mear,” (My Gallant Lad) which is sung by Ireland herself about Bonnie Prince Charlie, her “husband.” It was written by the poet Sean Clarach Mac Dhomhnaill, right AFTER the disastrous Battle of Culloden. And yet it’s still around.

Anyway, now there’s Amelia of the purple hair (with a “cet cairches corcraglan,” a head of bright purple tresses, even?) and the pink dress (guna rosicde). She would fit right into the old aisling genre.

And she’s even in love with a Charlie – but this time, he’s an ordinary guy who steps up to be a hero.

Besides her, we have Marie and Amelie from France, Husaria from Poland, Giorgia and Matteo from Italy, Maria from Germany, Amelia Fagan from Ireland (promising “more craic” later), and many more.

St. Gobnait’s Day

An account of how they celebrate Feb. 11 in Ballyvourney (Baile Bhuirne), in Co. Cork.

St. Gobnait was an early Irish abbess who was known for her way with bees. She is sometimes called “Deborah”, because of course the Hebrew name means “honeybee.”

The composer Sean O Riada started an Irish-singing choir for Mass there, so there is the humming of bees and the harmony of humans. His son Peadar O Riada, also a composer, does the choir now. They have put out an album for St. Gobnait (Naomh Gobnait) which includes pieces for a Mass for St. John of the Cross’ Day, and which includes a Communion hymn for funerals by Donal O Liathain (finished posthumously by him, believe it or not) set to music.

Among his many patronages, St. Valentine is also a patron saint of beekeepers. So are St. Ambrose of Milan and St. Bernard of Clairvaux. St. Modomnoc, a disciple of St. David, brought honeybees from Wales to Ireland.

Ven. Sheen to Be Beatified!!!!

The Sheen beatification is back on — and the Engstrom family says it will be ‘a little piece of heaven’

The Ultimate Aquinas Travel Guide

Seriously, this is great. And huge.

And the pictures are very nice and evocative of what you would see, if you were to go to Italy and follow the footsteps of St. Thomas Aquinas.

Following the footsteps of Aquinas-Historical Tour Guide

I have just received some cool new nonfiction books about Aquinas topics, by Peter J. Floriani, as well as his reprint of Fr. Placidus Conway, OP’s book about Aquinas’ life.

I am enjoying them a lot, and finding them good pre-Lent reading.

So finding this travel guide was very timely, as it shows all kinds of details that help one picture the events of St. Thomas’ life. Also lots of relic pictures, which include lots of medieval things that have survived because of St. Thomas having used them!

I was moved when I found out that the miraculous crucifix picture still survives and can be venerated, at the Basilica of San Domenico Maggiore in Naples.

St. Thomas’ fun Cross prayer/graph is also still in existence at Anagni, and there’s a photo of it too! Very nifty. And it shows that he could write neatly when he wanted to.

There’s also an autograph copy of St. Thomas’ writing (that is slightly neater than his own old notes to himself, as kept at the Vatican Library), posted in Naples at the old Dominican convent where he stayed and taught. Pretty cool.

The story of the mule dying of sorrow is possible. Well-trained horses and mules often understand their jobs, and want to do them well. It’s very likely that the mule was unhappy that he had let his rider run into a tree branch and get hurt, and that his rider kept smelling and sounding in worse and worse health. This kind of stress and unhappiness is bad for any animal, much less an equine, which can be killed by too much cortisol and stress. So even before any supernatural grounds for the mule feeling attached to a saintly human, that mule would probably have had trouble getting over the whole situation. Especially if he were a very intelligent mule, with a fair understanding of how disturbed the humans were acting. (And although mules don’t die as easily as horses, they still can get conditions that will kill them quickly.)

I missed finding or posting all this in time for St. Thomas Aquinas’ Day, but it’s always Aquinas time!

Hyperokhen

The second reading today came from 1 Cor. 2:1-5.

We had the word “hyperokhen” in 1 Cor. 2:1, which the lectionary translated as “sublimity.” I like that.

It originally meant “superiority” but came to mean “excellence.” It comes from the verb hyperekho, which meant first “to hold something over top” of something or someone, often to guard that person. Then it added the meaning “to stand out” or “to stand taller than.” From there, it came to mean “to be superior in power” or “to excel over, to surpass.”

Today the main event at our parish was the rite of putting the sign of the Cross on the catechumens who will be baptized during the Easter Vigil, and welcoming those who will be brought more fully into the Church on that night, or who will receive their Confirmation as adults.

Please do not forget to pray (and fast, with Lent coming up) for these new Christians and Catholics, as the time between making a commitment and receiving the Sacraments is often full of conflict for them. There’s a reason why they receive special blessings and have prayers said over them.

Please pray for their families and friends, too, and especially for those who aren’t Catholics, as it’s often a time of confusion and temptation for them as well.

Strangers

Today we have Psalm 145/146, which has a line translated today as “The Lord protects strangers.”

The Hebrew word translated this way is “gar” or “ger”, which really means “guest.” There was no absolute right in the laws that anyone be allowed to live in the lands or city of another tribe or people. So everyone who was not from there, but lived there, was a guest.

There were also sojourners, travelers, and so on. A foreigner was “nakri,” as were foreign gods.

Every “guest” had to follow Israel’s laws and worship Israel’s God. No exceptions.

The only difference was that “guests” were allowed to buy and eat animals that died natural deaths (instead of being slaughtered).

If “guests” wanted to intermarry or buy land, it was an object of community discussion. It took several generations for a family to become part of the Assembly of the Children of Israel.

The LXX Greek (numbered Psalm 145) has the Lord protecting “proselytous,” newcomers or proselytes. The normal Greek word for foreigners or guests was “xenos” (IIRC).

The idea was that they were newbies to worshipping the Lord, as well as to the land.

---

lun: to lodge a night; hence, someone staying the night as a lodger

toshab: sojourner; resident alien; someone who lives there for a while, but doesn’t dwell there. (A citizen/dweller is yashab.)

helek: wayfarer, traveler

‘arakh: to wander; hence, wanderer, traveler

‘orakh: road; hence, traveler, group of travelers, caravan.

‘arab, ‘arabi: nomadic person from barren land; hence the ethnic name Arab.

Seamless Weaving Tech

Apparently one of the ways to weave a garment seamlessly is the ancient use of extra warp and weft threads on a loom. (Including vertical looms such as were used in the Near and Middle East.)

You have some threads on top, some threads on the bottom, and you use two shuttles, one top and one bottom (or one back and one front, since they were vertical looms), to do double the weave layers.

This technique allows the use of different patterns and colors on each side of a garment or cloth.

The center of the garment, front and back, is often really the “edge’ of what was woven. Both layers come together there. Often this area is darker than the rest of the pattern, to make the edge less visible.

Hoping that I can find a video of this.

Anyway, since Our Lady is traditionally associated both with having the know-how to produce Jesus’ seamless garment, and with having produced the double-woven cloak shown in Constantinople for centuries that had a picture of the Apostles on one side, I think it is interesting that it is basically the same technique with more fancy work. Egyptian/Coptic weavers did picture and even portrait weaving in St. Epiphanius’ day, and Our Lady spent time in Egypt and might have seen similar earlier work.

As a Christian, Our Lady’s artistic side would not have had to obey Jewish custom and law. How far did she stretch her expertise, during her days living in St. John’s house?

Links when I get home.

Btw, the reason that looms started out vertical is that the ends of the warp threads were originally kept pulled tight by using “warp weights,” and the power of gravity. Warp weights were little rocks or pottery weights that swung free from the bottom, tied to the threads. They were often wrapped in cloth or other substances, to prevent making noise or cracking against each other. This kind of loom goes back to somewhere in Stone Age times, and weavers even back then were doing all kinds of fancy fabric twills and such, and using dyes to make stripes and plaids and checkered patterns.

We also have archeological as well as literary evidence of dresses and robes woven in tube shapes; or woven flat and then sewn into tube shapes.

Eventually, but very close to the Roman period, the warp weights were replaced on some looms by a bottom wood bar, to which the thread could be tied. But these vertical frame looms still used the power of gravity.

A skilled construction worker in Roman times knew all about scaffolding, machinery for lifting, and so on, so probably Mary could have had the more sophisticated kind of loom at home.

Horizontal looms did not show up until about 300 AD. They were more complicated to build and run, and often included a structure for “draw boys” to choose and feed color threads, much as Jacquard looms would do with mechanical parts and loom punch cards.

Right before Christianity was legalized, one of the big persecutions hit hard against the Eastern Imperial weaving “manufactories,” which were given the humorous name “gynaeceum” or women’s quarters. (Because in a traditional pagan Greek house, the women wove in their section, away from the men.) Many women workers had become Christian, and they were tortured and martyred in great numbers. Lactantius talks about this in his history of the time, of which he was a survivor.

In the Eastern Fathers, we see a fair number of things in the Fathers, talking about how Mary the skilled weaver became a loom for the Holy Spirit, upon which He wove Jesus a body. St. Proclus of Constantinople was very big on this, for instance, and his most famous homily on Mary (preached in 430) was included in the texts of the Council of Ephesus.

Seamless wrap/ruana:

My First Double Weave – A Seamless Ruana

Brief history of looms and weaving techniques, along with some videos:

A Brief History of Weaving

The robe of St. Joseph and the stola/veil of Our Lady, at the Church of St. Anastasia in Rome. If you search for images, you can probably find more detailed ones.

The Sancta Camisia (a piece of silk originally from Israel in the 1st century, and probably not from a tunic), in Chartres, France.

The holy tunics of Christ, at Argenteuil and at Trier. The wool tunic at Argenteuil is spectacular work. It is seamless and dried brown.

There are also several woven belts that are relics of the Holy Family.

Honestly… if Our Lady even was a normally productive weaver during her spare time, you’d expect her to have produced a fair amount of items over the years. We also know that a sturdy textile that is given good care (or which has good treatment by Nature and bugs) can indeed survive for thousands of years.

So there’s no particular reason to believe that they’re all fake, or that they’re mostly fake.

Emperor Constantine’s mother, St. Helena, notoriously visited Jerusalem to turn it back into a holy city after being Aelia Capitolina for so long. Among the relics that she collected to be brought back to Constantinople were Jesus’ sandals, his mantle, and two tunics, all kept carefully by the Christians living secretly in the countryside and the city.

Allegedly, one of these tunics was sent to Trier (Augusta Treverorum), the hometown of St. Ambrose before he got stationed in Milan and elected bishop. For many centuries it was capital of the Roman prefecture of Gaul and an imperial residence, until the capital moved to Arles where the weather was better. It was a city full of manufactories for the Legions. St. Athanasius was exiled to Trier by Emperor Constantine.

The Argenteuil tunic was given or obtained by Charlemagne, who ended up giving it to his daughter Teoderada’s and his sister Giselle’s abbey, on the occasion of Teoderada entering Argenteuil as a nun.

Review of a book about Early Christian images of Our Lady spinning during the Annunciation.