Garden -- March 2016

Last month I talked about preventing Japanese beetles.  Mosquitoes are worse -- and better.

Here is McGrath's plan for suppressing mosquitoes.
http://wtop.com/garden-plot-living/2016/02/garden-plot-lets-talk-mosquito-prevention/

Notice that you are going to decoy the females into laying eggs in poisoned water.

There are other things you can do.  A number of flowers have two benefits; they're good for pollinators and they repel mosquitoes.  They include lavender, bee balm, and marigolds.

You can attract bug eating birds.  You can put up bird apartment houses, which could attract purple martins.  They might get taken over by sparrows, but that isn't a bad thing because sparrows eat aphids.

Plant chokeberries and blueberries.  These will attract catbirds, mockingbirds, and other bug eaters, but most especially yellow warblers which eat mosquitoes.   Euonymus, which makes nice hedges, is another berry that bug-eating birds like.  Just make sure you prune only at the end of winter before the flowers come  on, otherwise you destroy the berries before they are born.

Also now is the time to buy your corn gluten meal to suppress crabgrass and other broadleaf weeds, and the compost to plant your early leafy greens and peas.  That's the big job for March.

© Patricia Jo Heil, 2013-2018 All Rights Reserved

Fact-Checking the Torah -- Exodus 1:11, 12:37

You were supposed to look at Exodus 1:11 because it mentions Ramses and Pi-Tum as treasure cities of the Pharaoh of the oppression.

But I just said that the place known to the 26^th dynasty as Pi-Tum had no conclusive residential remains in the 19^th dynasty of Ramses II.  Think about it.  If you’re going to keep treasure somewhere, you don’t just need big buildings.  You need guards barracks.  You need a warehouse for rations and weapons.  You need carters to bring in the rations and weapons.  You need somewhere for the carters to stay overnight after a trip of up to 55 kilometers from Avaris on an oxcart that travels about 5 kph.  You need homes for the inn-keepers (although they probably live in their own inns).  You need a market where they can buy things to feed their families and the carters and buy new housewares.  You need somewhere for the caravans to stay after bringing in the things the innkeepers buy.  The soldiers guarding the gatehouses might have families but they might also only use prostitutes; those women need somewhere to live and supplies to live on. 

That’s not what archaeologists found at the 19^th dynasty level at Pi-Tum. 

The modern name for the site of Pi-Tum is Tell el-Maskhuta.

Sound familiar?  It should. 

Exodus 12:37 names the jumping off point, on the trip from Ramses/Avaris into the Sinai Peninsula, as Sukkot.

We don’t know why the modern name of the location resembles Sukkot.  It’s a sound that would have to survive 36 centuries, despite the fact that it was occupied first by the Greek conquerors of Egypt, then by the Roman conquerors, and then by Persians, prior to the Muslim conquest.

Tell el-Maskhuta lies on a line directly from Avaris to Mt. Sinai.  Following that line takes the traveler across the northern end of the Bitter Lakes.  Twenty-five centuries ago this area was much moister than it is now; paleontologists have also found remains of crocodiles and hippopotami around the Bitter Lakes area.  Crocs and hippos are both fresh-water animals, although the nearest relatives of hippos, whales and porpoises, are sea-going.  There is now a thin canal of water between the upper and lower lakes, but it would have been larger and deeper 25 centuries ago.

A trip  to the southeast  makes perfect sense for the Israelites.  If they had gone south, they would have wound up in the middle of Ahmose’s  attacking forces.  If they had gone west, they would have crossed the Nile delta and wound up in Libya (which of course was not the desert it is now).  If they had gone northeast, the Hyksos would have overtaken them while fleeing Ahmose’s troops, and then the troops themselves would have caught up to them and they would have “seen war”.  And that is the meaning of Exodus 13:17.

For next week read Exodus 7:14 through 9:35.

© Patricia Jo Heil, 2013-2018 All Rights Reserved

 

Bit at a Time Bible Hebrew -- just do it!

So we have the aspects of verbs straight, and we know they apply to Biblical Hebrew. It does not use a tense system, even though modern Hebrew does. Now we’ll talk modality, which wouldn’t mean anything to you if you didn’t understand the aspect verb system.

 

Modality is related to what most languages call “mood” but they’re not identical, particularly not in Biblical Hebrew as you will see.

 

The class of modality you know best is deontic. This has to do with the way the speaker wishes the world was but isn’t.

 

The reason you are so familiar with the deontic is that it includes all the imperatives, the jussive and the hortative or cohortative.  In most languages, this is called imperative mood.  This is different from a commandment which as you now know may be in perfect or imperfect aspect.

 

An imperative is used to cause something to happen soon but it has one peculiar characteristic. Watch for the imperatives that don’t work out. One example is Genesis 14:21.

וַיֹּאמֶר מֶלֶךְ־סְדֹם אֶל־אַבְרָם תֶּן־לִי הַנֶּפֶשׁ וְהָרְכֻשׁ קַח־לָךְ:

 

The king wanted to bribe Avraham or make him a co-conspirator; Avraham refused to take so much as a sandal-tie.

 

In Torah, some people have a right to issue imperatives and some don’t. Gd does, of course. But He only uses imperatives when he’s talking to a person who will be responsible for personally carrying out the action, and who can be relied on to do it. This includes Noach and Avraham. In other situations, he uses the 2^nd person perfect or imperfect.

 

Avraham uses imperative when talking to others, and his imperatives always take effect. Read the story of obtaining Makhpelah for burials, in Genesis 18. Notice that the imperatives used by the council of the Bney Chet and by Efron never go into effect but those of Avraham do. They haven’t the right to issue imperatives; they do not have as high a status as Avraham.

 

In an aspect verb system, you have to use an imperfect as the basis for an imperative because the world isn’t yet the way you want it. That’s why imperatives in Biblical Hebrew look like the imperfect aspect forms of verbs. This form has been inherited by Modern Hebrew although it has a tense verb system.

 

It’s also true that because imperatives don’t take effect unless the speaker has a right to issue imperatives, the uncertainty persists until you get to the verse(s) saying that the action did or did not take effect.

 

So in Torah there will always be a two-step process with imperatives: the speaker issues it, and a following verse shows whether it was carried out. By this you will know the Biblical attitude toward whoever issues the imperative.  This is quite different from the 2^nd person commandments; the verb aspect relates to evidence of its being carried out.

 

There’s another deontic and while  you have probably used it, you don’t know what it looks like in Biblical Hebrew.

 

© Patricia Jo Heil, 2013-2018 All Rights Reserved

 

DIY -- castile soap

No, I haven't started making my own lye soap.
I just want to give the advantages of castile soap more air time.
First, there's no sodium, boron, or phosphates in it.
That's good for the health of our soil and water.
Second, you can't accidentally make hydrochloric acid with it, but you can use it with thyme tea as a disinfectant.
Third, you can clean your bathroom with it, mixing in baking soda when you need to scrub
BUT if you accidentally touch your clothes, it won't leave bleach spots.
That's one of my favorites among all the advantages.

Fourth, it gets out cooking oil better than normal detergents.
I've been  using it to wash dishes for a year now and one of the biggest problems has always been those yellow spots from cooking oil infused with turmeric.
Don't have that problem with castile soap.  It cuts the grease better and that means the turmeric yellow goes away.
Same thing happens with clothing.  When I splash the infused oil  on them, if I scrub them with a little castile soap, the spots go away.
I've tried using oxy-bleach for that; it doesn't make them go away, it turns them a nice bright purple.
Interesting bit of chemistry that must be.

I'm using castile soap for hand-wash and it doesn't bleach my hand made knits.
It's fine on cotton blends.
It's fine on wool.
It's fine on linen.
And that's all I care about, since I stopped using rayon because I was tired of it not washing well.
And I don't wear much lycra or spandex.
If you could see me you would understand that I'm doing everybody a  benefit by not wearing those.

And in a pinch, I use it for shampoo instead of my normal yucca-plus herbal blend.

If I catch all the water I use castile soap in, I can put it on my garden with no qualms.
You can't say that for detergents; the sodium or boron in them is bad for the soil.

Think about  it.

© Patricia Jo Heil, 2013-2018 All Rights Reserved

Fact-Checking the Torah -- Treasure Cities!

In fact lots of people would say that the Israelites never left Egypt because they never were in Egypt.

Where archaeologists have been looking, they haven’t found signs of Israelites.

What they have looked for is signs of the treasure cities.  When they went to layers at Pi-Tum deeper than the 26^th dynasty, they got to layers coordinating with Ramses II’s 19^th dynasty.  They didn’t find remains of a treasure city.  No heavy walls.  Not even settled residences.  Just small bits that might show somebody lived there temporarily.

In the 1990s they looked lower still, and there they found definite traces of residential areas.  These remains date to the 15^th through 17^th dynasties, after the chaotic interregnum from which the Hyksos emerged as rulers of the Delta while “native” Egyptians ruled south of Memphis.

We have no records specifically from Hyksos rule in the Delta that I can find on the Internet.  We know that their capital was Avaris, a city later taken over by and renamed for Ramses II.  The later name continued down through the ages.  We know that Avaris was on the northwest border of the nome of Goshen.

And we know that the Hyksos were K’naani.  Their sites have K’naani pottery in them, and during the 17^th dynasty artisans in the Delta created pottery of local materials but in styles that imitated ware from K’naan.  Some classically K’naani burials include a donkey sacrifice. 

We don’t know what the Hyksos called themselves but we do know that remains similar those of the Hyksos in the Delta occur around Shkhem in the Holy Land, where the Hivim lived.  And we know that when the 18^th dynasty expelled the Hyksos, some of them fled to the Holy Land, were besieged and defeated at Sharuhen, a city later forming part of Shimon’s portion.

The ruins of Avaris top off with a layer of pumice.  Radiometric dating shows that this pumice was deposited about 1630 BCE.

That coincides with the explosion of Thera, now known as Santorini, which destroyed the Mykenaean town of Akrotiri and left trees in Ireland with almost no ring growth.  The dust from Thera suppressed sunlight so much that trees some 4,000 kilometers away barely grew at all.

Avaris is about 800 kilometers from Thera.  The “native” Egyptians had their capital at Waset (Thebes), 760 kilometers further south, where there are no reports of pumice. 

So now that we know where Ramses was, what about Pi-Tum?  See Exodus 1:11 and 12:37.

© Patricia Jo Heil, 2013-2018 All Rights Reserved

Bit at a Time Bible Hebrew -- aspect review

I’ve covered a lot of complicated material so let me review it.

 

1.         Imperfect aspect has personal  and gender prefixes and is used as follows.

            a.         vav plus imperfect in VS order for narrative past.

            b.         vav plus subject plus imperfect for a relative or coordinate clause.

            c.         without vav in SV order for possibly a true future tense usage.

d.         vav plus imperfect in the 2^nd singular or plural in commands accepted to be part of Jewish law, but for which there is no visible evidence of practice.

e.         part of a parallel structure in poetry and prophecy following a perfect verb as a parallel.

f.          Preceded by ki or im is the “if” clause introducing a law.

 

2.         Perfect aspect has personal and gender suffixes and is used as follows.

a.         Normally in SV order, as a past tense.  Bounds the start and end of narratives, and used for the pluperfect.

b.         vav plus perfect in VS order when the subject is expressed is an oblique modality, a subordinate clause of condition, cause, effect, purpose or result.   The main clause states something familiar; the oblique modality is a possible future event which the listener is supposed to believe will happen because of the main clause.

c.         vav plus perfect in the 2^nd singular or plural in commands with a permansive effect on Jewish culture.

d.         part of a parallel structure, the following part of which is in imperfect, in poetry and prophecy.

e.         In a separate clause and following a ki/im plus imperfect clause, something that has to go to completion before the law applies.  This is a possible future event which is known to sometimes follow from the main clause.

 

3.         Progressive aspect has the following uses.

a.         present tense.

b.         action in progress.

c.         descriptive.

d.         immediate future, “about to X”.

e.         immediate past “has [just] X’d”.

f.          habitual.

g.         the sense in which an imperfect tense is used, that is, an action that was ongoing when something else happened.

h.         locative situations.

j.          X is “still” happening.

 

Next week I’ll get into the heart of Dr. Cook’s paper and you’ll see some real magic.

 

© Patricia Jo Heil, 2013-2018 All Rights Reserved

Garden -- about yesterday

If you skipped yesterday's post, please go back and read it, then come back here.
You still have time to plan to stop breeding Japanese beetles on your lawn.
First, check out the mower you use now.
Will it let you set the blade at 3 inches?
If not, you need a new mower.
You might not be able to find a gas or electric mower that will do this.
The concept behind gas and electric mowers depends on you not knowing that you are breeding Japanese beetles when you set your blade too low.
You might have to buy a push mower.
You're saying "but that takes too much energy!"
Not when you set your blade at 3 inches.
You will only be cutting grass blades, which are relatively soft.
When you set the blade lower, you are cutting the stems, which are tougher.
When you had a gas or electric mower, you didn't care because you didn't feel it -- except for how often you had to re-sharpen the blade.

Come to your senses.
Stop breeding Japanese beetles and providing food to starlings.
Get a  mower  that lets you set the blade at 3 inches.
If you have a lawn service, insist that they use your mower or set their blades higher.
If they won't, fire them.
They're hurting your grass and also your roses and other flowers, by breeding Japanese beetles.

© Patricia Jo Heil, 2013-2018 All Rights Reserved