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How do you explain the Trinity in Chinese? If you're a Christian in Tang China, there's a few ways!

I'm @ChenHuailun, back for my last #Twittistorian thread, this time on translating the names of God in Chinese Christian documents. ~ahc #jingjiao 1/

 There are two main writers/translators credited in the extant documents of the Christian (called 'Jingjiao' 景教 in Chinese) corpus of Tang China: Aluoben and Jingjing. ~ahc #jingjiao /2
Aluoben (阿蘿本) was said to have been the Persian missionary responsible for bringing Christianity to China, arriving in Chang'an in 635 and building a church there with 21 monks. ~ahc #jingjiao /3
'Observing the azure clouds, he [Aluoben] bore the true sacred books; beholding the direction of the winds, he braved difficulties and dangers.' - Xi'an stele ~ahc #jingjiao /4
Let's pause on this name, Aluoben (阿蘿本). Some translate it as 'Olopen.' Is it a Syriac name, perhaps a rendering of Yahballaha or Abraham? Or perhaps a Middle Persian name Anōš-ruwān (meaning immortal soul)? ~ahc #jingjiao /5
In Tang Chinese, these characters would be pronounced [a-la-pun]. I am inclined to believe the explanation of Kahar Barat, who suggests that it is simply a colloquial rendering of the Syriac title 'Rabban,' (ܪܒܢ) meaning 'our great one, or monk.' ~ahc #jingjiao /6
The other writer is Jingjing (景净), who is the author of the Xi'an stele erected in 781, more than 100 years after Aluoben brought Christianity to China. His Syriac name in the stele in Adam. ~ahc #jingjiao /7
Now that we have our two writers established, we divide the Jingjiao corpus between the two. Aluoben is credited in the Book of Hearing the Messiah (序聽迷詩所經) and the Discourse on One God (一神論). ~ahc #jingjiao /8
Jingjing is credited in the Book of Attaining Mysterious Rest and Joy (志玄安樂經), the Book of Proclamation of the Highest Origin of Origins (大秦景教宣元本經), the Hymn in Adoration of the Three Persons (景教三威蒙度贊), and the Book of Honour (尊經). ~ahc #jingjiao /9
They have markedly different ways of translating the names of God into Chinese. ~ahc #jingjiao /10
The first way is transliteration, as used by Jingjing in the Hymn in Adoration and Book of Honour.

For those who may be familiar with Syriac or even other Semitic languages, try to look at these Middle Chinese pronunciations and guess their meanings. ~ahc #jingjiao /11
阿羅訶 [Mandarin: a-luo-he; Middle Chn: ʔa-la-xa]
彌施訶 [Mandarin: mi-shi-he; Middle Chn: mji-ʂi-xa]
盧訶寧俱沙 [Mandarin: lu-he-ning-ju-sha; Middle Chn: lu-xa-niajn-ky-ʂa]
~ahc #jingjiao /12
These correspond to the three persons of the Trinity, namely God (Alaha ܐܠܗܐ), Christ (Mšiḥa ܡܔܝܚܐ), and the Holy Spirit (Ruḥa d-Qudša ܪܘܚܐ ܕܩܘܕܫܐ) ~ahc #jingjiao /13
The second way is using indigenous terms, as in Aluoben's Book of Hearing the Messiah. God is Tian-zun (天尊). Tian (天) means something like heaven or sky, but etymology dates back to the 9th cent BCE. Zun (尊) is a title of the Buddha as well as a deity in Daoism. ~ahc /14
Jesus Christ is Shi-zun (世尊), as used in the Discourse on One God. This is one of the ten epithets of the Buddha. However, there is no indigenous term for the Holy Spirit. ~ahc #jingjiao /15
The 3rd way of translating Christian terms into Chinese is neologism. We can see this in the use of the term One God (一神). God (神) refers to a kind of supernatural being, a god or a spirit, and is usually used in the plural sense. It also can refer to the souls of humans. /16
However the term 'One God' would imply a strong monotheistic emphasis of the Christian ‘god' (神). ~ahc #jingjiao /17
There are many titles/names for Christ, including Holy/Virtuous Son (聖子), Son of Light (明子), King of Eternal Life (常活命王), Universally-Honoured One (普尊), Merciful Joyous Lamb (慈喜羔), Great Master (大師). ~ahc #jingjiao /18
The titles with the epithet 'son' are notably similar to the emperor's title, 'the Son of Heaven' (天子). ~ahc #jingjiao /19
The word 'wind' (feng 風), attempts to incorporate the multiple meanings of the Syriac Ruḥa (ܪܘܚܐ), which not only means 'wind,' but also 'breath' and 'spirit.' It may also be influenced by Manichaean translations of Spirit in Chinese as 'wind' as well. ~ahc #jingjiao /20
Different ways of translating may imply different theological understandings or emphases between writers. For instance, the Cool Wind in Aluoben's docs have a sensory emphasis, while the Pure and Parisuddha Wind in Jingjing's docs have an emphasis on purity. ~ahc #jingjiao /21
Translation is never easy, especially between religious traditions that have few premises in common. Christians writing in Chinese had to be creative, and their translations may even give us insight into the theology of the church in China at the time. ~ahc #jingjiao /22
Overall, the Jingjiao corpus is small, but it is rich, and it can reveal to us a crucial part of the religious world of China and the medieval east.

Thanks for reading, and I will follow up with a round-up of all my threads this week! ~ahc #jingjiao /23

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Happy Friday! I'm @khowaga, and I'm talking about the social history of medicine and disease in #Egypt. Today's topic is the cholera of 1883. (1/19)

#tweetistorian #twitterstorians #histmed #epitwitter

It goes like this.

According to popular legend, Patient Zero of the 1883 cholera epidemic was a mason in his mid-forties named Ḥassan Nūr-al-Dīn, who lived in the port city of Damietta (34,000 people). (2/19)

Nūr-al-Dīn rarely traveled outside of Damietta, but on the morning of Thursday, June 21, he took the local train to the next major town upriver, Manṣūra (30,000 people) for a weekend trip. The next day, Friday, he began to feel unwell. (3/19)

After a fitful night, he went to the station to return home on Saturday. His condition deteriorated rapidly: on boarding the train he exhibited no symptoms, but by reaching the hamlet of Rās al-Khalīg, about an hour later, he had become violently ill. (4/19)

By the time the train arrived in Damietta, he was so weak that he had to be carried home from the station. He arrived at his house before sunset, died shortly before midnight and was buried promptly the next day, Sunday, June 24. (5/19)
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One key element of the Islamic intellectual tradition is the commentary. Commentaries on the Qurʼan (tafsīr) began early in Islamic history, but from about the 12th or 13th century, well into the 19th, commentaries on other scholarly texts became extremely common. -jm


Usually a commentary is called a sharḥ, and a supercommentary (i.e. a commentary on a commentary) is called a ḥāshiyah. Sometimes you get all the way up to a fourth- or fifth-level supercommentary. -jm


Sometimes it's hard to even tell what the "core text" is, because even a very famous text that's the core of many commentaries might present itself as an abridgement or comment on something even earlier. -jm


Commentaries might serve multiple purposes: to explain obscure grammar or vocabulary, to dig into particular legal cases, etc. Even to show why the core text is wrong. Eventually you get some Ottoman Turkish commentaries that translate Persian poems and then comment on them. -jm


Authors of commentaries often mark quotes from the core text by key words like "qawluhu" ("what he said") and manuscripts often emphasize this by writing these words in red or putting a line over the quoted text, so you can figure out who is talking. -jm
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1 So, today we turn to early Islamic Beirut. what do we know of the earliest times of #Beirut under early Islamic rule, starting with the #conquest. How and when did Beirut enter the emerging Muslim empire? -rm


2 Let’s start with traditional sources for the early Islamic period. Of those, only al-Balādhurī (d. ca. 892), the Abbasid scholar, is informative. Other Muslim and non-Muslim sources including al-Ṭabarī's Tārīkh are silent on the matter.-rm


3 In his small tome, Futūḥ al-Buldān, al-Balādhurī tells his readers: “After the conquest of Damascus, Yazīd came to Sidon, ʿArqa, Byblos, and Beirut which lie on the sea coast with his brother Muʿāwiya leading the van of the army.”-rm

4 Hence, the men who conquered Beirut were Yazīd b. Abī Sufyān (d. 639) and his half-brother and future caliph Mu‘āwiya (r. 661-680). The date of the conquest of the coast falls between 636 and 639 at the latest, the date of the death of Yazīd in the plague of Emmaus. -rm


5 Yazīd and the Muslim army likely took the coastal road to Beirut, a path taken by numerous armies before. They would have either swung from Damascus to Baalbek through the Hims gap to ‘Arqa, then Byblos, crossed the Dog River, and arrived at the eastern side of Beirut.
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1/25 Today, I will continue looking at the lives of Palestinian poets in the context of the intellectual battle over modernizing Arabic poetry after 1948. A marginalized and maligned figure in Arab intellectual history in the Cold War is Tawfiq Sayigh (1923-71) ~AA.


2/25 I am tagging Tawfiq's nephew @SayighYezid, a brilliant political economist and political scientist of the modern and contemporary Middle East. He is the son of Palestinian economist Yusuf Sayigh and Rosemary Sayigh, the British anthropologist ~AA.

3/25 Though elsewhere in my work I closely study Jabra I. Jabra (1920-94) -- Sayigh's lifetime colleague and confidant -- I will cover Jabra, here, in relation to Sayigh for the purposes of brevity and since Jabra has received a fair amount of attention in the historiography ~AA.

4/25 The prose-poem was a form that Sayigh masterfully used to express his feelings of misery and pain. Sayigh led a tortured life that took him from one exile to another until his lonely death in Berkeley in 1971. Mounah Khouri, Arabic professor @NESUCB laid him to rest ~AA.

5/25 During the Nakba, the Sayigh family fled from Tiberias and settled in Ras Beirut, where Sayigh received them and cared for them from his income as a librarian at Beirut’s American Cultural Center and as an anonymous editor of the women's magazine "Ṣawt al-Mar’ah" ~AA.
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@ChenHuailun here. I'm adding a supplementary thread before today's scheduled one to expand on the origins and early history of the Church of the East (aka the Nestorian Church) ~ahc #jingjiao 1/


The Church of the East traces its origins to the christological position of the School of Antioch, which held that the human and divine and human essences (ουσία) of Christ were united in a single prosopon (πρόσωπον). ~ahc #jingjiao 2/


This ran against the position of the School of Alexandria, which held that the two essences of Christ were united in a single hypostasis (ὑπόστασις). In general terms, hypostasis is more inherent than prosopon. ~ahc #jingjiao 3/


One implication of the Antiochene rejection of the hypostatic union is that Mary could not accurately be called the Theotokos, or God-bearer. Instead, she is the Christotokos, the Christ-bearer. ~ahc #jingjiao 4/


These Christological debates were further complicated by Syriac terms such as 'kyana' (ܟܝܢܐ), associated with 'ousia' but later translated to 'hypostasis' by Syrian Orthodox; and 'qnoma ' (ܩܢܘܡܐ), sometimes contentiously translated as 'hypostasis' or 'person.' ~ahc #jingjiao 5/
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The fascist danger is not over: a thread. 1/ What's important is that Trump incited the attack; the administration did not stop him; the chain of command protecting the legislature evaporated; and he is still in office inciting objections to the

2/ The Proud Boys led this, but the militias were largely absent. 45% of Republican voters *support* the attack on Congress. This is what Fox, Parler and the talk radio shows have created: a mass fascist network prepared to overthrow the US Constitution...

3/ There are similar moments in the 1930s... Hitler's Schluss Jetzt slogan in 1932 - "end the republic now" - and Paris 6 Feb 1934, when a fascist mob stormed parliament...


4/ The key is to demand the police do their job while preparing for them to break under pressure and via collusion. That's what let Mussolini's thugs march to power and, in the late stages, allowed the SA to run riot in Germany...

5/ I want all liberal and democratic politicians to say, today, "I am antifascist" - it's a moment to choose: you can't ignore them anymore. We have to fight them as in the 1930s... an alliance of the centre and the left...
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Today is “Korean American Day”.

#OTD in 1903, the first large group of Korean immigrants arrived in US-conquered territory. [Thread]


102 Korean men, women, and children arrived in Honolulu aboard the SS Gaelic to work in Hawaii’s sugar plantations. By 1905, Koreans comprised 11% of Hawaii’s plantation workforce—around 7000 people.


This first wave of Korean immigrants arrived amid sharpening imperialist rivalry in the Pacific. Korea had slowly been losing its independence for decades, and by 1903 was just two years away from becoming a protectorate of Japan.

At the same time, the US was consolidating its position in the Pacific, annexing Hawaii, Guam, and the Philippines in 1898, and partitioning Samoa in 1899.

(Pictured: US troops in the Philippines)


US missionaries colluded with the Hawaiian Sugar Planters Association to secure a new, cheap labor force for Hawaii’s sugar fields. Many of the Koreans who arrived in Hawaii from 1903-1905 were Methodists.
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Interesting to realize that the living things that lay the foundation of the biosphere are extremely robust as compared to the humans that are destroying the biosphere.

Seed can remain dry and dormant for ages only to reborn when provided the proper nutrients. In contrast, most animals require a continual living vessel to reconstruct itself from its DNA.

Evolution appears to constantly perform tradeoffs between robust organisms and organisms that are adaptable. Co-evolution makes possible the development of complex species as a consequence of robust organisms.

We exist as a consequence of the multitude of less complex individuals that make up our biosphere. We are in fact symbionts that are in constant cooperation with our microbiome. Absent our individual ecologies leads to death.

We are inseparable from our microbiome, we are inseparable from our societies, and we are inseparable from our biosphere. The biggest lie we are told is that as individuals, we are independent of our world.
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On this day in 2007, the bomb blasts in Samjhauta Express killed 68 people including 44 Pakistanis. The immediate investigations revealed irrefutable evidence about the masterminds. In this thread, I would share some Indian newspaper clips which covered the investigations.


1. Lt Col Prasad Purohit, a serving Indian army officer, was arrested for terror conspiracy in the Malegaon blast case. He was the co founder of Abhinav Bharat, a right wing Hindu organisation. He admitted that he was the mastermind.

(The Times of India, Pune, 7 November 2008)


2. Lt Col Purohit met Pragya Thakur on 5 Oct 2008 to tell her that "Our People" had carried out the killings in Orissa, burnt down two churches and also carried out the Malegaon blast.

(The Indian Express, Pune, 24 Nov 2008)

Ironically, Pragya is BJP's MP today.


3. During his narco analysis test, Lt Col Purohit told officers that Praveen Togadia was responsible for the “Samjhauta Express Blasts”. He asked me to find out from Dr Dev, how much RDX was remaining after the blast.

(Pune Mirror, 19 Nov 2008)

4. In his narco analysis test, Lt Col Purohit gave sensational information that he supplied explosives for Ajmer and Malegaon blasts at the instance of Mahant Dayanand Pandey.

(Sakal, Pune and Pudhari, Pune, both of 15 Nov 2008)
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A few thoughts on this sad development 👇👇

20 academics criticizing an paper is fine; good science, really

10000+ hate mail for studying schools in Sweden is insane

Anonymous docs/ prof (hiding in faceless accts) on twitter smearing researchers is insane
[thread] https://t.co/QYldLD3WO0


In April 2020, @jflier and I saw this coming

We saw increasingly heated and personal attacks against scientists merely for having a range of views on COVID19 (PS there is no playbook/ right ans)

Tying science to naked politics was also bad idea, we

Yet, repeatedly that is what happened. Twitter 'experts' displayed an absolute intolerance to other views

Folks who disagreed weren't just wrong, they were malicious actors spreading "disinformation"

Really? Someone worked for 25 years as faculty to suddenly spread lies?

Disinformation has been so misused that it has lost meaning.

I recently saw an ID doc & lab researcher in the UK be accused of spreading "disinformation"

hahah, get outta here, you are trying to say "i disagree" but your keyboard is broken

Personal attacks have become so bad that I have seen a lab researcher accuse a doctor of wanting to engage in inappropriate relationships with patients due to diverging views on vaccine messaging

Seriously? It was a low point even for twitter
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Mr. Patrick, one of the chief scientists at the Army Biological Warfare Laboratories at Fort Detrick in Frederick, Md., held five classified US patents for the process of weaponizing anthrax.

2/x
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Love,that is not real,has no passion. Its fire turns into embers, it doesn’t not smell. The day, the night, the moon&year burn without sun, light, comfort&sleep.
Ömer Hayyam

#Reyyan #Miran #ReyMir #EbruŞahin #AkınAkınözü
#HercaiThoughts


1
PRAISE
The praise in this episode goes foremost to Ebru because she portrayed Reyyan so realistically like a woman who truly lost her unborn child. I was in awe and pain watching her along the episode, all her breakdowns and tears were so real.
#Hercai

2
Of course also Akın took his part and did his part masterfully, but he rightfully was the one who stood aside in this specific episode that needed to be about Reyyan’s pain and thus concentrated on Ebru.
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And last but not least, if I say thank you to something that B gave us this year, then it’s to have Ali as our director. Also in this episode we saw the artistic eye behind every shot and I loved it.
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4
OVERALL COMMENT
I don’t know who wrote ep. 52 but ep. 53 was going strong once more on symbols: roses, stones, fire and trees were incorporated and especially the ReyMir dialogues were written very well. I truly loved every ReyMir scene.
So let's get into it.
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Why? Because back then, once in a while, you would say "also hey, I sell books" or "hey, I'm going to be signing at this event" and your facebook followers would actually see it.

Effectively, the implicit old arrangement was "facebook lets me reach readers efficiently, and I supply facebook with free content they run ads on."

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🌺श्री गरुड़ पुराण - संक्षिप्त वर्णन🌺

हिन्दु धर्म के 18 पुराणों में से एक गरुड़ पुराण का हिन्दु धर्म में बड़ा महत्व है। गरुड़ पुराण में मृत्यु के बाद सद्गती की व्याख्या मिलती है। इस पुराण के अधिष्ठातृ देव भगवान विष्णु हैं, इसलिए ये वैष्णव पुराण है।


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..ताकि उस समय हम जीवन-मरण से जुड़े सभी सत्य जान सकें और मृत्यु के कारण बिछडने वाले सदस्य का दुख कम हो सके।
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मृत्यु के उपरांत गरुड़ पुराण के श्रवण का प्रावधान है ।
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