Communications are a Bit Rocky (with Caleb Howells too)

Was Homer’s Troy Ruled by the Assyrians?
Caleb Howells | 8 Sept. 2026
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9I1lS2-E56A

1:03 Barring your proposal of placing Troy in the Iron age and closer to Homer ... my view is, first Hattusa was destroyed (with possible Trojan involvement) and then Troy itself was temporarily destroyed and permanently joined to the Ionic Greek world.

May I remind that the famous Trojan war was not the first conflict between Mycenaean Greece and Troy, it seems that Priamos means "hostage" in Greek (correct me if I'm wrong) and got that nickname when Hercules took him hostage in an earlier war, when he was a boy.

As to the earlier war, I have no doubts that Hittites were involved.

2:37 I've noted that too.

With the exception of the word, presumably Myc. Greek *hethos and then by dissimilation of aspiration in Classical Greek ethos.

The possibly oldest and crudest meaning being "duty" or "taxation" ...

Hittites were forgot because they were plundering some guys with too much taxes. Damnatio memoriae, except for the Bible and one Greek word preserving the memory one tried to erase.

4:17 I would place Ninus in carbon dated 6000 / 3000-ish BC.

6000-ish ... Historia scholastica considers him a contemporary of Sarug.

3000-ish ... he is credited with having initiated idolatry over grief of his father Belus. Idols, specifically of Ishtar, come to the foreground in Mesopotamia around 3000-ish BC.

In both cases obviously carbon dated.

5:05 Assyria can have after taking over the Hittite heartland have taken on all Hittite loyalties as claims, and retroactively branding them as Assyrian ones.

30 kings, from Ninus. I'll go with the real historical years of Sarug, born 2295 BC. Nineve was destroyed in 612 BC. 1683 years.

Now 22/30 * 1683 = 1234, and so many years after 2295 = 1061 BC. One century off traditional date of 1180 BC.

5:25 Can Plato be dependent on Ctesias?

[All ensuing comments are lost]

6:13 Sure. But I obviously dispute that the actual Ninus lived in the 1300's BC.

Ninus and his father Belus are tied to a story in which Ninus invented idolatry over the statue of his dead father Belus.

And if I give the medium time for 22 kings out of 30, it's 1061 BC, a pretty good match for Troy destroyed in 1179 BC, 120 years earlier.

What's the time for each king on my view? 1683 years = 1683 / 30 = 56.1 years per king. Now, that's not realistic for the times of the Trojan war, and one could imagine that kings have been forgotten or interregna overlooked, perhaps deliberately so. It is more realistic for times back near Sarug.

Tukulti-Ninurta I (1243 f.Kr.-1208 f.Kr.). 1243 to 612 = 631 years = 631 / 30 = 21 years per king. Realistic as far as it goes, but why would Ctesias have come across people who forgot about his father Salmanassar, who must on any view have been pretty famous?

8:03 Some have said Cadmus is a myth and Herodotus was wrong in crediting him with the Phoenician letters.

Some have said the Greek alphabet is older than we thought.

Archeology doesn't quite prove that Thebes ever was a Phoenician enclave, Bronze Age or later. Herodotus can have been wrong in crediting Cadmus with the Greek Alphabet.

8:59 I would say that the Ethiopians in the Trojan war actually point to Hittite times.

How so?

My theory is, Hittite memories of Kadesh were mixed with Trojan memories of the War.

However, in Kadesh, Hittites were fighting Egypt and may have had Ethiopian allies. So little battle-field archaeology exists, this Ethiopian presence can't be ruled out.

Later, when one deliberately forgot about Hittites and their name got nobler connotations than taxation, these memories were reattached to the Trojan war.

I need to go back to the video* with Mary Bachvarova (channel Lantern Jack interviewing her) to get back to whether there was a Hittite version of the Iliad.

[tried to add:

Also, apparently Assyrians never conquered Ethiopia, so the info in Ctesias is spurious, i e garbled info.]

* A Hittite Version of the War of Troy?
Lantern Jack | 28 Nov. 2021
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_Ao2sps9bR4

Caleb Howells Makes a How-Ler

Was Jesus Really Born on December 25?
Caleb Howells | 16 Dec. 2025
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AN_92VBzu14

5:49 No Jewish Year is 52 weeks. None at all. Doesn't exist.

A normal year of 12 months is 354 days. That's 50 full weeks and 4 days. (It can vary between 353 and 355)

A leap year of 13 months is 384 days. That 54 full weeks and 6 days.

So if anyone ever told you that the division of Abia came the same two weeks year after year, that's bogus.

At the end of the month Adar, the temple checked the wheat, if it was mature, to a specified point, not sure of the exact degree, the next month was Nisan of the next year. If it wasn't, there was a Second Adar. And Nisan started after that one.

When Julian the Apostate failed to reestablish the Temple, the Sanhedrin was disbanded, there was no more anyone who had authority to make the "Hillel / II Adar" test. So, Hillel II invented an alternative method for calculating Jewish years, still used today, one in which II Adar is always 30 days long, one in which you don't watch for newmoons to see when months start.

Not very far from when Christians had got fed up with asking Jews when Nisan was, in order to have Easter the Sunday after 14 Nisan. Our alternative way of calculating Nisan was in principle outlined at the council of Nicaea and would at the time on average have coincided with a Jewish Nisan. Yes, the Roman Catholic Church actually does count Nisan, it's just that this is done among clerks and the laymen are only told "Sunday the ... is Easter"

6:12 On Yom Kippur, only ONE priest does what Zacharias did. According to the Mosaic law, that was the High Priest.

Now, Zecharias was in fact not on the list of serving High Priests that we have.

However, there is a clue in the text showing what I mean:

And it came to pass, when he executed the priestly function in the order of his course before God According to the custom of the priestly office, it was his lot to offer incense, going into the temple of the Lord
[Luke 1:8-9]

It could be a simple synonym of "according to the law of the priestly office" since liturgic laws are customs. But I think St. Luke meant a custom prevailing then and there.

Here is another clue to this custom I hypothesise:

And how our chief priests and princes delivered him to be condemned to death, and crucified him
[Luke 24:20]

Summi sacerdotes, not summus sacerdos or simply sacerdotes ... according to the Mosaic law, there is only one High Priest at a time, and he serves till he dies. However, the Romans violated this part. My hunch is, in response to Romans (already at this time, it was after Pompey de factor conquered / occupied Judea) manipulated Jewish High Priests as chess pawns, they had liturgy follow not always the nominal High Priest, but anyone could in fact (if he was a priest), at least outside Easter, do an office for which Moses required the High Priest. Any priest was a High Priest, much like in Rome any bishop, priest or deacon of an old Church is a bishop (so, the priest of Santa Sabina, being a cardinal, is usually a bishop). There you find the plural in both Luke and Mark to "summi sacerdotes", there you find someone not listed in (Antiquities? anyway) Josephus as high priest being a high priest ... and there you find a famous Christian of Asia Minor, who could be John the Gospeller, as having "worn the golden headband" (which was reserved for the High Priest).

So, this Yom Kippur, the nominal High Priest didn't officiate, he might have already done so, he might have been ritually impure, he might simply have wanted to get as many priests involved in the duties of a High Priest as possible. So the Romans couldn't have the chance of picking out a really incompetent High Priest. As, if Yom Kippur hadn't interfered with the courses, this year the course of Abia would have fallen on Yom Kippur, he drew lots for the available ones from the course of Abia. Zecharias was chosen.

6:44 Wait, are you going to count eight weeks from "the first day of the seventh month" to find the week the course of Abia was in Ezra 3:6, then apply this to every year and therefore also to the year when Zecharias served?

Sorry, doesn't work. No Jewish year is 48 weeks. Add the weeks for major festivals, no Jewish year is exactly 51 weeks either. The courses will be displaced from year to year, and more so on leap years with a leap month.

7:18 No. You DID IT!

You did misapply Ezra 3:6 to the start of the first division every year. Because, you know, the division of Abia we are talking about here is a different year from the year in which Ezra 3:6 happened. Indeed, centuries apart!

48 weeks + 3 weeks when all priests work ... that's fifty-one weeks, 357 days. So, supposing you are right about the general setup, the year after a normal one will have the courses displaced to later 2 to 4 days. A leap year 384 +/-1 day, will involve allow the third turn of it's first courses (not the first courses) to begin before the year ends.

You cannot transfer when the course of Abia was in Ezra's time to Luke 1.

Caleb Howells

@calebhowells1116

There is good evidence that the priestly divisions regularly started in the month of Tishri, the seventh month, and that this wasn’t just something that was established in the time of Ezra and then allowed to drift through the year.

We don’t have enough information to say how they accommodated the extra time in the year, but we certainly can say that they seem to have regularly started in the month of Tishri. Hence, the calculations in this video hold up.

Hans-Georg Lundahl

@hglundahl

@calebhowells1116 "good evidence" simply isn't a named source, and Biblically, there isn't.

Confer the extra quotes in a comment below my post:

https://assortedretorts.blogspot.com/2025/12/caleb-howells-makes-how-ler.html

@calebhowells1116 But, let's suppose you are right. St. Luke doesn't say Zacharias served in the course of Abia, he says he was of the course of Abia and served in his course.

After the exile, some of the courses had become standins for extinct lines, so he could also have been serving in a course that Abia took over.

Caleb Howells

@hglundahl The problem with that argument is that the divisions which were divided to substitute the lost divisions after the exile took the names of those lost divisions, hence why we continue to see references to them in post-exilic documents. So if Zechariah had been serving in one of those other divisions, Luke would have used its name.

Hans-Georg Lundahl

@calebhowells1116 Or not, since that would anyway have been his division. His right to it being in the division of Abia.

But mainly I argue that the succession of courses was a rolling scheme, so each course had access to all feasts of the year.

Ithaka: Ithaki or Leukada?

Φιλολoγικά/Philologica: If Aquinas had had to present the theory of Dörpfeld: Ulisses' Ithaca was Leucada · Assorted retorts from yahoo boards and elsewhere: Ithaka: Ithaki or Leukada?

The Real Location of Odysseus’ Ithaca
Caleb Howells | 19 July 2025
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EWXPD8YICPw

2:19 what if you interpret "furthest off into the gloom" as "furthest west" if you consider the contrast with the other islands ("dawn"="east")?

2:30 To be more precise.

Kephalonia stretches further west on it's west point. However, another one is further west on the east point, when arriving from Pelopponesos.

One would pretty obviously want to sail inside the islands as they shield from winds outside.

It is also further off when arriving from the Pelopponesos.

Dörpfeld rejected Kephalonia, because he found it very convincing that traditional Kephalonia = Ulysses' Kephalonia.

[Tried* to add:]

My bad, Zakynthos = Zakynthos.

3:28 Ah, Leukada. Sounds much better.

4:39 Unlike you and like most, Dörpfeld accepts that Homer lived 3 to 4 C. after the Trojan War.

This means the harbour could be an anachronism.

On Dörpfeld's theory, the inhabitants of Ulysses' Ithaca were Ionians, and they fled to modern Thiaki when the Dorians arrived. On that view, it makes sense they would reconstruct the cultural environment, including a cave to Aphrodite.

Here is part of Dörpfeld's argument:

η πoυ τις νησων ευδειελoς ηε τις ακτη
κειθ' 'αλι κεκλιμενη εριβωλακο ηπειροιο;

Ulysses asks "is this an island or a cape"?

6:13 You have a point. I'd have taken "sun and dawn" as hen dia dys, but take them as two separate directions, Leukada still remains an option.

8:01 According to Dörpfeld, the inhabitants fled from Ithaka to Dolichion.

So, modern Ithaki = Ulysses' Dolichion.

Or that may be my bad memory, it's thirteen years since I read Dörpfeld in a library, and wiki attributes to Dörpfeld the idea that Same was modern Ithaka rather than modern Kephalonia. In that case modern Kephalonia would have been Dolichion.

9:09 What do you do with Dörpfeld's argument that Homer's Ithaka had some reminiscence of a peninsula as per:

η πoυ τις νησων ευδειελoς ηε τις ακτη
κειθ' 'αλι κεκλιμενη εριβωλακο ηπειροιο;

Dörpfeld thought it referred to the area between Leukada and the mainland with so little water Ulysses was unsure if it could count as making it a separate island?

I thought that Dörpfeld's strongest argument. Along with Dolichion not being a small island but one comparable to the other ones mentioned.**

* All of my comments disappeared.
** Ithaki has two major part joined by an Isthmus, which could explain the lines, they do not explain the disappearance of Dolichion.