A text only post, and about history, afield from fauna and flora, sort of...and grim, so dear readers, a caution to read on...

I'll put the search strings in bold, these are the beginning of a quote, and the link(s), the ulr(s), which are highlighted too, will be the quote(s) end(s)...

Like a by the wind sailor, Velella velella, I drift about...

In the movie Noah (see yesterday's post) there's this snake skin, a shed snake skin, and the movie writers have it that it related to the snake in the garden of eden, and this skin, when worn spiraled around one's forearm, imparts some magic from one generation to another...Noah uses it to touch the newborn twins...I thought it a curio, and in looking about, find that when Alexander the Great went onward from Jerusalem in his conquest of Persia he carried before him a flag with a brazen serpent, which was the flag/banner of the Temple and the Jews...the serpent was depicted as a serpent coiled around a pole, and there were bronze statues like this in the Bible stories too...

serpent pole Jews

In the biblical Book of Numbers, the Nehushtan (or Nohestan) (Hebrew: נחושתן or נחש הנחושת) was a bronze serpent on a pole which God told Moses to erect to protect the Israelites who saw it from dying from the bites ^[1] of the "fiery serpents" which God had sent to punish them for speaking against God and Moses.

Nehushtan

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nehushtan

Robert Graves in The White Goddess proposes solutions to a riddle poem called Hanes Taliesen...each line is a riddle, and one line is:

"I have borne a banner before Alexander"

...the ancient bards looked to have written, spoke most likely, long riddling poems filled with puzzles and allusion that challenged one another, and too for instruction of young bards...I don't know if we have anything similar nowadays, except maybe on game shows, or trivial pursuit games...one needed a terrific memory to be able to participate in these challenges...nowadays there's the web, and I can kind of cheat..:)...

Graves in puzzling over this line, concludes:

"To the learned Gwion therefore, a banner borne by Alexander was equally a banner borne by Moses, and St. Jerome, or his Jewish mentors had already made a poetic identification of Alexander's horns with those of Moses.

The banner of Moses was 'Nehushstan', the Brazen Serpent, which he raised up to avert the plague in the Wilderness."

pp80-81

The White Goddess

Robert Graves

this is on web, but pdf, so cant copy/paste

When I visit the family grave plots, nearby is a statue of Moses, with horns.

(update: have this wrong...graveyard Moses has no horns, but I think it is copy of Michealangelo's, which does, I think!)

It would be a too far reach to connect the Brazen Serpent with the snake skin in the move of Noah, the later looks to be creative story telling...and the banner may not have been a flag, but rather a tall pole with a bronze snake coiled about it...and it would be carried before a Jewish army, and Alexander's...and this in legendary lore...legendary lore surrounds the Bible stories...like stories surround the Bible from the Apocrypha and Torah...

And the Bible studies point out that when Moses fashions the curative serpent on a pole, it is a foretelling of Jesus dying on the cross...

moses serpent pole

And Moses made a serpent of brass, and put it upon a pole, and it came to pass, that if a serpent had bitten any man, when he beheld the serpent of brass, he lived.

Numbers 21:9

http://biblehub.com/numbers/21-9.htm

Well, that was an unexpected find, and it is a connection, and connections of all sorts...the notions of a serpent as evil from the days of the Garden of Eden, is flipped about, and the serpent on the pole is curative...as Jesus will be on the cross...if this emblem was over the Temple, I don't know, but it would follow...and as I related earlier, Jesus was crucified nearby the Temple...becoming, for a moment, its 'banner'...

Before he came to Jerusalem, Alexander fought at Tyre and Gaza...he had more success than Napoleon...and Alexander asked Jerusalem for help, but they declined, citing treaties with Darius the Persian, so when Alexander defeated Tyre and Gaza, he marched right up to Jerusalem in a rage, but Jerusalem prepared, dressed up in best finery, opened the gates, and welcomed Alexander...both had had prior dreams of one another, Alexander of the Jews, and the Jews of Alexander...and when Alexander met the high priest at the Temple, there was recognition of this by both sides, and an alliance and peace were made...

alexander temple Jerusalem

for I saw this very person in a dream, in this very habit, when I was at Dion in Macedonia, who, when I was considering with myself how I might obtain the dominion of Asia, exhorted me to make no delay, but boldly to pass over the sea thither, for that he would conduct my army, and would give me the dominion over the Persians;

Alexander visits Jerusalem

http://www.livius.org/aj-al/alexander/alexander_t35.html

The site is quoting Josephus...

Oh, and I watched Lucy Aharish News of Today, 11/4/15 i24 late last night...this is becoming a favored routine!...she takes things personal sometimes in the back and forth, and one guest was berating her, 'you are a journalist, you must be objective, and not in the pay of your employers' or some such, and Lucy wouldn't have it...the guest was a curio, a Palestinian spokesman...he was in the Anna Baltzer interview a few years back with John Daily...brb...Mustafa Barghouti is the guest's name...Lucy was trying to bring to light the subject of Palestinians using social media, radio broadcast, and such, to instruct one another on how to maim and kill...Mustafa didn't want to go there...'it is for me to answer the questions, and for you to ask, it's not for you to give your opinion and bend things propaganda like, like your employers would have it'...or some such...Mustafa would find sympathy with the republican candidates. both being beset by journalists going beyond their stereotypical ask and answer interview format!...at the end of the show there is a Rabin memorial segment with two guests, and Lucy brings it to the close with the question, 'How will things be ten years from now?'...

and I left off wondering about that, and came to the realization that what both the Palestinians and Israelis want isn't land so much, but Cities...big ones like New York, London, Paris...the movement from rural areas to cities is well studied...and I was wondering if Gaza, the little strip of Palestinian land along the Mediterranean had a city, and if the West Bank, where the remainder of the Palestinians are, has a city...oh....this is a project for a post, but on reading about Alexander's conquest of Gaza, I realized Gaza is a city, a very old one!...I had thought Gaza referred to a territory of land like the name of a state.

Gaza alexander

According to the Roman historian Quintus Curtius Rufus, Batis was killed by Alexander in imitation of Achilles' treatment of the fallen Hector. A rope was forced through Batis's ankles, probably between the ankle bone and the Achilles tendon, and Batis was dragged alive by chariot beneath the walls of the city. Alexander, who admired courage in his enemies and might have been inclined to show mercy to the brave Persian general, was infuriated at Batis's refusal to kneel and by the enemy commander's haughty silence and contemptuous manner.

Siege of Gaza

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Siege_of_Gaza

oh...I'm looking about for i24 Lucy Aharish show for today, and no luck...yet...here's an older youtube one, in it she's going on some more about the roots of incitements...all on her own...

(go to youtube)
Lucy Aharish mad as hell)

VIDEO: Amazing. Powerful words from Israeli-Arab reporter Lucy Aharish.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8rYCQjQkRGs&list=PLUhcXOFf515wH0kAe0u1sfvYxJRBp8Vbi

there are like 200,000 visitors to this clip, in contrast to the i24 clips I've linked which have like 32 visitors...i24 is very hard to open and see...many in the comments section express a concern for her safety, which I am in complete agreement with...be safe...

oh, here's another:

Lucy Aharish (i24) asks why don't the people in Gaza protest
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_vAhx5Th_ck

and here is another, a cnn interview of Lucy, and at the, the climax, as it is a performance!, she says what I thought...opportunities for the young...there are a lot of young in the middle east...it's a matter of rebuilding and infrastructures...cities...

Arab-Israeli journalist blames both sides; Israel/"Palestine"; 10-16-2015
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dSyqU47shv0

DavidDavid