¹ Some circumstances of this decision have been recounted by Parfitt, Tudor Dr in the Sunday Times, 25th 10 1985Google Scholar.

² In the adjacent Yemen the first trace of a Jewish presence is fourth century AD.

³ As Dr Geza Vermes informs me.

⁴ The sense “bite off a chunk” given in mediaeval lexica seems to be post-classical.

⁵ ḥūg: this is the only difficult word in the passage to have caused controversy; it could be understood either as the “rim” that keeps the circumambient Ocean from spilling over into nothingness, or as the arc of the heavens.

⁶ In the Bible, the affair is represented as a “revolt” on the part of a tributary king, which is naturally not the way Mesha saw it.

⁷ One need only recall that in biblical Hebrew the finite verb form hiqṭilhas as its participle maqṭil from an earlier mēhaqṭil.