דמשק is an Anagram for מקדש

[Secret Alias]

Apparently Nodet beat me to the punch. He already made reference to the anagram explanation (although Google unfortunately read the Hebrew letters דמשק and transposed them to the Roman letters 'porn' oddly enough:

The exact meaning of this name remains uncertain: pom (Damascus) could be an anagram of enpn (temple), or an allusion to Babylonia (exile), cf. Jerome Murphy- O'Connor, "The Judean Desert," in: Robert A. Kraft & George W. E. Nickelsburg, Early Judaism and Its Modern Interpreters. Philadelphia (Penn.), 1986, p. 1 19-156. https://books.google.com/books?id=J-sPA ... EQ6AEIKTAA

Still though that will help the interpretation gain traction for publication I think. As stupid as it sounds if you begin your paper with "Nodet first noted ..." as opposed to "I was putzing around at the online forum BC&H ..." the idea is suddenly taken more seriously. Nodet however was probably putzing around in Jerusalem when he noticed the possibility. Don't see why dropping a name should change anything.

[Secret Alias]

Does the fact that Nodet doesn't provide a reference mean that the observation was the result of 'putzing around'? Or is there a pre-existent reference he forgot to mention?

[Secret Alias]

And why do these people think mikdash means 'temple'? As if the Pentateuch imagined Moses and the Israelites wandering the desert carrying around a 'temple'? Honestly the closer I get to scholarship the more I realize how bad it can often be.

And let them make me a mikdash that I may dwell among them. Make this mishkan and all its furnishings exactly like the pattern I will show you.(Exodus 25:8)

=

And let them make a temple that I may dwell among them ...

Jeez. That's why this interpretation never went anywhere. The Samaritans never had a 'temple' before the Jews but surely 'sanctuary' changes everything.

[Ben C. Smith]

As stupid as it sounds if you begin your paper with "Nodet first noted ..." as opposed to "I was putzing around at the online forum BC&H ..." the idea is suddenly taken more seriously.

I should have thought that working in the word "putzing" would always impress the editors.

[Secret Alias]

Hee hee hee

[Secret Alias]

But in another way, why should it matter whether Nodet added to 444 or I did it while walking the dog? That's how I came to the understanding. I didn't realize this was an anagram. I was adding up all the possibilities that might lead to 444 when I came up mikdash. I only realized it was an anagram of Damascus when I went to the wikipedia entry for mikdash. I guess my question is - why do I need a PhD to 'certify' the obvious?