The Inside Assyria Discussion Forum #5

=> My Error

Posted by pancho (Guest) - Sunday, February 25 2007, 2:13:24 (CET)
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My Error.

It was my mistake to issue a challenge I claimed would prove Dr Joseph’s credibility, one way or the other. It wasn’t my place to do that, for I could have worded it wrong, or prejudiced the case beforehand or simply been too dumb to know how to do these things properly, for which Dr Joseph’s reputation would suffer( I could have set the challenge up so as to prove him right, incorrectly and undeservedly, as well) but only through my fault and not his demerit. In this I was as wrong as our nationalists are or Maggie has been to define the criteria by which Dr Joseph is to be judged. But then I’m an amateur too…but trying to do better.

This is what I wrote:

So, which is it?

1. Did Xenophon use the term Assyrian or Chaldean?
2. Did he mean the people of Urartu when using “Chaldean”?
3. Were the people of Urartu known as Haldians, Khaldians and Chaldeans?
4. Did Xenophon identify the ruined cities of Assyria as being Median cities and the people in them as Medes?

..and I go on:

“”…it should be an easy matter to “prove” something here. Dr Joseph cites the book, the “Anabasis”of Xenophon, as his source and provides other source material as well. You, Maggie, without any source material cited but on your own, said that Xenophon is a classical writer who spoke of “Assyria”, Dr Joseph and his sources say not…it should be very easy to prove who is wrong. I don’t have a copy of the Anabasis here, but you could get one from a library…it should not take much time to find the appropriate section and see for ourselves what Xenophon actually said…then we’ll know who is “lying”, or mistaken.””

…As it turns out Maggie used other books, than the Anabasis, by Xenophon to make her case that he did mention Assyria and Assyrians. I limited the challenge to the Anabasis because that was the source for Rassam’s claim, which is what Dr Joseph was refuting. The other books which mention Assyria and Assyrians do not, of course, disprove Dr Joseph or discredit him in any way because his book isn’t about Xenophon…it is about modern claims of Assyrian ethnicity and identity.

I unknowingly set up the same sort of “false trial” that our nationalists do. I created my own scenario…wrote out my own “test”, set up my own measure of someone else’s veracity…and did it so poorly too that it was easy to “prove” I ,and therefore he, was wrong…but even if I had proven my point…my “proof” would still have been invalid, because I am not a scholar by profession or training or, that marvelous word, DISCIPLINE,…to know how these sorts of “challenges”, which call a man’s character and work into doubt, must be phrased.

In other words I had no business issuing such a challenge and making any claims on its behalf one way or the other which I claimed would be a test of someone else. It would be nice to think I’d be saying this even if Maggie hadn’t brought up those other books…

It would be like my deciding to create an IQ test…or a test on any subject on which I was an amateur and novice…and then claim that all who did well on it were obviously brilliant and those who failed it, obviously not too bright. All I’ve really done is expose my own weak head in ever thinking I was capable of creating a reliable measure of such a delicate and illusive subject as human intelligence…I’m the only one who comes out the dummy.

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