The Inside Assyria Discussion Forum #5

=> With All Doo Respect

With All Doo Respect
Posted by pancho (Moderator) - Tuesday, March 3 2009, 6:14:07 (CET)
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>Well that is where our views must diverge. The ancient Assyrians gradually incorporated the Aramaen tribes in their heartland around 700 BC with the kings gradually taking Aramaens as wives. Like all other waves before them they gradually assimilated into ancient Assyria with the exception of their language which gradually blended with Akkadian over the centuries until it took over as the lingua france of the entire Middle East. The same thing happened to the Jewsd of Europe who were speaking a mixture of Hebrew and German called Yiddish before their return to the Middle East and the reconsituting of over 70% of their current Hebrew language from original ancient Aramaic sources.

...The Jews of Europe are a far more recent case...one for which there is ample documentary evidence. Until I see actual historical facts that support such statements about the Assyrians of old, of who absorebed who and who was dominated by whom, or married which from where, I'm going to respectfully refuse to accept these sorts of explanations as anything more than myth and legend, or propaganda.
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>>The Aramaic language, on the other hand, did not disappear so that the Christians who adopted this as their liturgical language, remembered the Aramaic/Christian culture.
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>The Aramaic language and alphabet were all introduced during the zenith of the Assyrian empire and represented a continuity of Akkadian. The subtle difference is that although we don't know whether we are direct descendants of the ancient Assyrians we do know that we are direct descendants of the ancient Aramaens, the vast majority of whom were a part of the ancient Assyrian empire.

..this may all be true...but the plain fact is that no "Assyrian" REMEMBERED being Assyrian until Layard told him he was...I think that is an undisputable fact. Had we remembered anything at all about Gilgamesh, or anything else NOT in the bible, we might have a case that we are descendants etc. But, since we didn't remember...and since the same Euros we fault at other times, had to teach us....I remain unconvinced.
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>>I didn;t want to pick a new fight with him, since I was apologizing....but I hope he took the hint.
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>You should only have apologised to him if he went to the same lengths as you have to deconstruct his own manufactured history and culture which he clearly hasn't. In fact he continues to fall back on the same old tired arguments that neatly fall within the Orientalism framework, blaming the victims - the Muslims - for forcing the benevolent West to invade their nations and instill democracy.

I apologized because I was wrong...I was wrong in saying that there are modern day direct descendants of the ancient Assyrians....I'm sure you would agree that no modern Greek would dare say he has a direct descendant of Socretes...

He was wrong too...but it's for him to deal with his character. He wasn't wrong, however, indiscounting Assyrian nationalist "aspiration". I too think these are ridiculous and foolish. His further mistake is to keep referring to modern Assyrians as if they really exist...so he's STILL mistaken...But where he was REALLY wrong was when he slandered the ancient Assyrians...and I never apologized for calling him on that.
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>As such, as wrong as you - and many of us - now appear in hindsight we were still more right than he was and continues to be.
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>Also unlike my relative Ashur Bet Shleemon I don't have an inferiority complex when it comes to tracing back our ancestry back to only the Aramaens. In fact I find it refreshing to know that we lived in such a multicultural, multi-religous and multi-ethnic location and our Aramaic language was adopted by all in the Middle East, including the Copts of Egypt.
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>Due to this it it's impossible to trace back our ancestry to the ancient Assyrians. The only people who would be upset by John Joseph's revealation are nationalists who still cling to the dream of a nation state in which we kick out the Muslims and use our romanticised and manufactured history and revised history to justify our appropriation of the indigneous Muslims' lands.

...agreed



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