Posted by andreas from dtm2-t8-1.mcbone.net (62.104.210.78) on Monday, December 16, 2002 at 10:55AM :
In Reply to: Tweaking Abgar posted by pancho from pool0253.cvx24-bradley.dialup.earthlink.net (209.179.210.253) on Monday, December 16, 2002 at 9:35AM :
: Paul contends that the belief in Ashur had died out by the time the Jew carpenter was born. That may be the case up where Abgar lived...though even after the Muslim conquest 600 years later there was evidence of some worship of Ashur...nonetheless, whatever Abgar and his people were practicing before he got the Clapp, it wasn't Judaisim...Reformed or other wise.
: Of course the Abgar story is a myth...but even as a myth, it leaves us with the as yet inexplicable detail that what he switched over to was Judaism, not Christianity...Christ was a Jew...he never heard of Christianity and sure as hell wouldn't recognize it today.
: Leaving Abgar for the moment, with his new found religion...somewhere, and at some time, the remnants of the Assyrians...who for the most part had left Ashur...though what they replaced him with till Judaism came along isn't clear...at some point they shifted to Judaism...which grew into Christianity...which split into a hundred sects giving us all the headache and more blood shed in the name of the Prince of Peace than you can imagine.
: Okay...so you didn't leave your wife for another woman...you just leave her, for no clear reason...and years later find another one. Big deal...that's a virtue?
+++ There was no one left anymore who could leave Ashur:
The ruling monarchy, the noblity and the ruling class had been extinguished; in a few pockets of "ancient (=original Assyrian) citizens) the Ashur cult was increasingly transformed by better elements and under external influence to fit the higher religious niveau of Zarathustra, then Mithra etc.
+++ While all the rest of the formerly subjugated peoples which formed the majority populace in Assyria up into the higher echelons (so-called "new citizens) kept to their Hurrian, Median, Aramean, Babylonian etc gods and/or further developed into higher syncretist forms so that Christianity later found a fertile ground.
+++ No need for Ashur.
Finished.
Basta !
-- andreas
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