Posted by pancho from pool0052.cvx25-bradley.dialup.earthlink.net (209.179.216.52) on Sunday, January 19, 2003 at 9:40AM :
In an article, R.A. Markus, professor of Medieval History at Nottingham University writes..
."In its beginnings Christianity was a religion of a Jewish sect: one of a great many groups into which Judaism was divided, especially in its Palestinian homeland. Among their fellow Jews, Christians were distinguished by their belief that the promised Messiah who would deliver his people and inaugurate the kingship of God had already come in the person of Jesus, the Christ....If the Jews were God's chosen nation, the Christians saw themselves as the true Jews. Among them God had brought to a conclusion the saving work accomplished among the people of the Old Covenant."
Now that's interesting. The Jews saw themselves as the chosen among all the people on earth...and the early Christians were the chosen of the chosen...how much more exclusive can you get? Christians were just Jews who believed the Messiah had come...it had happened before...there had been false Messiahs, like most Jews felt this one was.
Our boys like to say there was nothing in Christianity that was foreign to Ashur and his people. The one marked characteristic of Ashur was that he was not a tribal god...he wasn't exclusively for his own people but was much closer to a universal god who was for anyone who would accept him.
To go from such a universalist, all embracing, wide open religion to the claustrophobic Jewish religion...and on top of that to become even more exclusive by counting ourselves among the select of the select...especially as you had to be practically a Jew to even be eligible to be a Christian...seems very out of character for Assyrians. Unless you want to argue that it was the Assyrian, "arms-open" policy, that eventually threw the doors open to Gentiles to join Christianity as well. You can do that if you're trying very hard to justify an Assyrian's existance as a Christian...like we weren't worth much anymore exccept insofar as we wised up and became Christians...a religion for slaves and servants.
Anyway...in the myth, Abgar converted us to Judaism, not Christianity...there was no such thing back then...just a Jewish sect. And you can see today the practical outcome of Christianity...the blind defense of Israel, the Holy Land and birthplace of "your" god...at the expense and through the destruction of the lands and people of BetNahrain we should have remained loyal to.
The Jews remained loyal, and have today enlisted our aid in maintaining themselves in Israel, while they and their offshoot, Christianity, has us killing each other and ourselves and destroying our own Holy Land...generaly called the Cradle of Civilization...NOT the birthplace of Christianity...but the modern burial ground of the Assyrian Heritage...if the Christians get their way.
-- pancho
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