Posted by Tiglath from 155.a.004.mel.iprimus.net.au (210.50.36.155) on Wednesday, February 12, 2003 at 7:12AM :
In Reply to: Re: Ba'oota D'Ninwaye posted by Paul Younan from ? (12.242.209.181) on Tuesday, February 11, 2003 at 1:51AM :
Khizma Paul,
: Khizmie, I have to totally disagree with your opinion about the story of Jonah and the basis of our holiday.
: The story is about God's love for the Assyrians, and how he spared them after they repented (to the dismay of the Hebrew prophet.)
: It is a story of God's universal love and mercy - even to the bitter enemies of the Jewish people.
You said it yourself. It is a STORY!
Who knows where it originally came from.
However we can make an accurate guess.
Perhaps it was an old babylonian or Sumerian myth in which some Mesopotamian God travelled to the Netherworld and told Ishtar the queen of Hades that unless she repented of her evil ways Heaven would conspire to destroy her and her kingdom?????
Perhaps this cuneiform tablet lies in the basement of the British Museum awaiting decipherment?
Perhaps it is still in Iraq awaiting a US smart bomb to destroy it in the coming war or smugglers to sell it on ebay to some rich Westerner for $30US in an online auction?
: No other nation besides Israel in the OT is mentioned as having a prophet sent to it, other than the Assyrians. I think that says alot.
No other monumnet stands as a testament to our religiously-based identities than Nabbi Yuenis, whicxh is situated in Mosul (Nineveh).
Nabbie Yeunis is today a Muslim mosque having originally been a Christian church. It is believed to be the burial site of the very same Jonah that the fable claims preached to the Ninevites.
What few don';t know however is that in 1853 when Austin Layard was excavating the palace of Ashurbanipal his calculations estimated that the palace of Ashur-haddon the King of Assyrian and Pharaoh of Egypt was located right under the site of the holy Islamic site.
Due to the religious sensitivities of the day, and of today of course, he was unable to procced with the dig.
I believe that the Nabbie Yeunis site serves as a great metaphor for our people today.
: No matter how many negative things are written in the Old Testament about the Assyrians - multiply it by 1,000 times and that's how many negative things are written about the Israelites themselves!
Khizma, in 1997 I saw for myself the cuneiform text telling of Naphustin's Ark not Noah's.
Seriously, if one of the Old Testament's stories is disproved then how much faith can we have in the other stories??
: Besides, there are many places in the OT (besides the book of Jonah), that speaks positively about the Assyrians.
: This is not to mention the NT when Meshikha speaks of the "Men of Nineveh" who will stand in judgement against the Jews of his time.
They're using US as an example of the very worst of humanity. It's like someone saying today "Hell even a monkey would obey Yawheh.com. Why not you the chosen children of Israel?
I know this is hard to swallow. It tok me a while to be able to digest it fully. I'm not asking you to deny your God or your religion all I'm saying is that we should all think deeper about it.
I hope you understand.
B'Shena,
Tiglath
-- Tiglath
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