Posted by pancho from customer-148-233-78-77.uninet.net.mx (148.233.78.77) on Friday, February 21, 2003 at 6:48PM :
Typical Assyrian Brutality
The bible is filled with more unadulterated...chunky...raspy-in-your-throat, hard to swallow bullshit than any book I know...especially when you factor in that the Jews got people, even people who hate their guts and wish every one of them dead or worse, to believe this patchwork of whoppers, stolen and garbled Mesopotamian poetry and congealed idiocy is the word of any god...any god you'd trust as a babysitter...let alone the lunatic who made the world... though, come to think of it...
You'd think any self-respecting Assyrian (possibly a contradiction in terms) would reject the whole thing outright as at the least an out and out theft...or else an insulting and lying account of one of the pre-eminent civilizations in the world at the hands of one of the puniest, that has made a whipping boy of Ashur...whose "great buildings" have yet to be found. Everyone can now say, "Saddamhasweaponsofmassdestruction"...in their sleep. They can also say, "typicalassyrianbrutality", without pausing to think.
Never mind that the most Christian monarchs of Europe, with the blessings of their Popes (I know, I know, they were all renegades)...invented tortures that would have made a pagan blush; Such as drawing and quartering...having your intestines slowly pulled through a hole in your side and roasted over a fire...while you contemplate the mercies of the Lord you'll soon be enjoying... then hanged by the neck just long enough to regain consciosuness, after which you'd be cut down to have your chest cut open, your beating heart cut out, roasted and stuffed down your throat...after which the four limbs of your body would be tied to horses each set to running in different directions and if anyone found a part of your arms or legs the'd be welcome to them....and what they did for fun with your torso I can't imagine....but then I'm a descendant of the brutal Assyrians, I don't understand Christian charity.
In, "The Bible and the Ancient Near East", we learn that King Ahaz ascends the throne of Israel(Judah, actually because the kingdom is no longer united...not only did their "empire" fall apart, they couldn't even keep their postage stamp sized kingdom, filled with Jews, together) around 740 BC and Isaiah tells him there's trouble brewing that he might not be able to avoid...something to do with Tiglath-Pilesar coming back to do what the Jews were no longer able to do to anyone...anyone besides another Jew. This message unhinges him so that it..."drove Ahaz to the desperate step of sacrificing his own son (2 Kings 16:3). Now we all know that an Assyrian King would have killed his own son just for sport...a Jew had to be "desperate". However...I'd like to point out that them people must have been desperate a lot cause their Lord was constantly calling on them for human sacrifice...the last being Jesus himself. Funny how the same people who deplore cannibalism and human sacrifice among Pagans and Heathens...get positively beatific and blissfully wet when they talk about the sacrifice of Jesus...or the eating of his flesh and drinking of his blood. Would you be surprised that those who "love" this religion the most can kill 500,000 innocent children? Jesus was innocent too.
Next the book says it was Isaiah's "impracticable" message that drove Ahaz to desperation. In the next sentence they say he was also driven to, "the practical expedient of bribing Tiglathpilesar to attack Aram and Israel(the northern part of the split kingdom...in other words he paid the Assyrian to kill his own Jews) and thus to save Judah from them". Had the man been practical as any sane person would understand the term he would have used bribery first, before infanticide, but hey...these are God's own people and he couldn't WAIT to see a child sacrificed.
The Hebrews eventually get hauled off to Boarding School in Assyria to kind of "bring them along" and the book says, "The story of what happened to the Israelian exiles in Assyria and Media is of special interest. Probably a good percentage of them, especially those with paganizing tendencies"...now hold on there...do they mean the kind who would or wouldn't kill their own children?..."simply assimilated into the greater Assyrian Empire, never to be heard from again (he means as Jews). Thus develops the famous legend of the Ten Lost Tribes of Israel."
Apparently this book came out after Kelly Ross gradutaed from Podunk University...as he was dead certain the Assyrians had kidnapped the Jews, held them against their will, and then misplaced them somehow. Truth is life was much better in Assyria than it was in Locust-Land. The Assyrians, being far more cvilized than the people who gave you your Jew carpenter, accepted all decent people...the likes of Abraham, however, were encouraged to emigrate...so a Jew would have to be crazy or a failure to go back to Israel. "See Nineveh and feggiddaboud Jerusalem" could have been a travel poster back then.
In the next chapter Sargon II is introduced and right off the bat he's called a usurper...no mitigating circumstances allowed. There was rebellion in the empire at his acession and, "Sargon blamed King Yaubidi of Hamath for stirring up the rebellion in Syria and Canaan. The coalition had many members besides Hamath, Damascus, Israel and Egypt. For example, Hanno, the ruler of Gaza, who had escaped to Egypt, came back to lead his city in the rebellion."
In other words...the provinces were waiting for the chance and took it. Apparently only the Assyrians ever tried to keep an empire together. The Jews themselves, the Romans, the Brits and everyone else just sort of hoped things would hold together...but if someone wanted to break away, like The Colonies for instance...what the hell, it would be wrong to use force to quell a rebellion.
The book goes on, "Sargon's reprisals were severe(here it comes). Israel was put under a governor and had to pay a permanent tribute(tongue in cheek as ever...how "permanent could it have been?). Samaria was strengthened as an Assyrian stronghold and the land was settled by an alien population". The Iraqis today should be so lucky.
Then the book says...and remember Menahem who ripped apart pregnant Jewish women, his own people..."The treatment that Sargon meted out to the whole area was typically Assyrian in its cruelty. Yaubidi was flayed; Hamath was incorporated into the empire; the people were exiled;the land was resettled. Sargon's victory was complete."
You'll excuse me...but that doesn't sound so bad. The king, the ringleader who set all this death in motion was flayed alive...I'd have skinned him too. You can bet that if only three more people had been flayed there would have been mention made of it...or if two-thirds of the population had been killed...as the Jews did to the Moabites...there would have been a blood-curdling description of "typical Assyrian brutality". The book paints the worst picture it can and yet Sargon, and the rest of the Assyrians come across much better than David or Menahem...remember these weren't fellow Assyrians they were ripping apart...these were rebels...and throughout history the rebel receives no mercy. had the Brits caught Washington they'd have hanged him from the nearest tree, no trial and no bullets...that would be for a gentleman...a rebel and a traitor received a dog's death...from a Christian monarch no less.
Somehow the notion of Assyrian "tyranny" being such an onerous thing doesn't quite wash...not unless you're a Jew or a Christian...in which case the Assyrians were about as bad as bad could be. Just ask yourselves who wrote the bible...who threw you all a bone so, dogs that you are, you could brag about Jonah and what not.
Shame on you all...and shame has come to you all.
-- pancho
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