Posted by pancho from pool0066.cvx24-bradley.dialup.earthlink.net (209.179.210.66) on Monday, November 25, 2002 at 11:12PM :
In Reply to: Re: This Boy Has Gone Bonkers posted by sankho from proxy.connexus.net.au (203.222.88.23) on Monday, November 25, 2002 at 8:42PM :
++++Did you spend time with the Jesuits? You can argue in circles forever...I know. You're dealing with the BIG ONE Buster!
: It's impossible to call a Christian Assyrian an Israeli Assyrian....
+++I guess so...you just did it. Wasn't hard. How do you feel?
++++ahem...."it is not difficult to call an orange and apple". See? That wasn't hard either. Hey...this is FUN! Now he tells me how to do it!
+++No it fits quite well. Assyrians picked up a sub-sect of Judaism...one that required any followers of Christ to BE Jewish before they could even qualify. So...in Abgar's day...while Jesus still lived, and was unabashedly a Jew...one would have HAD to have been Jewish to be a real follower of Jesus. Later gentiles could join...but not at the time Mar One and Mar Two went down that road to Jersey.
while Assyrian or Eastern Christianity was DERIVED from Jewish religious principles, it is a heavily Assyrianised version.
+++Says you. This is your fond wish...it's the way you turncoats save face...I've seen yours...you lost.
It is a derivative religion not pure Jewish religion and culture transplanted across. Early Assyrian Christianity in particular was very very 'paganist'.... heretical to the Western Christians.
++++Western Christians were Romans and there wasn't anything Christian about them. Jesus said pure and simple, follow me and you will get that kingdom...follow up to the cross to get scourged and spit upon and stripped and fondled and raped and stabbed and you will get HEAVEN...well after that sort of introduction it WOULD seem like a heaven.
+++Assyrians nevernevernevermevernever did those sort of things. Jesus didn't invent love, he didn't invent washing your hair, he didn't invent honesty, he wasn't the first to help an old lady across the street. these things were being done by people from way back when. What Jesus did bring was a belief that this life isn't the real life...it's a sort of testing time...what really counts is what comes after...AND, the best way to get there is to STOP ACTING like anything we know of any kind of an Assyrian...from the time when I think it mattered to be Assyrian.
+++Who CAN'T be a Christian...who can't grovel...who can't make a virtue of stubbing their toe...on their head? But who can do what the Assyrians did...the real ones?
+++Once an Assyrian became ANY kind of a Christian...with whatever over and undertones...pagan influences and all...once they said good-bye to Ashur, they were about as Assyrian as a Jew who quits Yahweh would be.
++++Once you go through that door...once you open your cupped hands and let the water run out...you can't get it back. To become any kind of a Christian, is to stop being an Assyrian through and through...and who needs them for anything...look at them. Good people at heart...but no soul.
: Contrast that to Islam which was transplanted whole across to Iraq.
+++Not true...the glory of Islam isn't what came out of Arabia...that was the desert heat and fierceness and purity. The Assyrian Heritage...NOT the Christian religion...gave Islam its polish and lasting appeal.
+++If Christianity was changed for the better by rubbing against Assyrians...then so was Islam. The fact that Islam prevailed tells you something about its vitality. Kick-ass Christianity also did well in the world...because another fierce group adopted and adapted it, the Romans. Your Christianity is the "get Kicked" kind, and it worked! Congratulations.
++++And DON'T tell me how Christianity is a religion of peace...it has been far more bloody than Islam...and they were Christians so they should have known better...also Christian atrocities have been on the rise for the last 200 years...Islam's period of collective barbarism ended long ago. You Christians get credit for the Holocaust...the First and Second World wars...Vietnam, Korea and of course, Iraq and Afghanistan..oh yeah, Yugoslavia...the Serbs are also Christians.
+++If your kind of Christianity was rejected by so many people...and it is dying out in the world...there must be a reason...same reason Christ got killed and would again. You are going the way of Christ...thanks a lot.
There may be some differences bt its pretty much the PURE Arab religion.. that's why Iraqis like to call themselves Arab
++++They call themselves Arabs as often as Assyrians here call themselves Americans...and proud of it. At least the Muslims of Iraq AND its Christians...all descendants of the ancients, are there trying to preserve the land of Ashur against attacks by the "phony" Christians, with the real ones leading the cheers. Dismal bunch.
and don't give two hoots about anything Assyrian apart from some nice old Assyrian things in some nice museums...
++++I suppose sending bombs and Sanctions is giving hoots? call them what you will...they are the people of the land of BetNahrain...while you are of the land of kangaroos.
-- pancho
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