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Posted by farid (Guest) - Tuesday, November 4 2003, 11:08:43 (EST)
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It is Joan, not Joyce Oates. At the same time Hammurapi (the preferred spelling now) ascended the throne in Babylon another Amorite was king in Assyria. Shamshi-Adad was a vigorous fellow with two sons we know of. One was a rather clumsy oaf named Yasmah-Adad, the other, Ishme-Dagan, a more competant fellow. Some of the best letters ever preserved from the ancient world flew back and forth between father and his two very different sons...each entrusted with a city to rule. The father and Ishme-Dagan are constantly scolding Yasmah-Adad...apparently he liked playing around in the harem more than attending to business. He also complained a lot and sent alarms at the slightest thing. In one case Ishme-Dagan says to his brother...

"Why are you setting up a wail about this thing? That is not great conduct."

How little we change. He could have sent this letter to any one of our National types today.

Shamshi-Adad had set up a system of flares to be manned at several points so that in emergencies signals could be sent to major towns fairly quickly. Of course the exact meaning of the flares would have to be known ahead of time. Yasmah-Adad was scoled by his brother for setting off the entire warning system for nothing more than a local raid...he says...

"Because you lit two fires during the night, it is possible that the whole land will be coming to your assistance."

I like these guys. Just these bits and pieces allow you to conjure them up in many other ways. We've had these same types throughout history. Yasmah-Adad sits in coffee shops in Chicago and Turlock sending out alarms and probably making demands and issuing diclarations...especially diclarations. He likes the attention all this "action" gets him from the women in his life. Ishme-Dagan has to take time from his own affairs and put out the fires his brother would start in the National Shorts. Being far more capable Ishme-Dagan has more real and pressing issues to deal with...but he's stuck with this goof of a brother so he makes the best of it. Watching over this brood (there may have been more brothers) is the figure of the Old Assyrian and even HE isn't "pure" but of Amorite stock...who tries to bring all his children along, seeking an heir to the kingdom from what he has to work with.

As an aside one is reminded that the Church tried valiantly for 1000 years to sink the Western world into ignorance and rank stupidity. The Muslims brought science and soap into Spain from where it spread after their downfall, but still the Church fought tooth and nail to keep books and knowledge and hygeine a secret. Its stranglehold was broken by several events, not the least of which were the tales of high civilization the Crusaders brought back from the Muslim east...and the fact that Muhammad trounced Christ, when the most Christ could manage was to get Christians killing Christians and then Jews.

The Renaissance, which helped blow the cover off the bloody Church, came about the year when the Eastern Church was invited to Rome to see if there could be a reconcilliation between these two branches of the Christian franchise. The visiting prelates and Bishops brought with them Greek culture and learning which washed over the idiotic West like a balm. Other contacts whetted the appetite of dukes and princes and those Western Cardinals who didn't believe all their own crap either...and soon you had a crack in the iron cage the pope had placed people in.

I wonder if all those documents laying around in museum storerooms stay there because they challenge the notion that the Christian world is an improvement over what they ruined...and also because the simple truth that the Hebrews couldn't write a sentence OR build an outhouse might upset the applecart. It wouldn't be the first time the Church tried to stamp out learning and knowledge...and in this case especially their continued though limited stranglehold is something very dear to their mercenary little hearts.

Is it possible that the ancient world was far more complex, refined and far richer intellectually and morally than this bible of theirs can bear to admit...and that the Jews, because they have to be the ancestors of the son of god...must get credit for it all, no matter what the cuneiform texts might reveal to be the opposite? And don't we Assyrian Christians just love to join in bashing our own ancestors? "Well...they were good enough in their day...a very bloody day, but THANK YAHWE we now know better and follow a Jew carpenter and there's peace on earth."

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