The Inside Assyria Discussion Forum #5

=> Fred Aprim and the Sasanians

Fred Aprim and the Sasanians
Posted by pancho (Moderator) - Sunday, November 27 2011, 16:41:59 (UTC)
from *** - *** Commercial - Windows XP - Mozilla
Website:
Website title:

assyrian "historians" like Aprim tell us that throughout history assyrian/Christians have been persecuted and killed for absolutely no reason except their religion. This applies from the earliest times to today. It is, of course, not true. This is where you see clearly what makes the difference between scholar and propagandist. Aprim reads history books looking for what can be "useful" to promoting his personal prejudices...that film maker, Andre, does the same. A scholar, like Dr John Joseph, reads everything looking for everything in order to learn all he can about something.

Aprim and Peter BetBoohoo tell us the Persians persecuted and massacred Christians because they didn't like Jesus and wanted to convert us by force.

Here is Will Durant on the subject:

"Christianity was well established there (Persian Empire, mine) when the Sasanians came to power; it was tolerated until it became the official faith of Persia's immemorial enemies, Greece and Rome; it was persecuted after its clergy, as at Nisibis in 338, took an active part in the defense of Byzantine territory against Shapur II, and the Christians in Persia revealed their natural hopes for a Byzantine victory. In 341 Shapur ordered the massacre of all Christians in his Empire; entire villages of Christians were being slaughtered when he restricted the persecutions to priests, monks and nuns; even so, 16,000 Christians died in a persecution that lasted till Shapur's death (379). Yezdegird I (399-420) restored religious freedom to the Christians, and helped them rebuild their churches. In 422 a council of Persian bishops made the Persian Christian Church independent of both Greek and Roman Christianity."

There is much to learn in this paragraph and none of it welcome to Fred Aprim...so he skipped it.

a. Christianity was tolerated...as all pagans were far more tolerant than Christians ever were.

b. It was tolerated until its clergy took an active part against the State.

c. I would argue that there is nothing "natural" about Persian Christians wishing to betray their neighbors and countrymen in favor of foreign Christians. It is natural to remain loyal to the State you live in, or get out.

d. In response to their treason, the Persian Emperor ordered the slaughter of all Christians, but modified the order to apply only to the clergy...he is to be commended for that because it is the clergy that teaches their poison to the young...I'd have done the same.

e. Even so 16,000 Christians were killed. Still, no one has killed Christians like Christians. In one 24 hour period the Catholics of France rose up and murdered 10,000 French Protestants; their neighbors and sometimes family members too. Had they carried on for another day they would have surpassed the body count of Shapur. It should be far more shocking to Christians that Christians have murdered millions of their fellow Christians than that here and there, someone else has killed Christians.

f. We now know what would have happened to those Persian Christians if the Byzantines had won: they would have been forcibly converted or killed.

g. We learn that although one emperor, with good reason, attacked his treasonous Christian subjects (as he would have any other traitors), the next king restored them to their rights and freedoms and helped rebuild their churches...no Christian king, after a pogrom against Christian "heretics" ever did the same.

h. And, finally, we see that it was this penchant to hope for deliverance by outside Christian nations, and the disasters which invariably ensued, that forced the Persian Christians to adopt Nestorianism...as a way of showing their Persian overlords that they would not want, and would not be welcome, in any Byzantine victory....because they would be persecuted and killed by their "saviors". That was one attempt to stop Christians in one country from turning on their neighbors in hopes that foreign Christians would rescue their "brothers".

Alas it's a lesson we never learned...right up to this war on Iraq our assholes were beaming with hopes of being rescued by Christian attackers and enemies of the State. Christianity has made us stupid and self-destructive...and it's made a fool and a liar out of Aprim.



---------------------


The full topic:



***



Powered by RedKernel V.S. Forum 1.2.b9