The Inside Assyria Discussion Forum #5

=> Herodotus

Herodotus

Posted by PANCHO (Guest) - Sunday, October 28 2007, 21:34:48 (CET)
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There is much lifting out of context and deleting of words or sentences and otherwise scrambling of data indulged in by our “experts” which leave doubts about the ethics and conclusions of christo-nationalist claims. Elsewhere I copied down a section where Dr Joseph shows how one nationalist writer left out a crucial last sentence which would have destroyed the meaning he attempted to read into a paragraph by George Roux. When that last sentence is included, Roux’s meaning becomes clear and the entire point our nationalist was trying to screw out of him, ends in failure.

The following quote in reference to Herodotus is taken from the same book by Dr Joseph, pp 20-21:

“Herodotus is often erroneously cited by the nationalists as having equated ‘Assyria’ with ‘Syria’, referring to his statement that the people the Greeks call Syrians are called Assyrians by others. Herodotus himself, however, always differentiated between the two terms. Randolph Helm’s researches show that Herodotus ‘conscientiously’ and ‘consistently’ distinguished the names Syria and Assyria and used them independently of each other. To Herodotus, writes Helm, ‘Syrians’ were ‘the inhabitants of the coastal Levant, including North Syria, Phoenicia, and Philistia’; he NEVER (emphasis Helm’s) uses the name ‘Syria’ to apply to Mesopotamia. Mesopotamia is always called ‘Assyria’…(and its) inhabitants ‘Assyrians’. The clear distinction made by Herodotus, comments Helm, was ‘lost upon later Classical authors, some of whom interpreted (Herodotus’) “Histories’ VII. 63 as a mandate to refer to Phoenicians, Jews, and any other Levantines as ‘Assyrians’.

A footnote to the above follows:

“See Helm’s ‘Herodotus Histories VII.63 and the Geographical Connotations of the Toponym ‘Assyria’ in the Archaemenid Period’ (paper presented at the 190th meeting of the American Oriental Society, at San Francisco, April 1980). See also his “Greeks’ in the neo-Assyrian Levant and ‘Assyria’ in ‘Early Greek Writers’ (Ph.D. dissertation, University of Pennsylvania, 1980), pp. 27-41; see also Herodotus’ ‘Histories’, I. 105 and II 106. The late Arnold J. Toynbee, has also clarified that the ‘Syrioi’ are the people whom Herodotus includes in his Fifth Taxation District’ which includes ‘the whole of Phoenicia and the so-called Philistine, Syria, together with Cyprus’. The ‘Syrioi’, emphasizes Toynbee, are ‘not the people of an Assyria which contains Babylon and which is the ninth district in his list.’ ‘A Study of History’ (1954), vol. vii, p. 654, n. 1. See also George Rawlinson, ‘The History of Herodotus, ed. Manuel Komroff (new York, 1956), bk. Ii, p. 115. Cf. Odishoo, ‘The Sound System of Modern Assyria’, op. cit., pp 8-9.”

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