The Inside Assyria Discussion Forum #5

=> How We Came To Believe We Are Assyrians

How We Came To Believe We Are Assyrians
Posted by pancho (Guest) - Wednesday, February 21 2007, 16:19:51 (CET)
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How We Came To Think We Are Assyrian.

I can understand why people start chewing on the furniture when this subject is brought up. It seems to them that you’re calling into question their legitimacy, calling individuals who until then thought of themselves as the heirs of a most prestigious and wealthy family, “bastards” given over to adoption.

If I had to judge the truth of it by watching and listening to two people argue opposing sides of this issue, my choice would be for the one who remains calm, collected, speaks softly and provides the greatest number of sources for logical arguments. Likewise I’d be awfully suspicious of the one who shouts, whose flap “B” comes unhooked from his slot”A”, who calls his opponent a liar “in the pay of…” and other names.

In truth Dr Joseph’s case makes far more sense than that of the nationalists and so often when people know themselves already to be the losers in such an argument before it even begins, they try to plaster it over and confuse the issue with loud noise and somersaults. As the much-to-be-pitied judge said after hearing Dadeeshoo’s torturous harangue against the census report’s combining of Assyrians with Chaldeans in the lawsuit he brought against the Census Department that Dadeeshoo was, “long on rhetoric but short on logic”. So too the critics of Dr Joseph seem well stocked with wounded pride and passion but in very short supply of serious historical data with which to refute his position, for which they substitute fanciful readings of history, which isn’t the same thing.

The whole thing is very simple…I mean the story of how we Nestorans came to be confused with and then confused ourselves with, claims to direct descent from the ancient Chaldeans and Assyrians. It all flows together very logically and, were it not for the fact that it creates a lot of newly-minted bastards, who only yesterday were royalty, there’d be very little reason to toss all these names and accusations around.

Very simply put it came about from the same confusion of geographical location with ethnic descent as created the Chaldean “people”. The Nestorians were dubbed Chaldeans by the pope because he chose that location (Chaldea as it is said to be in the bible) to be the site of their new and reconciled congregation and then coming, in time, to think of themselves as the ethnic people of that name, so too did the Nestorians come to think of themselves as ethnic Assyrians from that word being applied to the Nestorians living in geographical Assyria where all those ancient discoveries were made in the 19th Century.

Dr. Joseph has this to say:

“When the Assyrian excavations revealed the remains of Nineveh to the wondering eyes of the world, the Nestorians and their ‘Chaldean’ brethren in the environs of the ancient Assyrian capital and beyond attracted special attention. The hero of these excavations, Austin Henry Layard, hastened to proclaim these historic, linguistic and religious minorities to be ‘as much the remains of Nineveh, and Assyria, as the rude heaps and ruined palaces’. In the midst of this excitement, J.P. Fletcher wrote that ’the Chaldeans and the Nestorians’ are ‘the only surviving human memorial of Assyria and Babylonia.

While the name Chaldeans was already, as we have seen, appropriated by those Nestorians who had embraced Roman Catholicism, the illustrious twin name ‘Assyrians’ was eventually adopted by the Nestorians as a name for themselves. Interestingly Layard and Hormuzd Rassam continued to use the older and more familiar name Chaldean and applied it to both the Chaldean Catholics and ‘Nestorians’. Coaley notes a dispute that Rassam had with Arthur J. Maclean of the Anglican mission in Qochanis in 1889 over the names ‘Syrians’ and ‘Assyrians’, when Maclean argued against the term ‘Assyrians’…’Why should we invent a name when we have such a very convenient one, used for centuries, at our hand?’

It was understandable, he agreed, that someone living so close to the ruins of Nineveh, ‘should have a fit of enthusiasm of Old Assyria,’ but ‘is it common sense to cast aside the name used by the people themselves (Suraye) and to invent another for them of very doubtful applicability?’

The point made that the term used by the people themselves, up till that time, was Suryaye…and not Assyrian is very telling.

All of these denunciations of scholars, no matter how reasoned and calm and well fortified their writings, as secret agents paid by nefarious interested parties to fabricate lies about our true history leaves the judicious person asking “why”? Why would so many people supposedly spend so much money, study and teach for so many years with the sole intention of spreading lies about who we really are? Rather it seems that WE are the ones expending a lot of time and energy and our own money, because none of us will pay, to spread what amount to half-conscious lies, but untruths all the same, about ourselves and out and out lies about legitimate scholars.

Why does anyone care to keep us from unifying? Or, do we think someone else MUST be working overtime to achieve this because we are so disjointed and out of whack that we presume no one would do this to himself and therefore there MUST be someone else doing it?

No one can furnish the answer to this simple question…no one can say what there is to fear from all of us Assyrians proving without a doubt we ARE Assyrians and all joining together to form one big Assyrian to confront the world. Is there a bank account somewhere drawing interest for the last 2000 years that we can claim only if we unify and prove our case? Will Iraq be handed back to us the minute we prove our claim? Will England have to turn itself over to us if we unify and prove we are Assyrians and is that the reason so many scholars and Jews too, amateurs all, are being supported to deny our heritage and keep their England?

Just what does anyone have to fear that so much effort is being expended to un-unify us?



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