The Inside Assyria Discussion Forum #5

=> Proving Greeks are Greek

Posted by pancho (Guest) - Tuesday, October 2 2007, 2:47:44 (CEST)
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A common response to Dr Joseph’s thesis that modern assyrians, like modern chaldeans, are a recent invention of the Europeans is to ask indignantly why Greeks don’t have to prove they are Greek…or Italians have to prove they are Italians etc. That the counter-argument to these challenges don’t exist anywhere can be put down to their being deleted or banned by a succession of moderators who will not allow “attacks” against the Assyrian identity etc.

The simple answer to the question about Greeks not having to prove their identity is, of course, that they do have to prove it. They have to prove it when applying for a Greek passport or any time place of birth is asked for. A Greek’s claim that he is the son of Socrates will not do…so it should be no surprise that a so-called Assyrian’s claim to be the son of Ashurbanipal falls flat. No Greek is expected to give blood for a genetic test because it wouldn’t prove nationality or ethnic origin…a birth certificate will suffice.

Modern day Assyrians do have countries and national identities…which they can validate by showing a birth certificate…the trouble is they can produce no such document that states they were born in Assyria. That should be the end of the story…but it isn’t.

If a Greek loses his birth certificate he’ll have as much trouble proving he’s Greek as an Assyrian has proving he’s Assyrian. The Greek government will not accept spoken Greek as proof of nationality…neither will customs or clothing, food, drink etc suffice because these are things which can be acquired. No, for important things, important documents are required, not poems or ardent beliefs or what your grandmother told you.

If a Frenchman is born in Greece he will be Greek, by nationality, French by “ethnic origin”. But even here he will need to show his parent’s French birth certificates to qualify as French-by-nationality. Not even the fact that his parents spoke French or came from France will do…papers must be shown.

There is no genetic ethnic marker for being Greek…or Armenian or anything else. There are abnormalities in the blood which tend to form in some groups, such a sickle-cell anemia among Blacks…but there is no such thing as Black or White blood. There certainly isn’t Italian or Spanish blood.

Likewise there’s no marker for being Assyrian. It’s amazing how otherwise sane people tripped all over themselves believing that a genetic test could prove their Assyrianess…when there’s no ancient Assyrian genetic material to compare with and even there were the ancients themselves were a mixture of everything within 1000 miles at least. They weren’t “pure” back then and they certainly wouldn’t be today.

Modern day Assyrians do have national identities…depending on the real and actual countries they were born in…I’d venture to say that all of them were eager to show their Iraqi or Persian passports and birth certificates when entering America or Europe. I can’t imagine a single one of them insisting that he must enter as what he was, an Assyrian, “screw the papers”.

They are Iraqis, Iranians, Syrians, Italians, Australians…depending on what it says on their birth certificates or naturalization papers. It is nothing more than race-hatred which makes Iraqi Christians refuse to be called Iraqis…because they have branded all Muslims of the MidEast as Arabs…and they hate Arabs.

As far as ethnic identity goes here again there is no proof that what modern Assyrians exhibit is Assyrian at all. The customs of the modern so-called tribal Assyrians match almost perfectly those of the Kurds and other neighbors. The food, clothing, music etc is almost identical and what differences exist can in no way be proven to be Assyrian. The spoken language won’t do either because it was the common language of that region spoken by Greeks, Persians, Hebrews, Egyptians and others….besides which the language isn’t even Assyrian but Aramaic….Had Aramaic not been spoken by Jesus and the Hebrews it would not have become the liturgical language of eastern Christianity. Latin was the language of the Latins of Rome…when it became the Imperial and also the liturgical language of their brand of Christianity it was learned and spoken by people far removed from Italy…but that didn’t make them ethnic Italians…same with Arabic when it was imposed as an imperial and liturgical language…people who were forced to adopt it did not become ethnic Arabians.

Differences appear and drive a wedge between neighbors with different religions. Birth, death and wedding ceremonies, religious fasts etc. create “ethnic” differences…as we see when someone changes religion and is considered “lost” from then on…and indeed, with the passage of time and several generations truly, remains “lost”. But modern Assyrians have retained none of the customs of the ancient Assyrians. They may now try to half-heartedly revive what they think existed but there is no way to tell. In truth no one knows what characterized ethnicity among the ancients…except for their religion of Ashur, which no one follows today, or the language of Akkadian, which no one speaks. What is claimed as Assyrian today is merely Christian ritual and customs and just as a Christian would cease being Christians if he adopted Islam…so too would an ancient Assyrian stop being Assyrian when adopting Christianity. What we have today are Christians who refuse, due to race hatred and bigotry, to be called “Arabs”. The liturgical language of their Christian faith, which is not even Assyrian but Aramaic, has convinced them that they are Assyrians. But they also believe they’re going to live on a cloud one day so you can determine their mental state pretty well by that alone.

There’s really no confusion at all about the nationality of modern Assyrians…not for those important things in life for which the rest of us have to show documented evidence. In that realm there simply is no such thing as an Assyrian…or a person from Gaul…or Albion. These nations no longer exist…we all know that. If someone insisted he was an Aztec, by nationality, and pointed to Mexico as his place of birth…which was till recently the land of the Aztecs…he would be asked for a birth certificate stating “place of birth” as the Aztec “nation” and not Mexico. Without such papers he would be Mexican…also end of story.

The answer then to “why doesn’t a Greek have to prove he’s Greek, is that he does…and if he can’t produce the valid documents, he isn’t Greek.

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