The Inside Assyria Discussion Forum #5

=> Re: not the book I started to write....

Re: not the book I started to write....
Posted by Tiglath (Guest) - Tuesday, January 16 2007, 12:27:51 (CET)
from 210.84.8.199 - 210-84-8-199.dyn.iinet.net.au Australia - Windows 2000 - Internet Explorer
Website:
Website title:

*** I moved house around a month ago and haven't had a chance to hook up my internet yet but I just had to respond to this magnificent post.

pancho wrote:

** Mention that the start of the Assyrian King List featured "Kings who lived in tents" refering to pastoral origin of civilisation.

*** Perhaps mention that during the 5,000 year course of our history - the first in history min you - we were known by numerous epithets. Each new ruler seeking to establish themselves would build or renovate a new palace. Some went so far as to move their capitals. It was this movement of capitals that was responsible for some of our greatest epithets. Under Sargon of Akkad the capital became Babel (Gate of the Gods) and the Empire became the Babylonian Empire. Under later kings the capital, named after the chief diety, was moved to Ashur and the name of the empire became the Assyrian empire. These numerous names were applied to the same continous people of the region who continued to assimilate other groups that migrated into BetNahrain over the course of time.


>The Assyrian Empire was ultimately shattered by a coalition of Medes and Babylonians who destroyed the capital city of Nineveh in 612 BC. Many were killed and many were resettled elsewhere. Though the empire was no more, the people regrouped in smaller settlements or went on with their lives elsewhere under new rulers. The next momentous event in their lives was the advent of Christianity to which Assyrians were converted early on. Later they divided among two main sects; Nestorians and Monophysites or Jacobites, both originating in Roman Constantinople where they were quickly branded heresies. Dialects of the original Aramaic were kept alive through church ritual and common use. In the late 1890s Western missionaries arrived from Europe and America bringing Catholicism and Protestantism which won many.... (need info on this)

*** The new religion was our own religion with names and places changed to protect the ignorant. Tammuz became Jesus, Ishtar became the virgin Mary etc. Holidays such as the Death of Tammuz during the Summer Solstice (June 21st) became Noosardel and associated not with the baptism of Tammuz but with the baptism of Jesus's disciples.


>

>
>Of all their cultural or ethnic markers and inspite of every loss and humiliation the majority of Jews held on tenaciously to their ancient religion centered around their god yahwe. Eventually they were defeated and brutally occupied by the Romans, then finally driven out of their homeland to live most of their lives among strangers in strange lands. They learned other languages, forgot their own and intermarried. Food, dress, diet, music, arts and crafts, literature can be shared with other cultures or people…but religion, above all else, would be the single thing a Jew could not change and remain a Jew.

*** True, but not all Jews remained true to their religion. When Sargon II took over Samaria and carried the lost 12 tribes into captivity they were essentially assimilated into the Assyrian empire in the region today known as Kurdistan. Similarily there were Jews that remained in ancient Israel and mosy likely converted to Christianity and then Islam during the religous waves that swept the region. The modern day Palestinians may in fact have more direct lineage to the Abraham than the modern Jews od European stock that continue to persecute them.

>Finally, the claim of modern Assyrians that renouncing their ancestral god, Ashur, for another, newer one, made no difference in the direct link to their forbears, but that any Assyrian adopting Islam in place of Ashur, or Jesus even, meant that he would no longer be Assyrian, direct or otherwise, may be at the heart of the inner conflict and resulting political misery afflicting modern Assyrians. Their past and current losses and suffering may then, with some justice, be attributed to their own peculiar beliefs in this regard and the behaviors they have engaged in based on those beliefs. At the core of all their perceived and unique-in-history persecution or worthy-of-compensation losses and what is owed them by their foreign “enemy” Islam is the notion that all Muslims in BetNahrain must be descendants of the invading Arabs of 638 AD. They believe that no Assyrian would ever have converted to Islam willingly and that any who did were forcibly converted and therefore "Arabized". These converts, having bowed to Islam even though under pain of death or torture, unlike themselves who, when confronted with the like demand to embrace Islam, yielded themselves up willingly as martyrs, cannot compare with them in terms of rights, privileges or even honor, who remained the “true”, the indigenous, the Christian Assyrians.
>
>...all comments will be paid back tenfold....verily.

*** I think you need to also remind the readers that nationalism is a modern day construct that has barely been understood in the predominantly secular West has taken on religously based conotations in the Middle East.



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


The full topic:



Content-length: 5520
Content-type: application/x-www-form-urlencoded
Accept: image/gif, image/x-xbitmap, image/jpeg, image/pjpeg, application/x-shockwave-flash, application/vnd.ms-powerpoint, appli...
Accept-encoding: gzip, deflate
Accept-language: en-us
Cache-control: no-cache
Connection: Keep-Alive
Cookie: *hidded*
Host: www.insideassyria.com
Referer: http://www.insideassyria.com/rkvsf5/rkvsf_core.php?not_the_book_I_started_to_write-MPcx.OSdh.QUOTE
User-agent: Mozilla/4.0 (compatible; MSIE 6.0; Windows NT 5.0; DigExt; .NET CLR 1.1.4322)



Powered by RedKernel V.S. Forum 1.2.b9