The Inside Assyria Discussion Forum #5

=> Santa Came Early

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Santa Came Early

Here I sit, contemplating Fred Aprim with the serene humility of a Christian holding four aces.

PERSONAL REFLECTIONS ON JOHN JOSEPH'S HYPOTHESIS

Aprim’s method will be his usual. He will skip a direct confrontation with the central point and thrust of the book(though he will dismiss it in passing as if there had been no need to bother for “we all know”, though he won’t say who “we” are and he won’t say how he knows or what or where from either), to prowl the periphery hoping to spot an “aha!”,..seizing on as many as he can bag as “proof” there was no substance in the central theme, which he dared not engage, with perhaps a passing comment that a minor point or two were “interesting”. This way he appears to be “thorough” and fair and probing.

….And that’s all it is…and that’s everything that Dr Joseph’s approach isn’t. Dr Joseph, and no real historian, who has to really publish a book which must be reviewed by others in the field, cannot pass off his as his manuscript, the “personal reflections” as the musings of an amateur…a mechanical engineer, whose hobby is being a nationalist The true scholar and historian is not a partisan, he is not striving to make a political point, he is not dealing with being a patriot or Real Assyrian or Real American when he writes about modern American or modern Assyrian history. Fred Aprim and the rest of our nationalists, have an agenda clearly expressed in all their writings and they all approach history, not as a scholarly discipline, but a place to pick up slogans for their political aims.

This nationalist agenda hinges on being able to maintain the fiction that he, and all the rest of them, is a direct descendant of the ancient Assyrians… not from any affection for his supposed ancestors, or serious conviction, but as another weapon in his battle to get “his land back”, with all the oil under it there is…and he has seized on writing “history” as a weapon in his arsenal to be used to attack those standing in his way, and one of those who stands to disarm Aprim, before he even shaves in the morning on his way to the national office, is Dr Joseph and this book. Dr Joseph’s book is heavily supplied, some might feel burdened, with extensive footnotes and lengthy bibliography of books he’s actually read and understood, and this is precisely in order to be thorough and allow others to check his sources for themselves and follow the steps by which he seeks to support his claims.

It is Fred Aprim who “must prove” things are the way he needs them to be, something no scholar or historian, not on the payroll of the CIA or in a political think tank holed up at a university, would ever even attempt...it is Fred Aprim who stands to gain something dear to his heart through a battle in which he must win and therefore, like any soldier facing heavy odds, his concern is to survive and struggle to victory, no matter what crimes must be committed because he is engaged in a “noble” war…Dr Joseph faces so such desperation…he writes with the calm and thoughtful manner of the scholar, sitting with his books, dictionaries, encyclopedias and with several authors and experts available for consultation. He wants to “get” nothing…no land, no country…no political recognition, no oil revenues and, where the esoteric subject matter of this book is concerned, no royalty checks either…rather his is a quest for enlightenment through a close examination of the manner by which we came to be called modern Assyrians…something Aprim cannot even begin to consider in a rational manner because he is already under “attack” everywhere and on all fronts and now, since the formation of Kurdistan, the millions of dollars given, by the Kurds, to Aghajan to hand out to our harassed people there, plus the imminent demise of his Rocinante, from the multiple wounds Dr Joseph has inflicted on it, with the best of intentions, with darts and shafts aimed from this book, the warhorse Fred Aprim was counting on riding to victory, must, with that other historic deformity, Richard III, cry out in despair, “My warhorse, my warhorse, my Assyria for a warmhorse”…as he goes down to inevitable defeat…”and we all mourn”.

Let us reflect on the shallow reflection of a wonderful book, in the muddy puddle that is nationalism.
>
> It is a well-established fact that few so-called scholars and
> historians, who were and still are in search of personal glory, had abused
> and distorted ancient history.

..One more quick observation…you will notice that what Dr Joseph is accused of doing wrong or wanting to achieve by Fred Aprim is precisely true of Fred Aprim and not of Dr Joseph. What college professor, living his active years behind the walls of his college, going back and forth to classrooms daily and for years, guiding students along on their way through, ever went there with dreams of “personal glory” in his head?

…Why is Dr Joseph, who’s book, it’s ideas, and the attention we’re bringing to it, which sparked this reflective mood in Fred, included in a list among “so-called scholar and historians”? And who are the rest of the people on that list…or is it only Dr Joseph’s name that appears there? What makes him “so-called” and by whom and on what authority? Should we not be “thorough” and avoid selectivity when saying these sorts of things, or is this kind of sloppy work, implying Dr Joseph is on some list of incompetent historians, without admitting Fred drew that list up, okay to engage in when slandering a man in the guise of reflecting on his book?

Does calling Dr Joseph a “so-called” historian mean that he is erroneously said to be a true historian and Aprim’s list contains many such frauds? Again, by whom, where, when? Does it mean that he is an amateur in the field of history, like Fred, whose only area of expertise is mechanical engineering which he hasn’t worked at as a profession in decades…while Dr Joseph, a Princeton graduate with a doctorate, retired now after a distinguished teaching career at a well known college as an Emeritus professor…and who will now have the new Center for International Studies building, on the campus oh his college, named after him…with two or three books to his credit and many articles too…is such a man a “so-called” historian..or is this a sop thrown to the pig ignorant people who constitute Fred’s selected and selective audience meant to give them heart that for all of Dr Joseph’s recognized and real accomplishments in his field of expertise, while Aprim has none in his but has, rather, leapt with his two flat feet among the scholars, writers and historians in Dr Joseph’s profession, that Fred Aprim, without an ounce of qualifications, really belongs there and not at an engineer’s desk, by virtue of simply calling them all by the term which best describes him and his big nationalist clodhoppers…as the “co-called” and self-styled “historian”…just because he is brazen and foolish enough to be insulting?

Is it that easy? Is it that easy to consider himself the professional equal of Dr Joseph and his peers….as easy as it is to consider himself the grandson of Ashurbanipal? Is it that easy?

…Dr Joseph has, “abused and distorted ancient history”(?) Is there any evidence that he has done such a thing or is none needed because this is a “belief” and as such is believed in because it is believed in, and nothing more needed?

If this is a “well known” and an “established fact’”…where, when and by whom and on what authority? Where are the sources who speak of Dr Joseph in these ways, besides Fred and Maggie?

Dr Joseph’s book is filled with sources, with notes and an extensive bibliography. Every other page is almost half-filled with notes and sources with titles, dates of publication, volume numbers, page chapter and supplemental sources for further study and research etc…and what has Fred produced to back any one of his disparaging comments about this most gifted man…besides his “believes”? Were Dr Joseph to do such a transparently dishonest thing one can imagination how quickly Fred Aprim would take him to task…but these crimes of conscience and intellectual misdemeanors are allowed to Fred…by Fred. And every taxi driver in this nation.

Nobody can and beyond any reasonable doubt
> prove that today's Assyrians are not the descendents of the ancient
> Assyrians.

…Dr Joseph never set out to prove or even asserts, that there is proof, that they “are not”… he decided, rather, to question what is put forward as proof, by others as well as by them, which they give as proof that they are…and to do it by conducting a survey of the various means by which he believed this modern identity was erroneously attached to the people living on the land, throughout history and right up to the national awakening which gripped people beginning in the nineteenth century, when, as far as the Nestorians were concerned, the treasures of the ancient Assyrians were unearthed and all the world set to wonder…and how it came to be assumed that the people on the land must be lineally descended from the people under it….which he claims was the modern source of this error…and not the first time it had been made either...although the actual discovery of tangible proof that the Bible was correct, along with the magnitude and quality of the find, did more to unsettle everyone’s minds, beginning with those who did the digging and later, when they saw how much attention came their way, as only comes to Fred Aprim now and for the same claim of lineal descent, decided to take this ball and run with it…right into Kurdistan.

I wonder if such historians could dare to claim that at least
> segments of today Greeks, Italians, Iranians, Egyptians are not the
> logical descendents of the ancient Greeks, Romans, Persians and Egyptians
> respectively?

..there’s no “logic” to making such claims of nationality today, nothing more is asked of a person than documents and official proof of nationality and place of birth.

When it comes to the really important things, and not merely dabbling as an amateur, everyone needs documentation and not merely “my believess (sic)”. As Fred faced when applying with US Immigration for his entry papers to America, or his driver’s license. On all such occasions, where people are not merely indulging themselves and their friends, real and certified proof must be shown… “my believes” simply won’t do.

And this may well be the reason that no Assyrian “expert” has made a point of studying or researching this topic…because there is no more than “your believes” to base anything on, if your belief is that you are a direct and lineal descendant of the ancient Assyrians. The other nationalities Aprim mentions would all be able to show official docmentation, including Iraqis, which I find curious he didn’t include, but maybe not…because for all his talk about “no need to prove what I know” and “everyone knows”…I’ll bet anything Fred never dared put down, “Assyria” for place of birth or nationality at such times.

If Fred knows better than to try such a national stunt where it counts, where he could finally and incontrovertibly prove he is what he says there is no need to prove he is, only he failed to do so…failed to proclaim in a loud and national voice his pride and conviction that he is an Assyrian,,,why does he belabor Dr Joseph for having his doubts as well? Fred denied his lineal descent before Dr Joseph ever thought to “do it” for you.

In any truly scholarly work one do not base ones “beliefs” ON those same beliefs. This is to argue in circles. The other people he mentioned had documents proving they were of their appropriate nationality and not a one of them expects to be thought of as a lineal descendant of Rameses III or Shapur. Fred’s official documents, like their’s, list the name of the country and therefore the nationality, of birth… and Fred’s is Iraqi and nothing else, not where serious and practical matters are concerned. For the rest Fred can dress up like Florence Nightingale if he wants, and dare any “scholar or historian” to prove he is not…and when no one bothers, as who would, declare this is because no one can…when no one has any interest in someone obviously decked out in borrowed clothes and identity…but scholars most definitely would look for the source of the symptoms which lead so many people to claim they are really a Civil War nurse.

Few historians had adopted the basic psychology technique,

What does Fred know of basic historical “technique”, or scholarly “technique”, or academic, that one can have any confidence he understands the techniques of psychology? We are not talking about pop-psychology….nor pop-history either.

> which teaches us

…Where? Where does “it” teach these things…where are the books and teachers of such a technique as he claims there is?

that when looking for a mean to deny or question a
> certain crucial issue, a person needs simply to implant the factor of
> DOUBT in the mind of the vulnerable reader or listener and this is what
> John Joseph had applied in his newest book, or should I say his new old
> book with basically new title and cover.

….This is what Fred does, this is his “psycho-politico-nationalist” technique…for he is not discussing the point in question at all. Dr Joseph, who is not a psychologist, as Fred isn’t, but who is an historian, as Fred also isn’t…is only surveying the various methods by which we have been called several things, by Europeans first and then adopted ourselves.

> The latest book by Joseph, The Modern Assyrians of the Middle East, is
> simply a revised edition of his 1961 book "The Nestorians and Their Muslim
> Neighbors".

….Why does Fred “selectively” copy down the title? Why does he “we wonder” but leave out the rest? Why his basic psychological and historical technique of chopping things up and only taking the parts he thinks serve his purpose…is it not significant, to Dr Joseph’s main point and a reflection of his thorough method and a desire to inform, that the actual title reads, “The Modern Assyrians of the Middle East, Encounters with Western Christian Missions, Archaeologists and Colonial Powers”?

I guess Joseph lacks creativity and vision to publish something
> new so he looked in his old stuff, picked this 40 years old book and gave
> it a face-lift.

…Such a cheap shot.

…He explains, quite plainly and simply, what the reasons were for re-issuing the book and he says he has added and expanded it to include our history since 1961, especially as so much has happened to us since then…but that the essential argument, covered in chapter one, still stands and has stood the test of time well…are you a professor Emeritus anywhere?

While the author justified his motion of giving the title
> "The Nestorians and Their Muslim Neighbors" to his old book by claiming
> that he was speaking about the members of the Church of the East, what
> justification could we give the author for changing the title to "The
> Modern Assyrians of the Middle East,"

..I think the question would be better put if Fred asked “what justification would the author want from Fred Aprim”…that, at least, shows Fred knows his place. He has called us “modern” Assyrians because that is what we claim we are, and that claim has been growing in ferocity and foolishness and is still at the core of his revised edition…which has been reissued precisely because this recent and most volatile situation exists in BetNahrain.

yet neglecting completely, for
 example, the Orthodox Assyrians, wrongly named Jacobites.

…”wrongly”? So, does Fred admit people can be “wrongly” called things? That’s a start at least…now merely apply that notion to himself..,and then set out to show where that error came from, and he’d be on the same quest Dr Joseph is.

…I’m afraid, however, that those wrongly named Jacobites, as he admits, will merely take a page from Fred’s book and say, “we know we are Jacobites because we are Jacobites”. Does Aprim see the essential nature of the problem now?

If the author
> had decided to address the Assyrians of the Middle East,

…He is not addressing modern Assyrians, he is addressing the Nestorians who insist they are modern Assyrians...he believes they were misled into wanting to
be such a creature…he calls them Nestorians and he is not addressing his book to any one segment but to the general reading public…for their consideration.

why did he ignore
 the Catholic Assyrians throughout WWI

…What about Catholic Assyrians should not have been “ignored”?

and their condition in Iraq today

…What “condition”?

> with the exception of mentioning the issue from a narrow prospective of
> the Churches' dialogue?

..what “Church’s dialogue? What is the “narrow perspective” of the “Church’s dialogue” which Dr Joseph has “ignored”?

Does Joseph believe that the members of the
> Chaldean Catholic Church and Syriac Orthodox Church are not Assyrians?

…Dr Joseph believes that none of us are Assyrians…he believes we were misled and enjoyed it so much we’ve been misleading ourselves ever since...he says that we believed people who called you “Assyrians” because we were living ON geographical Assyria…and that all the references which Fred cites to classical writers or, any writer, including himself, have merely continued with that error…and if Fred can show anyone from the past, before the 19th Century who said, “I am a direct and lineal descendant of the ancient Assyrians or Chaldeans”, Fred will have done what no one else has been able to do

 In this new-old book, the author implanted this factor

..The Bible has been revised many times too…and is made up of old-new testaments … we should remain calm.

..it isn’t a “factor” and he didn’t “implant” anything…Fred is the one claiming (implanting?) he “left” this out and “put” this in… Fred should cite the page and chapter and make his case in a rational manner…like Dr Joseph has done with all the references he cited to back him up…they were not all his “personal reflection”, in fact any scholar worthy of the name makes very few of those without first building as tight a factual case as he can, so he has something solid to reflect on and not merely a reflection of a reflection. It is Fred’s ”idea” of the correctness of his beliefs which is based on nothing more than on his beliefs, which seeks to implant the notion that Fred Aprim knows what he is talking about.., because he “proves” himself…which is not at all what Dr Joseph has done in this book.

of doubt here
> and there to confuse the reader and did this in avery methodical and
> clever way.

…Alas, to Fred everything that happens to him was “done” to him and since no one will admit how dense he is, will add, “in a very clever and methodical way” too…when it took nothing of the kind to convince Fred that he is a modern Assyrian, in the first place.

He did so while trying not to show himself as a completely
> blind antagonist.

.this is what Fred is, now. Fred is antagonistic to the book on unthinking and unseeing principle…Fred is confused by what he doesn’t understand, or feel compelled to slander because it gives the lie to his nationalism, and therefore hopes to build a case for it being done “in a clever and methodical way” to fool people, when nothing is further from the truth, where Dr Joseph is concerned. All Fred’s “reflection” are base accusations, with nothing at all of true reflection to them…in fact, since mentioning his” idea” of what the book tries to do, he has only tried to sow doubt over the rest of it by these arch comments that are supposed to show that he is “in on it”…and we must take his word for it.

He stated, for example, in one paragraph, quote: "In the
> eighteenth century Assemani used "Assyrian" in reference to thecendants of
> the Assyrians. Assemani, according to Fiey, found a certain Assyrian descendance in all the peoples in the region:
> Jacobite, Nestorian, Sabaeans, Yezidis, and a great deal among the Kurds."
> Unquote. Even in this quote, he is adding further doubt by choosing a quote
> that is mysterious enough by bringing the Kurds in his argument and the
> thought that there was no implication that the Nestorians were descendants
> of the Assyrians!

Here is a perfect example of what Dr Joseph contends all nationalists do when hacking at scholarly works on thier way to cobbling together their “evidence” from the debris they leave behind, which is nothing more than a dishonest way to sow doubt by throwing as many unsubstantiated accusations as they can manage. Dr Joseph showed one such example in the case of Odisho and his use of only one sentence from Roux to make it appear that Roux agreed with Odisho’s point (which shows that these nationalists are indeed dependent on scholars, where they can be put to national work, even dishonestly), while, leaving out the following sentence which destroyed the point Odisho hoped to make by being “selective”. So too does Fred either miss the point or deliberately leave out the sentences which appear before this quote and after it…in an attempt, not to be “selective” and also “thorough”, but to fashion an absurdity or lie to lay at to the charge of the author whose work he has violated, where there was sense and continuity…. here is the entire paragraph:

“’Thanks to the Old Testament, the names ‘Assyria’ and ‘Assyrian’ were well known for centuries, long before the archaeological excavations of the nineteenth century. In the works of the early Eastern Christian writers, notes Fiey, we find all the gamut of references to these ancients, employing indifferently the words Syrian, Athurians(Assyrians), Chaldeans, and Babylonians, but these writers never identified with these ancients. “I have made indices of my ‘Christian Assyria’, emphasized Fiey, and have had to align some 50 pages of proper names of people; there is not a single writer who has an ‘Assyrian’ name.’’’ In early modern times, as noted above, the Roman Catholic Church added to the confusion by coining a number of names for various Christian communities of the East and their patriarchs; these Roman Catholic titles and names, however, tried to identify the geographical location of the of he churches and patriarchates of the region and not the ethnic origin of the people involved. In The eighteenth century Assemani used “Assyrian” in reference to the Nestorians but with no implication that they were the descendants of the Assyrians. Assemani (and here Fred begins to lift), according to Fiey, found a certain Assyrians descendance in all the peoples in the region: Jacobite, Nestorian, Sabeans. Yezidis, and a great deal among the Kurds. Also in the 18th century, the British historian Edward Gibbon, aware of this confusion of names, wrote that the Nestorians,’Under the name of Chaldeans and Assyrians, are confounded with the most learned or the most powerful nation of Eastern antiquity.”

This is the entire paragraph…and the pages, 22-23, on which it appears are half-filled with multiple sources and further explanations which, if they were written in the same size script, would make another entire page, just of references.

Dr Joseph begins by showing that Assemani’s reference to Nestorians included no hint that they were the descendants of the Assyrians, which Aprim cut out of the segment he chose to quote. It is Assemani, according to Fiey, who then went on to find a “certain Assyrian descendance in all the people of the region”. But Dr Joseph’s point is that Assemani was incorrect about the Kurds and the Nestorians (sic) and everyone else on his list.

I think part of Fred’s confusion, his penchant for getting even simple things wrong, as is rife among all our marginally educated nationalists, who also have very poor comprehension of the English language, is that none of them are familiar or comfortable with the higher uses of the language when discussing arcane, or even common, subjects. And since most scholarly works on this, sometimes dense and heavy-going, subject are expressed in equally weighty words with subtle meanings and multiple references over a broad range of historical topics no amateur would even think to read, it’s no wonder that they get it wrong as often as they do, and also no wonder that this thought never occurs to them or matters not at all if it does.

They are doing “National Work” and which nation hasn’t been stupidly proud of its ignorance and arrogance?

I believe Fred thinks that “a certain Assyrian descendance”, means Assemani found a CERTAIN, as in “certainly sure” , Assyrian descendence, in so many people, including the Kurds…a “point” Fred will later go on to “destroy”… when what is meant here is an alleged…as in a certain KIND of Assyrian descendance, meaning “nothing exactly-certain”, but a special KIND of hint of descendence…not typical or open to claims of certainty as in “I have certain proof of this”..but, rather , “I have a certain kind of proof of this”. And, as with the central theme of Dr Joseph’s book, Fred is off and running with his own initial misreading or deliberate mish-mashing, building a “case” based on his own error or in the service of his nationalistic, political needs. And names are also words…and this is exactly Dr Joseph’s point as to how this whole thing started in the first place…through multiplying errors based on one big initial one.

To play Fred’s game, for a moment, one might ask if that’s a “certain kind” of Assyrian name he has…or is it a CERTAIN Assyrian name, taken from a list of other such certainly-sure, historically and lineally-descended-from-ancient-Assyrian names?… and one which must, therefore, be identified, both ethnically and nationally, with the ancient people from whom this, or any other name comes, and that that the person called by an ethnic name is “lineally” descended from the ethnic people whose name it is? If one recalls that there are several modern Assyrians with the name Frederick…is it therefore a “certain kind” of a name APPLIED to modern Assyrians(as an ancient Assyrian name might be APPLIED to a Nestorian)…and, since it is a Teutonic name, is Fred a modern German? Or does Fred believe his name to be a “certain sure” ASSYRIAN name…in other words did any ancient Assyrians have the name Frederick?

Is Fred saying that the name “ Assyrian” added onto Christian Nestorians, as was recently done by the Nestorian Church, makes the Church, therefore, Assyrian…. because a name is proof of ethnic and lineal origin…but that his own name of Frederick, which is attached to the Teutonic People, has nothing to do with his, “obvious”, German ancestry? .Has Fred become German as well as modern Assyrian simply by having ancient names attached to him? Did he become a “writer” as well in the same way? Can a name do that? Or is he merely a Middle Eastern Nestorian, mechanical engineer, of Iraqi birth and nationality, no matter what the ethnic/historical derivation of the name his parents attached to him, or he attaches to his modern ethnicity, either “Assyrian” or Germanic?

While Fred would never assert that a Germainc name would make him an ethnic German, descended from Freidegunda or some horned Valkyrie, even if he’d been born and bred in Germany… taking away, or even replacing, his undoubted Iraqi and Nestorian background, says, nonetheless and against all reason and in contradiction to the above “point”…that the name of “Assyrian” attached to him, because he was born on that ancient land’s name…makes him nay, “proves”, that he IS Assyrian, in spite of the fact that no Nestorians, before the nineteenth century, ever thought or spoke of THEMSELVES as such…but picked up these ideas from the views formed on this matter based on the discoveries and then multiplying errors in referring to the people on the land by the same ethnic name as that of the people buried under the land, by European explorers, travelers, missionaries and foreign government officials. Nestorians, who never before thought of themselves as lineal descendants, even though they read about and “mentioned” ancient Assyria but, on the contrary, held all the common and negative views about the ancient Assyrians as their Nestorian Christian-Jewish faith and Bible taught them.

Therefore Fred’s “point” that Dr Joseph, while “foolishly admitting” that Assemani said there was CERTAINTY in a Kurd being a descendant of the ancient Assyrians, was denying that “certain kind of Assyrian descent” to Nestorians “!!!!!!!!!!!!!” is invalid on the face of it…because he says no such thing, but rather Fred, who lifted this one sentence without all the qualifiers in the paragraph provided by Dr Joseph and who knows what the use of the word “certainty” meant in this context, to prove to the hasty and those who place faith in Fred, that Dr Joseph said and meant these things, when it was merely dishonestly or a lack of comprehension on Fred’s part that makes it appear so.

…Fred and others like him, are used to lifting all their proofs and sources out of context, concocting straw dog they can then discredit by, in this case, attempting to show that it is Dr Joseph who is being “clever” and trying to “confuse”, when it is Fred, every time…every time

…Fred’s effort to prove Dr Joseph wrong on his main theme about how these bogus claims to a modern Assyrian identity, based on things like Assemani’s hair-trigger as well as that of all the rest who rushed to judgment, by trying to dishonestly show that Dr Joseph would credit a “certain” Assyrian descent” to Kurds (Gasp!) while denying it to Nestorians, was another in the string of deliberate efforts Fred makes, in these muddy “reflections” of his, to discredit serious and respected scholars through misleading readers by fabricating evidence of such alleged errors.

…Fred’s shabby attempt to “expose” Dr Joseph’s “secret agenda” which he is then forced to “wonder at”, by asserting that Dr Joseph would ever say or believe such a foolish thing, which flies in the face of his entire book and in a most ridiculous way at that(in crediting a European writer’s claim that Kurdish ancestry and connection to the ancient Assyrians had validity, while denying it to Nestorians and therefore “selectively” selecting one set of Euros to believe while dobting what other Euros believed in a most “clever and methodical manner that makes us wonder”), was Dr Joseph’s intention, or even that he accepted Assemani at face value, or was “proof” that Dr Joseph is “unbalanced and inconsistent in his ramblings” and that Fred, a mechanical engineer with a habit of committing mayhem on the English language, was going to point his errors and failures or “secret machinations” out to the readers, could not have been honestly presented or made in good faith, and without a national-agenda in mind, had Fred kept that one sentence within in its context, where it belonged and where it made the kind of sense Dr Joseph intended when writing it as part of its surroundings and where it could clearly be understood as having done so quite well and, as a consequence, to the utter ruin of any “point” Fred thought to manufacture…Fred once again set out certain sure he would find “Assyria” but stmbled into a real Kurdistan and not a figment of Asssemani’s imagination, this time. It is Fred, as is the case every time, who exposes himself, which is exactly as it should be.

…Rather than deal honestly with the readers and leaving it to them to form their own opinions, as Dr Joseph and every honest scholar/historian would do, Fred yanked what he thought would “work” out of place to put his own twist to it, as something which could as easily stand alone to mean what he claimed Dr Joseph intended. Dr Joseph’s point in writing that paragraph, all of it, was to show that since Assemani found these traces of a “certain descent” in everyone and his cousin, (including Nestorians), which Dr Joseph says he is mistaken, not correct, in making… and that these same errors have been made by many Europeans, who started this trend, including Edward Gibbon, whom Fred may have heard of…and whose quote Fred also left out for the “point” he wished to make, by selectively selecting a select sentence or two to which he thought would serve his national purposes agenda.

And they do, because his real purpose is not to write, read or understand history, not anybody’s and not at any time...it is, rather, to use legitimate history and the works of scholar-historians wherever he can, no matter how badly he mangles them, either through sheer ignorance or through deliberate attempts to render the ideas meaningless, if not foolish, when they can’t be “useful” to his purpose, is to keep appealing to the same illiterate nationalists he comes from and who he believes will form this great “democractic” base of people who will sweep Fred and Kenna and the rest to glory and vindication…through the same dreary methods of perpetuating and now enhancing in these dishonest ways, those multiplying errors, which are at the heart of Dr Joseph’s book and which Fred thinks to build a nation on…and nothing, absolutely nothing positive or of any good to anyone but those playing this game, will be gained through a foundation of errors and lies and selected truths. Had Fred continued on to the next few sentences only, the entire thrust of the paragraph, and book as well, from which he only selected a few lines, would have been made clear to him… or those for whom he wrote these murky reflections…but then that’s the whole point….to keep people muddled and murkled on thier road to Assyria….which got all of them…all of them, Kurdistan instead.

We too are “forced to wonder”, if there is another and more “real” agenda Fred has.

“Dr Joseph’s entire point is that the Nestorians are not the direct descendants of the Assyrians…not of a “certain kind” even, and certainly not for a CERTAINTY…for which he has offered ample argument based on evidence and sources…where are Fred’s…except to say he believe it because he beielve it, using his own beliefs as the “reason” and also the “evidence” for those beliefs.

It is truly shocking to think a good nine-tenths of these “exposes” and “proofs” accusations of “lies”, “we believees”(sic) and the books, articles as well as threats of future books and articles as well as, god have mercy on us, the petitions sent to bewildered recipients, have no other origin than in the confusion of people like Fred when trying to deal with the English language, especially at the higher levels and meanings and grammar which is used in such scholarly work as this of Dr Joseph. Moreover, since one already sees that these nationalists have no trouble knowing what they know, because they know it…and the arrogance and intellectual buffoonery which go with such circular running-in-place and poking their noses where they don’t belong…it’s no wonder they can not afford to stop to ask themselves if they understood anything they read…or wrote… or thought they were writing…it’s a scary thought…but seems more and more likely with every such article.

And, even worse than this, is to imagine that they all are working on “secret” agendas, too dangerous and pivotal to the “National Good” to be spoken of in the open, where we can check or correct them before they ruin it for the rest of us(as these types always have), which is all they understand “democracy” to mean; their own chance, finally, to play tyrant, which a Tyrant never allowed them but which they can indulge themselves by aping in a Democracy…as if, in an attempt to plan strategy or send encrypted code messages, one would hire only those who demonstrate over and again how ill-equipped to understand or use ordinary language they are, never mind creating an encryption of one…or what other preposterous notions their secrets might contain, when the few that leak out have been such howlers..
>
>
> Some readers and critics out there jump hastily when Assyrians try to
> justify their link to ancient Assyrians.

,,,Dr Joseph didn’t “jump”..he took his time to research and compile an impressive list of sources as well as contstruct a compelling argument, which was reviewed by experts in all relevant branches of history and published, at the risk and expense of a prestigious publishing house who wouldn’t give Fred the time of day…yoors trooli didn’t “jump” in either…in fact the only one here who jumped in is Fred…because he was in a hurry, or was hurried into, these “reflections” because people are taking an interest in something besides Fred’s “I knows it all” political stance. Fred and his rollicking nationalists are like that other bunch of politicians so proud of their ignorance they called themselves, “The Know Nothings”…on their way down to defeat.

And Dr Joseph is not speaking of “justify”…He is speaking ABOUT those links…people can justify what they want..either to believe or look into it further or refuse to believe in it further…as their reading of his argument added to their own thoughts on the matter indicate…to them.

They blame Assyrian authors today
 for being selective;

If Fred means to include himself among the others, no one is “blaming” Fred…some of us are trying to show why Fred tries to justify the indefensible…why Fred might want to do such a thing..as perhaps the first modern Assyrians also decided to become so with no justification whatsoever…no one is blaming them either….scholars don’t blame people or ideas…they try to show where the ideas might have come from….especially about the people themselves and more especially when the transformation takes place practically overnight.

one wonders who is not selective among today's
> historians?

…it depends by what Fred means with that word..if he means “selective” as in; disciplined and not wandering all over hell and back merely to confuse people into an exhausted state of intellectual surrender, then he has described his own “methodology”, and not any sort of discerning selectivity Dr Joseph and other scholars employ.

If Fred means selecting only those things which suit ones agenda, though it is likely meant to imply this is what Dr Joseph and other real scholars do...then I think Fred knows who is guilty of this better than anyone. Any such egregious act of scholarly sabotage and sleight-of-hand would have been picked up instantly by the recognized authors who are also in the field, as well as by the publishers well before publication. It is Fred who doesn’t have to bother with any of this, not peer review, not facts and never with a rejection slip because he needs to answer to no one but can go on slandering and attempting, thereby, to “demean” legitimate historians, while his friends pay for the printing, not publishing, of his books which can and do contain any number of factual inaccuracies and grammatical barbarities and outright deceptions.

When reporters travel thousands of miles from New York to
> north of Iraq and return only to publish an article about the Kurdish
> struggle and ignore the Assyrians,

There is no story to tell about any Assyrian struggle, of the kind Fred means, the kind the Kurds have been actively engaged in since before anyone can remember, because there isn’t one and never has been one. The only kind of struggle the Christians there are facing is the struggle to stay alive, which several reporters have written of…it is people like Fred, who are safely out of the country, that are trying to force a violent confrontation on them, so maybe they’ll be “inspired to fight back”..as The United States admitted to doing when it starved to death Iraqi and Assyrian children in an effort to inspire their parents with the urgent need to fight Saddam.

They are the ones, these nationalists who are, for their own selfish, and not national reasons, trying to force a struggle on them, for their own personal benefit…even as now Fred tisweaking the Kurds in hopes they’ll take it out on those poor people…refuse to give them money so they are forced to “support” Kenna…it is these nationalists who are bleeding them, after they’ve been thrown to the ground by the nationalists’, adopted American and European, Canadian and Australian nationalities,not the Kurds. The Kurds didn’t make this war on them, the Christians of the new homes of the nationalists did…the Kurds are now trying to repair some of the damage done by this war,,,to people they are willing to include in Kurdistan…but with the same reservation the Iraqis and our own Departmant of Motor Vehicles had…they must stop this “we are lineal, ethnic descendants of the ancient Assyrians and therefore “rightful owners of this oil”, business. And the Christians there, not in San Jose, are willing to do what it takes to live and prosper again, as Fred were willing to deny his so-called Assyrian nationality, which he denied, when he wanted to enter America to live and prosper…and Fred and the nationalists don’t want them to.

they are being selective. When authors
> write about the Holocaust as a word synonymous with the Jews, they in fact
> are being selective, in a horrible manner.

No, they aren’t. They are being correct in a very proper manner. They are using the word in its primary meaning, if Fred checks any high school dictionary…which refers to the massacre of six million Jews, by Christians, during World War II…the word has been co-opted by people such as Fred who hope to ride into thier own “Jerusalem” on the legitimate suffering of other people. There was no Holocaust of Assyrians...or of Christians…except by other Christians, who have killed more Christians than anyone else ever did…maybe because they know something the rest of us don’t…the only Holocaust and not “a” holocaust, in history, is the one visited on the Jews by the Christians…Fred did not suffer a Holocaust…but he would like very much if the Christians trapped in Iraq did…even a little one. I fear this is one of the ugly, secret strategies these people have.

We are all selective in what we
> do, with perhaps very minimal exceptions So why should Assyrian authors be
> branded being selective when everybody else is trying to prove that the
> Assyrians of today are not the descendants of the ancient Assyrians? Is
> being selective a privilege of the few?

“Everybody”? Everybody is trying to prove it? Not even Dr Joseph is trying to prove it. Wasn’t it a “few” misguided ones just a minute ago?

>
> Joseph in his book implied that it was the archaeologist Layard who had
> created the modern Assyrian name in the19th century as he stated, quote:
> "When archaeologist Layard further publicized the historic minority
> [Joseph refers to the Aramaic-speaking Nestorians Christians] as
> 'Assyrians', the name acquired a new connotation when other forces at work
> in the region-religious, nationalistic, imperialistic-engaged these modern
> Assyrians in vagaries and
> manipulations in which they were outnumbered and outclassed." Unquote.
>
> Well, we have to respect any person's opinion,

…Especially those, like Fred, who know not what they speak of…the less they know, the more “respectable” they will find Fred’s argument…because it essentially “respects them” by enshrining their error and keeping them from seeing it.

but we must remember
> that this opinion of Joseph was confronted meanwhile by Prof. Richard Frye
> for example, who in his article "Assyria and Syria: Synonyms" has shown,
> contrary
> to Joseph,

…”Confronted” is to confront, it is not to prove anything, but to present a counter-argument…as we have tried to do so many times with Fred, without once being able to catch him anywhere to “confront”.…Dr Joseph did not run from this “confrontation”...he met it head-on with an article in response…he did not have Dr Frye banned so his own point of view would go unconfronted as if it could NOT be confronted...
that people had used the term Syrian and Assyrian before the

19th century.[[[ Does not mention my response to Frye.]]]…

…And why should anyone, least of all a scholar of Dr Joseph’s standing, or Dr Frye’s?

…That “people” had “used” the term “Assyrian”, by itself doesn’t mean they were therefore Assyrians. Did people say THEY were lineal descendants etc? That is the question…to “use the term” and conclude thereby that their saying it made them Assyrians, would have made a Chaldean out of Xenophon…did it?

We people have used the term Suraye, about ourselves, all by ourselves, as far back as any of us can remember…anyone using the term Assyrian, before the 19th century discoveries was referring to the historical Assyrians, as a people and a land, to whom they made no claim of being or descending from…this claim was only put forth after the discoveries and the attention it brought to the people ON the land. Give us evidence that people, or one…was calling HIMSELF an Assyrian, of lineal descent…just one.

Other Professors
> like Simo Parpola have proven that Assyrians didn't simple vanish. In fact
> the Assyrian name was used in Russian archives during the 17th century.

Dr Joseph agrees that they didn’t vanish, not in the way people usually explain it as an inevitable and instant result of military defeat.…and he says so in the book…and the “mention” of Assyrians in anyone’s archives, is not the same as the recognition that the people on the land referred to in the archives, or anything else of that sort, ARE the lineal descendants.

People move around, as they did in all those centuries…Fred is now in California…if they dig him up 2000 years from now they will know better, thanks in part to Dr Joseph’s book, than to assume he MUST have been a member of the Digger Nation of Natives of the Sacramento Delta and surrounding area.

Fred either missed the point entirely is are trying to mislead people…Dr Joseph’s point is that Layard and others were mistaken in the first and heady flush of their magnificent find, which led one feverish fellow to call the people on the land “the children of Shalmanessar”…and he shows that Layard himself, as well as Rassam, went right on calling the people Chaldeans, due to an earlier mistake of the same nature, and not Assyrians. Dr Joseph has written an article rebutting Dr Frye’s point…which I haven’t read yet but then nether has Fred…Dr Simo Parpola has no standing as an expert in the time frame Dr Joseph is discussing…his field is ancient Assyrian history and his hobby is trying to prove that Christianity could have been Assyrian…as for all other mentions of the Assyrian name by anyone, proves nothing since the Bible covers that topic well and the entire Jewish and Christian world knew enough to know the names of the country and the people who used to live there who WERE ethnically Assyrian…but anytime Assyria is “mentioned” is no proof that it existed at the time the person or archive, “mentioned” it.

There are countless books that mention “Gaul” and it’s history and people…that doesn’t mean there is a Gaul today, or was whenever that term is “mentioned”. There are books which mention Atlantis, yet no one looks for it.

I
> am not sure what Joseph is looking for really. Is he asking the Armenians,
> for example, to use the English term Assyrians in their documents, when
> they use Asori in their own Armenian language?

,,,yes but Asori, in their language, MEANS Syrian..and not Assyrian…see below.

He is saying that the effort by modern nationalists to claim there was a “missing A” in front of Suraye, their preferred term for themselves as well as what they were known as by others for centuries, until the 19th, is an effort to change, retroactively, Suryae into ((A)suraye/(A)shuraye and hence claim that they had always “known” they were Assyrians…is a clever bit of national fluff, but no more.

Let us allow the readers to judge…this is taken from page 20, Chapter One:

“…in the Armenian language, the names for Syrian and Assyrian, although similar sounding(as they are in English, mine), both have always retained and pronounced the initial A: Asoric/Asori for Syria/Syrian and Asorestan/Asorestantsi or Asorestanci for Assyria/Assyrian.”

Is Joseph asking the Arabs
> to use the English term Assyrian when they use Ashuri in their own Arabic
> language?

…Of course not. He didn’t ask the Armenians to do anything and he didn’t ask the Arabs to do anything either… Fred is “asking” if Dr Joseph is asking such a senseless thing.

> Joseph assumed a conclusion that the ancient Assyrians couldn't have
> survived because they dropped their mother language,

…And, if he was a writer and historian or even a logician, along Fred’s lines, he would stop there and say, “I believe what I assume to be true because I assume it to be true”. But he does no such silly thing.

i.e. the cuneiform
> Akkadian, and adopted the Aramaic, unlike the Persians. Joseph stated,
> quote: "Š Unlike the Assyrians, the Persians did not forget their own
> mother tongue, they maintained their national-linguistic identity,
> largely because their own Aramaic-speaking subjects did not predominate
> from within Persia as they did in the core region of Assyria, later known
> as Bait Aramaye-home of the ArameansŠ"

Unquote. First, we need to remind
> Joseph that his argument has no foundation since the Assyrians replaced
> their complex Akkadian cuneiform language with the easier alphabetical
> Aramaic in 752 BC while the empire continued some 150 years after that and
> was in fact real powerful then.

..What does that prove if not Dr Joseph’s point? This point was given even more force with the quoted passage from Roux that those who forget their mother tongue, for whatever reason and no matter how powerful they might be at the moment, will soon lose their history and identity,,…which is exactly what all nationalists say when they apply that same warning to the language Fred insists is “Assyrian” when the whole world and Fred too, when Mel Gibson is around, call it Aramaic and nothing else.

..It has every significance because they did not, even though powerful enough, as Fred claims, call the new language by their own, powerful, name. They kept the name of the people they took it from indicating their debt and that fatal flaw, mentioned by Roux, which led them to lose everything, when, that most important part of keeping all they’d gained, their military power, disappeared and their ancient Akkadian language with it.

…It is modern Assyrians who are claiming the two languages are “almost or really the same”..as Dr Parpola is busy trying to do the same with Christianity..that it “came from” Ashur…just as Fred is claiming that Aramaic “came from” Akkadian because there is “Akkadian influence in Aramaic”…or, it was “very close”. Had it been so close there would have been no need for the Assyrians to change from their own, they could have merely assimilated it (as they were the ones to be assimilated by it) and certainly no need to change the name of their own, much older language, to that of another and defeated people entirely.

The Akkadian was the language of the
> Assyrian courts but everybody did not read or write it, although hey spoke
> it. A good reason for using the Aramaic was to facilitate administrative
> tasks because Aramaic was better known in the other vast regions of the
> Assyrian Empire.

…Yes but WHY was it better known…in the Assyrian Empire?

…The same was true when French became the lingua franca in its sphere of influence, where its native speakers were outnumbered, as English was and “American” is now…but it remained FRENCH and did not change its name when adopted by surrounding Algerians, to the name of the Algerian language…the “weaker” Arameans, in terms of military might, would have been helpless had the “powerful”, in military might, Assyrians decided to put their own name on this new language…but they didn’t. In fact all that was left was an empty shell of an “Assyria” for the few centuries before all traces of the people were absorbed…as has been the history of that entire region…while Aramaic language and culture, and not Assyrian, spread its influence everywhere in that region to become the common language of many people…to THIS day…as we remind Mel any time we can.

Meanwhile, there is ample proof of how Aramaic is
> influenced by the Akkadian language.

..As there is proof that Latin influenced Italian…but Latin, as a living language as well as the people who spoke it as such, is gone…and in its place is a dialect of Latin called Italian.

The Akkadian itself survived long
> after the empire had fallen. Aro and Whiting wrote: "ŠI have argued
> elsewhere that Akkadian was likely to have survived throughout the
> Parthian period, at least until the mid-3rd century AD." Read Sanna Aro
> and R. M. Whiting, The Heirs of Assyria, a paper by M. J.

…He said “likely to have survived”. Fred said, with no qualifier at all, “survived”…Dr Joseph has a few of those too..but not for his major thesis…Had Dr Joseph based his main point on a “likely” Fred would have been all over it. It seems he is selective when selecting what is “likely” the truth. Fred has selected one author for only his “likely” support of Fred’s own theory, with no assurances for the readers that Fred has not been as quick to chop and paste entire paragraphs, as he has done already...that is hardly evidence of anything more than one point of view…had Dr Joseph done this with his thesis Fred would be howling foul.

Geller titled
> "The Survival of Babylonian Wissenschaft in Later Tradition." Secondly,
> Syriac manuscripts tell us that: "Bait Aramaye is an ecclesiastical
> administrative term referring to southern Mesopotamia,

..Syriac manuscripts are like nationalists…their evidence is that they just gave you the evidence…this will not do..not without corroboration…which Fred has yet to provide. Elsewhere in his book Dr Joseph mentions one expert’s view of Syriac manuscripts; that they are wildly exaggerated in all their claims.

or al-Iraq
> al-Arabi, or Bilad al-Nabat of the Arabic sources. The ecclesiastical term
> for northern Mesopotamia, Athur (Assyria), corresponds to al-Jazira, or the
> land of Mosul of the Arab geographers; see Fiey, Assyrie III, 12, 36." Read
> Amir Harrak, "The Chronicals of Zuqnin," Parts III & IV, AD 488-775. Hence
> Harrak is telling us that Bait Aramaye was applied to southern Mesopotamia
> and not Assyria.

..None of this addresses the issue that the people on the land of Assyria are therefore the same ethnicity and lineal descent as the people under the land…whatever the names and languages. Fred is vainly trying to discredit the central theme of the book, not by addressing it directly, but by prowling around the edges where the secondary or tertiary items he thinks exist. He should refute those on their merits later…and discuss the central issue on its own merit.

> Furthermore, we need to remind Joseph that Assyria later in the
> Christian era was assigned Assyrian bishops who were titled "bishops of
> Nineveh" in many periods. And when the Romans invaded the region in the
> second century of the Christian era, they called it "Province of Assyria."

…He explains this quite well and simply…and it is the very simple and simplistic way, through a name change, in which we all became Assyrians. He explained that what started out as the Christians of Assyria, meaning the Christian Nestorians on the land once called Assyria, soon became “Christian Assyrians”…as if the joining of those two words was all it took to make modern descendants out of Nestorians…which is the main thrust of the book; that this is all it took… Repeated by many people, including Fred, who cite any mention of the historical name of Assyria, associated in modern times with the LAND of ancient Assyria, as “proof” that people are admitting that there IS a modern Assyria and that the people on it are therefore and “must be” Assyrians.

The Romans simply based their choice of that name on the geographical name of the country, which was not forgotten…Dr Joseph discusses this and cites the sources for these errors…and Fred has left them all out…whereas Dr Joseph included all the “proofs” Fred lists which claim to support Fred’s point of view…one of them is being dishonest and selective, in he negative sense of the word.
>
> And then Joseph claims that the Nestorian Assyrians were Arameans and
> even more when he wrote, quote: "Membersof the Aramean community of Iraq,
> mostly Nestorian Christians, and many of them Persian converts who had
> held offices of trust under the Sassanians, now served the Arab
> administration." Unquote.

We need yet again remind Joseph that many
> missionaries have admitted that the Christians of the Mosul plain in Iraq,
> Urmia region in Iran, and Hakkari Mountains in Turkey have referred to
> themselves as "Surayeh," which we know today that it is the Christian
> version of Assurayeh or Ashurayeh, the Syriac equivalent for the English
> Assyrian. Again, it is Joseph's thought against many others.

…It is no such thing…and who are the “many others”…Fred’s cousins? This is Fred trying to pull the “Lost A” routine.,,that the “A” that would have made an Ashuraye out of Suraye was really there all along, but not mentioned….clever but not smart.

This is what Fred says…this is not what the people themselves have said until the 19th Century..we have always refered to ourselves, even in Mosul as Suraye…the term Ashuraye was, again, simply the name of the historical and geographic land of ancient Assyria…but the people, as the Jacobites to this day, always called themselves Suraye/Suryoyo and not Ashuraye/Ashuryoyo.

Fred also has no evidence to prove that the Church of the East ever called itself the “Assyrian” Church…not till 1976… and not with the meaning that they WERE ethnically and linealy descended from the ancient..what Church at that time would WANT to be? Nationalists admit that the recent “discovery” of and addition of the name “Assyrian” to the Church, did not mean that in all the centuries before, it had NOT been “thought of”, or “was not really” an “Assyrian” church(that lost “Assyrian” again) all those centuries before 1976 A.D…., because, Fred hastens to add, why would one need to put that name there since the church had always been “in the land of ancient Assyria…what else WOULD one call it”?

Fred has said this, they have all said this and yet Fred doesn’t see how they have reaffirmed Dr Joseph’s point every time…because Fred insists that; it was always “known” that to be on the land of Assyria, “obviously meant to BE Assyrian”, and so there had been no need to “add” that name “until” …not until the Euros fell in love with the idea and then and started using it to mean the Nestorians they found living on the land of Assyria and, again, when Saddam “refused to recognize” modern Assyrian lineal descent from the ancient Assyrians…so that it became “necessary to add” Assyrian…to “prove” ethnicity.

So that now Saddam, like the Eros before him, was responsible for them adding that name…because the name, coupled with the geography, would, “prove the identity of the people on the land”…as it would bring them to life, to begin with, when other people, in this case Euros in the 19th century, put that name on the people “living on the land of Assyria”. And these two attempts, one admittedly done by modern nationalists, and the other by Euros, as a means of “proving our modern Assyrian identity”, were made from the same erroneous and unthinking motive,,,to use a name, attached to a location, as “proof” that the people, or the church, on that location, were the same people as those buried under it, or who had that name applied to them at that location…or had the name, Assyrian, denied to them by Saddam and added on to bolster their claim to being lineal descendants by adding it, in the last 30 years or so, because they “lived on the land and so what else could they be”?( I think I need a rest)

Fred’s effort to make a stronger case has led him to adopt, in the case of Saddam and the need of the nationalists to “prove” who they are, the very same methods which Dr Joseph is pointing out as the source of the initial error made by the Eros, and now adopted by nationalists…Fred is not an ancient Assyrians because he “dwells” on the land of the ancient Assyrians, as those nationalists upset at Saddam were doing,,,but they thought to “prove” they were by adding the name Assyrian to Nestorian and then doing away with Nestorian next…that is Dr Joseph’s point, corroborated, very nicely, by Fred and his nationalists.
>

> Although the book contains some good information about the
> inter-relations between the Assyrian Christians and their Moslem neighbors
> in the Middle East, the author fell too short in addressing seriously many
> issues relating tomany important matters. The authors, for example,
> dedicated very few lines to the Mosul and Kirkuk incidents between the
> Assyrians and the locals and he basically leads the reader to the
> conclusion by blaming the Assyrians for the troubles!

..”:many issues relating to many important matters”…?

…Does Fred mean he’s going to blame the debacle for the Christians of Iraq on everyone BUT himself and the idiotic idea the nationalists put forth that this war on Iraq was a GOLDEN OPPORTUNITY? What “important matters”…why can’t Fred name some of them…as far as his use of the word “Assyrian” it too is part of the problem Dr Joseph is discussing, therefore to use it as if it were an accepted or proven fact, in a discussion of the book which raises doubts about Its validity, only means that Fred is not discussing the book, but rather simply taking the chance to say the word “Assyrian” as often as he can, which he think establishes it as a fact ,without all this need of reading and writing and all that dumb stuff.,,while at the time disparaging Dr Joseph by claiming he is guilty of Aprim’s own and manufactured claims for supposed shortcomings and devious things, will make those two points seem “real” and established and in no need fo further and more honest investigation. In Fred’s case, repetition is 100% of his “facts”.

Fred is trying to force the issue, while Dr Joseph is trying to explore and refine the issue…it is valid to critique his exploration and what he feels he has discovered, but to keep saying there is no need to explore because “we know” what ‘s there because “we know”, is to continue missing the point and talking in mad circles...indeed, Fred is not discussing the book at all...but only his own personal opinions, based on nothing more than his own personal opinions and attempting to smear Dr Joseph’s book with the slander he himself brings to it, but which applies, in every instance, to his own methods and books.

As important as
> these incidents were in the history of modern Iraq, he did not bother to
> address the two incidents thoroughly.

..here’s that word again…how does Fred qualify “thoroughly”… and is he thorough?
>
> In his analysis, the author casually discusses the Nestorians in this
> manner on page 154, quote: "It is difficult to speakwith confidence of a
> national sentiment among these Christians [author referring to
> Nestorians], a people who had
> never constituted a single and comprehensive state. Their history was
> unlike that of the European Christians of Turkey, who for centuries had
> nourished a common stock of traditions and aspiration that were identified
> with particular territories, furnishing the minorities with a psychological
> basis for a centralized political entity. The Nestorians, like the rest of
> the Eastern Christians, with the possible exception of the Maronites and
> the Armenians, had no local nucleus or a definite area of homeland."
> Unquote. I am not sure what the scholarly world calls this paragraph, but
> it is full of inaccuracies. How the Assyrians conducted and ran their
> daily lives and where their homes were for centuries and their traditions
> are well defined in many history books.

...Point out the inaccuracies…what kind of history “books”…written by whom? And again, the point to the book is the very fact that these Nestorians, who call themselves modern Assyrians only starting with the 19th century, were compounding a mistake made by Euros and even earlier by popes and classical writers etc. These people were and are Nestorian Christians who THINK they must be Assyrians because of what Euros told them…and nothing from history, if Fred reads and presents it honestly and carefully and checks around…proves otherwise.

Fred is, again, merely propagating the initial error..,as Aryan Eshaya continues to do…the question in discussion is that those people were not Assyrians at all…but only Nestorians…if Fred is going to try to refute his point, he should stick to HIS definition of “modern Assyrian” and not his own, erroneous one…or write his own book proving there are modern Assyrians and not using as “proof” that “there are modern Assyrians”.

On the photo cover of Aprim’s own book he has made that same mistake by placing what we are supposed to assume is an “Assyrian” boy because he stands in front of an Assyrian ruin…by that logic Fred could travel the world being everyone by standing on their land, or in front of an artifact of their’s…or send a photo home of himself standing in front of a Rolls and counting on his cousins in the village to believe it was his car and not that of The Archbishop of Canterburry.
>
> Then the author on page 149 claims that one of the reasons the British
> brought the Assyrians from Urmia to Iraq was because of famine! I am
> wondering what references Mr. Joseph was using to reach this silly
> conclusion?

…maybe he spoke with my Grandafther and all those who had to escape Urmia with nothing…literally nothing. Surely Fred doesn‘t accuse Dr Joseph of manufacturing hunger do you?

The British had their eyes on the oil in Iraq. They needed a
> separate group like the Assyrians to use them as a political card against
> the future government in Iraq

…Does Fred mean like now? Which he described as a “golden opportunity”? But which he recognizes now, when it happened 80 years ago and in hindsight, was a “ruse”? The same manipulations and deceits in a quest for oil, which he claimed this war was not about, but rather ”just what” Assyrians needed…Is it that Fred was not there 80 years ago to possibly benefit from oil revenues and so can afford say he saw through it…when he insists that this is not a ruse this time, but a “Golden Opportunity”, because he is here now and might just benefit from oil ?

…Is there no hunger in Iraq now, Fred?

in order to have things go their way in
> Iraq. At this time the British were sure what was the future of the three
> Ottoman wilayats, Mosul, Baghdad and Basrah. Famine, in the eye of most
> political analysts, was not even a reason worth mentioning.

….What has this to do with the central theme? Or is this how Fred “deconstructs” . Why does he discuss and probe and “wonder about” everything except the main theme of the book…why? Is it again in an effort to poke holes wherever he can and as far from the central point as possible, which he is apparently unable to pierce through, let alone discuss in any rational or prolonged manner, but jump from “error to error”, as he sees it, on the edges so he can “discredit”, not the edges and minor points, but the entire core and soul of the book? Is that how he works?

>
> Furthermore, the hypothesis presented by the author disproving the
> linkage of ancient and modern Assyrians would not change any Assyrians'
> perception to whether he is an Assyrian or not,

…Any psychiatrist can tell the same thing about the over 1245 Napoleons and 653 Cleopatras in mental institutions today around the world…they also refuse to consider options and find themselves most unhappy and, inglorious too, when only going by the name given them at birth.

since it is Joseph's
> thought against many others who have proven otherwise.

..Give us, the adult people reading this, their books and proof so we can judge for ourselves..as Dr Joseph has done…stop lecturing us like we were in a third grade class…unless those are Fred’s readers of choice.

Joseph had failed
> to convince this reader with his weak argument.

It isn’t a ‘weak” argument because Fred says it is, on that basis anything that went over his head would be “weak” though perfectly understood by scores of lay and professional people…Fred needs to prove its weaknesses…

Fred’s case, that we are modern Assyrians and there can be no doubt of it, is not something Fred really believe. If he did, with all the conviction he seems to indicate in words, he would have made his argument where it counted, like when getting into America or getting a driver’s license. While he is free to claim anything yhe wants at the bar or club or in his “books, where he can call himself anything and not get thrown out… but where it COUNTS he knows and has admitted himself his whole life...that he is Iraqi and not Assyrian.

The Assyrians
> has lived in northern Mesopotamia (Assyria) from time immemorial.

No, they haven’t…”people” have lived there all that time. Assyrians lived there for a period of time and there were others before them and other people after them….lots of people other than Assyrians. But as all you nationalists say; forget your language and soon you forget your history and identity…and all the attempts to disguise the fact that we did…are weak,

The
> Assyrians of today speak the same Aramaic
> language spoken by the ancient Assyrians,

No they don’t,..in its last few centuries or so it was a Neo-Assyrian Empire, made up of lots of different people in which, it is assumed, there were few ethnic Assyrians, just as there were few ethnic Romans in Rome during its last days. The ancient Assyrians, for the majority of their lives, and up till a century and ten years before their demise spoke Akkadian and not Aramaic.

Dr Joseph has compiled an impressive list of sources and arguments, while Fred has said, “we know”…and “no one can me stop”. No one wants to make him stop…all Dr Joseph offered was an astute argument based on research, sources, notes and the knowledge and findings of experts in the field…which Fred is not…and he won’t get to be one by declaring himself to be…as he can’t become an Assyrian simply because he calls himself one.

or any number of dialects of
> it, a language that had much Akkadian influence in it.

That was covered earlier, in Italian.

The essential fact is that when a people give up their language, the language they lived their lives in and thought and spoke and wrote their story with, they quickly will lose their history and identity…as you all warn s will happen today with regard to the Aramaic language and how we must not forget or “who are we”? Who are we, indeed…if we admit to having replaced Assyrian with Aramaic? Assyrians were near to exhaustion..they had done much but could not go on forever and so they adopted first the language of another and more future oriented people...who were able to make that “easier” language...(as if to make an easier language was, itself ,easy), and in time their customs and beliefs. And the torch has passed…as has happened with all empires and ethnicities…especially in BetNahrain since recorded history.

And finally, the
> Assyrians adopted Christianity during the first century and the Assyrian
> church records have kept that linkage alive till this very moment.

..if Fred means Abgar that is a myth..as are the other legends about Mar One and Mar Two…no one knows for sure and no one, no historian, takes the word of the Church unless it is a historian of the “words of the church”.

…There is no proof that the churches and people in them thought of themselves as descended from the ancient Assyrians or Chaldeans, while there is evidence, as Dr Joseph provides, that Church leaders themselves knew they were using and being given titles reflecting the ancient culture and names of the ancient people, buried under the ground, which in no way meant, to them or their congregants, that they were ethnically related to those people...these were merely the geographic names for the church ON the land…as in a church IN Assyria…became an “Assyrian Church”…which is not the same thing at all...it is an understandable error and also understandable that many would want, desperately, to cling to it, but it is an error all the same, and the weight of history, logic and scholarship, not to mention the future welfare of the last remaining Christians of Iraq, all call out that this must be more widely recognized, before we go on compounding this initial error into the biggest one of our lives.

>
> Fred Aprim
> California

…You see? Now, and with the addition of that name alone, Fred is a Californian…because he lives in geographical California.
>

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