The Inside Assyria Discussion Forum #5
=> Thoughts on Dr Joseph`s Book
| Thoughts on Dr Joseph`s Book |
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Posted by
pancho
(Guest)
- Tuesday, February 20 2007, 16:20:40 (CET) from 189.162.12.50 - dsl-189-162-12-50.prod-infinitum.com.mx  Mexico -  Windows XP -   Internet ExplorerWebsite: Website title: |
It’s 2:30 AM…Went to bed early to read…took a cat nap an hour later and read till now. No point trying to sleep… Something in Dr Joseph’s first chapter keeps going round in my head. He writes that the word “Chaldean” was of earlier use than Assyrian to describe our people, known till then as Nestrorians, and that the Roman Catholic Church chose that word as the description of the “place” or geographical location where the central church was located...and NOT, as we rushed to use it, as an ethnic title. It was, in other words, geographical and not historical. What keeps me from sleeping is the recollection of a post by one fellow, responding to the accusation that the word “Assyrian” was added to the Eastern Church’s title relatively late…according to Dr Joseph in 1976…I had heard the 1960s but I’ll take his word for it since the difference is so slight as not to matter in this case…and because he knows more about the subject than I do. What strikes me now in that fellow’s heated response…when aren’t we heated when responding…was that it was” taken for granted” all along that the Nestorian church was an Assyrian church because it was IN Assyria and what would you expect it to BE if not Assyrian…he added that the name “Assyrian” had been deliberately added to the title only because Saddam had begun to deny our identity blah blah blah and so the church wanted to “make sure” to preserve our identity etc. I have to admit that at the time his reasoning, or so it seemed to me, was sort of sound…a church IN Assyria, remembering that he is one of those who persists in calling Iraq “occupied” Assyria…would indeed be an Assyrian church. Except that on reading Dr. Joseph’s book and noting his point that the early church was called Chaldean by the Roman church because it was in a region known historically by the name Chaldea…and that the Catholic pope wished to make a distinction between old sects and his newly reconciled Catholics and so added the name of the region to the new Church. But, rather than making instant Chaldeans out of the older Nestorians; the new Catholics, who attended the new church in historical Chaldea, shows us that geography can’t create ethnicity…as claims to ethnicity can’t recreate geography or turn geography into ethnic history. When an Assyrian from Iraq moves to America his grandchildren can refer to themselves as Americans…because by every rule of nationalism, they qualify. It doesn’t matter that their ancestors didn’t come on the Mayflower or on a slave ship…they are now this new thing called American…because before the Mayflower there was no America, as a nation to belong to. But that Assyrian descendant of the Iraqi immigrant can’t call himself an Apache or Cherokee…because they were here before America and it was never called America when the Apaches were the Apaches and not a minority in a new nation. The fellow can stand in front of all the wigwams he wants to…he can even live in one…he can smoke kinikinik in a peace pipe all day long, wear feathers in his hair and eat great big buffaloes…but it won’t make him an Apache…he can, however, eat hot dogs, drive a Ford, smoke Camels, drink Bud…and be an American. Likewise with that church in “Chaldea”…and the “Chaldean” too. He can stand in Chaldea…he can swim up to Assyria…he can have photos of himself taken in front of Assyrian ruins…he can point to the word written above his church, which he wrote there…but that doesn’t make him an ethnic Assyrian or Chaldean…no more than having his photo taken leaning on a Rolls Royce makes him its owner. So that the clever response of that irate Assyrian…and ain’t we all these days…that the church was always “assumed” to be Assyrian because it was IN Assyria…floats off on gossamer wings of national nothing…as does his most UN-reasonable point that since we are from historical Assyria and born in historical Assyria…we too must be presumed to BE historical Assyrians…when we’re just hysterical Nestorians and always have been. --------------------- |
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