The Inside Assyria Discussion Forum #5

=> With a grain of piquant salt: Ancient Assyrians Alive!

With a grain of piquant salt: Ancient Assyrians Alive!
Posted by Tiglath (Guest) - Sunday, July 29 2007, 14:09:13 (CEST)
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Bhaskar Dasgupta

[global-analyst] With a grain of piquant salt: Ancient Assyrians Alive!
I nearly fell out of my chair when I stumbled over a tiny piece of news
about the fact that August 7th is declared as the Memorial Day for Assyrian
Martyrs. Assyrians? Surely somebody is pulling my leg or its April fool's
day. Assyrians as a people died out millennia ago, and for a press release
coming out commemorating August 7th as Martyr's day for them sounded a total
joke to me. After I had managed to drag my carcass up from the floor,
collected my jaw and settle down my oculars, I went digging into this
strange and interesting news-story which I thought I would share with you
dear readers. Here is what I found out.

There are approximately 1.8 million Assyrians scattered around the globe,
but mainly in Iraq, USA and Syria. Previously inhabiting a swathe of
territory ranging from Lebanon, Syria, Iraq, Iran and bits of the Caucuses,
genocide and ethnic cleansing meant that a lot of them have emigrated to
other countries. The link to the ancient Assyrians seems to be a bit weak
and not very clear, but I suppose it is very difficult to establish it
either way, even with DNA testing. What is interesting is that these modern
day Assyrians have a different culture, language and religion to their
Iraqi, Kurdish, Iranian and Syrian neighbours.

The language spoken by the Assyrians is Aramaic. If one is a movie goer or
follows the tinsel-town news, one would know that Mel Gibson recently made a
film about Jesus and used Aramaic in this film. Historians posit that the
language of Jesus and the early Christians was Aramaic. Of course, any
language would change over the course of couple of millennia, but it is
apparently still heavily related to its roots of ancient Aramaic. The
current day language borrows from Hebrew, Arabic, Syriac and Akkadian
languages. The religion which they follow is Christianity, and they follow
the Chaldean Church of Babylon in Iraq, the Assyrian Church or Chaldean or
Assyro-Chaldean Church in Syria, and Church of the East in Iran. There seems
to be some confusion but the Syrian Orthodox Church who also consider
themselves as Assyrians or Arameans. Be that as it may, these are minor
details. There has been much to'ing and fro'ing between the Roman Catholic
Church of Rome with some elements of the Church of the East becoming
catholic, while others have maintained their own unique church, liturgy and
theological aspects.

An interesting aside, the Assyrians literally believe in one passage in the
Bible which says, "In that day there shall be a way from Egypt to the
Assyrians, and the Assyrian shall enter into Egypt, and the Egyptian to the
Assyrians, and the Egyptians shall serve the Assyrian. In that day shall
Israel be the third to the Egyptian and the Assyrian: a blessing in the
midst of the land, Which the Lord of hosts hath blessed, saying: "Blessed be
my people of Egypt, and the work of my hands to the Assyrian: but Israel is
my inheritance." (Isaiah 19:23-25)." This has been repeated in many Assyrian
websites and mailing lists, it is an article of faith for them. Egypt is
their promised land, and between Egypt and Israel, the Assyrians will be the
lord and masters. Now the situation in the Middle East is difficult and
convoluted enough to attempt to understand without bringing in more
complexity like this.

Imagine me writing an alternative history of the region, or a fantasy tract.
And then we have these Assyrians coming over the hills (or is that the Golan
Heights?) and sweeping the Israeli's and Egyptian border pickets and armies
away, the respective armies melting away, and a new Assyrian state is born
in this region. Many have created a state in this area comprising of Israel
major and Egypt in the past, such as the Romans, Ottomans, etc. but this one
should be good and interesting. It will really set the local politics
alight. I wonder what will happen to the various other 'promised land
theories'? Actually, here's a theological quandary for you, if the God of
the Christians, Jews and Muslims is the same, how did he manage to promise
the same few kilometres of land to so many different people? And for crying
out loud, out of the billions and gazillions of kilometres in the universe
and on this earth, why in the name of all that's holy (no pun intended) did
he have to pick those few concentrated kilometres?

But while these Assyrians, at least in this essay, have been portrayed as a
single ethnic group, the reality was different in the last century. Even
though they share the culture, history, language and religion, they had been
fragmented to a large degree over language dialects, religious differences,
historical backgrounds, etc., but recently with the rise of internet
communications, and use of English as a common external language it is
bringing this community together again. What is very impressive is that they
have managed to keep an ancient language, Aramaic alive and in common use
for such a long time. Think back on other ancient languages such as Latin
and Sanskrit, which are unfortunately no longer in common usage.

This group of people have a rather interestingly and well documented history
of being persecuted. A website I found notes the first persecution way back
to 107 A.D. when the Parthian king Xosroes murdered the second bishop of
Arbela (modern Arbil). In 448 A.D., King Yasdegerd II lead the Persians to
knock off more than hundred thousand Assyrians in and around Kirkuk in
modern day Northern Iraq or Kurdistan. And so on and so forth, being
persecuted by the Jews, Muslims, Parthians, Mongols, Kurds, you name it.
Between Iran, Iraq and Syria, the Kurds seems to have really got it in for
them. And these Assyrians were also part of the group of Maronite Christians
in current Lebanon and participated in the civil war which sadly seems to be
picking up steam again. But these chaps have really suffered, so much so
that they were called as the Martyr's Church by Pope John Paul II, because
no other church has been the unfortunate recipient of concentrated
martyrdom, persecution and massacres just for belonging to this
religion/church.

This church seems to have grown and it pops up in the most amazing of
places. The South Indian church is linked to the Assyrians, where it is
known as the Chaldean Syrian Church. Kerala, the southern state, has had
long trading links with the Middle East and this is where it's believed (on
very little factual basis mind you) that the Apostle Thomas landed and
converted many locals to Christianity. The Portuguese tried to convert these
people to Catholicism, but didn't really manage to do so, but guess what?
There seems to be a right royal theological war going on between Catholicism
and Syrian Christians in India, with the equivalent of a SWAT team being
sent by Antiochene Church in Jerusalem in 1665 to help fight off these pesky
Catholics. This church is also present in USA, Australia and New Zealand and
in some smaller numbers in Russia and other countries.

When I started to research this and talking to my sister about it, it was
almost like being an internet Indiana Jones. Fascinating to dig around and
discuss this little nugget of information. But for these Assyrians, life is
not that easy. They are dissipated across a vast landscape, persecuted by
and in the states in the Middle East where they live, difficult language and
communication problems. It will indeed be a shame for this amazing cultural
and religious group to die out, but they will have to make extraordinary
efforts to create a self identity and grow into a confident part of the
greater comity of nations. The Assyrians should take the words of Irena
Klepfisz, a famous Jewish poetess and writer to heart. Irena said about her
people and language: "Yiddish acted as the cement that bound the Jewish
community together on a socialist foundation. What language we spoke was
critical. It reflected our identity, our loyalty, our distinctness not only
from the gentile environment, but from other Jews as well. The use of
Yiddish was an expression not only of love of a language, but of pride in
ourselves as a people; it was an acknowledgment of a historical and cultural
yerushe, heritage, a link to generations of Jews who came before and to the
political activists of Eastern Europe. Above all it was the symbol of
resistance to assimilation, an insistence on remaining who we were."

All this to be taken with a grain of piquant salt!



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