The Inside Assyria Discussion Forum #5
=> about the author....
| about the author.... |
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Posted by
pancho
(Moderator)
- Sunday, July 14 2013, 23:40:51 (UTC) from *** - ***  Commercial -  Windows NT -   MozillaWebsite: Website title: |
...this book, "The Mystery of the Hanging Gardens", is written by a well respected Assyriologist, Stephanie Dalley...the book is published by the very prestigious "Oxford University Press". Ms Dalley teaches at Oxford and has a distinguised resume and numerous accomplishments...but her book, again, is about ancient times...it deals with the idea that the original Hanging Gardens were not in Babylon but in Nineveh and that Sennkherib built. As part of the evidence she offers for this new conclusion is this very fact of the word "Syrian" meaning Assyrian as well...because she has to discount the Greek origin of "Syrian"...so that her sources prove her case. Now, she's allowed to do that because she's well established in her field...and I don't much care who gets the credit....but I do think she's ignoring some facts she doesn't mention, but Joseph does. Joseph writes that the term "Syrian" was the word Greek Jews chose for "Aram"...so that the land of the Arameans became Syria....the Jews did this when they translated the Aramaic bible into Greek for the use of the Jewish colony in Alexandria, which only spoke Greek, since Greek became the language and cultural influence of that region for 1000 years. No one knows,or I don't, why the Jews used "Syrian" instead of Aramean...but, that this is the origin of "Syria" can be shown by the fact that in 1970 scholars at Oxford University made a new translation and went back to the old Aramaic usage of "Aram" for Syria..and Aramean for Syrian. Dr Dalley doesn't mention this as evidence that perhaps the Greeks were the source for this change...and that her reading of that fragment from Turkey needs a little more explaining....her explanation doesn't explain why Oxford scholars "went back" to Aram for Syria.... --------------------- |
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