The Inside Assyria Discussion Forum #5

=> in which I continue not to give a wikifuck....

in which I continue not to give a wikifuck....

Posted by pancho (Moderator) - Thursday, April 26 2012, 21:37:49 (UTC)
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...but plow right on.

Dr Joseph on the derivation of "Syria":

Dr Joseph's research and sources have shown that the word “Syria” is not derived from “Assyria" at all, but rather the two were confounded with each other much later. Syria derives from Aram, the land of the Arameans known today as modern-day Syria. One indication of the correctness of this view is that in 1970 British biblical scholars, sponsored by Oxford and Cambridge universities released a new edition of the Bible in which the words “Syrian and “Syria” were rendered back to their original Aramean and Aram. Had there been any doubt about the true derivation, the words would have been changed to “Assyria” and “Assyrian”, which they were not, hence several scholars know that Syria did not derive from Assyria.

Also, the Bible itself uses the two words independently of each other. There is no hint in the Bible that Aram/Syria is also Assyria.

To quote Dr. Joseph;

“The designations Syria and Syrian were derived from Greek usage long before Christianity. When the Greeks became better acquainted with the Near East, especially after Alexander the Great overthrew the Achaemenian empire in the 4th century B.C., they restricted the name Syria to the lands west of the Euphrates. During the 3rd century B.C., when the Hebrew Bible was translated by Jewish scholars into the Greek Septuagint for the use of the Hellenized Jews of Alexandria, the terms for ‘Aramean’ and ‘Aramaic’ in the Hebrew Bible, were translated into ‘Syrian’ and ‘the Syrian tongue’ respectively.”

Thus we see that “Syria” came from Aram and not Assyria. And Aram/Syria referred to the lands west of the Euphrates and not any part of what is known as Assyria proper, then or now.

...The Turkey-tablet which has caused so much hope to burn in “Assyrian” hearts, dates from the 8th century, long after “Syria” was derived from Assyria (and after the Muslim Conquest)...this was a time well into the Christian era when the confusion in names had already existed for centuries, as per Dr Joseph's reasearch. This tablet merely confirms the confusion, not the derivation of Syria from Assyria. I can say that with confidence because those who tout its discovery as having "settled for all time" the controversy of derivation, have not known about, or bothered to address, the numerous evidence that Syria derived from Aram and neither terms were used to mean Assyria "as well"...or "in place of"...or were "the same as...".

Also from Dr. Joseph;

“The Authorized Version of the Bible continued to use the same terms that the Septuagint had adopted. In 1970, the New English Bible, published by Oxford and Cambridge University presses, and translated by biblical scholars drawn from various British universities, went back to the original Hebrew terms, using Aram and Arameans for Syria and Syrians respectively.”

...”back to the original Hebrew terms”. Were the Hebrews then mistaken? No scholar has said so. Aram/Syria did NOT refer to Assyria. It had nothing to DO with Assyria but with the lands west of the Euphrates...known as the lands of the Arameans, modern-day Syria, not Iraq.

Returning to the text;

“In Palestine itself, according to Noldeke, the Jews and later the Christians there referred to their dialect of Aramaic as Syriac; in Babylon, both Greeks and Persians called the Arameans Syrians.”

...this editor and all other nationalists are the ones calling the Aramaic language “Assyrian”. It was not. Akkadian was the language of the Assyrians...it is the language all the cuneiform tablets are written in, not Aramaic. People back then knew Aramaic stood for Syriac...that Aram was Syria and not Assyria, not the “same “ at all but quite distinct and separate.

“Both Greeks and Persians”, their immediate neighbors and conquerors, called the Arameans “Syrians”, not Assyrians.

A footnote;

See T. Noldeke, “Semitic Languages”, in Encyclopedia Britannica, 11th ed. P. 625). The second-century B.C. Greek historian Posidonius, a native of Syria, noted that ‘the people we [Greeks] call Syrians were called by the Syrians themselves Arameans….for the people in Syria are Arameans’.” (See J.G. Kidd, ‘Posidonius’ (Cambridge Classical Texts and Commentaries, 1988), vol. 2 , pt. 2, pp. 955-956.)” pp. 9-10.

A Greek historian of the 2nd century B.C., in Syria, not Assyria, writes that the Syrians themselves called themselves Arameans, not Assyrians “too”.

And, not to put too fine a point on it;

“Herodotus himself, however, always differentiated between the two terms. Randolph Helm’s researches show that Herodotus ‘conscientiously’ and ‘consistently’ distinguished the names Syria and Assyria and used them independently of each other.” p 21

Herodotus, among others, knew way back then, that Syria and Assyria were independent of each other. They were most definitely not the same entity with two, different, names.

And then there is this, also from Joseph;

“Tatian not only did not claim to be an Assyrian, but scholars point out that he was not even born in the lands east of the Euphrates. Tatian (Greek Tatianos), writes Millar, no more came from geographical Assyria than did that other ‘Assyrian’ with a Latin name, Lucian (Greek Lucianos) of Samasota. Millar explains simply that the terms Assyria and Assyrians were common terms then for geographical Syria and its inhabitants. See his Rome and the East, pp 227, 454-455, 460. Consult also Asmussen, op. cit., p 927; Encyclopedia of the Early Church (New York 1992), under ‘Tatian’; Patricia Crone and Michael Cook, Hagarism (Cambridge, 1977), p. 197, n. 163.” p 27

...”Millar explains simply that the terms Assyria and Assyrians were common terms then for geographical Syria and its inhabitants.”

...I can well believe that this view is not shared by the editor here, but until he finds an accredited historian, in THIS field, who shares his disdain, he is merely stating a personal preference, that's all.

A footnote;

“See Helm’s ‘Herodotus Histories VII.63 and the Geographical Connotations of the Toponym ‘Assyria’ in the Achaemenid Period’ (paper presented at the 190th meeting of the American Oriental Society, at San Francisco, April 1980). See also his ‘Greeks’ in the Neo-Assyrian Levant and ‘Assyria’ in Early Greek Writers’ (Ph.D. dissertation, University of Pennsylvania, 1980), pp 27-41; see also Herodotus’ Histories, I.105 and II.106. The late Arnold J. Toynbee, has also clarified that the Syrioi ‘are the people whom Herodotus includes in his Fifth Taxation District’ which includes ‘ the whole of Phoenicia and the so-called Philistine, Syria, together with Cyprus.’ The Syrioi , emphasizes Toynbee, are ‘not the people of an Assyria which contains Babylon and which is the ninth district in his list.’ p 21

...according to Toynbee, a somewhat well-known non-volunteer, the “Syrioi” people include the people of Phoenicia, the “so-called” Philistines, together with those of Cyprus and Syria...but NOT Assyria. Toynbee “emphasizes” that these Syrioi people are NOT “the people of an Assyria”...that is in the Ninth Taxation District, not the Fifth Taxation District.

...clearly “Assyrians” use baffled history and borrowed expertise, from other fields, as well as total ignorance of what these sources are really saying, as well as what actual experts say, in order to create a derivation for themselves from an ancient heroic group.

And it turns out Wikipedia is the perfect place for them since, having attracted like-minded and befuddled people who agree with them, they have tacked together a “consensus”, which seems to be the operating mechanism here for establishing “truth”. I wonder if Wikipedia realizes that this sort of “proof” for qualifying as truth would have kept us in the Dark Ages, a time when there was vast consensus that the sun revolved around a flat earth? It was by bucking consensus, not seeking it, that we have managed to advance. I urge the administration to allow real “truth-seeking”, which comes by reasoned questioning, especially with actual sources, over an agreement among partisans, all volunteers no less.

One further point, to settle the unquiet about a fellow "Assyrian" being so determined to discover the actual truth in these claims (after all, why WOULDN'T I want to be a hero too?). Let me point out that on this very Wikipedia, under "Ashurbanipal" can be seen a photo of the monument to that magnificent Assyrian king I built and which was installed in San Francisco in 1988. It must be galling, I know, for "Assyrians" to discover that yet another one of them, went and got educated on the subject and is determined to share the actual truth behind this bogus identity. People should not want to dress themselves in borrowed finery but rather attain their own successes in life...which, I grant, is hard to do as a volunteer, in life.

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