The Inside Assyria Discussion Forum #5

=> sure thing.....

sure thing.....
Posted by pancho (Moderator) - Wednesday, March 21 2012, 14:40:46 (UTC)
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LY the Assyrians and Fareed wrote:
>First, thank you for the response. Now I have a few more question, if you don’t mind. I will put your comments in [brackets] then follow it with my question.
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>[..sure thing...happy to oblige. For an ethnic identity as old as the Assyrian I would say it would have to be of the same caliber as what other people, also from that era, have to show. And that would be if they had retained their original religion of Ashur and not changed to Jesus....or Muhammad....or Buddha.]
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>You’re saying that Religion defines Ethnicity. Is that what you mean?

...I'm not sure what ethnicity even means any more. I mean when an American is made up of German, Dutch, English, Italian, Irish and Russian "ethnciities"...just what is he? And if his bloodline goes on to mix with Chinese, Japanese, Korean, African and Nepalese ethnicities, what does his family become? With all the traveling around the world and intermingling, what is an ethnic identity any more? Seems to me the safest thing to say is "I am Human".

...Religion used to define ethnicities because people stayed pretty much in one place with their cultures intact...in Australia or the Pacific Islands this meant a great deal...but in New York? In fact, as Dr Joseph points out, before the advent of the modern nation-state, religion was THE key point in people's lives...so, yes, religion used to define ethnic or group solidarity...but no more.
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>[...if a Jew loses faith in Yahweh, he is no longer a Jew....same for an Assyrian....same for a Christian. You can't be a Jew or a Christian is you give up on Yahweh or Jesus.}
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>Again, you’re saying it is faith that defines ethnicity, correct?

....no, because Jews and Christians today are made up of all sorts of ethnicities....you can be an Arab Jew, an Ethiopian Jew, a Spanish Jew...a German Jew, a French Jew....that part of you that ISN'T the religion can come from anywhere on the planet....but your religion can be changed, and if you change from a Jewish god to a Buddhist god, you will not be considered a Jew any more, by JEWS especially.

...but since the ancient Assyrians, like the Hebrews of the same time period, WERE defined by their religion...and since they kept theirs, while the Assyrians left theirs for another god, we can say that Assyrians stopped being Assyrians, in that one regard, just as a Jew would have stopped being a Jew had he done the same. But that's because in the ancient world things worked like that....your religion defined you...Yahweh was the national god of only the Hebrews..and not even every one of them...Ashur was the national god of the Assyrians....others could join in his worship, but he was FOR Assyrians...but that was then, this is now....now gods seem to be more universalist, the Catholic version especially. But even the ancient Assyrians allowed others to worship Ashur and in that sense, they too became Assyrian, I guess.

..this whole thing is silly....but it is silly primarily because modern assyrians insist that Christianity is what MAKES them assyrian....more than anything else.....you can forget your Aramaic, you can stop drinking tea, you can marry someone other than your cousin, you can stop playing soccer with your nose, none of that keeps you from being assyrian...BUT, leave Jesus and you are no longer ASSYRIAN. I'm merely responding to this bit of Fascistic silliness.
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>[...but if any MidEasterner could show that his family had never left off believing in Ashur, that would go a long way...]
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>I like that! And again, in your mind faith and religion is what defines ethnicity, correct?

....I said I don't know what defines ethnicity any more...and in 500 years I doubt we'll even use that term any longer. Once upon a time England was made of various ethnic groups...there were the Angles, the Jutes, the Saxons, the Dane, the Norweigen and then the Norman/French....yet today, after centuries of intermixing, there is only "English". In another 500 years, if the English mix with ten other ethnicities, they might not even be "English", in any ethnic way which we now recognize.
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>[although it's always possible that they were never ethnically Assyrian, even 3000 years ago...]
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>Are you saying here that even believing in Ashur could exclude you from being Assyrian? Help me here, you said earlier that Religion defines ethnicity. But then you say that it may not?

...well, it would if you left off believing in Jesus...at least to the rabid nationalists it would...and to the priests...they would think it a bad joke. Religion USED to define ethnicity...it no longer does, except in a few circumstances, which don't apply to us because we've been mixing with others freely since the early days of Empire....ancient Assyrians didn;t have the kinds of restrictions we do about who you could marry or worship to be a "real" Assyrian...it wasn't in their nature and besides which it would have been impossible because Mesopotamia is flat on three sides and was the common meeting and crossing road for the ancient world.
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>[but it's much better than saying "Only Christians are true Assyrians" today.]
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>I don’t know which fool says that, but fair enough.

...which fool? ALL the fools say it!
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>[..Language alone wouldn't do it because anyone can learn a language (just as anyone can adopt a religion),]
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>I’m not following you, sorry. What I understand from you is this: Religion defines ethnicity, but it’s possible it won. And to be Assyrian, one has to believe in Ashur, but even if he does, that doesn’t make him Assyrian... This is what I understand you’re saying so far, from what you said earlier.

....I said this about religion because we claim to be directly descended from a time when it WAS true...when religion defined ethnicity or was a huge part of it...but yes, even back then, people were adopting Judaism and also Ashurism....but once adopted, they "became" those people, that ethnic group, even though the rules and customs would remain new and foreign for some time yet until they completely assimilated.

...I have said all of this in reaction to the litmus test for "assyrianism" which our nationalists have devised: that you can ONLY be assyrian if you are Christian....if they weren't so foolish, I wouldn't be dealing in so much foolishness myself.
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>[but even there the language we speak is not Assyrian but Aramaic..."we" gave up Akkadian long ago, which was the language of the ancient Assyrians...the language all their history and culture is recorded in,]
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>Are you now saying that language is important when defining an ethnicity?

...well, if your entire culture and history is written in a language you forgot....I'd say it was pretty damn important. Had the ancient Assyrians translated all their history and culture, to that date, into their new language of Aramaic (or Greek or Persian etc.), then we could say they remained Assyrian, because they would have kept their identity. But they didn't...for some reason they didn't see any value in keeping their history and culture alive...so how "Assyrian" did they remain?
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>[which no Nestorian or modern assyrian could read when the tablets and monuments were dug up, beginning in the 1840s.]
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>Again, meaning it’s language that defines ethnicity?

..nothing "defines" ethnicity any longer, except in a few cases, and even those will soon change as new "cultures" are made of blends. Ethnicity has just about become meaningless, in the modern era.
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>[The safest thing that can be said is that all of the people residing in the MidEast today are descended from ALL of the ancient people of that region, which includes Sumerians, Babylonians, Hurrians, Hittites, Amorites, Kassites, Assyrians AND Arabs, Turks, Qurds, Greeks, Persians etc and etc.....that religion has nothing to do with it and so forth.]
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>That’s very plausible, yes.

...yes, but we aren't dealing with plausibility or even rationality when we deal with modern assyrians...we're dealing with religious fanaticism and sectarianism disguised as "nationalism", they think.
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>[But to say that ONLY Christians today are descended from ONeveryone else "disappeared" is as silly as our claim that Assyriologists say that ALL Assyrians disappeared...of course they didn;t all disappear...they just forgot their native tongue and THEN disappeared, when they lost their identity by losing their history and real culture.
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>[After all, didn;t your parents warn you not to forget "your mother tongue" (though they meant Aramaic) because "if you forget your language you forget who you are"? And it's true and in that sense, Assyrians "disappeared", because, like your parents warned you...they "forgot who they were when they forgot their mother tongue", Akkadian.]
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>I have seen many people in all nationalities here, including Assyrians, who don’t speak their mother tongue but they know what they are when you ask them... Chinese, Koreans Lebanese, Italians, Greeks and Assyrians. So, I’m not sure that what you said is true... At least not according to the facts about those I know, anyway.

...the people you mentioned all have nations where they can and have kept their cultures alive, even though mixing and matching....and yes, these people do have to PROVE who they are....which they can do by showing passports or birth certificates....you can stick a feather in your head and tell your pals at work that you're an Apache...no one will much care or ask you to prove it...but, if you show up when the Federal government hands out mineral rights checks to the Apache tribes, you WILL be asked for proof...a feather in your head, or even the fact that you speak Apache, will not do.

...same for Chinese, Lebanese Italians etc.....just try crossing into Italy without a passport...you will be asked for PROOF for who you claim you are, even if you're Italian, simply saying so, in Italian, won't get you in....the funny thing is that all assyrians know this, because all of them who came to America or Europe know damn well they had to PROVE who they were...and for proof not a one of them said, "I am an Assyrian and why should I prove it to you"? For one thing none of them had any documents showing they were Assyrian...they all showed their PERSIAN or Iraqi or Turkish or Syrian passports...because for important things you have to show important documents...and assyrians have no such papers, nothing official anyone would accept.

...no one, I mean NO ONE credits this claim of ours...they pat us on the head and let it slide...why take candy from a child? Besides the actual history of how this identity was invented, out of whole cloth and ruins, is plainly there, in real history books for all SERIOUS people to read...and all the people we deal with, for serious things, are the kind of people who KNOW serious things.
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>[..what would be most convincing would have been a "continuity of consciousness"....had the people claiming to be of direct Assyrian descent remembered their culture and language, even if they changed religions, all through the same centuries that the Hebrews kept theirs, for instance, there would be some basis for accepting their claims.]
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>I’m sure there are many others, but what do you think about Greeks, then? Or Italians? They don’t speak their original language and they have changed faith. Do they fall in the same category as Assyrians? Are they not Greeks or Italians?

...they are what they can prove they are, by modern and accepted standards....no one today has a litmus test involving blood purity...no one but Fascists that is...by whatever rules we play by today, assyrians don't count....they have none of the required documents to prove who they are...but it isn't true that "others don't have to prove who they are, why only we assyrians are asked for proof"? Everybody must show proof, for serious things...anyone can "be" assyrian, or a Navajo, or Italian, at a bar, or at the water cooler.

...if a Greek showed up today claiming he was from the original Ionians and that the site of the Parthenon in Athens was where his grandfather's house used to be, a little before the time of Socrates, and he wanted it BACK because he was the indigenous Greek...he'd be locked up...which is where we belong.

...anyone insisting he is not French but a Gaul and therefore has some land rights in Paris would be laughed at...as we are when we claim to be direct descendants of the ancients...they just don;t laugh in our faces, that's all.
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>Thank you.

..any time.



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