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=> language a go-go

language a go-go
Posted by parhad (Guest) - Monday, March 8 2004, 13:50:10 (EST)
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Okay now, I'm just speculating...it's that thing you do when you watch a bird flying a summer sky as you lay back against a warm hayrick and wonder if people could somehow fly too...so it's a well established human pastime...do NOT throw an axe at me...I'm not being mean to you!

Let's say back in 548 AD a family moved from Arabia to BetNahrain and came under the spell of Jesus and his church and these people wanted to join up. I'm assuming they took converts since they were Evangelising the hell out of people who DIDN'T want any part of it. I figure in order to understand anything this family would be obliged to learn the liturgy and the whole nine yards...and it would only be available in Aramaic, "the language of Christ"...which, incidentally, we also spoke.

So the Arab family gives up its idols and weird ways and starts praying and eating human flesh and drinking human blood, symbolically of course. They learn Aramaic...their neighbors speak Aramaic and just as happens with modern immigrants to America, pretty soon those little Arab tykes are speaking Aramaic all of the time..in school and playing with their chums...and mother is shopping down at the butcher's and he only speaks Aramaic so she learns it too and the father has to speak it to pay his taxes and knock back a few with his pals at the tavern....pretty soon they have no use for Arabic and in a few generations can't even remember where Arabia is and feel like they've been living in BetNahrain all their lives and since before even...and they marry and have children and they grow up and so on and pretty soon you can't find them any more so well blended in are they.

And say the next people to come are some Romans and then some Phrygians and Lydians and Persians and Afghanis and Q---s and Germans and Hindus and a couple of Chinese families... all of them drawn to Christ and BetNahrain and everybody is as happy as pigs in crapola and ALL of them are now speaking that old language of Christ cause the church is central to all their lives etc.

Fast forward several centuries and Layard shows up, discovers Nimrud and everyone within 500 miles says he and she are descendants of whoever those mean and nasty people were...cause it beats being descended from the stock as the Muslim villagers around them. Some more time goes by and some jackass named Fatty Parhad shows up and asks these people how come they're all so sure they're descended from the old Assyrians...and how come they get to be the only descendants and since no one has a birth certificate or passport that says "born in Assyria"...or of "Assyrian Descent" and there hasn't been an Assyria proper for a couple of thousand years...just how do they KNOW they're Assyrian, pure and true. And they hem and they haw...one of them says he knows he's Assyrian because he's Assyrian and wouldn't be so damn sure if he wasn't..others say they talk a lot about being Assyrian and that sort of proves it beyond a doubt...and then several of them start looking real mean and mad at Parhad and they want to ban him and delete his head...when one of them comes up with this as absolute proof...says he..."we speak the language of the Assyrians...same one Jesus spoke and the same one we use in our churches".

Anyone in that region or of whatever ethnicity who converted to Christianity, either voluntarily or at the point of a Roman sword would have to have either been speaking Aramaic already or learn it...and anyone coming to the region...as people travelled around even then, would also have to learn Aramaic as they have to learn English eventually today if they move to America or England, Australia, Canada, New Zealand, New Guinea and South Africa. The point being that as universal a language as Aramaic was back then, you can hardly use it to PROVE you are one thing or another today, several hundred years later. It's a wonderful and a dear language and a treasure and all of that..but hardly PROVES ehnicity any more than religion does. I'm afriad there's no way around it...Assyrian is as Assyrian does.

Questions?



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