Mail Condemns Guantanamo Abuses

limerickman

That is my job - and I moderate when needed.
Like when you needed me to moderate last week.
Remember?



The volume of traffic on the s/box thread contradicts your statement above.

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.."But finally the last thing I’ll say to the people who don’t believe in cycling, the cynics and the sceptics. I'm sorry for you. I’m sorry that you can’t dream big. [I]I'm sorry you don't believe in miracles. You should believe in these athletes, and you should believe in these people. I'll be a fan of the Tour de France for as long as I live. And there are no secrets" - this is a hard sporting event and hard work wins it - Armstrong 2005 TDF
morelike hypocrisy.

Carrera

Yes, there is all sorts of stuff being printed on the internet and frankly it's worrying that standardised history is being twisted by the three religions. I've found huge discrepancies between all accounts published on Jewish, Christian or Moslem sites.
I don't think it's a good idea to just grab material from any old website. After all, I could myself list hundreds of websites that claim the lunar landing wasn't a historical fact.
Here is what one of our female members posted on my other website with regard to Aramaic so please note you are disagreeing with her and not just me. This particular lady speaks several languages, ancient included:
"Aramaic flourished from about 700 BC to 700 AD and was spoken first in Arama which is now Syria and gradually "replaced" Phoenician and Hebrew in the Middle East but slowly petered out itself to Arabic. Aramaic can still be heard today in a small Syrian settlement of about a thousand Christians living in the hills outside Damascus, Syria."

Carrera

My Classics website published that Jews adopted Aramaic from the second temple period. Michael Grant places the adoption of Aramaic as later than this. Although Aramaic was spoken in Syria (probably around 800 B.C.-900 B.C., it's agreed by all conventional sources to date that Jews adopted Aramaic far later on. Most of the OT is written in Hebrew, includingh the song of Deborah dated by some around the time of the Judges.
Here is further food for thought:
"Canaanite languages that include Hebrew, Phoenician, and Punic, were spoken in Palestine, Syria, and in scattered communities around the Mediterranean. All these languages are extinct, except Hebrew, which was revived as a spoken language only in the 19th and 20th centuries."
http://www.nvtc.gov/lotw/months/aug...cLanguages.html
"The Hebrews started using the Aramaic script for everyday use, reserving the Old Hebrew script for religious use only. The Aramaic script adopted by the Hebrews quickly became known as the Jewish script. Because of the shape of the letters, it was called the "square script"."
http://www.nvtc.gov/lotw/months/aug...cLanguages.html

limerickman

There is a lot of stuff on the internet which is incorrect.
With regard to Aramaic preceeding Hebrew though, the internet is correct.

Initially I didn't rely on the internet as my source for confirming that Aramaic
is older than Hebrew.
Our school history books covered the ancient world - that was what I had in mind when I took you up on that point about language at the outset.
The fact that history books told us this at school was my starting point.

Then when you started going on about what was ancient and what wasn't ancient, I quickly realised that you hadn't got a clue and that you weren't prepared to listen and accept that what you posted, was wrong.

So I scrolled through the internet to locate the relevant links.

I realise that no matter how many sources I provide, you will still not understand that you're incorrect.

Let's look at what you posted above - something about a woman speaking several languages and supporting your point of view.
How credible is that?

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.."But finally the last thing I’ll say to the people who don’t believe in cycling, the cynics and the sceptics. I'm sorry for you. I’m sorry that you can’t dream big. [I]I'm sorry you don't believe in miracles. You should believe in these athletes, and you should believe in these people. I'll be a fan of the Tour de France for as long as I live. And there are no secrets" - this is a hard sporting event and hard work wins it - Armstrong 2005 TDF
morelike hypocrisy.

Carrera

Then I fear your old school teacher was teaching material that other historians don't agree with.
Mainstream Classics teaches the Canaanites inhabited the Jewish homeland first and that there existed a language called proto-Canaanite. From this (the root I referred to before, arose Phoenician, Hebrew and Aramaic but Aramaic wasn't adopted by Jews till later on.
In the first Temple period, the elite Jewish Court could understand Aramaic but it wasn't commonly spoken amongst the people. Just one piece of evidence: Around 715 BC Assyria sent an envoy to Jerusalem to declare war on Israel (2 Kings)and the said envoy was asked to speak in Aramaic, not ancient Hebrew so the common people standing on the city wall wouldn't understand. Only the Jewish scribes understood the Aramaic of the envoy. The Assyrian narrative of the war against Judah has also survived.

Carrera

I can't find a better example than this straight from the Old Testament, Kings 18 v 17 - 26. Here it is. The link to this online Bible is huge so you'll have to edit it to the address bar or simply pick up a printed OT:
"26: Then Eli'akim the son of Hilki'ah, and Shebnah, and Jo'ah, said to the Rab'shakeh, "Pray, speak to your servants in the Aramaic language, for we understand it; do not speak to us in the language of Judah within the hearing of the people who are on the wall."
There are dozens of amounts of evidence to prove Jews were not speaking Aramaic as a common language till the period of the Second Temple. But if you argue that all these sources and the OT as well are wrong, how come the common people by the wall couldn't understand Aramaic?
http://etext.lib.virginia.edu/etcbi...8&division=div2

Carrera

Check this one out too: The continuation of the narrative in the Old Testament. If Aramaic was spoken in Israel before Hebrew and Hebrew was derived from Aramaic, how come the everyday Jewish folks sitting on that wall couldn't understand Aramaic and they had to be addressed in their own tongue. The fact is only the Jewish scribes understood since Aramaic hadn't yet become a vulgar language within Israel.
KINGS 18, 26
"Then Eli'akim the son of Hilki'ah, and Shebnah, and Jo'ah, said to the Rab'shakeh, "Pray, speak to your servants in the Aramaic language, for we understand it; do not speak to us in the language of Judah within the hearing of the people who are on the wall."
27: But the Rab'shakeh said to them, "Has my master sent me to speak these words to your master and to you, and not to the men sitting on the wall, who are doomed with you to eat their own dung and to drink their own urine?"
28: Then the Rab'shakeh stood and called out in a loud voice in the language of Judah: "Hear the word of the great king, the king of Assyria!"

Carrera

On the link I provided above the passage comes out as verse 26 a bit further down.

FredC

I know where Lim went to school,and he had the finest education one can possibly have.
What about the Sumerians then? Don't they count?
Aramaic yes. Hebrew was not a language, it was a tribe, it only became known as a liturgical language latterly, and was filched from Aramaic, but used a block letter system. Read 'The Dead Sea Scrolls'. If Hebrew? was the predominate language why were Essene sect using Aramaic as the primary language?

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The media is a self perpetuating publicity stunt.

FredC

Nobody's stopping anyone from joining in. I've noticed that the Americans are ill equipped educationally to function on the topic of the Middle East, even if the Senate is one third Jewish, the taxpayer stumps up $14 billion per annun for Israel, and US Tv is censored on the topic.

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The media is a self perpetuating publicity stunt.

Carrera

Hold yer horses and let's address the actual point I made. I've been taken to task on many occasions and informed I'm dead wrong so it's fair I should be allowed to defend myself in these debates.
Yes, I concede Lim obviously has had a good education, otherwise I wouldn't be debating with him.
You mention the Sumerians but this distracts from the specific point we're discussing - namely Aramaic and its use in ancient Israel. I know there are more ancient societies than Israel but I feel obliged to make some defence over this issue.
Fred, the points you've just raised appear top be in the wrong time-zone. You appear to be confusing Aramaic in latter day Israel (or even the Christian period) with the period of 700 B.C.
We all accept Hebrew was later influenced by Aramaic script but again, I point to the fact that the envoy described in the book of Kings wasn't understood by the commoners in Aramaic at that time. And the Bible account if confirmed by another ancient source.
All mainstream students accept Aramaic was adopted by the Jews as a lingua franca later on (my own personal estimate being around 400 B.C.)

Carrera

The girl whose comments on Aramaic I quoted lives in the U.S. (a Christian I suspect) and I've know her online for some years. We have a majority of members from the U.S. and one or two of them are total eggheads (they know much more than I do as I don't know Greek or Hebrew).
The U.S. has some very good universities and research facilities.

stevebaby

I was kidding...I actually enjoy reading the posts.
As for joining in...I have found a new vocation and it's called....."DO-DO problems" 3290.

Just as I was beginning to doubt my faith,the lord has delivered a prize bumpkin to Craggy Island!

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I'm Rooting for Chiara!
Drink!Feck!Arrse!Girls!
bastard

Carrera

I figure it's more exciting than Coronation Street. Spectators must now be wondering what's gonna happen next. This is better than Big Brother. Could you imagine myself, Fred, Lim, Boogers and Colorado Rider in the Big Brother House.