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To: lentulusgracchus
That defi will come as a severe shock to Christian Galilaeans and to any number of Maronite and Nestorian Christians. Believing it would make it nearly impossible to understand how Christians in India came to practice their liturgy in Syriac. My sister got married in this language 25 years ago, in a church Christianized 17 centuries previously by St. Thomas of India, who followed the Roman trade routes to take up a mission in the Greek trading entrepots of the Malabar Coast.

No, that won't be a shock to any Maronite or Nestorian. Why do you think they have been persecuted by the majority of Jews and Arabs for the past 2000 years? The number of Maronites is very small compared to the number of semetic Muslims. And the Nestorians are very small. And Christianity never took root in India no matter what language the litergy is in.

Christianity did originate among a Semitic people, but it never took deep roots among Semites. Most Jews never converted and never will. And when Islam came along, a form of religion conforming more to Semitic cultural values, it easily supplanted Christianity. Christianity is a minority religion among Semitic peoples. Among them, Islam and Judaism predominate.

57 posted on 08/03/2009 10:46:20 AM PDT by stripes1776 ("That if gold rust, what shall iron do?" --Chaucer)
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To: stripes1776
The number of Maronites is very small compared to the number of semetic Muslims.

Sure it is. Now.

And the Nestorians are very small.

But once they were very numerous.

And Christianity never took root in India no matter what language the litergy is in.

Christians are 20% of the people in India, where 30% are Moslem and most of the rest are Hindus or Jains. As many as 20% in a religiously plural society is a root.

Christianity did originate among a Semitic people, but it never took deep roots among Semites. Most Jews never converted and never will.

The Jews didn't, but the Christian Jews did.

And when Islam came along, a form of religion conforming more to Semitic cultural values, it easily supplanted Christianity.

Yes, with taxes and the sword -- but then I repeat myself. The Arabs used the police power and the edge of the sword, the toll of boys and the immersion techniques used today by cultists to convert Greek-speaking Christians to Islam.

Christianity is a minority religion among Semitic peoples. Among them, Islam and Judaism predominate.

No, Islam predominates -- by force, as I said before.

The Semites are not just the Hebrews and the Arabs. They include the Phoenicians of the coast, Syrians, Aramaeans, all the Nabataeans and Edomites (who may be the same people, all proto-Arab), and 90% of the people of Mesopotamia, in the time of Christ. Christianity was very widespread and the predominate religion in this region in the time of Justianian, its only real competitor being Zoroastrianism from the age of Theodosius forward. Your claim that "Semites" gave Christianity no mind is hollow.

If by "Semites", however, you mean only the Jews and the Arabs, then again you have a problem in argument: because "Jews" has always meant the Jehovah-worshipping Semites of the House of Abraham who clung to the Mosaic Law after Christianity had appeared -- so that you are arguing a tautism: if "Jews" means only the Jews who never converted from the Law of Moses, then of course your statement is perfect because it's a tautology, and because you then say that Christian Jews are no longer Jews but Gentiles.

Sorry, no sale.

62 posted on 08/03/2009 3:46:41 PM PDT by lentulusgracchus
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