Free Republic

The Arabic-speaking (though ethnically Aramean) Christian community in Israel celebrated on Monday the promotion to the rank of Major of one of its own in the Israel Defense Forces. More and more local Christians have been volunteering for the IDF in recent years as groups like the Israel Christian Community (ICCI) encourage military service as the best way to integrate into the Jewish state. In a Facebook post marking the promotion of Maj. Eddie Jamalia, the ICCI told “everyone who tried (and is trying) to prevent our integration into Israeli society, in the IDF and the security forces (in particular),...

The Hebrew Bible views Egypt as the location of both slavery and refuge. The “wandering Aramean” ancestor mentioned in Deuteronomy 26:5 was a slave in Egypt, whereas the prophet Jeremiah and others chose to flee there after the fall of Samaria/Israel and Judah. This presentation offers a look at the evidence for diaspora life in Egypt found in Papyrus Amherst 63, a long and difficult text written in Aramaic but using the Demotic Egyptian script. The many compositions in the papyrus reflect the religious traditions and collective cultural memory of a group of Aramaic speakers in Egypt, including Samarians and...

Aramaeans Call Upon the Justness of the President-elect Barack Obama Dr. M. Shamsaddin Megalommatis published December 29, 2008 Aramaeans have been for millennia the moving force of vast empires, like the Achaemenidian Persian, the Arsacid Parthian, and the Sassanid Iranian empires, as well as the Islamic Caliphates, particularly the Abbassid empire of Baghdad. Great Central Asiatic empires like the Kushan and the Uighur empires owe their strength and socio-economic interconnectedness to the use of Aramaic writing and language that helped diffuse many, different backgrounds´ religions, notably Mithraism, Manichaeism, other Gnosticisms, Buddhism, and Nestorian Christianism. Due to their extensive islamization, the...