"Syria is according to information received by the Society for Threatened Peoples -STP (Gesellschaft für bedrohte Völker GfbV) increasing pressure on the Assyrian Aramaic language and culture. The international human rights organisation with its centre in Göttingen stated on Tuesday that the Syrian secret service has forbidden a performance of the popular Assyrian Aramaic musician, Habib Mousa, at a concert of another artist in the city of Kamishli in the north-east of the country. For the Assyrian Aramaic Christians this ban is a sign that the totalitarian Baath Party, which has ruled since 1963, is still pursuing its goal of forcible Arabicisation of the Assyrian Chaldaic and Kurdish ethnic groups", criticised the chair of the German section of the STP, Tilman Zülch. "The intention is to ensure that the Christians give up among other things their New Aramaic language in favour of Arabic." The opposition Assyrian Democratic Organisation ADO also sharply condemned the ban on the performance by the Syrian authorities."
There is a most impressive new website just up dealing with the Talpiot “Jesus” tomb in all of its aspects at talpiottomb.com. It is sponsored by JTERP (Jesus Tomb Education and Research Project), headed by Jerry Lutgen who works in the informatics health care field. You can read more of him as well as JTERP, its history and its purposes here. Some of my readers might remember Mr. Lutgen from his published article “The Talpiot Tomb: What are the Odds?” published at Bible & Interpretaton, that dealt with why the various studies using statistics differ so wildly in their conclusions. Lutgen also has a most interesting new study titled “Did the Set of Names from the Talpiot Tomb Arise by Chance,” which you can download at this new website.
"The Jews who lived in the regions of northern Iraq on the border with Turkey, Kurdistan and Azerbaijan brought a plethora of languages to Israel with them, some of which were classified as "Neo-Aramaic."
The key to the development of these different languages was the isolation of the various Jewish communities in the region. Linguists explain that when an innovation is introduced in a language, it moves like a wave between the communities that speak that language. However, in mountainous areas, linguistic innovations cannot easily spread, and the more isolated the communities were - especially Jewish communities that kept to themselves - the more likely it was that a unique language would arise. "
