#road to Polyglott

[deriangrayve]

To become un Polyglott, eu trebuie sa meistern die art of Trilingualitate zuerst.

[my--wonderland]

Ce n'est qu'un au-revoir.

Abigail et Headley n'osaient pas se regarder. Le dernier jour de Poudlard était marqué par la fin de leurs études, bien sûr, mais aussi par le départ d'Abby, qui souhaitait faire le tour du monde pour parfaire son talent de Polyglotte. Les deux amis s'étaient promis que le dernier jour, ils feraient une farce intergalactique à toute l'école, un truc gigantesque et les profs ne pourraient même pas les punir, vu qu'ils ne reviendraient plus à Poudlard. Mais alors que ce jour était arrivé, ni l'un ni l'autre n'avait envie de faire des blagues. Abigail arrachait des brins d'herbe. Allongés près du Lac Noir, les deux amis attendaient le Poudlard Express, qui les ramèneraient chez les Archer, à Charlister Road. Headley se décida enfin à briser le silence. Retenant son souffle, il demanda d'une voix mal assurée : - Tu, euh... Tu pars quand ? Elle mit un temps à répondre, évitant toujours son regard. - Fin juillet. - Ah... Le silence retomba, seulement gêné par le clapotement de l'eau. - Et... T'es obligée ? Elle secoua la tête, et Headley sentit l'espoir s'insinuer en lui. Espoir qui retomba bien vite lorsqu'Abigail précisa : - Mais je le veux. J'en ai besoin. De changer d'air. - C'est à cause de ton père ? Le coeur d'Abby ralentit douloureusement. Son père, Argus Filch, avait été condamné deux ans plus tôt à quatre ans de travaux d'intérêt général, à savoir s'occuper de personnes atteintes mentalement à Ste Mangouste. Au moins, il sera avec des personnes comme lui, avait amèrement pensé Abigail. Elle trouvait la peine du Magenmagot risible. Argus avait réussi à mentir et à couvrir sa responsabilité concernant la mort de Mary Filch, et le tribunal avait conservé la thèse de l'accident. Deux ans encore. Dans deux ans, il sortirait. Et il la retrouverait. Abby en était certaine.

Elle omit volontairement de répondre à la question d'Headley, qui avait pourtant compris : - T'as peur qu'il te traque ? Abigail tordit ses mains, glacées malgré la chaleur estivale ambiante, et se garda de répondre. Headley posa les deux mains sur ses épaules maigres, et la secoua légèrement. - Abbyyyyy..! T'es jeune, t'es belle et t'as fini tes études ! Profite un peu ! - Je ne peux pas. - Mais si, tu peux ! Tu veux quoi, attendre qu'il soit mort ? Elle baissa la tête. - Non... - Alors va de l'avant ! - Mais je ne fais que ça ! se récria Abigail en faisant volte-face. Chaque jour, j'essaie d'oublier, mais la nuit... Je revis mes souvenirs. Headley baissa les yeux vers le visage de son amie. Beaucoup d'autres garçons voyaient une peau pâle, un long nez droit, des pommettes hautes et des yeux d'un bleu pur, mais lui voyait les cernes ceintrant les yeux d'Abigail, et la flamme fiévreuse à l'intérieur. Il la serra doucement contre lui, et elle ferma les yeux pour les protéger du soleil. - Je veux pas que tu partes, moi. - Ce sera dur de vivre sans moi, mais promets-moi de ne pas te suicider, porté par le désespoir d'avoir perdu ta meilleure amie. Headley éclata de rire. Au loin, on entendait le Poudlard Express arriver à Pré-Au-Lard. - Je le jure, promit-il. Et toi, promets-moi de ne pas trouver un meilleur ami mieux que moi. Ça n'existe pas, mais je préfère prévenir. - Je le jure. Ils se regardèrent un instant, portés par l'émotion, puis Headley se leva, lâchant Abigail. - Le dernier dans le Poudlard Express est un bouffon de Gryffondor ! Et interdiction de transplaner ! Il se mit immédiatement à courir. Pensive, Abigail se leva et le regarda prendre de l'avance. - Nous nous reverrons, Headley Archer, souffla-t-elle avant de se mettre à son tour à courir en direction de Pré-Au-Lard. Nous nous reverrons.

[goatfactsofficial]

Oh hey, I have some relevant knowledge here thanks to my re-enactment kit. So like, yeah, a bunch of Jews fled the Byzantine empire under Basil II and fled to modern Crimea where a bunch of other Jews were. This happened to be under the control of the Khazar Khaganate at the time. The Khagan (Or beq/bek/bec or Khan, I've seen a lot of these used interchangably) at the time was torn between the Christian Byzantines to his southwest, and the Muslim Umayyad and Abbasid Caliphates to the south. Both sides wanted to ally or conquer Khazaria to get the upper hand on the other, and also the Khagan was really interested in this whole Monotheism thing, since he thought it could help him tie his whole kingdom together. The problem here is that if he became Christian, there was this Pope guy and also the Byzantine Emperor he had to pay tithes and swear fealty to. Not quite what he was looking for. Islam? Pretty cool. Very into the arts and mathematics, but also enforces a tithes and fealty thing. Also there was some border conflicts in the Caucasus. Still not quite the right fit for a state religion. So anyway, these Jews start turning up on his doorstep en mass since Basil II decided to pull the classic "Scapegoat the Jews" trick, and the Khagan hears that they have a monotheistic religion. "Cool!" He says, "I've been looking for one of those for a while. I think they could help tie my big kingdom of semi-nomadic peoples into a unified culture. But I really don't want to swear any oaths to other kings or heads of the religion." "Well, we don't have a homeland, so we have no King. And since we have no homeland to make a centralized religious structure we also have no head of faith." Said the Jews. "Real shit?" Said the Khagan. "Oh yeah, also a lot of our people already trade along the Silk Road, right through your territory and are polyglottal badasses who make hella schmoney." "Awesome, come live here. I'm erecting a synagogue as we speak." Said the Khagan, making a note to start giving his kids Jewish names. So these Jews decide to settle down and enjoy having a head of state that didn't want to persecute them. According to some sources I've read that were poorly translated from Russian, some later khagans even started defensive wars when their neighbours started purging Jews. There is some scholarly debate about how much of Khazar culture converted, but the Bulanid Dynasty is certainly Jewish past a certain point. It's also not out of the realm of possibility to assume that some of the semi-nomadic family units or "tribes" (I use the word hesitantly because of its connotations here) might've picked up some Jewish practices or even converted. So we have a large group of Jews fleeing progroms in Byzantium. These Jews were probably diaspora that had been relocated by the Romans. So the notion that every Israelite Jew died in Roman captivity is straight up bullshit. And the idea that the Khazars converted in at all demands that *SOME* of those Jews managed to get out. On top of that, if the Khazars converted...then they ARE Jews. They have been ritually adopted by Abraham and Sarah, and Israel IS their ancestral homeland. It doesn't matter how you slice the pie, Israel is our home. To deny that is antisemitism, ignorance or some foul combination of the two. (This is not to say that I approve of the actions of the fascist government in Israel today. I am a draft dodger from my IDF service, Viva Palestina.)

If you have a problem with Jews using the word "diaspora," you're the one who needs to go and find a new word, because you're using a Jewish one.

The word "diaspora" was originally coined for the Jewish Diaspora. It has other meanings only by extension.

[johnjankovic]

ATLAS

For you know that it was not with perishable things such as silver or gold that you were redeemed from the empty way of life handed down to you from your ancestors, but with the precious blood of Christ, a lamb without blemish or defect.

1 Peter 1:18-9

Christianity’s Eurocentrism is an overstatement. Before the Great Schism in 1054 between Catholic Rome and Orthodox Constantinople, christened Istanbul in later years, had Christianity spread with runaway growth in Syria, Israel, Lebanon, Turkey, Iraq, Iran, Armenia, Egypt, and Ethiopia, long preceding its diaspora from the Mediterranean into Europe. Large tracts of Mesopotamia, a Roman fiefdom, were hospitable to Christianity yet Europe’s primus inter pares in the measure of faith materialized afterward by default since elsewhere had our family been terminated with extreme prejudice wherefore the Middle East could just as easily have industrialized and laid claim to a colonial past. A third of world Christians inhabited the region, then the Church’s epicentre, well into the eleventh century when earlier they imported classical learning from Greece to prompt the halcyon of sciences ahead of Europe as holy sees from Mosul, to Damascus, to Baghdad, to Basra, to Tehran (Rai), to Herat, to Merv all dotted the region. Since the lingua franca dispensed with Latin, substituted instead with polyglottism, the enculturation of Syriac, Coptic, Persian, and Turkish into liturgy orientalized our family. Lost in history, or more honestly rewritten by Islamic negationists, is how Iraq from a bygone age was Christianity’s heartland for over a millennium.

The universality of the Church was honoured in letter and spirit beginning in the East under the aegis of Syriac Christians. Before Saint Benedict inaugurated his first monastery, holy sees of the Nestorian Church had been founded in Iraq and Iran, before the advent of England’s first archbishop had Afghanistan and Turkmenistan become holy sees themselves, before Poland’s christianization were provinces in Uzbekistan and India governed by bishops in Samarkand and Patna, simultaneously had churches sprawled in Sri Lanka, Tibet, and China. Christian Arabs leapfrogged past medieval Europe in science, philosophy, and medicine sourced from how Damascus and Baghdad manifested into wellsprings of knowledge. Predecessors to the flagship universities by Catholic monks in the West were Turkey’s Nisibis and Iran’s Gundeshapur established by Syriac and Nestorian bishops, respectively. Patriarch Timothy I later help found the House of Wisdom first led by Christian Arab Hunayn ibn Ishaq under Caliph al-Ma’mum. Of the triumvirate, that is Imperial Rome, Byzantine Constantinople, and Baghdad, the third wielded the most clout as a matter of geographical size ideally situated along the Silk Road. In the other two did Muslim Saracens and Moors in the company of pagan Vikings and Magyars pillage monasteries and Saint Peter’s Basilica amid the eight and tenth centuries.

Promising though it was by comparison, evangelization in the East could not coexist with Islam. Politics and jihad rather than theological failure wrought a post-Christian Asia. Of the greatest ironies is how we intimately informed Islam between such influences as the Orthodox Church domes atop mosques, the facsimile of Lent in Ramadan, the uncovered feet, prostration, and prayer mats from Nestorian worship, the daily devotionals by monks replicated in the Salat, or more indelibly the Quran’s deference to the ‘prophet’ Jesus and Virgin Mary. No immunity, however, would avert our genocide from a demographic of 21 to 3.4 million between AD 1200 and AD 1500, or circa the time when minarets squared off and repurposed the Hagia Sophia Cathedral under Ottoman rule. In the interim were the Crusades wrongly set upon the region to reclaim the Holy Land of Syriac Christians. So seminal was the Middle East that the Nicene Creed of AD 325 reconciled all churches under one ecumenical council here to decide for posterity the doctrine of our faith. The difference in density could be no more stark, Rome was the lone patriarchate in the West, in the East were Alexandria, Constantinople, Antioch, Jerusalem, and Baghdad — their memories and those of the seven churches in Asia Minor from the Book of Revelations erased.

Christian Arabs built the Muslim world and spurred the Islamic Golden Age but retelling of this history is verboten. As Norsemen and Muslims plundered Europe, existentially destined for ruin, a bipolar world emerged between two stubborn strongholds seeking hegemony: the Orthodox Church in Constantinople and the Nestorian Church in Baghdad. Of these two the latter similarly fell to ruin culminating in the crescendo of death perpetuated by Turks during the Armenian holocaust of 1.53 million Christians and by Iraqis amid the Assyrian pogrom in the twentieth century. These purges accounted for the term ‘genocide’ coined thereafter. The Europeanization of our family came to fruition only in the sixteenth century when the Orthodox Church, exiled from Constantinople, shifted further to the East and the toehold of Rome gained currency across the West later in lockstep with the Reformation. Yet of the manifold traditions in Catholic Rome a large share of them was begotten from Syriac Christians six of whom were chosen to be popes as successors to Saint Peter between the seventh and eight centuries. No less in importance is how the Eastern Church became the fountainhead of Christian music from Gregorian chants to hymnbooks, and the impetus behind habituating the West to the feasts of Mary’s Nativity and Dormition.

Eastern Christianity’s earlier footprint actuated the remote outpost of Rome though the evangelism of both in their infancy proliferated much the same way along land and sea routes from the older Persian and later Roman metropoles thus enabling the missionary work, for example, in India by Saint Thomas. The scope of Christianity in the East was bespoken by the first Christian kingdoms of Osroene and Armenia ascribed to the efforts of Saints Bartholomew and Jude, the next was Saint Matthew’s Ethiopia, or ancient Abyssinia, thereupon Nubia situated south of Saint Mark’s Alexandria in Libya and Sudan declared itself a sovereignty of the Church for nearly a millennium. The Mediterranean littoral functioned as a staging  ground into the mainland from the patriarchates of Alexandria, Jerusalem, Antioch, and Constantinople long before Rome espoused Christianity. By AD 431 at the Council of Ephesus, however, did Baghdad formally sever its umbilical cord to Antioch, uncoupling itself from the Roman empire writ large as a result of its differences over Jesus’ humanity and divinity ex post the Crucifixion hence spurning the orthodoxy of the Virgin Mary as the ‘Mother of God’ at the cost of Christ’s manhood which ran afoul of its monophysitism. Semantics and pedantry split the Church at every turn in the Nestorian Schism, Great Schism, and Reformation.

This mutiny from, and disaffection with, the Imperial Roman Church by the patriarchate of Baghdad (Seleucia-Ctesiphon) followed by the exit of Alexandria at the Council of Chalcedon in AD 451 engendered a third and fourth axis in Christendom: 1) Rome, 2) Constantinople, 3) Nestorian Baghdad, and 4) Alexandria’s Oriental Orthodoxy. Modern cartography associates the territory of Rome to Europe, of Constantinople to Asia Minor, the Balkans, and Russia, of Baghdad to Mesopotamia-Persia, and of Alexandria to a patchwork of Egypt, Ethiopia, Eritrea, Syria, Armenia, and India. The Christianization of Asia manifested with an alacrity unknown to Europe. Although a demographic parity of twenty-million existed between both continents by the turn of the millennium, the genus of churches were poles apart, those in their thirtieth generation in Asia were ancient whereas the proselytization outside of Imperial Rome was jejune by this standard: Syriac Christians in Egypt and Baghdad originated the mores of monasticism for monks and nuns working in hermitages so common in Europe; Marian devotions were made ubiquitous by them; the works of Antiquity they translated for scholarship in the West. These apostolic roots of the East whose Semitic traditions were closest to the teachings of Jesus were in time erased. This is our history; our past.