He sympathizes with the Armenian and the Turk, with the Algerian and the Amazigh, and he considers himself an Egyptian with African forebears, an
Aramaean with Byzantine uncles, a Hijazi child coddled by Muslim Umar and Christian Sophronius when the former conquered Jerusalem, and his "scorn for Zionists" does not prevent him from saying he was "a Jew expelled from Andalusia," for "by anything less than this, one is not an Arab.
This handbook offers a comprehensive review of current research regarding central Syria's ancient
Aramaean culture.
On the one hand, Syrian political and religious institutions are interested in the safeguard of the main relics of the political power and of the waqf; since the first UNESCO inquiry in Syria (Collart, Abdul-Hak and Dillon 1954), Damascus' architectural heritage has been represented as the objectification of Syrian history, conceived as a teleology that started from
Aramaean founders of the city, crossed Seleucid, Roman, Byzantine, Umayyad, Seljuq, Ayyub, Mameluk, and Ottoman civilizations and reached its climax in the modern Syrian Arab Republic.
Hadadezer of Damascus, as has been seen, was almost certainly the Ben-Hadad who had within the past three years launched and lost
Aramaean Wars I and II against Israel, waged at about the same time Shalmaneser was battering Ahuni of Bit-Adini.
The considerable evidence for Levantine, Greek and
Aramaean cooperation in their initial exploration of the west also supports this; one may also add a substantial amount of evidence for an ongoing relationship between Levantines and Euboeans in the central Mediterranean (Boardman 2006; Hodos 2009).
The ancient treasure -- monumental deities from
Aramaean civilization and relief slabs depicting hunting scenes -- will soon be back on public display.
God then orders him to take his family and move to Canaan, presumably to eliminate the influence
Aramaean paganism is having on them.
Its Temple of Jupiter, built on the site of the old temple of the
Aramaean god Hadad, was one of the largest in the whole of the East and sections that still exist today are its oldest architectural remains.
The whole history of salvation takes place within the continuing history of creation and shows how God affirms and accepts identities: starting with the election of a particular person, the wandering
Aramaean, Abraham, the covenant with a specific people, Israel and its twelve tribes.
As a result of the
Aramaean siege and subsequent destruction, Safi/Gath lost prominence in the region.
In chapter 3, "Defining the Neo-Hittites," Bryce rightly questions the modern classification of these Iron Age kingdoms as a distinctive group for which the appellation "Neo-Hittite" is appropriate, to be distinguished in particular from the neighboring
Aramaean states west of the Euphrates.
As a product of an
Aramaean kinglet, the stele can then be made to yield significant insights into the multicultural, multi-ethnic environment of the western Jezirah and the Levant.
