Talk:Assyrian continuity

Should the general rejection of the Assyrian continuity thesis as described here be mentioned in the second paragraph of the lead or not? I will address Shmayo's objections in the edit summary of their revert:

Donabed & Mako (2009) p. 83 write that

A trend has become more prevalent in modern scholarship to dismiss the ‘Assyrian’ claim. Much of this finds its strongest proponents within the field of Syriac Studies.

Why should this not support the article's claim that "the idea of Assyrian continuity is generally met with skepticism in the field of Syriac studies"? The claim in the article seems actually weaker (as is appropriate). True, there is also skepticism in other fields, and Donabed & Mako 2009, p. 84 actually generalize the rejection to most historians as such, writing that in every case where ‘Assyrian’ is used in literature from the fall of the Assyrian Empire to the present day, it is (usually) categorically rejected by historians. But it should be clear that Syriac studies most strongly and most notably rejects the continuity claim.

Why should the Brock quote not address the thesis as formulated in the lead sentence ("the idea that the modern Assyrians are directly descended from the ancient Assyrians")? This seems like hair-splitting, and isn't it in any case clear that Brock is responding to the general idea of Assyrian continuity as broadly described in the article?

As for Syriac studies not being the primary authority on this topic, that's debatable, but not necessarily relevant to assessing whether it is wp:due to mention or not. The thesis is rejected by a whole field of study that –dealing with the history of the Assyrians and related groups from late antiquity to the Middle Ages– has at least a good deal of relevance to the topic. Not making that clear from the beginning of the article would be very non-neutral. ☿ Apaugasma (talk ☉) 10:25, 7 April 2026 (UTC)

I would like to clarify that my primary reason for reverting was the last part above. I think it is relevant when we are discussing a second paragraph of a lead in an article.

It may seem like hair-splitting, but other scholars have pointed this out. Aaron Butts (2017) did so in his introduction to an article on Assyrian ethnic self-identity ("The present essay is not concerned with evaluating the legitimacy of connections between the Syriac heritage and ancient Assyria."). I think that is true for similar articles as well. While that was not necessarily the case with Brock in 2001 (taking into consideration that he ends the sentence with "...and it lacks any sound historical basis."), in my interpretation, the "Assyrian claim" in Donabed & Mako (2009) is also the one of continuous self-identification and connection between "Assyrian" and "Syrian".

I agree with you to some extent, many Syriac studies scholars are skeptical, but there are also scholars in the field that don't reject this thesis (Harrak, ter Haar Romeny, Al-Jeloo).

Again, I'm not against including this in the article - as it is already partially included - but rather the lead. Shmayo (talk) 14:45, 7 April 2026 (UTC)

I don't understand what you are trying to say about Brock 2001, but let's drop that.

I'm also not entirely clear about your primary reason for reverting. Is it that Syriac studies is not the primary authority on this subject, or that not all Syriac scholars are skeptical, or both?

Could you provide some quotes from Harrak, ter Haar Romeny and Al-Jeloo supporting the continuity thesis? If there is significant support for the thesis in Syriac studies I would agree that the proposed text should not be the second paragraph of the lead, and that it should be differently worded. ☿ Apaugasma (talk ☉) 06:38, 8 April 2026 (UTC)

Syriac studies not being the primary authority.

I won't be able to compile more than this today:

• For Harrak and Al-Jeloo: See the two lectures cited in this article.
• Also see: Efrem Yildiz (1999), "The Assyrians: A historical and current reality", Journal of Assyrian Academic Studies
• For ter Haar Romeny: Please see this article - I would not call anything here "support for the thesis" (which is not what I stated above either). He does however state that Syriac-speaking Christians were living in an area where the Assyrian Empire once held sway. The empire disappeared into the mists of history, but its inhabitants may have continued to live there, mingling with the people they overcame and that overcame them. If outsiders were to deny the Syriac Orthodox the right to identify themselves with the Assyrians, they would be using double standards. Shmayo (talk) 11:01, 8 April 2026 (UTC)

Thanks for that. I guess that these scholars do support the thesis, albeit in a vague and roundabout way. Apparently direct and in-depth discussion of the thesis in its strong form is rare, both among proponents and opponents of continuity.

Still, the fact that significant scholarly opposition to the thesis does exist should somehow be mentioned in the lead in order to comply with wp:npov ("representing fairly, proportionately [...] all the significant views that have been published by reliable sources"). What about moving it to the last paragraph of the lead, with the first sentence modified in the following way:

Some scholars have openly opposed the Assyrian continuity thesis, especially in the field of Syriac studies.^[1] According to the leading Syriac scholar Sebastian Brock, "the alleged ethnic identity with the ancient Assyrians is in fact a recent creation which has taken place in the course of the last century and a half, and it lacks any sound historical basis."^[2] According to Adam H. Becker, a Syriac scholar who has investigated the origins of Assyrian nationalism, the use of the word Assyrian itself for the modern ethnic group "derives from Western sources, not from a continuity of identity between the ancient Assyrians and the modern ones."^[3] Proponents of the thesis regard such statements as inaccurate and partial.^[4]

☿ Apaugasma (talk ☉) 08:23, 9 April 2026 (UTC)

Thanks for the new suggestion. I just reread the lead. I don't think that any of the existing paragraphs currently summarize the scholarly support that exists and is mentioned in the article, anymore. If the suggested paragraph is thought to present or summarize the "other" significant scholarly view that exists, shouldn't it be preceded by a summary of the scholarly support (imo the weight of modern scholarly opinion)? Shmayo (talk) 12:28, 9 April 2026 (UTC)

If the thesis is supported by majority of scholars, there should in principle be no need to explicitly state this in a well-written lead. The problem here though is that this lead was written from a defensive point of view, as if the Wikipedia article needed to establish against scholarship that the thesis is correct. I removed the most offending parts in that regard, but it is still too long as it stands. There is still much unnecessary detail about continuity in antiquity, and it's just wordy in general. It should be rewritten (just like the article as a whole) to give a more concise overview of the thesis and its various aspects, as explicitly described and debated by scholars. Instead we have a Wikipedia article that is itself building the argument for continuity, citing sources that often only vaguely support what it is saying.

I have neither the expertise nor the time to work on this much-needed rewrite. Assuming that you won't be doing a rewrite either, we are likely going to leave the lead in its current state. In that case, I agree that explicitly mentioning the scholarly support before pointing out that there also is opposition is probably a good idea. Given the fact that there is not much room for expansion, it should be a concise and general statement that most scholars support the thesis. However, per wp:academicconsensus we will need a source that gives exactly such a statement, which may be difficult to find. Do you know of such a source? ☿ Apaugasma (talk ☉) 16:59, 9 April 2026 (UTC)

Hannibal Travis (2012) concludes regarding opposition that Due to the efforts of a many scholars in diverse fields, such denial has become very difficult to sustain.^[5] Shmayo (talk) 16:05, 10 April 2026 (UTC)

That's a little bit sparse. What denial exactly is Travis talking about (unfortunately, I don't have access to Cetrez et al. 2012 to check the context for myself)?

Alternatively, we can write something like

Many scholars in various fields have expressed support for Assyrian continuity.^[6] There is also some opposition, especially in the field of Syriac studies.^[7] According to [... continues as above]

Since we are not saying "most" or "all", wp:academicconsensus can perhaps be ignored. ☿ Apaugasma (talk ☉) 17:25, 10 April 2026 (UTC)

Here is a longer passage from the Travis article, for context:

Those, like John Joseph, who have denied the existence of Assyrians or attempted to construct a monolithic Aramaean identity must have ignored not only the key Greek, Hebrew, Latin, and Persian confirmations of the existence of Assyria and the Assyrians in the first millennium CE, but also the survival of ancient Assyrian deities and magic in the hearts and traditions of the people of Assyria down to the present. Due to the efforts of a many scholars in diverse fields, such denial has become very difficult to sustain. Rather than a strictly imagined community, Assyrians have insisted on continuous national commonalities. This does not mean that Assyrians are a metaphysical or strictly biological phenomenon, but a people and nation seeing itself, and being seen by others, as sharing a region, ideals and traditions.

I think one quote is enough to get the point across, but I'll leave the final call to you. I'm fine with that version as the last paragraph of the lead. Shmayo (talk) 11:37, 11 April 2026 (UTC)

Thanks for the longer snippet. It seems like this rival idea of "Aramean continuity" (as Gaunt, Atto & Barthoma 2017, p. ix call it, though they point to Brock & Taylor 2001 rather than to John Joseph, as Travis 2012 does) is also something that should at some point be mentioned in the article. Then we could follow up by quoting Travis 2012 on how this rival thesis has been discredited.

For now though let's just add the paragraph we agreed on. To be honest, I have put much more time into this than I actually have available, which has already resulted in my own work suffering from it, so I'll be more than glad to leave this behind. If we're very lucky, Generalissima will take up this article and work her GA/FA magic on it. ☿ Apaugasma (talk ☉) 18:05, 11 April 2026 (UTC)

I just stumbled across this randomly, and I thought it was a very interesting topic that ought to be brought up to quality a bit more. I think discussions are too focused on the lede in comparison to the rest of the article, and even though I personally feel that the continuity analysis holds up, this article is so argumentative in favor of the theory that it makes it seem less authoritative about the subject, and makes the theory seem less factual.

• To start with, it's pretty excessively long. That third paragraph in the lead is gargantuan, and I think we can take it down to just three normal sized-paragraphs with enough summary style.
• Most of the background context ought to be condensed down through proper summary style, This isn't article on Assyrian history, it's an article on one historiographical lens of Assyrian history. I think "Assyrians after the Assyrian Empire", "Identity in ancient Assyria", and "Pre-modern self-identities" can all be compressed into a single background section, of 2000 words or so. If there is no serious scholarly argument that the Assyrians as a people were destroyed, we don't need to spend paragraph and paragraph refuting that. We can just give a brief summary of Assyrian history, and save the rest for the History of the Assyrians article.

• In general, the article spends far too much time explaining the minutia of a particular theory or line of evidence for continuity. We spend over a thousand words talking about the word Suryāyā and attempting to prove its etymological link to assūrāyu. Is there any serious scholarly analysis which denies this link, that there were people calling themselves Assyrians in the Roman period? If not, we don't need to include it. As it is, this whole section reads like an argumentative essay, not an encyclopedic article. We also shouldn't include background info that is actively debated between reliable sources, only unambiguous stuff (or summarizing both viewpoints which we absolutely have to include it.)

• In contrast, the "Modern identity and nationalism" section is pretty good, although it has a bit too many personal anecdotes from individual scholars and travelers, when we could just summary the state of affairs. I feel like there's more we can say about the emergence of Assyrian nationalism itself here, since from what I can tell, the main point of scholarly opposition theorizes that nationalists overemphasized continuity with ancient Assyria?
• If this is an area of active scholarly debate, why are we clumping all opposition into a "denial" section, rather than incorporating those theories throughout the article? Even though I feel the continuity theory has more merit, it is ridiculous to treat its denial like a fringe theory akin to the Khazar myth or something. The "Denial" section doesn't even really describe their evidence for these viewpoints, it just describes that people are pissed off at them for opposing it! (Also, trying to say that the views against the theory originate from the Ba'athist regime is strange, when we are otherwise talking about academic theories which predate the regime. We can say the regime promoted anti-continuity views though.)

• Likewise, "Other forms of continuity" can probably just be incorporated into our already existing descriptions of Assyrian history

• That list of academics who support the theory under "Academia and politics" is honestly just citebombing. In any case, it is original research to present a wide variety of academics who agree with a theory and say that this represents the majority - the reader doesn't know we aren't just cherrypicking! If we want to talk about how many academics support the theory, we have to use secondary sources about academic support of the theory, not a selection of sources where academics support the theory without discussing viewpoints more generally.
• Bibliography is a bit messy. We seem to be focused on quantity rather than quality of sources. For a point of comparison, look at a featured article on a very important and controversial subject that also gets a lot of nationalistic historians attempting denialism - Armenian genocide. Look carefully at the sources; even though it's a massive, sweeping topic, there's like 5 or 6 sources that comprise the vast majority of its cites. We need to downsize to a smaller number of the best quality sources which accurately reflect general academic consensus (and its variation within) and use these as a focus for the article.

Also, Cetrez et al. 2012 sounds like a valuable source, but we spread a bunch of chapters from it into a handful of cites that aren't even formatted as SFNs. Generalissima (talk) (it/she) 04:19, 11 April 2026 (UTC)

I agree with you on all points. If you feel like working on this article, please do so! ☿ Apaugasma (talk ☉) 07:03, 11 April 2026 (UTC)