Armstrongism’s Assyrian Problem

Herbert W. Armstrong proclaimed that the key to prophecy was the identity of the British people as the principal, modern descendants, along with the Jews, of the Biblical patriarch Israel.  An important arc in this scenario is the identification of the German people, the agent used by God to punish Israel, as Assyria.  These two propositions make it possible for proponents to project Biblical prophecy dealing with ancient Israel and Assyria into the arena of modern nation-states and attaches meaning and relevance to World Wars 1 and 2.  The problem, for Armstrongists, is that the Germans are not Assyrians. 

An Exercise in Inconclusion

In the second volume of the Compendium of World History, which can be accessed via internet, Herman Hoeh makes his argument for Assyria as Germany.  An example of Hoeh’s model of historical interpretation is a reference to the writing of St. Jerome.  Hoeh claims that Jerome witnessed the Assyrians invading Europe as a collection of Germanic tribes.  But if you examine the source written by Jerome, this is not unequivocally the saint’s assertion.  Jerome cites some Germanic tribes that were causing trouble and quotes Ps 83:8: “Assur also joined with them.”  But does Jerome mean this Biblical reference figuratively or literally?  We can’t know.   The term “Assur” can be an epithet like the term “barbarian hordes.”

Moreover, Jerome lived circa 347 – 420 B.C.  We know from archaeology and genetics that Western Europe was invaded by the early forerunners of the Germans around 5,000 ya (q.v., David Reich, Who We Are and How We Got Here: Ancient DNA and the New Science of the Human Past) and are called Steppe Pastoralists and identified with the Corded Ware people.  Consequently, we must classify Hoeh’s argument here, and his similar arguments elsewhere, as inconclusive. 

Hoeh also mentions the physical appearance of the Assyrians – they are Caucasians.  But he omitted an important issue – they depict themselves uniformly as brunette with curly hair, like most Middle Easterners and unlike modern Germans.  But there is uncertainty here as well.  Modern studies of pigments on Neo-Assyrian wall paintings in the palace of Ashurnasirpal II indicate that the Assyrians used just three colors: red, white and black (Li Sou, Digital Recolourisation and the Effects of Light on Neo-Assyrian Reliefs).  All hair and beards were depicted as black.  Proponents of the Hoeh viewpoint could easily posit that even blonde or red hair was depicted as black because of this limited palette.   This seems unlikely.  It is more credible that other hair colorations were not needed to reflect reality.  But here again, the debate does not converge on a conclusion.

A Genetic Deduction

Arguments about Assyrian identity based on ancient historical writings, Hoeh’s mainstay, are unverifiable and may be essentially hearsay from sources contemporary with the ancient authors.  An approach using Biblical exegesis that relies on the science of genetics can be more informative.  

The line of reasoning begins with recognizing that Y chromosome haplogroups (“haplogroup” means Y chromosome haplogroup throughout this text) are inherited in the masculine line and the approximate times of their emergence can be determined from mutational rates of change and the haplogroups are related to each other hierarchically.  Using this approach, Dr. Spencer Wells, a Harvard trained geneticist, determined that Abraham was haplogroup J.  This is because both the Jews and the Adnani Arabs claim descent from Abraham and both are haplogroup J.   This can be extended backward through earlier generations to Noah.  Noah, in Abraham’s masculine line, was haplogroup J.  The same would be true of Shem and Ashur (progenitor of the Assyrians according to the Clans of the Sons of Noah genealogy in Genesis 10) – both are haplogroup J.  From this, we may conclude that whoever the Biblical Assyrians are, they will be haplogroup J.  But the modern Germans are haplogroup R primarily.   They are descended from the Steppe Pastoralists that invaded Western Europe from northern Russia about 5000 ya.  Therefore, the Assyrians cannot possibly be identified with the modern-day German nation.  There are haplogroup J people among the Germans and in small numbers across Western Europe but they are not numerous enough to form the basis of the German nation.

The archaeogenetic data supporting the analysis of this problem could be much better and I expect that it will be in the future.  There is no large inventory of ancient Assyrian genetic data. A few excavations from Turkish sites are useful (de Barros, et al).  It is unfortunate that this data comes from the far northern frontier of the Assyrian Empire and may not represent the main ancient Assyrian demographic.   In these small samples, both haplogroup J and haplogroup G are present.  Haplogroup J is what our exegetical approach above would predict for the Assyrians and that haplogroup is present and more numerous but the sample is very small.  Haplogroup G represents the early Farmers that originated in Anatolia and spread through much of Europe prior to the invasion by haplogroup R.  (Otzi, the mummy from about 5,000 ya and found in the Swiss Alps, was haplogroup G.)  One could argue that the Assyrians were an outlier group of haplogroup G people from Anatolia until further corroborative information for haplogroup J comes in, but that would also not support Hoeh’s construction of the Assyrian identity.  A finding of haplogroup J also supports the prevailing historical/cultural understanding that ancient Assyrians were Semites who spoke a dialect of Aramaic.  It is uncertain if the modern Assyrians, with a mix of haplogroups, are actually connected to the ancient Assyrians.

The Upshot

Herman Hoeh’s teleological approach to history was to create an alloy of traditional belief, myth and historical fact to produce an account that supports the past domination of the world by British-Israel.  But this alloy has proved to be brittle in light of modern genetic findings.  The present evidence, which should further solidify in the future, is that the Assyrians of the Biblical account were haplogroup J whereas modern Germans are haplogroup R in the main.  I would expect Armstrongists to readily accept the validity of Biblical genealogy but balk at the science of genetics.  But, then, the challenge to the proponents of Hoeh’s view is to demonstrate the invalidity of the science of genetics in a credible way.  This will never happen.  We may reasonably conclude that the identity of Assyria as Germany is a chimera and cannot provide a key to understanding Biblical prophecy.