Chaldeans

“ So, the Chaldeans shall leave no substance behind them; their faces, their bare appearance, is the proof that nothing good shall be left.
Shall gather the captivity as the sand - They shall carry off innumerable captives.
Verse 10
They shall scoff at the kings - No power shall be able to stand before them. It will be only as pastime to them to take the strongest places. They will have no need to build formidable ramparts: by sweeping the dust together they shall make mounts sufficient to pass over the walls and take the city. ”

“ CHALDEAN AND ASSYRIAN ART. The Chaldeans or Babylonians and the Assyrians came from one great stock, the Assyrians being mostly colonists from Babylonia. The original inhabitants of Chaldea spoke a Semitic dialect. At an early date Eastern Chaldea was invaded by the Sumerians or Accadians, a Turanian race which is supposed to have come from the plateau of Central Asia. ”

“ The Chaldeans have invested our town; they wish to burn our houses; I stand here with sword and spear, and will do my utmost to prevent them. Too much knowledge is unwholesome. I know all I want to know. ”

“ Far better for our beloved Chaldea if the superstitious brood had been left in their own country. May the gods grant that every Hebrew office-holder may so cling to his imaginary god as to walk straight from office into sure destruction. My motto is 'Chaldeans for Chaldea!' Personally, I have no hostility toward these young men. Nay! But, O my country! my country! it is for thee my heart bleeds! Sons! ye shall do well to be on your guard, and see to it that they escape not your vigilance. If they die, their offices will be vacant, and must soon be supplied by some persons of ability. ”

“ The Chaldeans had a lively sense of human frailty, and of the risks entailed upon the sinner by disobedience to the gods. The dread of sinning haunted them during their whole life; they continually subjected the motives of their actions to a strict scrutiny, and once self-examination had revealed to them the shadow of an evil intent, they were accustomed to implore pardon for it in a humble manner. ”

“ The Chaldeans, building their great embankments or raiding upon Job's herds, are no longer a myth to us when we remember that they were wet by the rain and anxious about the weather and their crops, just as we are ”

“ The Chaldeans are a sect in politics, like to that of the Egyptian priests; for being ordained for the service of the Gods, they spend the whole time of their life in philosophy; being of exceeding great reputation in astrology, and pretending much also to prophecy, foretelling things to come by purifications and sacrifices, and to find out by certain incantations the preventing of harm, and the bringing to pass of good. ”

“ I had no alternative but to convey my salvage in the best way I could across Armenia and Chaldea by land, consoling myself with the expectation of finding a market for the slaves along the road. But once again the gods were cruelly adverse. We were attacked by a troop of Chaldeans; fifty armed men could not protect a gang of four hundred slaves, who, miserable wretches as they were, could not be induced by blows or prayers to lift up a hand in their own defence. ”

“ The tribes follow, singing as they march, with the solemn joy of sacrifice. There is neither haste nor lagging. An infinite on the march. As they pass, the Chaldeans gaze at them with astonishment. Strange folk, whom no one can understand, whether in their dejection or their exultation!
Chorus of Jews. We move among the nations, we move athwart the ages, by the unending roads of suffering. For ever and for ever. Eternally we are vanquished.... But cities fall, nations vanish, oppressors go down into shame. We move onward, through the eternities, towards our country, towards God. ”

“ It was at any rate a powerful and compelling religion this, that lasted through four thousand years of battles, of races that appeared, rose to importance and vanished, of peoples as little in sympathy with natural feeling as the Phœnicians and Assyrians, as the Hittites or Chaldeans. The worship of this goddess went on claiming homage from the mighty kings of the Hittites, the Chaldeans, and the Assyrians, keeping subject the host of nations, great and small, from Persia to the Mediterranean coast. ”

“ These influences, joined with a love of independence, and a strong traditional attachment to their ancient rights and rituals, which have been encroached upon and altered since their submission to a foreign supremacy, have tended to make the Chaldeans more and more restless under the Papal yoke; and I am persuaded that an offer of friendly assistance from our Church to enable them to carry out their desires for a radical reform would be hailed with gratitude by two or more of their Bishops, and by many of the most influential members of their community. ”

“ CHALDEANS The course of our narrative will take us on into Kurdistan, and among peoples different to those we have met in our journeyings from the Mediterranean and the eastern border of Mesopotamia. We have had occasion to notice various races and peoples in passing, but of all these, those who have by their high antiquity of descent the premier claim to description are the Chaldeans, to whom up to the present we have not given more than casual notice. ”

“ When they had not power to oppress God's Israel themselves they were pleased to see the Chaldeans oppress them, partly because they envied their wealth and the good land they enjoyed, partly because they feared their growing power, and partly because they hated their religion and the divine oracles they were favoured with. ”

“ I will make a brief parallel between the architectural monuments of the primitive Chaldeans, their mode of writing, their burial places, and give you the etymology of the names of their divinities in the American Maya language.
The origin of the primitive Chaldees is yet an unsettled matter among learned men. Some professing one opinion, others another. ”

“ The primitive Chaldeans were preeminently a literary people, and it is by their literary relics, by the scattered contents of their libraries, that we can know and judge them. As befitted the inventors of a system of writing, like the Chinese they set the highest value on education, even though examinations may have been unknown among them. ”

“ The Arabs also had a similar clan named Bani Shaitán, a clan of the Hinzala tribe, the descendants of Tamim, through Zeid Monat of the Moaddite stock. The Bani Shaitán (the children of Satan) dwelt near Kúfa.—Vide Qalqashandi's Dictionary of Arab Tribes.
[41] Sura XLVI, verses 28, 29. These people were from Nisibin and Nineveh in Mesopotamia. They were Chaldeans, soothsayers, and cabalists. In the book of Daniel the Chaldeans are classed with magicians and astronomers, and evidently form a sort of the priest class who have a peculiar "tongue" and "learning" (Dan. I. 4) . ”

“ Our travellers remained at Tabriz from the 18th of December to March, 1831, when restored health and the opening season permitted them to resume their journey. In Salmas, they first came in contact with the Chaldeans, as those Nestorians were called who had been won over by Roman Catholic missionaries since the year 1681. The name means no more than papal Syrians, or papal Armenians. Some of their bishops and priests had been educated in the college of the Propaganda at Rome, and spoke Italian fluently. The Chaldeans were reported, at that time, as a neglected and declining sect. ”

“ The Turkish children of Anatolia, the little Arabs of Syria, and the Chaldeans of Mesopotamia are, when kindly treated, just as loving and as lovable as the youthful redskins of the broad wildernesses of Brazil and Peru. ”

“ Like the Papal Syrians, the Chaldeans have profited by their communion and intercourse with Rome, from whence they have learned something of European advancement, and their youth who have been educated at the Propaganda are undoubtedly more generally intelligent than those brought up in this country. ”

“ We find this term oftentimes subjoined. The Chaldeans, who were particularly possessed of the land of Ur, and were worshippers of fire, had the name of Urchani. Strabo limits this title to one branch of the Chaldeans, who were literati, and observers of the heavens; and even of these to one sect only. Εστι δε και των Χαλδαιων των Αστρονομικων γενη πλειω· και γαρ [159] Ορχηνοι τινες προσαγορευονται. But [160] Ptolemy speaks of them more truly as a nation ”

“ I am persuaded that the Church would hardly sanction any ulterior measures which we might use to raise an individual, so little to be depended upon and so little respected by the generality of the Chaldeans, as Mutran Elîa, to the patriarchal dignity; nor do I believe that she would approve of any attempt on our part to create a schism by drawing over a number from their present spiritual rulers for the purpose of forming them into a distinct community. ”

“ The two languages were used side by side, the Semitic as the common tongue, and the Accadian as a literary language. The earliest known king of Chaldea was named Eannadu (B.C. 4500) . The Chaldeans advanced slowly along the Tigris and pushed their kingdom towards Assyria in the north, where they built the cities of Ashur (Kal’at Sherkât) , Calah (Nimroud) , and Ninua (Nineveh) .
The northern portion of the Chaldeo-Assyrian empire asserted its independence about 1700 B.C., and Assyria became a separate kingdom. ”

“ Persecution has doubtless made the Christian crafty and distrustful, and is often quoted as an excuse for the many undesirable qualities he possesses which the Musulman does not share. Alone among these Christian sects stand the Chaldeans of the north, whose pride of race and tongue has done something to keep them above the Armenians, Syrians, and Greeks they despise, and to preserve alive in their breasts the sentiment of the ruling race from whom they profess to spring, and which saves them from many a littleness which is an integral part of the nature of the other Christians. ”

“ We shall now see that there is scarcely any considerable race of men among whom there does not exist, in some form, the tradition of a great deluge, which destroyed all the human race, except their own progenitors.
The first of these which we shall notice, and the one with which the Hebrew agrees most closely, having been copied from it, [22:1] is the Chaldean, as given by Berosus, the Chaldean historian. [22:2] It is as follows:
"After the death of Ardates (the ninth king of the Chaldeans) , his son Xisuthrus reigned eighteen sari. ”

“ He chooses this order so as to work up to a climax of error and absurdity in heathen worship. The direct nature-worship of the Chaldeans is shown to be false because its objects are works of the Creator, fashioned for the use of men. ”

“ The primitive inhabitants of this district were called Accadians, or Chaldeans, but little or nothing was known of them until within the last fifteen or twenty years. Their language was agglutinative, and they were the inventors of the cuneiform system of writing. The Babylonians conquered this people, borrowed their signs, and incorporated their literature. Soon after their conquest by the Babylonians, they established priestly caste in the state and assumed the worship, laws, and manners of their conquerors. ”

“ Although the Chaldeans were astrologers rather than astronomers, they were yet familiar enough with the heavens to estimate astral phenomena for what they really were, instead of holding them to be Gods, though they may have represented them as such to the common people. Their literature contained numerous mythological poems, so obscure that to understand them a key was required, which key was only in the possession of the priests. Inasmuch as Abraham came from Ur in Chaldea, with him crept into biblical literature much of the Chal [Pg 105] dean tradition and folklore. ”

“ The famous cylinder of the British Museum (see No. 62, p. 266) is strong presumption in favor of the identity of the Chaldean version of the first couple's disobedience with the Biblical one. We have seen the important position occupied in the Chaldean religion by the symbol of the Sacred Tree, which surely corresponds to the Tree of Life in Eden (see p. 268) , and probably also to that of Knowledge, and the different passages and names ingeniously collected and confronted by scholars leave no doubt as to the Chaldeans having had the legend of an Eden, a garden of God (see p. 274) . ”

“ Presumably, these people would sort themselves into kindreds, so that when the pressure from increase of population caused them to swarm, they went off in bodies all of the same type. The Red type we may call Egyptians, the Yellow type, or black-haired we call Chinese, the great remaining bulk of dwellers on the soil became the people called Chaldeans, Babylonians, Assyrians and other names. ”

“ Chaldeans with their frizzled beards; and Jews in their short tunics and long gaiters, with panther-skins thrown across their shoulders. Again, there were Lydians with bands around their foreheads; Egyptians, some with shorn heads, and some with enormous wigs; Chalybeans, wild in aspect, and half naked; and [Pg 37] men of Caucasus, gigantic in size and strength. Many a far distant land had sent its sons to our Phœnician cities as the headquarters and the home of industry and commerce ”

“ In this way the written language continued to undergo changes until it was eventually made up of wedge-shaped symbols, one of the clear results of the use of the clay tablets.
Our principal knowledge concerning the Chaldeans pertains to their religion, which is believed to have been one of the earliest religions of the world.
The religious instinct seems to have been inborn with man. Some form and degree of worship has been found among all primitive people and is cruder or more elevated according to the stage of development. ”