Assyrianvoice's Users' Comments And My Response To Them. Options

[Israelite_]

Posidonius: (ca. 135 BCE - 51 BCE): “The people we [Greeks] call Syrians (syriacs/suryoye) were called by the Syrians (syriacs/suryoye) themselves Aramaeans"

Please explain?

Source: http://www.Assyrianvoice.net/forum/index.p...35677.msg817304


jacob's response to this comment:

Maybe this one guy got it wrong or talked to someone who didn't know. Just because one Greek wrote it down doesn't make it the only source we have to go by.


But what about this:
Aram had the Aramites, which the Greeks called Syrians.

Flavius Josephus, The Antiquities of the Jews

Why do I have the feelings that Josephus not only knew what he was talking about, but also spoke the language of the Aramaeans, spend some time in Syria, and so on. And He could very easily distinguished between Assyrians and Syrians:

Ashur lived at the city if Nineve; and named his subjects Assyrians, who became the most fortunate nation, beyond others.

There is no mistaking here, who are the Assyrians, where they dwell and so on, and who are the Syrians, their place of dwelling and so on.

Source: http://books.google.co.il/books?id=JL3DDMN...lt&resnum=2

Of course I am aware of references to the Assyrians and Assyria after the fall of Nineveh, such as the one made by Marcus Junianus Justinus:

The Assyrians, who were afterwards called Syrians, held their empire thirteen hundred years.

Source: http://www.forumromanum.org/literature/jus...ish/trans1.html

I wouldn't attach much credibility to this statement by a historian who somewhere else makes an identification error, which results in 1500 years difference.


But then we hear those words clearly put by Herodotus:
This people, whom the Greeks call Syrians, are called Assyrians by the barbarians

Source: http://books.google.co.il/books?id=naU5mTu...lt&resnum=1


Very fascinating and intriguing. But then we have many references where it is clearly evident from the text that the word Syrians refers to the Aramaeans and not to the Assyrians.

All in all, in order to establish the identity of the Modern Assyrians, we have to resort to two methods:
1. Inspecting the Modern Assyrians' history in the last two millenniums.
2. Inspecting their Genetics profile.

But before that I want to ask a question, which some how I have never seen asked by any one, though it is of a fundamental importance:

How did the ancient Assyrians call the Aramaeans!?

Can anyone enlighten us on this ?