Rosetta Stone-Decoding the Demotic Text

However, this is a very informal essay in supprot of the fact that Macedonians have always had yet another important factor to survive all oppressions and preserve the glorious name untill the end of time!!!

2000 YEARS OF CHRISTIANITY IN MACEDONIA

We have the first accounts on the developments of Christianity in Macedonia in the earliest writings of the Apostles. Macedonia is mentioned several times in the Bible, (unlike Greece which is not mentioned at all). For example; it was a Macedonian peasant in St. Paul’s vision who asked him to come to Macedonia and preach the Gospel there so that he would save the Macedonians from the Roman tyranny!

St. Paul came to Macedonia and took a servant called Lidia, who was a Macedonian. Even Philip and Luke, were said to be of Macedonian descent. They both carry typically Macedonian names, neither Greek nor Jewish!

From Easton’s Bible Dictionary:

“Macedonia in New Testament times was a Roman province lying north of Greece. It was governed by a proprietor with the title of proconsul. Paul was summoned by the vision of the "man of Macedonia" to preach the gospel there (Act 16:9). Frequent allusion is made to this event (Act 18:5; Act 19:21; Rom 15:26; Co2 1:16; Co2 11:9; Phi 4:15). The history of Paul's first journey through Macedonia is given in detail in Acts 16:10 - 17:15. At the close of this journey he returned from Corinth to Syria. He again passed through this country (Act 20:1), although the details of the route are not given. After many years he probably visited it for a third time (Phi 2:24; Ti1 1:3). The first convert made by Paul in Europe was (Act 16:13) Lydia (q.v.), a "seller of purple," residing in Philippi, the chief city of the eastern division of Macedonia.”

Mary Magdalene might as well be Macedonian, since she was said to have been Philip’s sister. The Qumran scrolls reveal a lot more different picture of the real story behind the curtain. It is not surprising that these people were ethnic Macedonian, because after Alexander’s expansion they had settled in Palestine and Israel as well, since these lands were both under the Macedonian rule.

From Wikipedia:

“The Gospel of Philip is one of the Gnostic Gospels, a text of New Testament apocrypha, dating back to around the third century but lost to modern researchers until it was rediscovered by accident in the mid-20th century. Although this gospel may at first appear similar to the Gospel of Thomas, it is not a sayings gospel, but a collection of Gnostic teachings and reflections.

Sacraments, in particular the sacrament of marriage, are a major theme. The text is perhaps most famous as a very early source for the idea that Jesus was married to Mary Magdalene. Though this is never explicitly stated in the document itself, she is described as Jesus' "lover" in some translations.”

This was the first wave of Christianization of Macedonian population. At the very beginnings!!! Archeological findings of this time show that Christianity was a cult in the earliest epoch all around Macedonia. Among other cults of that time!

It wasn’t until the 4th century AD and Czar Constantine’s acceptance of the Christian Religion as the sole religion for the whole Empire, and later the division of the Roman Empire in Eastern and Western, that Macedonians started to regain control on the Mediterranean political scene.

From Wikipedia:

“Flavius Valerius Aurelius Constantinus was born in Naissus (modern Niš, Serbia) in the province of Moesia Superior on 27 February ca. 280 to Roman general and later Western Roman Emperor Constantius Chlorus, and his first wife St. Helena.

Young Constantine received a formidable education, became a fluent speaker of Greek (meaning KOINE or Alexandrian “Greek”), and was adept in philosophy.

The figures of Constantine the Great and Justinian dominated during 324–610. Assimilating the Roman tradition, the emperors sought to provide the basis for subsequent developments and for the formation of the Byzantine Empire.

Justinian was born into a Latin-speaking (probably the pre-Vlach of the Romanized ancient Macedonians) peasant family in a small village called Tauresium (near Justiniana Prima, which he founded later), very close to Skopje in what is today the Republic of Macedonia, around 482 AD.

He was born as Petrus Sabbatius; the cognomen Justinianus, which he later took, is indicative of adoption by his uncle Justin. His mother was Vigilantia, the sister of Justin, who was in the imperial guard (the Excubitors) before he became emperor.

Justin adopted Justinian, brought him to Constantinople, and ensured the boy's education. As a result, Justinian was well educated in jurisprudence, theology and Roman history. Justinian served for some time with the Excubitors but the details of his early career are unknown.”

From Wikipedia:

“The history of the Byzantine Empire is described by scholar August Heisenberg as the history "of the Roman state of the "Greek" nation that turned Christian". The division of the empire into East and West and the subsequent collapse of the Western Roman Empire were developments that constantly accentuated the position of the Greeks in the empire and eventually allowed them to become identified with it altogether. The leading role of Constantinople began when Constantine the Great turned Byzantium into the new capital of the Roman Empire, henceforth to be known as Constantinople, placing the city at the centre of Hellenism a beacon for the Greeks that lasted to the modern era.”

NOTE: August Heisenberg was born Nov. 13th 1869 in Osnabruck, Germany, died Nov. 22nd, 1930 in Munich, Germany. He was a professor of Byzantine Language and Culture Munich-University. This was the period of nation building in the Balkans, and the time when history played a major part in the process. The recently established Greek state used the German historiographers to propagate their claims to Macedonia and Byzantium. History and archeology have advanced to a great extend since then, and now we have a much clearer picture on the developments in the Byzantine Empire, and the influence Macedonians and Greeks had, respectively.

We have seen in the extracts from Wikipedia that Czar Constantine, the founder of Byzantium and later Justinian the founder of the Roman law, were not Greek at all!!! Moreover, they were born in the territories previously ruled and settled by Macedonians.

After Czar Constantine, the Byzantine Empire (or the Resurrected Macedonian Kingdom) gave way to an array of Macedonian Kings and Queens to rule with what is to be known a 1000 years of Orthodox Christian Kingdom on Earth! Some were the following: Justinian I, Ana Komnena, Michael Paleolog, Vasili I and Vasili III, Macedonian Kings that brought Byzantium at the footsteps of a new age of light.

During the early years of the Byzantine rule, the KOINE language of Alexandria became widely accepted as the language of the Empire, and was used by many intellectuals of the time, regardless their ethnic background. The language was the foundation for the modern version of Greek, and thus got its title as: “Byzantine Greek”, even though from my perspective it is just an updated version of the Alexandrian dialect.

However, other languages and scripts had survived in the early Christian times of Byzantium, which later had their major impact on the developments of the Eastern Christianity.

Byzantium was a complex organization ruled by kings and priests, from various ethnic backgrounds, and it would be false to proclaim the heritage of this vast Empire, both territorially and culturally as Greek, because the Byzantine culture was developed commonly in many centers across the Empire, so today there are architectural landmarks from Byzantium in Greece, Bulgaria, Turkey, and other countries.

Macedonia has a huge legacy from this period of Byzantium: churches, monasteries, houses, settlements… These were certainly the works of the people who lived there and accepted the Christian culture and lifestyle. We know of groups of craftsmen from Macedonia (the Miaks) who traveled all across the Byzantine Empire and painted the churches’ walls, or carved wood, or made jewelry… The Byzantine culture was developing in several stages and was bringing forward the fruits of what was known as the God-given Kingdom on Earth!

This Kingdom was setting its foundations on the vision for the Kingdom of Heaven, and as such might have reached its own Enlightenment if given a chance!

Instead, the Ottomans took over the stage, and the new children of Rome got their Renaissance!!!


SLAVIC BYZANTIUM

From Wikipedia:

“In the first period of the middle Byzantine era (610–867) the empire was constantly raided both by old enemies (Persians, Langobards, Avars and Slavs) as well as by new ones, appearing for the first time in history (Arabs, Bulgarians). The main characteristic of this period was that the raids were not localized to the border areas of the state but they were extended deep beyond, even threatening the capital itself. At the same time, these attacks lost their periodical and temporary character and became permanent settlements that transformed into new states, often hostile to Byzantium. Those states were referred by the Byzantines as Sclavinias.”

“Many among the Romanized and Hellenized Paionian, Illyrian and Thracian population of Macedonia were assimilated by the Slavs, but pockets of tribes that fled to the mountains remained independent.”

These extracts from Wikipedia claim that the Slavic tribes raided the Balkan and assimilated the local population. However, according to the early Slavic records, back in the 6th century with the “arrival” of the Slavic tribes from the north, due to the Hun raids, the people who arrived and formed the Sclavinias, were not so different from the local population they encountered on their raids, who had a culture of their own and used a script with “lines and dashes” (probably similar to the Demotic (Syllabic) script from the Rosetta stone); they influenced Byzantium a lot, but the Empire never really took restrictive measures against the Slavs; they were simply integrated.

And to do so, a script was to be given to these people that were “to hear the words of God in their own mother language”. This brought forward a new epoch in the developments of the Byzantine Empire and the spreading of its Orthodox Christian influence across the Slavic population.

The celebrated Byzantine scholars of that time, Cyril and Methodius must have known the reason why they promoted one script first (Glagollitic), and then allowed their students to replace it with another form (Cyrillic).

Today there are findings that suggest that perhaps there was yet as another form of even an older version found on rocks and other archaeological sites all across Macedonia! In other words, the Cyrillic script proves to be a restoration of yet another ancient script present among Macedonian population in its "secret" use, according to some early Slavic scholars. This script can also be found in the writings of Trp Ruen from the 5th century AD and some Ukrainian writings from even earlier times. There are writings on pottery, seals, a variety of objects that show a remarkable similarity with the modern day Cyrillic script. (read: The Truth behind Cyrill and Methodius)

This was the period of the activity of the so called Ohrid Slavic School of literacy. The school operated within the jurisdiction of the Ohrid archbishopric (Justiniana Prima), which was one of the first churches to be established after Constantinople's, yet the first to receive the blessing of an apostolic church like that of Vatican's back in 999 AD by the Pope Gregory V.

The OHRID ARCHBISHOPRIC:

What we know about the Ohrid Church was that it was founded by Apostle Paul himself. Thanks to the careful administrative work of a series of bishops, and patriarchs in the Ohrid Church throughout the ages, we have managed to preserve documents that prove that the Ohrid archbishopric had been active in its Christian mission since the very beginnings of it. Which, I guess, makes Macedonians a key factor in the proclamation of the Gospel to the "gentiles". The prove of that is in the little cave church on the way out of Ohrid, called St.Erasmo. Now we know that he lived in 280-303 and was the first bishop of the Ohrid Church. He lived in the third century AD.

Let me remind you that at those times the churches were secret organizations because Rome was persecuting the Christians. Since then a list of spiritual elders have run the premises of the Holy Ohrid Archbishopric and the Macedonian Orthodox Church. Among these were the Holy brothers Cyril and Methodius, and many of their followers among which Naum and Clement from Ohrid.

The districts taken within the jurisdiction of the Ohrid's archbishopric were amazingly vast. The very fact that both the Bulgarian and the Serbian churches later gained independence from the Ohrid archbishopric, even though disapproved by the Pope Innocentius III (1198-1216) in the case of the Bulgarian (Zagora) Church, and in the latter case the patriarch of the Ohrid Church, Dimitri Homatian (1215-1234), who was Greek by the way, but unlike his modern descendants, he was very much in favor of the Macedonian Slavic literary work that the church was conducting. In the case with St.Sava's church, which separated from the Ohrid Church in 1219, patriarch Dimitri reacted against the non canonic act conducted by the patriarch Emanuel from the Nicaean Church, who approved of the autonomy of the Serbian Church.

The list of patriarchs on head of the Ohrid church goes on until 1767, during Turkish reign, when the patriarch Arsenie II was unjustly alleged to have conspired against the Turkish Empire and thus his church was closed, and the Macedonian believers ripped apart among the Bulgarian and Greek national churches. But let us go back a little to get a better view on the picture!                            

From Wikipedia:

“At the beginning of the 9th century, the Slavic kingdom of Bulgaria (NOTE: Bulgaria was populated mostly by Ants, a Slavic tribe, but ruled by Bulgarian Mongols like King Asparuh, Boris, and others) conquered Northern Byzantine lands, including Macedonia B and part of Macedonia A. Those regions remained under Bulgarian rule for two centuries, until conquest of Bulgaria by the Byzantine Emperor of the Macedonian dynasty Basil II (nicknamed the Bulgar-slayer) in 1018.”

“By this time, the whole Macedonia region was inhabited by a few different ethnicities, with the Slavs being the overall majority, while Greek dominated along the Aegean coast.”

The Greek influence was wakening in the Empire since there was a rise in the population of the Slavs, who mingled with the population that lived in Roman and Byzantine Macedonia, and who were assimilated by the local culture, in a way that the newly created Sclavinias put a great pressure on Byzantium to find a cunning way how to spread their influence on such a vast population of ignorant and illiterate people like the newly arrived Slavs, who would not be easily Christened if made to speak an unfamiliar language like that of KOINE, or the Alexandrian dialect, the Byzantine “Greek” as referred to by the Greek propagandists, since this language was long forgotten, because the Slavs (who we might associate to the ancient Macedonians and the exodus that took place with the Roman conquest, when a vast population migrated to areas across the Danube back in the 2nd century BC), must have forgotten the Alexandrian dialect which was not their mother tongue even in the ancient time.

Therefore the Byzantine Empire needed to devise a new way how to approach the Slavic tribes and introduce Christianity to them, so that they remain loyal to the Byzantine Court. This is where we set the story of the two famous Macedonian scholars from Thessalonica, who - mind you - were not of Slavic origin, but of royal Macedonian descent from the nobility of Thessaloniki. These scholars found it suitable to introduce a very old script already present in its secret use among scholars of the age. They created the Glagollitic script first, only to obtain the support of Vatican, and later released the “new” script Cyrillic, which proves today to have a strong resemblance to earlier scripts of that kind found on rocks in Macedonia, and other written records from the 5th century, and ever earlier in the period BC.              

With the Cyrillic literacy, a new form of Byzantine expansion took place. Slavic Byzantium! It spread its influence as north as the Russian steppes. How else do you think the Orthodox Christianity got to the Russians? One cannot say the Greeks took it there! Because it was the Macedonian Slavs who took up the mission to preach the Gospel to the Slavic population of the Middle Ages! The modern Orthodoxy owes a great deal to the work of the Macedonian priesthood of that time (9th and 10th centuries AD).

Parallel to the Byzantine Orthodoxy, a new wave of Bogomil Christianity (Gnostic dualistic teaching which was proclaimed a heresy in Byzantium, and those who preached it were persecuted) started spreading in Macedonia originally from Armenia, which gave rise to a new population in moving forward the feudal society to the next epoch. The rise of Samuil’s kingdom is the outcome of this movement. And much further, the European Protestantism had its origins in this movement!

After the crusaders and the turbulent times of the pre-Ottoman conquest, the Christian world was facing a serious opponent to all of their values at that time. The Islam and the Turks as their introducer to Europe!

The Macedonian population, along with the Greek, Bulgarian, Serbian and many other Balkan ethnic groups were forced to reorganize their lives from Christian rulers into slaves or "raya" as the Turks called the gentiles in their fate. The terrors and tortures and the inhumane deeds performed by the first Turks can only be felt in the Macedonian folklore. There are so many sad legends sang in songs of lamentation, about heroes and heroines who laid their lives to protect the innocent people.

However, the churches maintained prime activity within the Turkish Empire. Not so much at the beginning but later they revived and protected their people, and the Ohrid church was very active in maintaining the mediation with the ottomans favorable. However, after 1767 the Macedonians were a subject to treatment of either the Bulgarian or Greek churches which were trying to proclaim and assimilate the Macedonian identity.

It was not until 1958 when the Macedonian Orthodox Church was officially reestablished, by the approval of the Serbian Orthodox Church, which now claims us back.

However the Christian tradition is not something one can find in the policy matters of the institutionalized church, even though it matters to many. The true Christian tradition lives in the hearts of those who pray in that manner, who love and cherish the true faith in such a manner, who shine within the light of the true divine values and give the world the glorious Kingdom of Heaven on Earth through their devotion and dedication for the benefit of all.

This is our legacy that we need to preserve. It is the teaching of the elders and the Holy mission of our church, not to conquer and covet that which is not ours, but to protect and preserve that which is!
       
We have the first accounts on the developments of Christianity in Macedonia in the earliest writings of the Apostles. Macedonia is mentioned several times in the Bible, (unlike Greece which is not mentioned at all). For example; it was a Macedonian peasant in St. Paul’s vision who asked him to come to Macedonia and preach the Gospel there so that he would save the Macedonians from the Roman tyranny!

St. Paul came to Macedonia and took a servant called Lidia, who was a Macedonian. Even Philip and Luke, were said to be of Macedonian descent. They both carry typically Macedonian names, neither Greek nor Jewish!

From Easton’s Bible Dictionary:

“Macedonia in New Testament times was a Roman province lying north of Greece. It was governed by a proprietor with the title of proconsul. Paul was summoned by the vision of the "man of Macedonia" to preach the gospel there (Act 16:9). Frequent allusion is made to this event (Act 18:5; Act 19:21; Rom 15:26; Co2 1:16; Co2 11:9; Phi 4:15). The history of Paul's first journey through Macedonia is given in detail in Acts 16:10 - 17:15. At the close of this journey he returned from Corinth to Syria. He again passed through this country (Act 20:1), although the details of the route are not given. After many years he probably visited it for a third time (Phi 2:24; Ti1 1:3). The first convert made by Paul in Europe was (Act 16:13) Lydia (q.v.), a "seller of purple," residing in Philippi, the chief city of the eastern division of Macedonia.”

Mary Magdalene might as well be Macedonian, since she was said to have been Philip’s sister. The Qumran scrolls reveal a lot more different picture of the real story behind the curtain. It is not surprising that these people were ethnic Macedonian, because after Alexander’s expansion they had settled in Palestine and Israel as well, since these lands were both under the Macedonian rule.

From Wikipedia:

“The Gospel of Philip is one of the Gnostic Gospels, a text of New Testament apocrypha, dating back to around the third century but lost to modern researchers until it was rediscovered by accident in the mid-20th century. Although this gospel may at first appear similar to the Gospel of Thomas, it is not a sayings gospel, but a collection of Gnostic teachings and reflections.

Sacraments, in particular the sacrament of marriage, are a major theme. The text is perhaps most famous as a very early source for the idea that Jesus was married to Mary Magdalene. Though this is never explicitly stated in the document itself, she is described as Jesus' "lover" in some translations.”

This was the first wave of Christianization of Macedonian population. At the very beginnings!!! Archeological findings of this time show that Christianity was a cult in the earliest epoch all around Macedonia. Among other cults of that time!

It wasn’t until the 4th century AD and Czar Constantine’s acceptance of the Christian Religion as the sole religion for the whole Empire, and later the division of the Roman Empire in Eastern and Western, that Macedonians started to regain control on the Mediterranean political scene.

From Wikipedia:

“Flavius Valerius Aurelius Constantinus was born in Naissus (modern Niš, Serbia) in the province of Moesia Superior on 27 February ca. 280 to Roman general and later Western Roman Emperor Constantius Chlorus, and his first wife St. Helena.

Young Constantine received a formidable education, became a fluent speaker of Greek (meaning KOINE or Alexandrian “Greek”), and was adept in philosophy.

The figures of Constantine the Great and Justinian dominated during 324–610. Assimilating the Roman tradition, the emperors sought to provide the basis for subsequent developments and for the formation of the Byzantine Empire.

Justinian was born into a Latin-speaking (probably the pre-Vlach of the Romanized ancient Macedonians) peasant family in a small village called Tauresium (near Justiniana Prima, which he founded later), very close to Skopje in what is today the Republic of Macedonia, around 482 AD.

He was born as Petrus Sabbatius; the cognomen Justinianus, which he later took, is indicative of adoption by his uncle Justin. His mother was Vigilantia, the sister of Justin, who was in the imperial guard (the Excubitors) before he became emperor.

Justin adopted Justinian, brought him to Constantinople, and ensured the boy's education. As a result, Justinian was well educated in jurisprudence, theology and Roman history. Justinian served for some time with the Excubitors but the details of his early career are unknown.”

From Wikipedia:

“The history of the Byzantine Empire is described by scholar August Heisenberg as the history "of the Roman state of the "Greek" nation that turned Christian". The division of the empire into East and West and the subsequent collapse of the Western Roman Empire were developments that constantly accentuated the position of the Greeks in the empire and eventually allowed them to become identified with it altogether. The leading role of Constantinople began when Constantine the Great turned Byzantium into the new capital of the Roman Empire, henceforth to be known as Constantinople, placing the city at the centre of Hellenism a beacon for the Greeks that lasted to the modern era.”

NOTE: August Heisenberg was born Nov. 13th 1869 in Osnabruck, Germany, died Nov. 22nd, 1930 in Munich, Germany. He was a professor of Byzantine Language and Culture Munich-University. This was the period of nation building in the Balkans, and the time when history played a major part in the process. The recently established Greek state used the German historiographers to propagate their claims to Macedonia and Byzantium. History and archeology have advanced to a great extend since then, and now we have a much clearer picture on the developments in the Byzantine Empire, and the influence Macedonians and Greeks had, respectively.

We have seen in the extracts from Wikipedia that Czar Constantine, the founder of Byzantium and later Justinian the founder of the Roman law, were not Greek at all!!! Moreover, they were born in the territories previously ruled and settled by Macedonians.

After Czar Constantine, the Byzantine Empire (or the Resurrected Macedonian Kingdom) gave way to an array of Macedonian Kings and Queens to rule with what is to be known a 1000 years of Orthodox Christian Kingdom on Earth! Some were the following: Justinian I, Ana Komnena, Michael Paleolog, Vasili I and Vasili III, Macedonian Kings that brought Byzantium at the footsteps of a new age of light.

During the early years of the Byzantine rule, the KOINE language of Alexandria became widely accepted as the language of the Empire, and was used by many intellectuals of the time, regardless their ethnic background. The language was the foundation for the modern version of Greek, and thus got its title as: “Byzantine Greek”, even though from my perspective it is just an updated version of the Alexandrian dialect.

However, other languages and scripts had survived in the early Christian times of Byzantium, which later had their major impact on the developments of the Eastern Christianity.

Byzantium was a complex organization ruled by kings and priests, from various ethnic backgrounds, and it would be false to proclaim the heritage of this vast Empire, both territorially and culturally as Greek, because the Byzantine culture was developed commonly in many centers across the Empire, so today there are architectural landmarks from Byzantium in Greece, Bulgaria, Turkey, and other countries.

Macedonia has a huge legacy from this period of Byzantium: churches, monasteries, houses, settlements… These were certainly the works of the people who lived there and accepted the Christian culture and lifestyle. We know of groups of craftsmen from Macedonia (the Miaks) who traveled all across the Byzantine Empire and painted the churches’ walls, or carved wood, or made jewelry… The Byzantine culture was developing in several stages and was bringing forward the fruits of what was known as the God-given Kingdom on Earth!

This Kingdom was setting its foundations on the vision for the Kingdom of Heaven, and as such might have reached its own Enlightenment if given a chance!

Instead, the Ottomans took over the stage, and the new children of Rome got their Renaissance!!!

SLAVIC BYZANTIUM

From Wikipedia:

“In the first period of the middle Byzantine era (610–867) the empire was constantly raided both by old enemies (Persians, Langobards, Avars and Slavs) as well as by new ones, appearing for the first time in history (Arabs, Bulgarians). The main characteristic of this period was that the raids were not localized to the border areas of the state but they were extended deep beyond, even threatening the capital itself. At the same time, these attacks lost their periodical and temporary character and became permanent settlements that transformed into new states, often hostile to Byzantium. Those states were referred by the Byzantines as Sclavinias.”

“Many among the Romanized and Hellenized Paionian, Illyrian and Thracian population of Macedonia were assimilated by the Slavs, but pockets of tribes that fled to the mountains remained independent.”

These extracts from Wikipedia claim that the Slavic tribes raided the Balkan and assimilated the local population. However, according to the early Slavic records, back in the 6th century with the “arrival” of the Slavic tribes from the north, due to the Hun raids, the people who arrived and formed the Sclavinias, were not so different from the local population they encountered on their raids, who had a culture of their own and used a script with “lines and dashes” (probably similar to the Demotic (Syllabic) script from the Rosetta stone); they influenced Byzantium a lot, but the Empire never really took restrictive measures against the Slavs; they were simply integrated.

And to do so, a script was to be given to these people that were “to hear the words of God in their own mother language”. This brought forward a new epoch in the developments of the Byzantine Empire and the spreading of its Orthodox Christian influence across the Slavic population.

The celebrated Byzantine scholars of that time, Cyril and Methodius must have known the reason why they promoted one script first (Glagollitic), and then allowed their students to replace it with another form (Cyrillic).

Today there are findings that suggest that perhaps there was yet as another form of even an older version found on rocks and other archaeological sites all across Macedonia! In other words, the Cyrillic script proves to be a restoration of yet another ancient script present among Macedonian population in its "secret" use, according to some early Slavic scholars. This script can also be found in the writings of Trp Ruen from the 5th century AD and some Ukrainian writings from even earlier times. There are writings on pottery, seals, a variety of objects that show a remarkable similarity with the modern day Cyrillic script. (read: The Truth behind Cyrill and Methodius)

This was the period of the activity of the so called Ohrid Slavic School of literacy. The school operated within the jurisdiction of the Ohrid archbishopric (Justiniana Prima), which was one of the first churches to be established after Constantinople's, yet the first to receive the blessing of an apostolic church like that of Vatican's back in 999 AD by the Pope Gregory V.

The OHRID ARCHBISHOPRIC:

What we know about the Ohrid Church was that it was founded by Apostle Paul himself. Thanks to the careful administrative work of a series of bishops, and patriarchs in the Ohrid Church throughout the ages, we have managed to preserve documents that prove that the Ohrid archbishopric had been active in its Christian mission since the very beginnings of it. Which, I guess, makes Macedonians a key factor in the proclamation of the Gospel to the "gentiles". The prove of that is in the little cave church on the way out of Ohrid, called St.Erasmo. Now we know that he lived in 280-303 and was the first bishop of the Ohrid Church. He lived in the third century AD.

Let me remind you that at those times the churches were secret organizations because Rome was persecuting the Christians. Since then a list of spiritual elders have run the premises of the Holy Ohrid Archbishopric and the Macedonian Orthodox Church. Among these were the Holy brothers Cyril and Methodius, and many of their followers among which Naum and Clement from Ohrid.

The districts taken within the jurisdiction of the Ohrid's archbishopric were amazingly vast. The very fact that both the Bulgarian and the Serbian churches later gained independence from the Ohrid archbishopric, even though disapproved by the Pope Innocentius III (1198-1216) in the case of the Bulgarian (Zagora) Church, and in the latter case the patriarch of the Ohrid Church, Dimitri Homatian (1215-1234), who was Greek by the way, but unlike his modern descendants, he was very much in favor of the Macedonian Slavic literary work that the church was conducting. In the case with St.Sava's church, which separated from the Ohrid Church in 1219, patriarch Dimitri reacted against the non canonic act conducted by the patriarch Emanuel from the Nicaean Church, who approved of the autonomy of the Serbian Church.

The list of patriarchs on head of the Ohrid church goes on until 1767, during Turkish reign, when the patriarch Arsenie II was unjustly alleged to have conspired against the Turkish Empire and thus his church was closed, and the Macedonian believers ripped apart among the Bulgarian and Greek national churches. But let us go back a little to get a better view on the picture!                            

From Wikipedia:

“At the beginning of the 9th century, the Slavic kingdom of Bulgaria (NOTE: Bulgaria was populated mostly by Ants, a Slavic tribe, but ruled by Bulgarian Mongols like King Asparuh, Boris, and others) conquered Northern Byzantine lands, including Macedonia B and part of Macedonia A. Those regions remained under Bulgarian rule for two centuries, until conquest of Bulgaria by the Byzantine Emperor of the Macedonian dynasty Basil II (nicknamed the Bulgar-slayer) in 1018.”

“By this time, the whole Macedonia region was inhabited by a few different ethnicities, with the Slavs being the overall majority, while Greek dominated along the Aegean coast.”

The Greek influence was wakening in the Empire since there was a rise in the population of the Slavs, who mingled with the population that lived in Roman and Byzantine Macedonia, and who were assimilated by the local culture, in a way that the newly created Sclavinias put a great pressure on Byzantium to find a cunning way how to spread their influence on such a vast population of ignorant and illiterate people like the newly arrived Slavs, who would not be easily Christened if made to speak an unfamiliar language like that of KOINE, or the Alexandrian dialect, the Byzantine “Greek” as referred to by the Greek propagandists, since this language was long forgotten, because the Slavs (who we might associate to the ancient Macedonians and the exodus that took place with the Roman conquest, when a vast population migrated to areas across the Danube back in the 2nd century BC), must have forgotten the Alexandrian dialect which was not their mother tongue even in the ancient time.

Therefore the Byzantine Empire needed to devise a new way how to approach the Slavic tribes and introduce Christianity to them, so that they remain loyal to the Byzantine Court. This is where we set the story of the two famous Macedonian scholars from Thessalonica, who - mind you - were not of Slavic origin, but of royal Macedonian descent from the nobility of Thessaloniki. These scholars found it suitable to introduce a very old script already present in its secret use among scholars of the age. They created the Glagollitic script first, only to obtain the support of Vatican, and later released the “new” script Cyrillic, which proves today to have a strong resemblance to earlier scripts of that kind found on rocks in Macedonia, and other written records from the 5th century, and ever earlier in the period BC.              

With the Cyrillic literacy, a new form of Byzantine expansion took place. Slavic Byzantium! It spread its influence as north as the Russian steppes. How else do you think the Orthodox Christianity got to the Russians? One cannot say the Greeks took it there! Because it was the Macedonian Slavs who took up the mission to preach the Gospel to the Slavic population of the Middle Ages! The modern Orthodoxy owes a great deal to the work of the Macedonian priesthood of that time (9th and 10th centuries AD).

Parallel to the Byzantine Orthodoxy, a new wave of Bogomil Christianity (Gnostic dualistic teaching which was proclaimed a heresy in Byzantium, and those who preached it were persecuted) started spreading in Macedonia originally from Armenia, which gave rise to a new population in moving forward the feudal society to the next epoch. The rise of Samuil’s kingdom is the outcome of this movement. And much further, the European Protestantism had its origins in this movement!

After the crusaders and the turbulent times of the pre-Ottoman conquest, the Christian world was facing a serious opponent to all of their values at that time. The Islam and the Turks as their introducer to Europe!

The Macedonian population, along with the Greek, Bulgarian, Serbian and many other Balkan ethnic groups were forced to reorganize their lives from Christian rulers into slaves or "raya" as the Turks called the gentiles in their fate. The terrors and tortures and the inhumane deeds performed by the first Turks can only be felt in the Macedonian folklore. There are so many sad legends sang in songs of lamentation, about heroes and heroines who laid their lives to protect the innocent people.

However, the churches maintained prime activity within the Turkish Empire. Not so much at the beginning but later they revived and protected their people, and the Ohrid church was very active in maintaining the mediation with the ottomans favorable. However, after 1767 the Macedonians were a subject to treatment of either the Bulgarian or Greek churches which were trying to proclaim and assimilate the Macedonian identity.

It was not until 1958 when the Macedonian Orthodox Church was officially reestablished, by the approval of the Serbian Orthodox Church, which now claims us back.

However the Christian tradition is not something one can find in the policy matters of the institutionalized church, even though it matters to many. The true Christian tradition lives in the hearts of those who pray in that manner, who love and cherish the true faith in such a manner, who shine within the light of the true divine values and give the world the glorious Kingdom of Heaven on Earth through their devotion and dedication for the benefit of all.

This is our legacy that we need to preserve. It is the teaching of the elders and the Holy mission of our church, not to conquer and covet that which is not ours, but to protect and preserve that which is!
       

"But what is Sphurasna?" The other replies: "You Attic people call it "cestra".

Actually the dialogue goes as "Athenian: But what is Sphuraina? The other: You Athenians call it Kestra". But see, the play's name is "The Macedonians", thus many assume the other with the funny speech is actually a  Macedonian character in the play. It is interesting the same section (book VII, 122) is about the hammer-fish and other similar dialogue found in a play of Antiphanes. "Sphuraina" is the name used also by Dorion, a character which occurs AFAIK only in this source, who's a man which knows how to live and he wrote a book about fishes.

This thread has 21 pages and only 5-6 pages consern the Rosetta Stone. All the others focus in the Slavonic origin of the ancient Greek Macedonians with sources the  wiki and FYROMacedonians propagandistic spots .!!!!

Edited by akritas - 06-Dec-2007 at 10:05

Fact: Greece is mentioned in the Bible under the name of Javan [Gen 10:2], [Joe 3:6], [Dan 8:21]

In reference to Daniel 8:21

BibleGateway.com - Passage*Lookup: Daniel 8 ;

21 The shaggy goat is the king of Greece, and the large horn between his eyes is the first king.

�Alexander the Great� by Lewis Vance Cummings, page 187

�Alexander then, recalling the refusal of the high priest of Jerusalem to render assistance during the siege of Tyre, next turned toward that city, a bare three days� march distant. As the army neared, the people of the city were panic-stricken, but, acting on the advice of the high priest, the citizens, with the priests at their head, met the king outside the gates of the city. Alexander was so impressed at the meeting, especially when shown one of the ancient prophecies that a Greek (literally a man from Javan, i.e., Ionia) would at last come and free the people from the Persian rule. This prophecy he read to mean himself. He therefore permitted the people of the country to live on under their own laws and system. Josephus says that he then made a short excursion northward into Samaria where he conscripted several thousands of the inhabitants and took them with him. Upon his arrival in Egypt, continues Josephus, he sent the Samarians to garrison the upper Nile post of the Elephantine. He then turned back to Gaza and prepared to march on to Egypt. The time was November. He had spent a whole year in the sieges of the two cities, and that was but a tenth of the time he had left to reign upon this earth.�

The �book of Daniel�, Page 90, by Raymond Hammer is also clear about the meaning of Javan.

�21. The Hebrew word for Greece (Javan) is derived from the Greek word �Ionian�. The Ionian Greeks lived mainly in Asia Minor, and it was through them that Assyria, Persia and Egypt first came into touch with Greek culture and trade. the first king: the reference here is to Alexander the Great (king of Macedon from 336 B.C. to 323 b.c.) - He was to die without an heir who could succeed him. (He married the daughter of Darius III, the last of the Persian kings, but, in his death, he left only an infant son.)�

From the book of �The Empires of the Bible from the Confusion of Tongues to the Babylonian Captivity� by Alonzo Trevier Jones in pages 14-15 we can find:

�33. From Javan came the Greeks; for in the Hebrew, Dan. 8 : 21 reads �king of Javan;� 10 : 20 �prince of Javan;� and 11 : 2 � realm of Javan;� instead of �king,� �prince,� and �realm� of �Grecia� or �Greece.� The Revised Version gives Javan in the margin of each of these places.
34. �This name, or its analogue, is found as a designation of Greece not only in all the Semitic dialects, but also in the Sanscrit, the Old Persic, and the Egyptian, and the form Iaones appears in Homer as the designation of the early inhabitants of Attica. . . . The occurrence of the name in the cuneiform inscriptions of the time of Sargon, in the form of Yavnan, or Yunant as descriptive of the isle of Cyprus, where the Assyrians first came in contact with the power of the Greeks, further shows that its use was not confined to the Hebrews, but was widely spread throughout the East.��
35. The name of Grecia embraced Macedonia , Epirus, Thessaly, Acarnania, Aetolia, Locris, Doris, Phocis, Boeotia, Euboea, Attica, Mnwris. Corinthia. Achaia. Elis. Arcadia. Argolis. Messene. and Laconia. And this is the country of Javan. Under Alexander the Great the people of Javan spread their empire over all countries from the Adriatic Sea to the River Hyphasis, and their power was recognized by all known nations of the world.�

The conclusion is that the name �Javan� and its derivatives are used by other ancient people to describe Greeks and among them, Macedonians, as it was known also from them that Macedonians were Greeks.


Fact: Lydia was from Thyatira. Ancient Thyatira stood on the border between Lydia and Mysia (Asia Minor) and it was mainly inhabited by Lydians like the name of Lydia reveals in its own.


Fact: Slavic propagandists have no shame in fabricating history.

The name Philip is Greek and during antiquity it was scattered all over Greek world.

Philippus of Croton, circa 6th century BC was an athlete and hero in Magna Graecia
Philip, son of Aristophanes
Philip, Spartan commander of Miletus in 412 BC
Philip, Theban commander killed by Theban conspirator Charon
Philippus of Opus, one of Plato's students
Philippus of Mende (Greece),astronomer
Philip, a physician from Acarnania, friend and doctor of Alexander the Great [1]
Philip, son of Menelaus
Philip (fl. 4th century BC), son of Antipater and general of Alexander the Great
Philip (son of Machatas) builder of Alexandria on the Indus
Philip (died 318 BC), Greek satrap of Sogdiana and governor of Parthia
Philip I Philadelphus, a ruler of the Hellenistic Seleucid kingdom (95�84/83 BC)
Philip II Philoromaeus last ruler of the Hellenistic Seleucid kingdom (65�63 BC)

LUKE
Gender: Masculine

Usage: English, Biblical

Pronounced: LOOK [key]

From the Greek name Λουκας (Loukas) which meant "from Lucania". Lucania was a region in Italy. Saint Luke, the author of the third Gospel and Acts in the New Testament, was a doctor who travelled in the company of Saint Paul. The name is also borne by the fictional character Luke Skywalker in the 'Star Wars' movies.

Behind the Name: Meaning, Origin and History of the Name Luke

Fact: The Slavic propagandist omited conveniently the following reference from Easton�s Bible Dictionary where it proves explicitely Macedonia was a part of Greece:


Greece. Originally consisted of the four provinces of Macedonia, Epirus, Achaia, and Peloponnesus. In Act 20:2 it designates only the Roman province of Macedonia. Greece was conquered by the Romans 146 BC. Afer passing through various changes it was erected into an independent monarchy in 1831. Moses makes mention of Greece under the name of Javan (Gen 10:2); and this name does not again occur in the Old testament til the time of Koel (Joe 3:6). Then the Greeks and Hebrews first came into contact in teh Tyrian slave-market. Phonetic notice is taken of Greece in Dan 8:21. The cities of Greece were the special scenes of the labours of the apostle Paul.

Originally posted by Leonidas ok hold on guys. this is a rosseta stone thread No FYROM talk, if you want to do the historical Macedonians are/are not Greek we have other threads very good threads between some very well informed members . Please search i get edgy with my hide button when to much cutting and pasting of material, no one reads and is off topic is posted in one thread.

YOU are right! Let us get prectical! Shall we?

NOTE: The text above is an essay of mine and it is not copy pasted from any other source.

(once again)WHO CAN CRACK THIS LINE:



CLUE: the name of the emperor...

OR in ancient Greek:



Edited by Petro Invictus - 06-Dec-2007 at 23:44

Originally posted by Arxileas The idea of a Macedonian ethnic came a little after during 1800's.This is FYROM's identity ?http://illyria.proboards19.com/index.cgi?board=makedoniamacedonia&action=display&thread=1192945034Too big to post on here, pictures do not lie ! Please do take a look.

These pictures would do good in a Bulgarian museum, section: Balkan Wars 1912/13 - Bulgaria's clams for Macedonia.

"pictures do not lie" - No, they don't, they just prove the aggressive policy of the Bulgarian state (as well as the other Balkan states) agains Macedonia at that time.

These documents clearly confirm the following (extract from Macedonia and Greece by John Shea 1997, pp.6-21
Excellent analysis of the Macedonian-Greek conflict)

"I do not claim to be unbiased, though in my examination of the evidence available to me I have tried to be as objective as possible. When I began my own inquiry about the topic, I wanted to know the truth. I began the process of discovery from a state of quite profound ignorance. I had talked with elderly Macedonian people about their lives, and about stories they remembered from the old days in Macedonia, and the things they told me often conflicted with the arguments of modern-day Greeks. I knew that these Macedonians, at least, thought of themselves as Macedonian long before the time of Tito. They told stories of Macedonian revolutionaries who, at the turn of the century, wanted a state separate from Bulgaria. They described how Bulgarian agents infiltrated the revolutionary movement and assassinated Macedonian leaders, and voiced a prevailing belief that Aegean Slavic Macedonians had been persecuted by successive Greek governments. But they told me little about the broader facts of the history of the Macedonians over the past two and a half thousand years. "

http://www.ancientmacedonia.com/shea.html

Again this is not the issue of our topic!

CRACKING THE DEMOTIC TEXT! I am still waiting for someone brave enough to crack the name of the emperor (its translation into English please)!

Here are the charts, for easier access:

Hence, we provide a detailed analysis of the wiring for sound of the asymmetrical, symmetrical, inclined and specific syllabic signs.

Using more than one hundred words from the contemporary Macedonian language, all 13 asymmetrical signs were wired for sound with corresponding consonants. They are:

Chart 1.



the asymmetrical signs P[r] and J[j] in today's and in the ancient Macedonian script have the same form and the same sound. According to their written form the remaining asymmetrical signs are mutually similar, and in their pronunanciation, too, for example the asymmetrical signs Ж[zh], З[z], Ѕ[dz], С[s], Ц[ts], Ч[tch], Ш[sh], and Шт[sht].

Each of these 13 consonants on the writing surface, can be written using 8 dispositions and can denote syllables with 8 consonants, as in the example of the sign for the consonant J[j].

Chart 2.



The procedure of mirroring and rotating the basic sign on the writing surface in order to attach the corresponding vowel from the syllable for consonant П

is shown below.

Chart 3.



All 8 positions of writing are identified in the text, which means they have been wired for sound with all 6 active vowels in today's Slavic languages and the long forms of the vowels O[?] and E[?] which have been preserved in the contemporary Slovenian language, as well as in some of the dialects of the Macedonian language.

All forms of the asymmetrical signs with their wiring for sounds are presented in the following table.

Chart 4.



Using about 20 words from the contemporary Macedonian language, 6 symmetrical signs were wired for sound. They are:

Chart 5.



No more than 4 positions for writing were found for each of the signs wired for sound in the text. The formation of syllables in the corresponding vowels is shown in the table, positions 1, 2, 4, 5, 6, and 7, respectively.

Chart 6.



In order to form a syllable with the vowel и, we identified that the signs of the consonants B(V) and Л(L) were written with the mark for virama and then the symbol for the vowel и(I) was added.

Unlike the asymmetrical signs, where the vertical line is dominant in the basic sign, in the inclined signs an inclined line is dominant. And for these signs no more than 4 positions for writing were identified.

The formation of syllables with corresponding vowels is demonstrated in the table shown below, positions 3, 9, 10, 11, 12 and 13, respectively.

Chart 7.



In the text the sign for the consonant Љ[lj] most frequently occurs in a syllable with the vowel y(u), which is also characteristic in the contemporary Macedonian language.

The first sign left to right in the analyzed text is a rotated form of the sign Б(b) for 45 degrees in the clockwise direction. No defining word for this sign has yet been found in today's Macedonian language, and our assumption is that most probably it represents the consonant Ф(f).

Chart 8.



The specific syllabic sign which in form recalls the letter Д[d] in the Cyrillic alphabet was proved by wiring for sound in all its forms, such as:

Chart 9.



Apart from our research, the syllabic sign Ди[di] has the same form of wiring for sound in the monograph Praslavyanskaya Pismenost by G.S. Grinevich, Moscow 1993.






Edited by Petro Invictus - 07-Dec-2007 at 01:45

Originally posted by akritas This thread has 21 pages and only 5-6 pages consern the Rosetta Stone. All the others focus in the Slavonic origin of the ancient�Greek Macedonians with sources the �wiki and FYROMacedonians propagandistic�spots�.!!!! �

Akritas, come on, you posted a third of it! And most of it really irrelevant and distracting!

To the contrary I am still waiting for you to take the challenge and CRACK the Demotic text with me, just for fun, and see how great these pseudo-scientists are, to even devise such a cunning way to read the Demotic text, and at the same time sound Slavic!



Let us expose their FRAUD!

Originally posted by Petro Invictus Correction! The term 'Greece' was not at use at that time, while 'Macedonia' WAS!

GREECE = GRAIA in GREEK which is a geographic area. Greece in the sense foreigners use the term today was HELLAS.

Originally posted by Petro Invictus So since the term "Greece" came into use much later, say since the western Rennaisence, how can you clam Macedonia as Greek. It can be at least Hellenic, which means part of the Mediterranean culture. But since the Mediterranean nations who used the Hellenic script as the language of official correspondence, were of various ethnic origins, we cannot conclude that the Macedonians were Hellenic.

Why did Macedonians use Greek centuries before Greek was lingua franca and way before Koine then?

Originally posted by Petro Invictus They could have been of Brigian (Phrygian) origin, very close at least linguisticly to the proto-Slavic.

You repeat the same things though we've already said it is wrong. Brygians according to their own report were their neighbours.

Originally posted by Petro Invictus Originally posted by Chilbudios "But what is Sphurasna?" The other replies: "You Attic people call it "cestra". Actually the dialogue goes as "Athenian: But what is Sphuraina? The other: You Athenians call it Kestra". But see, the play's name is "The Macedonians", thus many assume the other with the funny speech is actually a  Macedonian character in the play. It is interesting the same section (book VII, 122) is about the hammer-fish and other similar dialogue found in a play of Antiphanes. "Sphuraina" is the name used also by Dorion, a character which occurs AFAIK only in this source, who's a man which knows how to live and he wrote a book about fishes.   Exactly!

The play is called Makedones. There are people speaking attic and another dialect. There is no "Athenian" and no "others" in the text. Just people speaking. When the one part is definetelly Attic what would the other be in a play called "Macedonians"?

How much IQ is needed on this?

Originally posted by Petro Invictus YOU ARE 100% correct, they all have Hellenic names because we have them as recorded in Koine. The people who had these names were Macedonians though.

Is Javan Koine?

Is Yauna Takabara Koine?

In other words...Nonsense...

Originally posted by Petro Invictus However, the Rosetta stone Demotic text, reveals that maybe the names we have from the Koine text, are not the real names used by the Egyptians or the Macedonians, but as transcribed and translated into Koine.

Oh really...They are not real names? What does Ptolemy mean then?

Originally posted by Petro Invictus What I am saying is that maybe Ptolemy did not use this name for himself in this phonetic form.

It seems they loved to screw the names according to you.

Originally posted by Petro Invictus In fact Ptolemey is taken for the emperor's personal name, when it is actually his family name

Which means in Slavic?.