The Bible came from Arabia

From the First chapter of the book “The Bible came from Arabia” of Kamal Salibi

Where the author explains why and how did he develop his theory

"The present study owes its origins to pure chance. I had been presented with a copy of a gazetteer of Saudi Arabia, published in Riyadh in 1977, and was examining it for place-names of non-Arabic origin in West Arabia, when gradually it dawned on me that I was looking not just at place-names in West Arabia but also at those of the Biblical Old Testament, or what I prefer to call the Hebrew Bible. At first, I thought I must be mistaken, but as the evidence accumulated, I was persuaded that I had stumbled upon a remarkable set of coincidences. Nearly all the Biblical place-names I could think of were concentrated in an area approximately 600 kilometres long and 200 kilometres wide, comprising what are today Asir (Arabic 'Asir) and the southern part of the Hijaz (al-Higaz). All the co-ordinates of the places involved, as described in the Hebrew Bible, were also traceable there — a fact of the first importance, as these co-ordinates have never really been identified in the countries hitherto believed to have been the lands of the Bible. Moreover, I could not find such a concentration of Biblical place-names, usually in their original Hebrew form, in any other part of the Near East. I was obliged to consider the breathtaking possibility that Judaism had originated not in Palestine but in West Arabia, and that the history of the ancient Israelites, as narrated in the Hebrew Bible, ran its full course there and nowhere else. O f course, assuming that my supposition is correct, this does not mean that no Jews lived in Palestine in Biblical times or in

other countries outside West Arabia. What it does mean is that the Hebrew Bible is principally a record of the Jewish historical experience in West Arabia. Unfortunately, how Judaism came to be established from an early time in Palestine, it is not possible to say, as no records exist which might provide an explanation. However, one can make an educated guess.

Among the known religions of the ancient Near East, Judaism stands in a category by itself; no attempt to explain its origins in terms of the religions of ancient Mesopotamia, Syria or Egypt has so far been truly successful, except at the level of mythical borrowings. One such example is the story of the Flood, which may also be found in the ancient Mesopotamian Epic of Gilgamesh, not to mention other ancient folk myths, one of them Chinese. Yet, even in such instances, one cannot really tell where such myths originated, and who borrowed what from whom. However, as we shall see later in Chapter 12, it is reasonable to suppose that the true origins of Judaism may be sought in a trend towards monotheism in ancient Asir, where a number of mountain gods, such as Yahweh, El Sabaoth, El Shalom, El Shaddai, El Elyon and others, came to be identified with one another - how we do not know - and eventually recognised as one supreme deity, perhaps in connection with the amalgamation of some local tribes. Adopted by a local people called the Israelites, this rudimentary West Arabian monotheism eventually developed into a highly thoughtful religion with set scriptures, involving a sophisticated notion of divinity and an exceptionally refined social and ethical content. All things considered, such a religion must have been eminently capable of attracting converts from outside the vicinity of its origin, wherever a certain level of thoughtfulness and moral sensitivity existed. The fact that it was a religion with a book, developed by a literate people, must have facilitated its spread." (continues)