Who was Jesus? (3)
Adaoted from Kamal Salibi

There are two points in this reconstructed Koranic story which are particularly remarkable. First, it makes the correct distinction between the Mosaic monotheism of the early Israelites, and the Jewish faith which began to evolve from it in post-exilic times – with the career of Ezra, by general reckoning. Second, the story clearly depicts Judaism and the original Christianity of the Nazarenes as different departures from the original religion of Israel, and thus suggests a new The Koranic testimony  vision of the origins of Christianity as a sister religion to Judaism, rather than as a runaway Jewish sect as has long been the common view. While the Koran does not fix a place or date for the mission of Issa, it does give the general impression that, as a latter-day prophet to Israel, he was active in the same environment where Islam was born, i.e. in Western Arabia; also, that Nazarene Christianity emerged at a time when the Israelites, as a people, as distinct from the Jews as a latter-day religious community, still existed – which implies a date for the mission of the Koranic 'Jesus' which is perhaps closer to the fifth century BC than to the first century AD. While there is nothing in Islamic literature to endorse such an early date for the career of Issa, there is at least one indication in this literature that Christianity (certainly, the religion of the Nasara ) originated in Arabia rather than Palestine. Writing his geographical dictionary alRawd al-mi'tar fi khabar al-aqtar in the fourteenth century AD, Muhammad Ibn 'Abd al-Mun'im al-Himyari, a North African Arab originally from the Yemen, expanded on the history of pre-Islamic Christianity in the region of Najran, on the north-eastern peripheries of the Yemen, remarking unequivocally that 'the origin of this religion was in Najran' (wa-kan asl dhalik al-din bi-Najran).* That Christianity should have originated in Arabia before making a fresh start and assuming a new form in Palestine is not implausible. As indicated in the introduction, I remain personally convinced that the history of the Biblical Israelites ran its full course in Western Arabia, and that the original monotheism of Moses as well as the Judaism that evolved from it have their roots there, and not in Palestine. In terms of historical geography, Palestine can be viewed as a northward extension of Western Arabia, and some Arabian Israelites apparently did arrive to settle in that country in Biblical times. Later, during the Hellenistic period, Judaism under the Hasmonean dynasty came to have one of its main political centres in Palestine, where the principal Jewish city was called Jerusalem after the older, Israelite (and hence * See al-Rawd al-Mi'tar fi khabar al-aqtar, ed. Ihsan Abbas (Beirut, 1984), p. 573. 54 Biblical) Jerusalem of Arabia - probably the present village of Al Sharim in the Asir highlands, once referred to in ancient Arabi literature as Uri Shalim. Subsequently, Herod the Great erected a great temple in the Palestinian Jerusalem, which was destroyed when the city was sacked by the Romans in AD 70. The so-called Wailing Wall in this city is the remnant of this temple, and of no other. Despite continuous archaeological efforts, not the least shred of evidence has been discovered to indicate that the Biblical temple of King Solomon had earlier stood on the same site. In fact, there is clear evidence that it did not. The most outstanding natural feature of the premises of Herod's temple is the monolith which stands to this day under the famous Dome of the Rock, which was erected to provide it with architectural cover in Islamic times. The Biblical description of the temple of Solomon, which is fully detailed (1 Kings 6:2–36), does not mention any conspicuous monolith standing within its precincts. In Western Arabia, the political history of the Israelites, as recorded in the Hebrew Bible, came to an end with the destruction of the kingdom of Judah and the captivity of its people by the Babylonians in 586 BC. After conquering Babylon in 539 BC, the Persians arranged for large numbers of the Israelite exiles to return to their Arabian homelands and attempt a reconstruction of their society on its original territory. The career of Ezra belongs to this period. While the returned exiles were not successful in re-establishing themselves in Western Arabia as a state, they probably continued to exist in the area for a long time as a people organized in different urban or rural communities, or as tribes.