Who was Jesus? (1)

Adapted from Kamal Salibi's book Who was Jesus?

 Most scholars today agree that the Gospels cannot be regarded strictly as history; not as many may be prepared to admit how little history they actually contain. Written probably between about AD 70 and 100, the four canonical Gospels have been attributed by Christian tradition to four apostles: two of them (Matthew and John) companions of Jesus; the other two (Mark and Luke) companions of Paul.

Paul, whose writings are older than the oldest known Gospels, did not believe all the stories about Jesus circulated in his time by the apostles in Jerusalem. To him, some of these stories were mere legend' with no more historical truth than the false reports circulated about Paul himself by these same apostles. Considering that the Gospels, at least in part, probably repeat what the Jerusalem apostles had originally taught about the person and mission of Jesus, it is highly unlikely that Paul would have fully endorsed the truth of their contents. For example, while he did agree with all four Gospels that Jesus was a descendant of David, it is clear that he rejected the accuracy of the various genealogies – among them, no doubt, the two conflicting ones that ultimately found their way into the texts of Matthew and Luke. Yet Paul, in his own writings, said very little about Jesus as a human being. For information about the man in the Christian scriptures, we have mainly the Gospels to go by. Because they frequently speak of general political events in connection with the life and career of Jesus (what are technically called 'synchronisms'), the canonical Gospels give the impression that their authors had done their historical homework and knew exactly what they were talking about. Upon closer scrutiny, however, this turns out to be largely incorrect. Scholars today commonly concede that the Gospels were written to prove that the historical Jesus was in fact the expected Israelite Messiah, or Christ, rather than provide an accurate biography. It is for this reason that they are replete with references to prophecies from the Israelite scriptures - what Christians call the Old Testament.

For example, while he did agree with all four Gospels that Jesus was a descendant of David, it is clear that he rejected the accuracy of the various genealogies – among them, no doubt, the two conflicting ones that ultimately found their way into the texts of Matthew and Luke. Yet Paul, in his own writings, said very little about Jesus as a human being.

To appreciate the real extent to which the Gospel material is in fact exegetical elaboration of Old Testament material, let us consider the example of the Christmas story as told in Matthew. This Gospel explains that Mary, the mother of Jesus, was engaged to Joseph, but before they were married, she discovered that she was with child by the Holy Spirit. Matthew immediately adds: 'Now all this happened in order to make what the L Who was Jesus? (2)

To appreciate the real extent to which the Gospel material is in fact exegetical elaboration of Old Testament material, let us consider the example of the Christmas story as told in Matthew. This Gospel explains that Mary, the mother of Jesus, was engaged to Joseph, but before they w ord had said through the prophet Isaiah come true, "a virgin will become pregnant and have a son . . ." ' (1:22–3, referring to Isaiah 7:14). Matthew next explains that Jesus was born in the town of Bethlehem in Judea, 'For this is what the prophet wrote: "Bethlehem in the land of Judah, you are by no means the least of the cities of Judah; for from you will come a leader who will guide my people Israel" '

When King Herod of Judea heard that the Magi were asking where the baby was born who was destined to be the 'king of the Jews', he ordered the killing of all the boys in Bethlehem and its neighbourhood who were two years old or younger (Matthew 2:16). King Herod of Judea (37 BC –AD 4), as is well known, was an important historical figure in early Roman Palestine, but the available records do not indicate that he ever ordered a massacre of all the male infants of the Bethlehem district. However, after relating this episode in his Christmas story, Matthew stops to point out that: 'In this way what the prophet Jeremiah had said came true: "A sound is heard in Ramah, the sound of bitter weeping. Rachel is crying for her children; she refuses to be comforted, for they are dead" ' (2:17–18, quoting Jeremiah 31:15). Rachel, it must be explained here, is spoken of in the Old Testament as a wife of Jacob, the common ancestor claimed for the Israelite tribes, and she reportedly died in the vicinity of Bethlehem and was buried there (Genesis 35:19). Matthew next says that Joseph, to keep Jesus safe from the massacre ordered by Herod, took the baby and his mother to Egypt, then brought them back after Herod was dead – all this 'to make what the Lord had said through the prophet come true, "I called my son out of Egypt.

Jesus is referred to in Mark (6:3) as 'the carpenter' (Greek tekton), and in Matthew (13:55) as 'the carpenter's son'. This could mean that Jesus actually came from a family which traditionally practised carpentry. On the other hand, it may simply indicate that the surname of Jesus was the Aramaic Bar Nagara, meaning 'Son of the Carpenter'. In Semitic surnames (as in modern Arabic ones) the part of the appellation indicating descent or flliality (in Aramaic Bar, meaning 'son of) can be maintained or dropped. Hence, the surname of Jesus could have been indicated either as Bar Nagara (i.e. 'Son of the Carpenter'), or more simply as Nagara (i.e. 'the Carpenter'). 2 The father of Jesus was called Joseph. On this point all four Gospels agree (Matthew l:16ff.; 2:13ff.; Luke 1:27; 2:4ff.; 3:23; John 1:45; 6:42). It is not certain that the mother of the historical Jesus was called Mary. While Matthew, Mark and Luke identify her by this name, but say nothing about her immediate family, John seems to make a point of leaving her unnamed (2:1, 3, 5, 12; 6:42; 19:25, 26), but speaks of her in one instance as attending her son's crucifixion accompanied by a sister (Greek adelphe ) called Mary, identified as Mary the wife of Clopas (19:25). The mother of Jesus could not have been called Mary if she really did have a sister by the same name. Faced with this problem, Christian tradition has assumed that the two women were half sisters by the same mother but by different fathers, although there is nothing in the Gospels to support this assumption. 3 Jesus had four brothers called James, Simon, Joses and Judas, and more than one sister (Matthew 13:55;* Mark 6:3). 4 He began to attract public attention shortly after the reign of the Roman emperor Tiberius (i.e. AD 28 or 29, Luke 3:1), when he was about 30 years old (Luke 3:23); when Herod Antipas was tetrarch of Galilee (4 BC–AD 39, Matthew 14:lff.; Mark 6:14ff; Luke 3:lff.); and when Pontius Pilate was procurator of Judea (AD 26–36, Luke 3:1). Of this information, the reported age of Jesus is the only one that raises a question, because it seems to plead for two Old Testament parallels: first, the reported age of the Old Testament Joseph when he entered the service of Pharaoh (Genesis 41:46); second, the age of David when he first began to reign as king (2 Samuel 5:4). 5 Jesus had disciples and friends (men and women) whose names are cited in the Gospels, though not always with consistency (see below). 6 He led a disturbance in the Jerusalem temple, after which he was tried in the presence of Pontius Pilate and put to death on the eve of the Jewish passover (Matthew 27:2ff; Mark 15:lff.; Luke 23:lff.), or the day before (John 18:29ff.). Here, one may doubt that the crucifixion of Jesus necessarily took place one or two days before the Jewish Passover, because this can imply an esoteric comparison between his execution and the killing of the Jewish Paschal lamb. Some of this Gospel information about Jesus is validated by other sources. It has already been noted that both the apostle Paul and the Jewish historian Jospehus attest to the fact that Jesus had a brother called James, who was their contemporary. Paul actually met this James. In his Ecclesiastical History, Eusebius of Caesaria (d. AD c.340) speaks of grand* Matthew, repeating the information from Mark, renders the name Joses as Joseph. The Gospel evidence 41 children of another brother of Jesus, Jude (i.e. Judas), who were living in Galilee during the reign of the Roman emperor Domitian (AD 81–96). Quoting the authority of the secondcentury Christian historian Hegesippus, whose original work has been lost, Eusebius (3:19–20) relates the following story about them: The same emperor ordered the execution of all who were of David's line . . . And there still survived of the Lord's family the grandsons of Jude, who was said to be His brother, humanly speaking. These were informed against as being of David's line, and brought. . . before Domitian Caesar .

To continue

Is Western Arabia Zion?

Kamal Salibi, one of the Arab world’s foremost contemporary historians, kicked up a storm when he concluded in a 1985 linguistic exegesis that Judaism’s Zion was not located in Israel but in Saudi Arabia. Israelis, Jews, Saudis, Arabs, Muslims and Palestinians found common ground at the time to denounce Mr. Salibi in stark terms.

Israelis, Jews and evangelists charged that Mr. Salibi’s bombshell book, The Bible Came from Arabia, constituted an attempt to delegitimize the Jewish State and undermine its historic claim to modern day Israel. Israeli historians and rabbis denounced the theory as mythology, science fiction and nonsense.

Saudis, afraid that Israelis might take Mr. Salibi seriously and attempt to colonise the mountains of Sarawat, which the scholar believed was the Jordan valley referred to in the Bible, bulldozed dozens of villages which contained buildings or structures from Biblical antiquity. Abodes were turned into rubble in line with Wahhabi ideology that legitimized destruction of anything that could be construed as idol worship.

The Saudi effort made it more unlikely that archaeology would ever be able to resolve the controversy given that decades of diggings in modern day Israel have yet to yield incontrovertible evidence such as Hebrew inscriptions that unambiguously refer to events, people, or places named in the Old Testament.

Nonetheless, in a twist of irony, Saudi Arabia launched Mr. Salibi on his linguistic exegesis with the government’s publication in 1977 of a comprehensive list of thousands of place names in the kingdom. The list sparked Mr. Salibi’s interest because he had found little material for the early period of a history of Arabia he had just published.

‘’I was simply searching for place-names of non-Arabic origin in west Arabia, when the evidence that the whole Bible land was here struck me in the face. Nearly all the biblical place-names were concentrated in an area about 600 km long by 200 km wide, comprising what are today Asir and the southern part of the Hijaz,’’ Mr. Salibi wrote.

The controversy over Mr. Salibi’s assertions has long died down. Lack of contact between Saudi Arabia and Israel which do not maintain diplomatic relations and the fact that the kingdom was and is hardly a tourist destination except for the Muslim pilgrimage to the holy cities of Mecca and Medina ensured that research was all but impossible.

That however may be changing. Saudi Arabia, in an effort to diversify its energy-dependent economy and develop alternative sources of income is preparing to become a tourist destination, boasting its numerous historic sites.

Relations between Israel and Saudi Arabia are changing as both countries find common ground in their hostility towards Iran and need to confront jihadist groups like the Islamic State. A retired Saudi general last month led a delegation of academics and businessmen in a rare, if not first public visit to Israel in a bid to stimulate debate about a 14-year old Saudi plan for Israeli-Arab peace.

The thawing of informal ties between Israel and Saudi Arabia is a far cry away from a situation in which Saudi Arabia will lift its ban on Israelis traveling to the kingdom. Saudi Arabia already in the 1990s rewrote visa regulations that effectively prevented Jews from visiting the kingdom. The Saudi labour ministry included in 2014 Judaism for the first time as an acceptable religion for migrant or foreign workers in the kingdom.

Writing in The Times of Israel two weeks after retired General Anwar Eshki’s visit, journalist Jessica Steinberg noted that a vibrant Jewish community had populated 3,000 years ago areas that today belong to Saudi Arabia and that the cities of Medina, Khaybar and Taymar hosted large numbers of Jews in the 6th and 7th century. Rabbi Benjamin of Tudela, Spain, a medieval Jewish traveller, visited some of those communities during a 12th century trip to what is today Israel. Rabbi Benjamin’s writings offer a demography of the communities he encountered.

A dying generation of elderly Saudis of Yemeni origin who live in towns and cities along Saudi Arabia’s border with Yemen still recall the days prior to the establishment of the State of Israel when Jews were part of their community.

Anticipating a day where Israelis might be able to visit Saudi Arabia, Ms. Steinberg offered a primer of five Jewish sites in the kingdom’s Khaybar valley and ancient city of Taymar that can be accessed virtually:

Khaybar, a date-growing valley and oasis with natural wells, that was home to a Jewish community and served as a stop on the incense trade route from Yemen to Syria and Lebanon. Although its 1,400-year-old cemetery is void of headstones, locals recall its Jewish history.

Khaybar Fortress, the 1,400-year-old Fortress of the Jews perched on a hill overlooking the oasis that was conquered by the Prophet Mohamed. His nephew and son-in-law, Ali, unlocked the gate of the fortress, letting the Prophet’s army enter and conquer it.

The Palace of the Jewish Tribe’s Head, also located in Khaybar, that was home to the Jewish tribe of Marhab famous for its gold and jewellery trade.

Tayma known as fortified Jewish city where travellers stopped at the oasis to visit the Al-Naslaa Rock Formation, one of the most photogenic petroglyphs, or rock art, depicting the life and times of ancient communities.

Bir Haddaj, a large well at the centre of Tayma that dates back to at least to the middle of the 6th century BCE. The well is mentioned in the Book of Isaiah as the place where the descendants of Ishmael’s son, Tema, lived: “Unto him that is thirsty bring ye water! The inhabitants of the land of Tema did meet the fugitive with his bread.”

Holding out the hope for closer ties between Israel and Saudi Arabia, Ms. Steinberg suggested that “the day may be drawing near” when “historical sites pertaining to the ancient Jewish experience” will be accessible.

As a result, Saudi tourism as much in the Middle East that is easily politicized could blow new life into the controversy over Mr. Salibi’s theory years after he passed away. Saudi fears notwithstanding, Israelis like their Saudi counterparts have no desire to rock the boat or even contemplate the theoretical possibility that that their forefathers may have made a mistake. Any argument that Israel might eye Saudi oil reserves is countered by the fact that Israel is becoming an oil producer in its own right.

Beyond the historical and academic value of settling the controversy sparked by Mr. Salibi, his theory offers rich material for the ultimate ‘what if’ book or great novel on the Middle East. Imagining ‘what if’ would unlikely lead to even more conflict in an already tortured region but could well offer new perspectives on how to resolve its multiple conflicts.

James M. Dorsey

Reproduced from:  http://en.reseauinternational.net/is-saudi-arabia-zion/

Ref: http://en.reseauinternational.net/is-saudi-arabia-zion/#ohJsiHlwzCAAQMZI.99

Is Saudi Arabia Zion?

Kamal Salibi, one of the Arab world’s foremost contemporary historians, kicked up a storm when he concluded in a 1985 linguistic exegesis that Judaism’s Zion was not located in Israel but in Saudi Arabia. Israelis, Jews, Saudis, Arabs, Muslims and Palestinians found common ground at the time to denounce Mr. Salibi in stark terms.

Israelis, Jews and evangelists charged that Mr. Salibi’s bombshell book, The Bible Came from Arabia, constituted an attempt to delegitimize the Jewish State and undermine its historic claim to modern day Israel. Israeli historians and rabbis denounced the theory as mythology, science fiction and nonsense.

Saudis, afraid that Israelis might take Mr. Salibi seriously and attempt to colonise the mountains of Sarawat, which the scholar believed was the Jordan valley referred to in the Bible, bulldozed dozens of villages which contained buildings or structures from Biblical antiquity. Abodes were turned into rubble in line with Wahhabi ideology that legitimized destruction of anything that could be construed as idol worship.

The Saudi effort made it more unlikely that archaeology would ever be able to resolve the controversy given that decades of diggings in modern day Israel have yet to yield incontrovertible evidence such as Hebrew inscriptions that unambiguously refer to events, people, or places named in the Old Testament.

Nonetheless, in a twist of irony, Saudi Arabia launched Mr. Salibi on his linguistic exegesis with the government’s publication in 1977 of a comprehensive list of thousands of place names in the kingdom. The list sparked Mr. Salibi’s interest because he had found little material for the early period of a history of Arabia he had just published.

‘’I was simply searching for place-names of non-Arabic origin in west Arabia, when the evidence that the whole Bible land was here struck me in the face. Nearly all the biblical place-names were concentrated in an area about 600 km long by 200 km wide, comprising what are today Asir and the southern part of the Hijaz,’’ Mr. Salibi wrote.

The controversy over Mr. Salibi’s assertions has long died down. Lack of contact between Saudi Arabia and Israel which do not maintain diplomatic relations and the fact that the kingdom was and is hardly a tourist destination except for the Muslim pilgrimage to the holy cities of Mecca and Medina ensured that research was all but impossible.

That however may be changing. Saudi Arabia, in an effort to diversify its energy-dependent economy and develop alternative sources of income is preparing to become a tourist destination, boasting its numerous historic sites.

Relations between Israel and Saudi Arabia are changing as both countries find common ground in their hostility towards Iran and need to confront jihadist groups like the Islamic State. A retired Saudi general last month led a delegation of academics and businessmen in a rare, if not first public visit to Israel in a bid to stimulate debate about a 14-year old Saudi plan for Israeli-Arab peace.

The thawing of informal ties between Israel and Saudi Arabia is a far cry away from a situation in which Saudi Arabia will lift its ban on Israelis traveling to the kingdom. Saudi Arabia already in the 1990s rewrote visa regulations that effectively prevented Jews from visiting the kingdom. The Saudi labour ministry included in 2014 Judaism for the first time as an acceptable religion for migrant or foreign workers in the kingdom.

Writing in The Times of Israel two weeks after retired General Anwar Eshki’s visit, journalist Jessica Steinberg noted that a vibrant Jewish community had populated 3,000 years ago areas that today belong to Saudi Arabia and that the cities of Medina, Khaybar and Taymar hosted large numbers of Jews in the 6th and 7th century. Rabbi Benjamin of Tudela, Spain, a medieval Jewish traveller, visited some of those communities during a 12th century trip to what is today Israel. Rabbi Benjamin’s writings offer a demography of the communities he encountered.

A dying generation of elderly Saudis of Yemeni origin who live in towns and cities along Saudi Arabia’s border with Yemen still recall the days prior to the establishment of the State of Israel when Jews were part of their community.

Anticipating a day where Israelis might be able to visit Saudi Arabia, Ms. Steinberg offered a primer of five Jewish sites in the kingdom’s Khaybar valley and ancient city of Taymar that can be accessed virtually:

Khaybar, a date-growing valley and oasis with natural wells, that was home to a Jewish community and served as a stop on the incense trade route from Yemen to Syria and Lebanon. Although its 1,400-year-old cemetery is void of headstones, locals recall its Jewish history.

Khaybar Fortress, the 1,400-year-old Fortress of the Jews perched on a hill overlooking the oasis that was conquered by the Prophet Mohamed. His nephew and son-in-law, Ali, unlocked the gate of the fortress, letting the Prophet’s army enter and conquer it.

The Palace of the Jewish Tribe’s Head, also located in Khaybar, that was home to the Jewish tribe of Marhab famous for its gold and jewellery trade.

Tayma known as fortified Jewish city where travellers stopped at the oasis to visit the Al-Naslaa Rock Formation, one of the most photogenic petroglyphs, or rock art, depicting the life and times of ancient communities.

Bir Haddaj, a large well at the centre of Tayma that dates back to at least to the middle of the 6th century BCE. The well is mentioned in the Book of Isaiah as the place where the descendants of Ishmael’s son, Tema, lived: “Unto him that is thirsty bring ye water! The inhabitants of the land of Tema did meet the fugitive with his bread.”

Holding out the hope for closer ties between Israel and Saudi Arabia, Ms. Steinberg suggested that “the day may be drawing near” when “historical sites pertaining to the ancient Jewish experience” will be accessible.

As a result, Saudi tourism as much in the Middle East that is easily politicized could blow new life into the controversy over Mr. Salibi’s theory years after he passed away. Saudi fears notwithstanding, Israelis like their Saudi counterparts have no desire to rock the boat or even contemplate the theoretical possibility that that their forefathers may have made a mistake. Any argument that Israel might eye Saudi oil reserves is countered by the fact that Israel is becoming an oil producer in its own right.

Beyond the historical and academic value of settling the controversy sparked by Mr. Salibi, his theory offers rich material for the ultimate ‘what if’ book or great novel on the Middle East. Imagining ‘what if’ would unlikely lead to even more conflict in an already tortured region but could well offer new perspectives on how to resolve its multiple conflicts.

James M. Dorsey

Reproduced from:  http://en.reseauinternational.net/is-saudi-arabia-zion/

Ref: http://en.reseauinternational.net/is-saudi-arabia-zion/#ohJsiHlwzCAAQMZI.99

Monotheism was born in Arabia

There are indications that allow to deduce that it was precisely in the lands of the heart of Arabia, Al Hejaz, the Asir and neighboring Nejd, that the main monotheistic religions of the world began. 
Certain documentary and toponymic data lead us to believe that it was in these countries that the ancient Hebrew-Israelite religious currents and their historical derivatives, Judaism, Christianity, Islam and the ancient religion of Ethiopia originated.
The generally accepted belief holds that the events described in the biblical accounts occurred in the lands of the Near East, in the country called Palestine or Israel. In the same way it is usually accepted that the primitive city of Jerusalem, where King David and Solomon lived, whose age would be over 3,000 years, is the same population that was recognized as such during the Roman era, in later times and until the day from today.
Dissenting opinions have appeared lately on this subject.
Since the late twentieth century some authors noticed contradictions between the sites mentioned in the Jewish and Christian sacred books and the contemporary toponymy of Palestine and Israel
At the same time, certain researchers, in particular the Lebanese academic Kamal Salibi, found curious similarities between the names of the biblical sites of the Solomonic period and the geographic nomenclature of southwestern and central Arabia.
The pages that follow synthetically and partially expose some of the ideas exposed by Salibi, recently deceased, in his multiple publications and that lately has spread on his blog on the Internet.
The south-western and central region of Arabia, which includes Al Hejaz, the Assir and the Nejd, is vertebrated to the west by the imposing mountain escarpment of As-Surat. These territories extend along the western edge of Arabia, between Yemen and Tabuk. There, according to Salibi, would be located the native country of the biblical patriarchs.
The hypothesis is based on the repeated inconsistencies of the various Jewish and Christian religious books when referring to the geographical landscapes traversed by the prophets and the lack of archaeological evidence in Palestine, Syria, Iraq and Egypt that could confirm them.
Salibi and other authors came to the controversial conclusion that the biblical land of Abraham, David and Solomon was Arabia, and arrived at this hypothesis with different methods of analysis and research. In the same way they considered that the ancient city of Jerusalem, the one mentioned in the books, would also have been located in the Arabian peninsula.
Jerusalem is a Judeo-Christian name that refers to a city that has played a leading role in the religious history of the peoples of the Near East. According to some authors it means house of peace (jeru salem) or house of salem (god of the setting sun in Semitic religions). Another less orthodox interpretation holds that this toponymy can come from Yeru Shulaym, a compound word that it calls two ancient sites of Arabia (the Yeru and the Suleyman) .31 All these possible etymologies introduce uncertainties about the origin and location of the sacred city of religions monotheists.
According to Salibi, the toponymy of the Hebrew Bible refers to identifiable sites with place names in Arabia but which, in later times, would have to be reinterpreted as being located in Palestine, where centuries later the Hasmonean kingdom founded by Simon Maccabaeus would be established (last of the Maccabees) in the second century BC
A central proposition of the theory is that the geographical feature known as Jordan, which is generally taken as the Jordan River, would actually refer to the impressive escarpment of Western Arabia, the As Surat or Sarawat mountains. The area of ​​ancient Israel would be identified with the territories on both sides of the southern section of the escarpment, that is, the south of the Hejaz and the Asir, from Taif to the border with Yemen in the vicinity of the present cities of Abha and Khamis Mushayt. .
Salibi accepts that Palestine was inhabited by Hebrew-speakers, or that they spoke a language similar to Hebrew, from very early times, but considers that these peoples were not the same as those who arrived in that area in the middle of the first millennium a.e.c ..
Note: K. Salibi wrote in his blog: Zion was the city of David and subsequently the capital of Solomon and the kings of Judah who succeeded him, located in the mountainous heights of Qa'wat Siyan in the vicinity of Jerusalem, the Heights of Rijal Alma, to the south of the elevations that surround the current city of Abha. Jerusalem was located adjacent to this Zion in a northerly direction "Reference: http: // kamalsalibi. blogspot.com/2010/07/sundial-experiments-in-abha-saudi.html

Obituary

Kamal Salibi: Scholar and teacher regarded as one of the foremost historians of the Middle East

His respect for others' views was balanced by his scorn for hypocrisy: Salibi in 2004 ( )

Almost two decades ago, recording a BBC radio programme on Islam, I dropped by the American University of Beirut to interview an old Christian Protestant friend, Kamal Salibi. I asked him the same question I had already put to many Muslims: what happens after death? They, of course, assured me of their belief in an afterlife. Salibi, the great breaker of historical myth, did not share this conviction. "After life is nothing," he said, eyes cast slightly upwards, his voice almost shaking with indignation. "It is the end. We are dust."

I sincerely hope not. For Salibi, who died last Thursday after a stroke, was perhaps the finest historian of the modern – and the old – Middle East, fluent in ancient Hebrew as well as his native Arabic, his English flawless, a man whose work must surely shine into the future as it has illuminated the past. In one sense, his desire to deconstruct history, his almost Eliot-like precision in dissecting the false story of the Maronites of Lebanon, his highly mischievous – and linguistically brilliant – suggestion that the tales of the Old Testament took place in what is now Saudi Arabia, rather than Palestine, made him a revolutionary.

In one sense, his wish to live in a world unstifled by the texts of dictators made him one of the founders of the new "Arab awakening", 30 years before his time and scarcely 40 years after George Antonius first used the phrase as the title of his great work on the British betrayal of the Arab revolt. History, Salibi believed, should not only draw on original sources but should have a beginning and a middle. He was a "chronology" historian – such creatures are now back in fashion, thank God – who was also the first Lebanese writer to confront the country's civil war. His Crossroads to Civil War, Lebanon 1958-1976 was published less than 12 months after the 15-year conflict began.

Kamal Salibi never showed his age – he was born in 1929 in the Christian hill-town of Bhamdoun – perhaps because he so enjoyed the company of younger people, both his students at the American University and his later companions in the Jordanian Prince Hassan's Royal Institute for Inter-Faith Studies in Amman. He was a gentle, simple man whose respect for the views of others was balanced by his scorn for the world's hypocrisy. He often blamed the arrogance of Christians for their own fate in the region. How he would have loathed Lebanese Maronite Patriarch Beshara Rai's recent half-support for the Syrian President Bashar al-Assad in Paris, an echo of the widespread Christian suspicion that only strong dictators can protect Christian minorities from Islamist extremism. Salibi, like his contemporary, the late historian Yusuf Ibish, admired the Ottoman Empire and was contemptuous of the West's destruction of the Caliphate.

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"You often forget that one of the reasons you fought the First World War was to destroy the Ottoman Empire – but the Ottomans, in their last years, they wanted to be like the West," he told me one afternoon in his English department tutorial room, always the teacher, always mixing emotion with the kind of detail that obsessed him. "The Sultans and his closest advisers learned to paint. They learned to play the piano. The Ottomans wanted to be like you. So you destroyed them."

He was a brave man. When thesectarian civil war began to target the Christians still living in West Beirut, he chose to stay on in his beautifulOttoman home in the Hamra district, scarcely a hundred metres from the 1920s villa in which Ibish lived. When the Lebanese army broke apart and Christian units bombarded thedistrict, Salibi fled to a neighbour as shells destroyed his home. Ibish stayed downstairs in his own house, reading Hamlet as the upper floors burned. But when a local paper drew attention to the meaning of Salibi's name – in Arabic it means "crusaders" – he set off for Jordan to help establish Hassan's foundation.

He quickly became a confidante and adviser and was able to give me the prince's account of the final break with King Hussein when the latter decided that his brother Hassan should no longer be heir apparent. The prince had laid his pistol on the king's desk and invited his brother to shoot him if he believed he was plotting his overthrow or preparing for his demise. The king – who was to die of cancer a few weeks later after making his son Abdullah Crown Prince – handed Hassan an official letter renouncing his role as the next king; Hassan heard the contents read on the news over his car radio before having the chance to open the envelope.

Several years later, after Hassan had unwisely mapped out the future of Jordan in the Middle East at a conference in London, King Abdullah was understandably enraged. Hassan sought Salibi's advice. "I told him to go and see the king at once," Salibi recalled for me. "And I told him to tell the king that he was very, very sorry." Good advice from a wise man who never tried to enrage anyone. Indeed, he was the only visitor to come to my home and be warmly greeted by the family cat – a "scaredy-puss" if ever there was one, always fleeing from visitors – who would leap upon Salibi like a long-lost friend.

But Salibi made enemies aplenty when he published The Bible Came from Arabia, a long and detailed linguistic exegesis in which he claimed to have discovered – through long research into place names – that the lands of the Bible and of historical Israel were not in Palestine at all, but in Arabia; in fact, in that part of the peninsula which is now Saudi Arabia. Salibi was intensely proud of his achievement, refusing to be cowed by the storm of often abusive criticism which he provoked. Israel's self-appointed defenders in the West condemned Salibi for trying to delegitimise the Israeli state – it is surprising how long the fear of "delegitimisation" prevailed in Israel, as it still does today – while more prosaic writers treated the author with good-humoured contempt. A reviewer in the Jewish Chronicle referred to Professor Salibi as "Professor Sillybilly", a wonderful crack that I forbore to repeat to Salibi himself.

The Saudis, true to their fears that the Israelis might decide to take Salibi seriously and colonise the mountains of Sarawat (which Salibi believed was the real "Jordan valley" of the Bible), sent hundreds of bulldozers to dozens of Saudi villages which contained buildings or structures from Biblical antiquity. All these ancient abodes were crushed to rubble, Taliban-style, in order to safeguard the land of Muslim Arabia and the house of Saud. At the time of the Prophet there had indeed been Jewish communities in Arabia. Salibi – wisely or not – never abandoned his Arabian convictions. The last time I saw him, he was offering me a new edition of his Bible, with a laudatory new preface by an American academic, in return for a hitherto undiscovered Dumas novel about the Battle of Trafalgar.

The Druze leader, Walid Jumblatt, caught the nature of Salibi's work accurately when he wrote this week that Salibi sought through scientific-historical research "to overcome inherited beliefs which had taken on a sacred character". He was talking about the book which will still be read in a hundred years, A House of Many Mansions: The History of Lebanon Reconsidered in which he emphasised the place of Christian Maronites in the Middle East, insisting that they did not come to Lebanon as a persecuted minority – one of the stories which Lebanese often repeat to account for the cluster of Maronite towns in the high mountains around Bcharre. The predicament of the Christians of Lebanon had always fascinated him – his PhD at SOAS, under the supervision of Bernard Lewis, was entitled "Maronite Historians and Lebanon's Medieval History" – and was also the subject of his greatest despair.

"I like to give my students," he told a reporter four years ago, "a passage from an historical document and ask them: 'What does it say?' Also, 'What does it not say?'...Correct reading, it used to work wonders." It still does. Which is why, for Salibi, the end can not be dust.

Kamal Sulieman Salibi, historian and teacher: born Bhamdoun, Lebanon 2 May 1929; died Beirut 1 September 2011.

Robert Fisk 

@indyvoices 

Wednesday 7 September 2011 00:00 

The Independent Online

The Koranic Jesus

Kamal Salibi

This Koranic information concerning the 'Jesus' who was Issa can be distilled into a coherent narrative. Originally, this narrative relates, the people of Israel were organized into a religious community by Moses, who gave them the Torah.  Later, two other apostles were sent to them, first Ezra, then Issa. The followers of the first became the Jews; the followers of the second the Nazarene Christians; and each of these two communities came to revere its special apostle as a son of God.  Among some 'Nazarenes' (here the Christians in general) Jesus even came to be worshipped as God himself. Born of a virgin, Issa was a miraculous being whose human person was a living manifestation of the Holy Spirit and the divine kalimah, or prophetic 'word'. He performed miracles, and was able to raise the dead back to life. As a man, he was a consecrated or ordained person, which implies an association with priesthood. While he accepted the essence of the Mosaic law, he made a point of alleviating some of its rigour in his own preaching, which was the Gospel. In life, he was surrounded by a select group of followers called al-Hawariyyun, apparently because they wore special white robes.  The Jews, however, opposed his mission and scoffed at his miracles, and there was a claim among them that they actually succeeded in putting him to death, either by crucifixion or in some other manner. There were even Christians who accepted this claim. The person who was really crucified, however, was not Issa himself but someone else with whom his identity was confused. The real Issa was assumed to heaven, regardless of whether or not he died a natural human death. Before leaving the earth, he prophesied the coming of another apostle called Ahmad. Ultimately, Issa was to return to life, to pass the final judgement on mankind on the day of the Resurrection. 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 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 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.

* See al-Rawd al-Mi'tar fi khabar al-aqtar, ed. Ihsan Abbas (Beirut, 1984), p. 573.)

From; "Who was Jesus?". Kamal Salibi

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)

About Kamal Salibi, deconstructing official religious history in the Middle East

• by Robert Fisk 
  

"Almost two decades ago, recording a BBC radio programme on Islam, I dropped by the American University of Beirut to interview an old Christian Protestant friend, Kamal Salibi. I asked him the same question I had already put to many Muslims: what happens after death? They, of course, assured me of their belief in an afterlife. Salibi, the great breaker of historical myth, did not share this conviction. "After life is nothing," he said, eyes cast slightly upwards, his voice almost shaking with indignation. "It is the end. We are dust."

I sincerely hope not. For Salibi, who died last Thursday after a stroke, was perhaps the finest historian of the modern – and the old – Middle East, fluent in ancient Hebrew as well as his native Arabic, his English flawless, a man whose work must surely shine into the future as it has illuminated the past. In one sense, his desire to deconstruct history, his almost Eliot-like precision in dissecting the false story of the Maronites of Lebanon, his highly mischievous – and linguistically brilliant – suggestion that the tales of the Old Testament took place in what is now Saudi Arabia, rather than Palestine, made him a revolutionary.

In one sense, his wish to live in a world unstifled by the texts of dictators made him one of the founders of the new "Arab awakening", 30 years before his time and scarcely 40 years after George Antonius first used the phrase as the title of his great work on the British betrayal of the Arab revolt. History, Salibi believed, should not only draw on original sources but should have a beginning and a middle. He was a "chronology" historian – such creatures are now back in fashion, thank God – who was also the first Lebanese writer to confront the country's civil war. His Crossroads to Civil War, Lebanon 1958-1976 was published less than 12 months after the 15-year conflict began."

Reproduced from:   http://www.independent.co.uk/news/obituaries/kamal-salibi-scholar-and-teacher-regarded-as-one-of-the-foremost-historians-of-the-middle-east-2350184.html

Kamal Salibi, a revolutionary thinker

From Tom Segev

Kamal Salibi was Lebanon's foremost historian. He described Lebanese society as a mosaic of myths, and he scrutinized each myth critically. Many praised not only his analytic powers, but also his courage.
Salibi was born in 1929 to a Greek Orthodox family which later joined the Anglican Church. He studied and lectured at the American University of Beirut. He completed his doctorate in London, under the prominent Near Eastern Studies expert Bernard Lewis. Now associated with conservative Zionism, Lewis is probably not so proud of his student any more: In 1982, as the Israel Defense Forces was invading Beirut, Salibi was working on the galley proofs of a book titled "The Bible Came from Arabia."
Jews praying at the Western Wall in Jerusalem's Old City, December 25, 2009Emil Salman
It apparently all began when Salibi perused a gazetteer's description of the Arabian Peninsula and noticed that local settlements had names resembling biblical place names. Following linguistic, archaeological and geographic research, including field surveys, Salibi concluded that the biblical Land of Israel is actually located in the southern part of the Arabian Peninsula - and not south of Lebanon, as people now believe. Nor is ancient Lebanon the same place as modern Lebanon; it, too, was in the southern Arabian Peninsula, as was David's Kingdom and Jerusalem. The biblical Jordan River is not actually a river, but rather a mountain slope located in the Asir belt of Saudi Arabia, Salibi concluded.
Salibi's book was originally published in Germany, and in 1985 it was distributed by a prestigious London publisher, Jonathan Cape. Naturally, the theory provoked a number of media headlines, and several scientific journals published academic articles refuting it. Now, the theory is discussed mainly online.
Salibi did not repudiate biblical stories themselves; instead, he contended that conventional readings of them were founded on a chain of errors. He believed that the Hebrews came from the Arabian Peninsula. They migrated to what is now known as Eretz Israel, and they established the Hasmonean kingdom here. When they left Arabia, they took their legends with them, written in Hebrew. In their new land, the immigrants stopped using Hebrew and took up Aramaic. The language switch distorted their stories, creating a mistaken version which held that the events had occured in the land now known as Eretz Israel.
Few fields of study are more political than the archaeology of the Land of Israel. Starting in the 19th century, Christian archaeologists from Europe and the United States came here to find evidence of biblical stories. And as modern Zionism took hold, it too made efforts to authenticate the Old Testament. Naturally, Arab archaeologists tried to do the opposite. The Lebanese historian's attempt to remove the people of Israel from the Land of Israel is not essentially different from efforts by the State of Israel to dig up parchments, clay fragments or stone inscriptions to try and prove that the Jewish people are indeed originally from Eretz Israel.
This competition represents an integral part of the Israeli-Arab conflict. For this reason, it would appear that archaeologists' jobs are guaranteed for the time being, even though after decades of searching, not a single biblical story has been verified - not Genesis, not the story of Abraham or Moses, not the Exodus from Egypt, not the tales of King David.
Salibi stressed that his own theory warrants consideration so long as no proof is found contradicting it, especially since there are contradictions in the Bible itself, and Israeli archaeologists have a wont for arguing about where biblical places are located. On this note, Salibi ridiculed the conventional reading of the inscription of Mesha.
Mesha was a Moabite king, and the memorial he built to commemorate his victory over the Kingdom of Israel was found in 1868, east of the Dead Sea. This was interpreted as verification of one of the Bible's stories. The inscription is incomplete, and its language necessitates interpretation and supplements. For instance, the words "south of Rabin," were conventionally taken to mean "many days." Salibi disputed this interpretation, arguing that the word in question, yemen, meant to the south, and that the word rabin referred to a village not far from Mecca where, he believed, the biblical Moab was located. Under this interpretation, Mesha fled the Arabian village and then established a new kingdom.
Salibi recently passed away. His website suggests he had many admirers.
read more: http://www.haaretz.com/israel-news/the-makings-of-history-myths-and-facts-1.384829

http://www.haaretz.com/israel-news/the-makings-of-history-myths-and-facts-1.384829