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

The bible came from Arabia,

Jesus, son of Mary (Issa, son of Marion) lived in the VI century b.c. and died near Medina where his grave was found and described. His teachings were followed during the following centuries by a christian sect called "the nazarens" who settled in west Arabia. In his many books Salibi explains his theory based on real documents.
D.A.

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

Geography
Deserts, prayers and oil

The large Arabian peninsula, the homeland of Muhammad, the origin of Islam, is a country of inordinate geographical dimensions. It has an area of ​​2,250,000 km2. The 1,800 kilometers that separate its constituted by huge expanses of arid rocky and sandy land, without rivers or forests.

The territory is a succession of desolate and dry desert landscapes. In summer the temperature of the air can exceed 50 degrees and the soil gets so hot at noon that you could boil the water in the open air of the rocks exposed to the sun.

There are places in Arabia such as Rub'al Khali, with 600,000 km2, where pluviometers installed more than 50 years ago, have never registered a rain and the humidity of the air drops to less than 10%. But the Rub'al Khali is not the only sand desert, to the north is the Great Nafud, in the center of the peninsula, the Dahna, and to the east the dune fields of the Jafurah.

The rest of the country is also arid but its soils are stony or saline.

There is a mountainous area to the west that reaches more than 2,000 meters and is a little more humid (300 to 400 mm per year). It is a relief sloping gently to the east and abruptly steep to the west. From there come the great wadis that infiltrate or evaporate on the way to the east, and short and steep water courses to the west. Below the great escarpment is the tihama, a very hot and arid coastal plain. There are several important cities such as the port of Jeda and the religious city of Mecca. The region is called Hejaz.

In the wavy reliefs that descend to the east (Najd) the climate becomes more arid, desert areas interrupted by several oases. In one of them is the city of Riyadh, capital of the kingdom.

To the east, on the Gulf coast, are the largest hydrocarbon deposits in the world. There are also several important cities, Damman, Hofuf, the ports of Jubayl and Ras Tanura, among others.

Adaptation to aridity conditions

Human beings have a great capacity to adapt to the most inhospitable environments, even in conditions of extreme dryness and excessive heat.

From this point of view, the people who inhabit the Arabian desert or Bedouin are an admirable example. They have managed to use the groundwater, developed crops that tolerate dryness, salinity and extreme heat, and selected domestic animals perfectly adapted to the difficult conditions of the desert.

The Bedouins have managed to survive, and even lead a prosperous and pleasant life, in a place that at first sight seems hostile and unwelcoming. Its existence takes place between the houses of the oasis villages, under the shade of date palms, where they plant some crops using irrigation, and the transhumant grazing of camels and goats that allow them to obtain milk and meat for their food. Life in the desert is inspiring. The hot sun and the midday heat force you to carry out work tasks early in the morning, or in the evening. The starry nights are clear and clear, allowing to decipher the stellar configurations even in their smallest details.

When the moon rises the desert lights up and conditions for social and religious life are given. The new moon indicates the beginning of a new month and the fourth the next termination. For this reason the lunar phases are so important in the calendar of the Arab peoples, and the image of the crescent moon as a symbol of Islam has been imposed. The crescent moon appears on national flags and shields, and even the "Red Cross" itself has adapted to become "the Red Crescent Moon" in all Muslim nations.

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

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)

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