Secrets of the Bible People

206 Pages·1988·8.178 MB·English

by  Kamal Salibi

I
SECRETS OF
THE BIBLE PEOPLE
KAMAL SALIBI
KAMAL SALIBI
SECRETS OF
THE BIBLE PEOPLE
SAQI
British Library Cataloguing-in-Publication Data
A catalogue record for this book is available from the
British Library
ISBN 0 86356 546 8
© Kamal Salibi, 1988 & 2004
First published 1988 by Saqi Books
This edition published 2004 by Saqi Books
SAQI
26 Westbourne Grove
London W2 5RH
www.saqibooks.com
Contents
List of Maps 6
Key to Hebrew and Arabic Transliteration 7
Common Consonantal Transformations 8
Preface 9
Introduction: Defining the Objective 21
1. Did Adam Exist? 27
2. The Mystery of Noah 45
3. The Tower of Babel 63
4. The Abrams Who Were Not Abraham 75
5. The Secret of the House of Abraham 95
6. Joseph and his Egypt 107
7. The Wandering Aramean 127
8. The Search for the Historical Moses 139
9. The Man who Saw It Happen 163
10. A Prophet from Oman 177
Appendix: Geography of the Exodus 191
Index 197
Maps
The Middle East Today 20
Setting of the Eden Myths 28
The Noah Migration 46
The Migration ‘From the East’ 64
The Geography of thejoseph Story 108
Wandering Arameans 128
The Exodus and Wanderings of the 140
Hebrew Israelites in West Arabia
Geography of the Book ofJ onah 178
Key to Hebrew and Arabic Transliteration
Hebrew Arabic Technical Alternative
Transliteration Transliteration
N ’ (glottal stop) ’ (omitted at beginning
of words)
«( b
mm
a E g (Arabic g) j (in Arabic)
a d d
J
h h
n a
A w w
j z
E h (voiceless pharyngeal h
3
fricative)
I) Ja t (t as in ‘toy’)
j y y
k k
l
l J 1
^
(* m m
O
u n n
u
O" s (as in ‘see’) s

d t ‘ (voiced pharyngeal
vj
fricative)
Cf p (Arabic p) p or f (Hebrew)
f (Arabic)
u«» s (as in ‘saw’) s
UK a q (voiceless uvular q
stop)
j r r
j
tj. OA" s (sh as in ‘sheep’) sh
L>“ s (as in ‘see’) s
q
t (as in ‘tea’) t
3
t (th as in‘thaw’) th
h (voiceless uvular kh
fricative)
a d (th as in ‘them’) dh
Jo, z (voiced alveolar ?, dh
fricative)
L>=» d (voiced alveolar d,dh
stop)
t g (voiced uvular gh
fricative)
Common Consonantal Transformations
Hebrew Arabic
’ (glottal stop) w; y
g g; q
d d; z
h (as feminine suffix) t (normally silent)
w ’ (glottal stop); y
z d; s; z; d
h h
t t
y ’ (glottal stop); w
k q
m n
n m
s; s; sometimes z
‘ (voiced pharyngeal fricative) g
s d; z; z; sometimes s
q g; g;k
s s; t
s s; sometimes s
t t; s; t
Note: In reproducing Arabic names consonantally, I have normally omitted the
transliteration of the feminine suffix, and also the semi-vowels w and y where they
feature only as vowels. In some cases, however, these Arabic characters have been
transliterated for closer comparison between the Arabic and Biblical forms of the
same name. In The Bible Came from Arabia, 1 transliterated the Hebrew D as s, and
the as s, the common practice being the reverse. I have kept my own unorthodox
transliteration of the two characters in the present book for consistency.
Preface
As such a vital part of the heritage of the modern world, the Hebrew
Bible deserves to be properly understood. This is why, during the
last two centuries, it has been the subject of extensive critical study
by Christian and Jewish scholars, many of them practising believers
of deep religious conviction, eager to understand the origins of their
faith. At the hands of these scholars, the Hebrew text of the Bible
has been subjected to thorough investigation, and various theories
concerning the composition of its different parts have been advanced.
Attempts were also made to study the Bible texts in the light of
history in order to gain a better understanding of their narrative,
devotional and doctrinal contents. Where the stories of the Bible are
concerned it is today generally conceded that some involve chronicled
or telescoped history, while others are only tangentially historical,
preserving a rich fund of ancient myth and legend — the body of
immemorial lore which forms the pagan background of Judaism and
ultimately of Christianity.
To this extent the present book, wdiich examines some of the
better known Bible stories, is in the tradition of modern Biblical
criticism, but with one important difference. While Biblical scholars
today generally adhere to the traditional belief that the land of the
Hebrew Bible was Palestine, the present book proceeds on the
assumption that this land was actually in peninsular Arabia. This
concept of Biblical geography is not entirely new. A number of
references to Arabia in the Bible texts are so obvious that they can
hardly pass unnoticed. It has always been known, for example, that
9
Secrets of the Bible People
the Biblical land of Sheba is present-day Yemen, and that the valley
of Hadramut, which lies there, still carries the name of Biblical
Hazermaveth in an Arabicized form. It has long been speculated that
the Y emen could have been the original Arabian setting of the Biblical
story ofjob. In the nineteenth century many scholars were convinced
that Arabia was much more closely connected with the Bible than
was commonly thought. These scholars had read early Arabic
literature where a number of intriguing references to the Israelites
as an ancient West Arabian people are to be found. In 1864 the great
orientalist Reinhart Dozy published a book called The Israelites of
Mecca in David’s Time, in which he suggested that the lost Israelite
tribe of Simeon was already firmly established in the West Arabian
land of the Hijaz by King David’s time. Even before the time of
Dozy, there was widespread conviction among scholars that the
Biblical Israelites were originally Arabian desert tribes who later
came to settle in Palestine.
Today Biblical scholars scoff at the idea that the Hebrew Bible
could have had much connection with Arabia beyond the undeniable
fact that the ancient Israelites had a certain familiarity with the
peninsula. When I first came forward with the proposition that the
West Arabian highlands, rather than Palestine, were the original land
of the Bible and the setting of its entire history (The Bible Came from
Arabia, London, Jonathan Cape, 1985; Pan Books, 1987), my work
was condemned, in the wwds of Professor George Mendenhall,
formerly of the University of Michigan, as ‘a quixotic absurdity that
cannot be taken seriously’, and ‘an extreme example of the misuse
of specialized learning, based on nineteenth-century ideas that have
long ago been proved false’. Yet were these ideas ever really proved
false? And if so, how? Moreover, what if some major archaeological
discovery, in Arabia or in Palestine, should one day prove these
ideas — and my own, more extreme thesis — to be correct?
In the field of learning, as I see it, there is no orthodoxy and
heresy, but only the search, involving reasoned conjecture tested
against evidence. Until such time as proper evidence is brought to
prove beyond doubt that Biblical history ran its course in Palestine,
I shall continue to search for it in Arabia, not because I want it to
be there, but because I remain fully convinced by reason and evidence
that its dramas were played out there. Hence I venture to write a
new book on the subject. Time may ultimately prove my thesis
10
Preface
correct in its essence and perhaps even in most of its details, or it
may prove to be entirely wrong. If it turns out to be correct, then
many an accepted concept of the ancient history of the Near East
will have to undergo a radical change. If the thesis turns out to be
incorrect, it will still have served a useful purpose: that of stirring
modern scholarship in the field to rethink its basic position — an
exercise which is always in order. The plain fact is that in our own
century Biblical scholars and historians of the ancient Near East have
come to form a closed circle which resents unsolicited intrusions
into the field. They have built an edifice based on foundations which
are, in most cases, assumptions which they attempt to pass for facts,
while refusing any radical re-examination of the subject matter. To
any attempt at such re-examination, they react in anger, defending
the edifice they have constructed and turned into a citadel and hurling
condemnations at their critics from its ramparts. This does not imply
that all their theories and hypotheses are necessarily incorrect. In the
final analysis they may turn out to be right on many counts.
However, their insecurity in the citadel, where they have chosen to
lock themselves, is paramount, as they refuse to accept in good grace
external challenges which may be right or wrong.
For readers who have not read my previous book, The Bible Came
from Arabia, it would be useful to summarize its thesis here. While
undertaking an etymological study of Arabian place names, I was
struck by what seemed to be a high concentration of Biblical place
names in the West Arabian territory of Asir bordering the Red Sea,
between the city of Taif and northern Yemen. Upon closer scrutiny,
I discovered that the coordinates of the towns and villages in the
area bearing Biblical names conform to a stunning degree to the
coordinates given to the places mentioned by the same names in the
Bible — a far more telling fact than the actual existence of the names.
When I went back to the massive body of scholarly literature on
Biblical geography to check my findings against it, I found this
literature more confusing than illuminating. First, after more than
a century of research, scholars have only found a handful of Biblical
place names which actually survive in a recognizable form in
Palestine. Second, many of the Palestinian places which have come
to be known by Biblical names have been given these names, either
anciently or recently, by itinerant pilgrims, or by scholars or
archaeologists who took them, on no conclusive evidence, to be
n