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Theme Changer

 Topic: "most of the Arabian peninsula prior to Islam was Jewish"

 (Read 1632 times)
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  • "most of the Arabian peninsula prior to Islam was Jewish"
     OP - July 01, 2014, 01:13 PM

    Just come across a fascinating article!

    http://origins-of-christianity.blogspot.co.uk/2014/06/our-answers-are-in-lost-history-on.html

    Quote
    The chronology of Chrestianity and Christianity (as outlined supra) changes the relationship between the Roman Empire and Arabia, in particular as regards the Arab Conquests and the appearance of Islam. Of potential significance to me is how the first Arab attempt to take Iran failed and later succeeded only with the support of a mysterious party in Mesopotamia; I would suppose that this was the kingdom known earlier as Adiabene.

    It is often not realised how most of the Arabian peninsula prior to Islam was Jewish; the south was a Jewish kingdom and a number of important tribes to the north had converted. An important part of the authority held by Izates and his descendants was control over the sites of the Jewish Patriarchs, especially Noah. My feeling is that the lost history of this period contains the people and events which led to the Arab Conquests, Islam and the Sunni/Shia divide.


    When you are a Bear of Very Little Brain, and you Think of Things, you find sometimes that a Thing which seemed very Thingish inside you is quite different when it gets out into the open and has other people looking at it.


    A.A. Milne,

    "We cannot slaughter each other out of the human impasse"
  • "most of the Arabian peninsula prior to Islam was Jewish"
     Reply #1 - July 01, 2014, 04:48 PM

    That article is complete nonsense in my view ... total crackpot.

    But it is true that South Arabia was ruled by a Jewish kingdom for several centuries prior to Islam, and that the Northern regions had many Jews living there.  One of the very first inscriptions in Arabic

    The Hijaz itself does not seem to have had any traces of Jews at the time of Mohammed.  There is a recent article about this subject by Robert Hoyland.

    Interestingly this is one of the major problems for interpreting the Qur'an's origins in a Hijazi context.  The Qur'an itself was clearly directed at a society filled to the brim with Jews and Christians.  Its religious language and its religious references are entirely Christian (primarily Syriac) and Jewish.  It has virtually nothing to say about paganism.  And thus it is very hard to attribute its genesis to the Hijaz; if some portion of its contents does stem from the Hijaz, it was either very Northern parts or it was superimposed very late, long after Mohammed's death.

    Notably, the first Arabic script inscriptions we have are all from the Sixth Century AD, and they are Christian inscriptions which are well North of the Hijaz.  Robert Hoyland again has an article about this subject in the book "The Qur'an In Its Historical Context."  Quoting:

    "The sixth-century Usays, Harran and Nebo Arabic inscriptions are all from the
    former Nabataean sphere of influence, as are the second to fourth-century Avdat,
    Hegra and Nemara Arabic inscriptions. In addition to this we can throw into the
    equation two plausibly Arabic texts written in Hismaic script from the Madaba
    area (ca. first to third century),16 the Arabic legal phraseology evident in the first
    and second-century Nabataean papyri from the southern Dead Sea region,17 the
    predominantly Arabic nature of the toponyms in the sixth-century Petra papyri,18
    and the aforementioned observations by Epiphanius of Salamis and Jerome about
    Arabic being spoken at Petra and Elusa."
  • "most of the Arabian peninsula prior to Islam was Jewish"
     Reply #2 - July 01, 2014, 04:52 PM


    The Hijaz itself does not seem to have had any traces of Jews at the time of Mohammed.  There is a recent article about this subject by Robert Hoyland.



    I didn't think there was any evidence that the Hijaz region had any people in it at all. There is no mention of a city called Mecca in any sources and no archaeological evidence of any other towns from this period there.
  • "most of the Arabian peninsula prior to Islam was Jewish"
     Reply #3 - July 01, 2014, 05:09 PM

    The Hijaz certainly had people, just very few.  Mecca seems to have been a miniscule town until well after Mohammed (whether it was called "Mecca" is another subject -- I do not believe the Qur'an makes any reference to Mecca as we know it).

    I believe this is one reason why it was so suitable as the location for the emerging religion's history:  It was an almost completely blank canvas that you could mythologize about as you wanted.

    Hoyland's article on "Jewish" inscriptions in the Hijaz, for example, finds that there were a few of them, but very few relative to what one might expect for a region allegedly jam-packed with Jews (who Mohammed allied with/fought against at varying time).
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