Sheba

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144 WESTERN ARABIA AND THE SHEBA-MENELIK CYCLE Rabin found so many Hebrewisms. Salibi is apparently not aware of Rabin’s work. In 1985, Salibi published his initial findings as The Bible Came from Arabia, suggesting that it was likely that the events of the Hebrew Bible, until the Babylonian captivity, took place in western Arabia. Salibi suggested that one or more of the tribes that eventually became known as the Hebrew originated in the volcanic area of northern Yemen and then controlled a major East-West trade route across central Arabia. There they came into conflict with an Egyptian colony based in Wadi Bishah in western Arabia. The Egyptians enslaved the Hebrew, who, led by Moses in the Exodus, eventually reached the area just north of Mecca where they united with an Aramean people into “all Israel.” The suggestion of the Israelite identity belonging to Joshua’s time matches Noth’s 1930 hypothesis. Salibi placed the original homeland of six of the “lost” ten tribes (Reuben, Simeon, Levi, Dan, Gad, and Issachar) in the Hijaz area around Jeddah and Mecca. Significantly his location for the tribe of Judah, eponymous to the southern Israelite state, was on the escarpment and wadis south of Taif. The tribe of Benjamin (bn ymn) was also assigned the same area, not surprisingly considering that the name means Son of the South. The Queen of Sheba, ruler of Yemen, was later referred to as the Queen of the South. After consolidating their strength the Israelites expanded southward under Saul and then under David and Solomon until they had overrun much of the territory where their ancestors had originally been enslaved. The southern advance took them to the frontier of Sheba (Sabaea), and traditions say that Solomon proceeded further south to overrun Yemen itself. As mentioned earlier, archaeologists had already expressed exasperation over the lack of evidence supporting the Old Testament. However none of these critics questioned the Masoretes’ work in vocalizing place names that would occasionally match the locations where (e.g. Ararat) they were writing. Salibi challenged these assumptions, insisting that the Masoretes were geographically and historically biased towards their own homelands, and he insisted the unvocalized Hebrew text be reexamined. He reasoned that the word H-yrdn, translated in the Hebrew Bible as the River Jordan, was not a river at all but the Tehama mountain ridge that rises sharply from the Red Sea coastal plain. He placed Old Jerusalem, the City of Zion, and the City of David at separate locations, Jerusalem near An Nimas south of Taif, and stated that the “Egypt” and
QUEEN OF SHEBA AND BIBLICAL SCHOLARSHIP 145 “Ethiopia” of the Old Testament mostly did not refer to those countries at all but to two cities named Msrm and Kws (Cush/Kush). These were all situated in the highland area controlling trade routes from Yemen to the north. Salibi had other fascinating suggestions. He identified Al Junaynah as the Garden of Eden, hypothesizing that it was a center for a priesthood known as krbym (Cherubim), a name reminiscent of the Sabaean mkrbm priest-kings. As for Sabaea itself, he placed the city of Sheba at Khamis Mushait in Asir, quite far away from Marib, the later capital. And the wadi blocked by lava near Jizan? In Salibi’s opinion it was the probable site for Sodom and Gomorrah, cities believed to have been overwhelmed by a volcanic eruption. The story of Queen Esther has never been seriously considered by biblical scholars because it was assumed to have been set in the Persian imperial court, which has no record of a Jewish queen. Salibi suggested that the story was instead centered not in the Persian imperial capital but in the Taima region of western Arabia. In a letter to this writer, 31 March 1989, he explained: Right now, I am studying the extremely problematical books of Esther and Daniel, which have the same geographical and historical setting. While I remain in no position to say anything conclusive about them, one thing seems to me already clear. The Kings (Ahasuerus in Esther, and the enigmatic Darius son of Ahaurus the Mede in Daniel) were not Persian emperors, but viceroys in charge of an Arabian province of the Persian empire centering around Taima, in the northern Hijaz, with its fortress (h-byrh) capital at a Susa, which is today Shusha, a short distance south of Taima. It was this province which comprised 127 districts.…The satrapies of the Persian empire never number more than about 30, from an original of about 20. Between Hadiyya and Kuthah (hdw to kws in Esther 1:1 – translated in the Old Testament as “India to Ethiopia”) in Saudi Arabia the number of recognized imarat (traditional tribal districts), at present, is about 130. Salibi’s ideas are indubitably attractive, because if they are accepted, the events narrated in the Hebrew Bible become comprehensible. For anyone who has studied the economic geography of the sort of state Solomon ruled, Old Testament maps are very unsatisfactory. Blobs of territory are marked “Moab,” “Samaria,” or “Judah,” with no logical economic or geographical explanation of how such states sustained themselves. Salibi’s determination of ancient Israel and Judah as states controlling the trade routes of western Arabia makes more sense.
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Queen of Sheba and Biblical Scholar
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QUEEN OF SHEBA AND BIBLICAL SCHOLAR
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CHAPTER ONE Sheba, Zionism, and the
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CHAPTER TWO The Search for Evidence
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CHAPTER THREE Writing the Old Testa
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Sheba

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