Sheba

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WESTERN ARABIA AND THE SHEBA-MENELIK CYCLE
ignorant. Hammond, who used “contrary to fact”, “unscholarly in the
extreme,” and “presumptuous,” to describe Salibi’s work, revealed
lamentable linguistic knowledge and ignorance of Chaim Rabin’s work,
implying that Arabia in ancient times possessed only two languages:
If Hebrew was not the language of the “Hebrews,” but a language
“widely spoken in western Arabia” why are there differences between it
and Arabic, not to mention, in earlier times between it and both northern
and southern Arabic?
Few scholars can compare with Shahid, whose knowledge covers both the
Ethiopian and Arabian past, and there are almost none who can add the
Hebrew past to encompass all three. Salibi is unusual, for as a Christian
Arab his world view of the past is not cut off at the Jordanian border like
his Western contemporaries. His scenario of a Hebrew past connected to
the Arabian peninsula should not have been rejected out of hand,
particularly when leading archaeologists such as Kenyon had already
shown that an ancient Hebrew presence on the lines of the Old Testament
was most unlikely. Salibi later stated:
Biblical scholars and historians of the ancient Middle East have come to
form a closed circle, which resents unsolicited intrusion 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.
In the November 1991 issue of the International Journal of Mideast Studies,
Professor John Joseph of Franklin and Marshall College, Lancaster,
Pennsylvania, commenting on Philip Hammond’s 1990 review of Salibi’s
work, wrote:
We owe it to ourselves as well as to him [Salibi] .… to scrutinize his
thesis and the mass of detailed evidence that he has carefully gathered to
defend it ….Five years after the publication of this controversial book
[The Bible Came From Arabia], perhaps MESA [Middle East Studies
Association of North America] should devote a special issue its Bulletin,
if not of IJMES [International Journal of Mideast Studies], to an expert
and fair evaluation of Kamal Salibi’s arguments and approach. In the
meantime, perhaps Hammond would enlighten those of us who do not
have the expertise to judge for ourselves, but have students to teach and
seminars to conduct, what at least some of the most “blatant” errors are
that he seems to have found throughout the book and correct them.