Saturday, October 2, 2010

ملاحظات بشأن التراجع المفترض للدور المسيحي في العالم العربي


كمال الصليبي

يعزّ عليّ كثيراً، كوني عربياً أنتسب إلى المسيحية، وفي مؤتمر ترعاه مؤسسة لبنانية محسوبة على المسيحيين، أن أكون الشخص الذي اختير ليطرح موضوعاً درجت تسميته بتراجع الدور المسيحي في لبنان، أو في المشرق العربي، أو في عالم العرب عموماً، أو مهما يكن الأمر. وكأن المسيحيين في ديارنا ليسوا سوى بقية باقية من شعب منقرض: بقية تنتظر دورها لتنزلق في متاهات الزوال. إن مجرد طرح هذا الموضوع من قبل العرب المسيحيين هو في رأيي افتراض في غير محلّه لأنه يتجاهل حقائق تاريخية وحضارية ووجودية ولأنه يعني، ضمنا، أن العربي المسيحي لا يعتبر نفسه عربيا بكامل معنى الكلمة لمجرد وجوده حيث هو، مهما كان موقف العربي الآخر منه.
الموضوع الذي يجب أن يُطرح ليس هذا، بل موضوع آخر أكثر منه خطورة. وهو سؤال يلزم طرحه ليس فقط في البلاد العربية حيث للعرب المسيحيين وجود، بل أيضاً في تلك البلاد التي ليس لهم فيها وجود أو حضور دائم، سواء في مشارق بلادنا أو في مغاربها. هذا السؤال البالغ الأهمية يمكن إيجازه كالآتي: ما هو مصير العرب كشعب تاريخي في حال زوال النصارى من بينهم، مع الأخذ بالاعتبار أن مثل هذا الزوال للنصارى العرب، في صورة أو أخرى، أمر يمكن تخيّله؟ الذي سيحدث هو أن العرب لن يبقوا عرباً، في حال زوال النصارى مما يُطلق عليه حتى الآن اسم العالم العربي. لن يبقى العرب عرباً على أرضهم التاريخية. بل ان الأمر يتخطى ذلك بكثير ويتجاوزه. مع مثل هذا الزوال المفترض للنصرانية العربية، لن يكون هناك شيء في العالم اسمه عرب بالمعنى الكياني التاريخي الوجودي المطلق ودون تحفظ. وبعبارة أخرى، لن يبقى هناك في أي مكان من العالم كينونة عربية قائمة بذاتها لا تتصف إلا بعروبتها، ولا يختلط أمرها بالإسلام.
النصرانية في ديار العرب جاءت سابقة للإسلام بحوالى ستة قرون، مما يجعل منها أصلاً وليس فرعاً للكينونة العربية التاريخية، على عكس الرأي السائد بين العامة من النصارى والمسلمين والقائل بأن العروبة مرتبطة أصلا بالإسلام. والواقع ان للمسيحية في تاريخ العرب على مر العصور دوراً واضحاً وجلياً. قرون من الحروب بين المسلمين والروم، ثم بين المسلمين والفرنجة وإلى ما ذلك، لم تؤثر في هذا الدور ولا هي تمكنت من إلغائه أو تحجيمه.
من نصارى ما قبل الإسلام من كان على رأس شعراء الجاهلية الذين هذّبوا لهجات لغة الأعراب وصقلوها في ما نظموا من روائع الشعر، فخلقوا بذلك اللغة العربية الفصحى، واضعين الأسس الأولى لتراثها المستمر الذي يبقى حتى هذا اليوم المفخرة التي يجتمع حولها مجمل العرب.
جميع ممالك العرب وإماراتهم، في زمن ما قبل الإسلام، كان نصرانياً، إن لم يكن يهودياً. ثم جاء الإسلام فحلّ مكان النصرانية باستئثاره بالطليعة العربية ومُثلها من مروءة وفروسية وشهامة، فكلل بذلك نجاحه التاريخي الباهر.
هذا النجاح كان ظاهرة تاريخية ما زال العرب المسيحيون وغيرهم في حيرة من أمرها حتى يومنا هذا. الإسلام، تاريخياً، استأثر بالعروبة وتملكها، وهو ما زال حتى اليوم مرتبطاً ارتباطاً وثيقاً ومتبادلاً مع هذا الإرث الأصيل. أما آن الأوان لنا، نحن العرب النصارى الذين ما زلنا نعتز بعروبتنا، أن نقول، بكل صدق مع أنفسنا: مضى ما مضى؟ أمِنَ الضروري أن نجعل من الأمور التاريخية التي وصفها أحد رواد العالم الحديث جورج فورد بكونها Bunk، أي هراء، ما يعكر صفو عيشنا الجميل مع رهطنا أو ربعنا العربي على تنوعه، وما أحلاه؟
هذا أمر يبقى لكل واحد من نصارى العرب أن يقرره لنفسه ويدخله في قناعاته ويقينه: هل يريد أن يبقى في دياره التاريخية، مقيماً مع رهطه من العرب حيث كانوا بتوافق وتآلف أخويين، أم أنه يفضّل الهجرة إلى الخارج ليعيش مع ربع أقرب إليه مسلكاً وروحية، كما يتصور؟ إذا قرر الهجرة فهذا شأنه وما لنا إلا أن ندعو له بالتوفيق. لكن إذا هو قرر أن يجعل من وجوده مشكلة لنفسه ولمجتمعه تتحدى الحل، فهذه مسألة أخرى لا بد أن يحاسب عليها أمام التاريخ. وبالنهاية لن يصيب العرب المسيحيين حيث وجدوا في بلاد المشرق إلا ما يشاؤونه أو يصنعونه هم لأنفسهم.
سوف أطلق هنا العنان لخيالي فأقول: لبنان، بالنسبة الى العرب، هو آخر معاقل النصرانية في ديارهم. ومنذ عشرين سنة تقريباً، عندما بدا للعرب من أقصى مشارقهم الى أقصى مغاربهم، ان النصرانية في لبنان توشك على الانهيار، تملكهم الخوف وهبوا جميعا لوضع حد لهذا الانهيار، لا بل لمنعه من الحصول. فكانت وثيقة الطائف: هذه الوثيقة التي يتصدى لها من نصارى لبنان فريق ويرى فيها مسّاً بالمصالح المسيحية ونيلاً من حقوق يعتبرونها خاصة بالمسيحيين. وكان على رأس المتحمسين لمنع انهيار المكانة الخاصة بالمسيحيين في لبنان من كان على خصومة معهم من مسلمي البلاد منذ تأسيس الدولة اللبنانية عام 1920 وحتى أواخر الحرب الأهلية.
هذه الوثيقة، وثيقة الطائف، قرأت مسودتها ـ أو في الأقل رؤوس الأقلام منها ـ عندما كنت أقوم بزيارة للبحرين قبل انعقاد مؤتمر الطائف بأسابيع، على من أذكر. سألني المسؤول البحريني الذي أطلعني عليها بحميمية لم أكن أنتظرها منه: «بيمشي الحال على هذا الأساس؟» أظن أن هذا السؤال نفسه كان يطرح، بكامل المسؤولية والجدية، في معظم العواصم العربية آنذاك.
لو لم يكن المسؤولون العرب في ذلك الوقت، مدركين كامل الإدراك، في سريرتهم ان لم يكن جهراً، أهمية النصارى العرب، ونصارى لبنان تحديداً، للكينونة العربية التاريخية برمتها، هل كان حدث مثل مؤتمر الطائف يعقد أصلا، بل يستمر منعقداً حتى الوصول الى نتيجة تبقي النصارى في البلاد على رأس الهرم، وان بصلاحيات لا تستفز غيرهم من اللبنانيين كما كان الواقع في السابق؟ هل هذا الحدث التاريخي الفريد من نوعه ـ الذي هو انعقاد مؤتمر الطائف للبت العربي في أمر لبنان ـ يعني أن نصارى لبنان بقية من شعب منقرض غير مرغوب في استمرار وجوده وفعاليته في العالم العربي؟ هل يعي نصارى لبنان الى الحد الكافي ان عالمهم العربي الذي تهب عليه الرياح من كل صوب، لم يتحرك جدياً حتى الآن إلا لنصرة لبنان والوضع الخاص للنصرانية فيه. وهل من أهمية للبنان إلا كونه ـ في نهاية المطاف ـ وبسبب التركيبة الديموغرافية الخاصة به ـ محجة لا محجة بعدها للعالم العربي؟
نعود الى الموضوع الذي طلب مني معالجته: تراجع الدور المسيحي في لبنان وبلاد المشرق والعالم العربي. وأنا أرد على هذا الافتراض بطرح سؤال آخر: ما هو هذا الدور المسيحي الذي نتحدث عنه؟ هل لدى العرب المسيحيين في الوقت الحاضر ميزات عقلية أو تقنية أو غير ذلك تجعل منهم عنصراً لا يستغنى عنه في ديار العرب؟ ربما كان ذلك صحيحاً في الماضي في بعض الفترات وعلى بعض الصعد. لكننا نتحدث عن اليوم أي، أولاً، بعد زوال الحدود في انتقال المعلومات بين الشرق والغرب في العالم عن طريق وسائل الاتصال الالكترونية، وثانياً، بعد انحسار الفارق في التقدم الحضاري بين المسيحيين وغير المسيحيين في العالم العربي، وانفتاح العرب عموماً على طروحات ومتطلبات العالم الحديث والعلاقات الدولية الحديثة.
اليوم، وبعد كل هذه التغيرات التي جاء بها العالم المعاصر، يبقى لنصارى لبنان وبلاد المشرق العربي خصوصية تتمثل أكثر ما يكون في كينونتهم واستمرار وجودهم على أرضهم التاريخية إن هم شاؤوا ذلك فعلياً. و«الحجر على أرضه قنطار»، كما يقال. أما إذا نقلنا هذا الحجر الى الخارج، فعند ذلك يصح فينا قول زهير بن أبي سلمى، من شعراء الجاهلية (وثمة من يعتقد انه كان من نصارى ذلك العصر):
ومن يكُ ذا فضل ويبخل بفضله
على قومه يستغن عنه ويذمم
اعتداد العرب المسيحيين بالمهاجرين والمغتربين منهم هو في نظري ظاهرة مساوئها أكثر من محاسنها، إن لم يكن لشيء فلأنه يشجع نصارى بلادنا ضمناً، وغيرهم، على الهجرة. والهجرة هي من أهم أسباب تناقص أعداد النصارى في بلادنا نسبياً ومطلقاً، إن لم يكن أهمها. هذا التناقص في الأعداد هو السبب الأساسي للتخوف العام (وليس المسيحي فقط) من تراجع الدور المسيحي في جميع بلاد المشرق العربي، والأصداء السلبية المنتظرة لمثل هذا التراجع.
المسيحيون الباقون حتى اليوم في ديارهم العربية، والى جانب رهطهم، هم وحدهم من حماة هذه الديار، ان هم أرادوا ذلك فعلياً. المطلوب منهم هو ـ فقط ـ استمرار وجودهم حيث هم، حتى تستمر الظاهرة التاريخية التي اسمها العرب النصارى، التي بدونها لن يكون هناك شيء اسمه عرب. فهل ندرك عمق المسؤولية التاريخية والحضارية المنوطة بنا وخطورتها؟
إذا شئنا نحن المسيحيين البقاء على مستوى هذا الاستحقاق التاريخي الذي من خلاله يتقرر حضورنا ومصيرنا، فواجب علينا تجاه أنفسنا بادئ ذي بدء فهم أوضاعنا على حقيقتها على اننا جزء من كل، والكف عن العيش في الأوهام، واعادة الثقة الى أنفسنا، بهويتنا العربية التي نستمد منها كل ما نتميّز به.
([) قدمت في مؤتمر إحياء الدور المسيحي في المشرق العربي.

Sundial Experiments in Abha, Saudi Arabia: Biblical Jerusalem was in that Vicinity






Pictures in descending order: 7.30 am shadow is over yellow stick (pic 1)
and next moves clockwise. At 9.25 am (pic 2)and 10.30 am
(pic 3),and last 11.20 am(pic 4)the shadow is small and back over the yellow stick to cross counter-clockwise and reduces to null at noon and grow opposite at noon and again grow and move back clockwise 10 degrees and on counterclockwise.

Dr. Nurdin al-Mustaqim has conducted an experiment twice on 21 &23 June 2010, which is the summer solstice, in the city of Abha in Asir, Saudi Arabia (18° 12' 59" N / 42° 30' 19" E ), to demonstrate the point made by Mr. Anthony Lias in the postscript to the second edition of my book The Historicity of Biblical Israel…, and has kindly reported to me the following supplemented by pictures above , which are from 23 June which happen to be the clearest:

Dr. al-Mustaqim:
I CAN SWEAR AND GUARANTEE THAT SINCE 10:30AM WHEN I STARTED TO MAKE REGULAR OBSERVATION (21 JUNE) THE SUN WAS GOING COUNTER-COCKWISE FOR A FULL 180 DEGREES UNTIL 2:00 PM AND AFTER THAT IT HAD GONE BACK IN THE OPPOSITE WAY CLOCKWISE FOR 20 DEGREES AT MY LAST READING OF 3:30pm. SOME PERIOD WAS UNREADABLE DUE TO CLOUDY WEATHER. I GUESS THIS WILL PROVE THE POINT ANYWAY AND I KEEP LOOKING TO SUNSET AND MAY REPEAT IT IN FOLLOWING DAYS.
WELL, I WANT TO SAY FOR THE RECORD THAT I PERFORMED THE SUNDIAL EXPERIMENT ON 21 TO 23 JUNE 2010 HERE IN ABHA,THE HEARTLAND OF ASIR, AND MY EYES AND THE PICTURES TAKEN CONFIRM THE REVERSE MOTION TWICE IN THE DAY BY WHAT I THOUGHT 20 DEGREES WITHOUT EVER SEEING THESE COMMENTS BEFORE. IF IT IS 10 DEGREES THEN LET IT BE 10, AS IT CAN BE MEASURED OR POSTED FOR ALL BY DR.SALIBI. TO ME IT IS A GREAT STEP FORWARD FOR MANKIND AND HISTORY THAT HIS DISCOVERY ABOUT BIBLICAL GEOGRAPHY MUST BE TAKEN AS WORKING BASIS WITH ALL THAT GOES WITH IT.
MAY I THEN ADD THAT THIS SHOWS THE HIGH LEVEL OF ASTRONOMICAL KNOWLEDGE AT THE TIME OF KING AHAZ/EZEKIAH AND THIS IS THE TESTIMONY OF THEIR SCIENCE WHICH THEY HAVE WANTED TO PASS ON TO US OVER TIME BY THEIR RECORDING THE THORAT FOR FUTURE GENERATIONS SO TRUTH WOULD REMAIN UNTIL US.WE MUST THANK KING AHAZ FOREMOST AS HE IS WITH US NOW.IT IS LIKE A GPS SATELLITE POSITIONING WHICH WILL ENABLE ONE TO FIND A POSITION ANYWHERE,ANYTIME . FOR THOSE WHO COMPLAIN ABOUT LACK OF ARCHEOLOGICAL EVIDENCE AND ARE ASKING US TO PRODUCE KING DAVID/DAUD'S DRIVER'S LICENSE FROM THE GROUND BEFORE THEY WOULD BELIEVE AND NOT REMAIN IN THEIR OWN FAIRY TALES,I SAY THIS IS ASTRONOMICAL ARCHEOLOGY IN FULL SWING,WHAT CAN THEY PRODUCE?
KS: I owe a great debt of gratitude to Dr. Nur who spent three days in Abha observing the movement of the shadow of what stood for the gnomon of a sundial. By means of this experiment, he demonstrated beyond the shadow of a doubt that the astronomical event occurring in Old Testament Jerusalem, as reported in Isaiah 38:7,8 and 2 Kings 20:18-12 and explained by Mr. Anthony Lias in terms of a 'Jerusalem' located in Asir rather in Palestine, is the sort of astronomical event that occurs regularly in the tropical land of Asir, twice a day, during the period of the summer solstice. The same event cannot possibly occur at any time of year in a Jerusalem located in Palestine, well within the temperate zone.

The Sundial of Ahaz


POSTSCRIPT TO THE SECOND EDITION OF THE HISTORICITY OF BIBLICAL ISRAEL: STUDIES IN 1& 2 SAMUEL (2010)

The Sundial of King Ahaz

by Anthony Lias


In 1985, Professor Kamal Salibi, of the American University of Beirut, wrote a brilliant book entitled The Bible Came from Arabia. Having had unexpected access to a gazetteer of Saudi Arabia published at Riyadh in 1977, his study of it confirmed him in the belief that the place-names of the Hebrew Bible – the actual location of which has always troubled Biblical scholars if taken to apply to what we now call Palestine – fitted perfectly if applied to the region called Asir, situated in West Arabia abutting on the Red Sea.
As someone who has a working knowledge of the original Hebrew vocabulary of the Bible, and who has published three books on place-names myself, I found the hundreds of examples listed by Professor Salibi absolutely convincing. However, I have recently found what I regard as a further powerful proof that Professor Salibi’s argument is correct. To explain why, I must point out that Asir lies (and lay) well within the tropic zone (between 17 and 19 degrees north of the Equator).
Now according to Isaiah 38:7,8, the prophet Isaiah (early eighth century BC) tells King Hezekiah in Jerusalem that ‘the Lord’ will give him a ‘sign’, namely this: “I will bring again the shadow of the degrees, which is gone down in the sun dial of [your father, King] Ahaz, ten degrees backward. So the sun returned ten degrees, by which degrees it was gone down.”
This retrograde motion of a shadow cast by a gnomon (i.e., a sundial pointer) has traditionally been regarded as a ‘miracle’, because at the latitude of the present-day Jerusalem (31 degrees 47 minutes north of the Equator), such a motion would be impossible. However, and I quote a respected figure, the English mathematician/astronomer Thomas Keith (1759-1824): “If a horizontal dial, which shows the hour by the top of the perpendicular gnomon, be made for a place in the torrid zone [i.e. the tropics], whenever the sun’s declination exceeds the latitude of the place, the shadow of the gnomon will go back twice in the day, once in the forenoon and once in the afternoon, and the greater the difference between the latitude and the sun’s declination is, the farther the shadow will go back.” Thomas Keith, A New Treatise On The Use Of The Globes. Revised Edition. London, 1855, pp. 336-7.
Now according to Professor Salibi, the original Jerusalem of Isaiah’s time will not have been in today’s Palestine, but in Asir, and within the torrid zone. Therefore the retrograde shadow on the ‘dial of Ahaz’ will not have been a ‘miracle’, but a fact. And no doubt an experiment could be set up in Asir at the present time to prove this. (N.B: since declination is the angular distance north or south of any heavenly body from the celestial equator, and since the highest possible declination of the sun is 23 degrees 28 minutes, it is plain that during certain months of the year the shadow will go back for every location within Asir.) It is possible that Professor Salibi is unaware of these astronomical details, which I believe are a vindication of his thesis.
The story about the odd behaviour of the sundial of King Ahaz also occurs in 2 Kings, 20:8-12. Here, the story makes it obvious that Isaiah knew that the “shadow of the degrees” on the sundial would go back, and that King Hezekiah did not. My theory is that Isaiah (who is thought by some Biblical scholars to have acquired some astronomical knowledge from the Assyrians), duped Hezekiah into thinking he was witnessing a ‘miracle’, while in reality he was witnessing a genuine phenomenon in the Jerusalem of Asir whose existence is proposed by Professor Salibi, not the later one of Palestine. The fact of the retrograde motion of the shadow of a gnomon within the tropics is independently confirmed and fully explained by Denis Savoie in his book Sundials, Design, Construction and Use (English translation by Bob Mizon, Springer Praxis Publishing, 2009), Appendix F (6), pp.163-4.
I must conclude by saying that Professor Salibi nowhere impugns the religious message of the Hebrew Bible. His thesis, in The Bible Came from Arabia and in the third part of the present work, centres purely on the correct location of places mentioned in the Bible. [Note: for anyone interested, Denis Savoie provides a diagram in Appendix F (6) of his book demonstrating the shadow’s retrograde motion, as well as an explanatory mathematical formula.]


How Much Can Be Known about the Koranic Jesus?

Unpublished Supplement for the Second Edition of  WHO WAS JESUS

The Israelite priesthood was apparently regarded from an early time as the preserve of the tribe of Levi, with members of this tribe offering priestly services wherever they were needed (see Judges 17:6b-13). At some point, however, as the Israelite Yahweh cult became more organized, the priesthood came to be restricted exclusively to one particular Levitical lineage: the house of Aaron who was allegedly the brother of Moses, the first priest of Israel and the man originally given charge of the Ark of the Covenant (the sacred wooden chest in which the spirit of the invisible Yahweh was supposed to reside). The last officially recognized Aaronic chief priest, whose name was Abiathar, served under King David (c. 1005-964 BC), but was made to share his office with a man called Zadok who was apparently neither of Aaronic nor even of Levitical descent. Later, when Solomon succeeded his father David as king, Abiathar was sacked from the chief priesthood and banished to an agricultural estate that his family owned in Anathoth (1 Kings 2:26; Joshua 21:18) − today, almost certainly the village called Antutah (Arabicized form of the Biblical Hebrew Anatot, name changed today to al-Mubarakah), in the fertile hinterland of the Saudi Arabian coastal town of Jizan, close by the border with Yemen.
From that time on, the chief priesthood of the Davidic kingdom – under Solomon, then under the kings of Judah who were his successors – became the exclusive preserve of the house of Zadok. This same Zadokite priestly establishment continued to dominate Israelite religious affairs following the Babylonian conquest of Judah in 586 BC and the deportation of its leading citizens to Iraq. In the meanwhile, the Aaronic priesthood had somehow managed to survive in Anathoth, probably supported by a body of die-hard Israelites who refused to accept the sacerdotal authority of the Zadokites. Among the Aaronic priests of Anathoth was the Prophet Jeremiah, who predicted – and lived to witness – the downfall of Judah, and who vanished from history in obscure circumstances shortly thereafter.
Apart from identifying “Jeremiah the son of Hilkiah” as being one “of the priests who were in Anathoth” (Jeremiah 1:1), the Received Text of the Hebrew Bible, which was compiled and redacted by the Zadokites and their associates in post-exilic times, has nothing to say about the house of Aaron following the dismissal of Abiathar from the chief priesthood. And nothing would have been known about the fate of the Aaronic priestly line after the mysterious disappearance of Jeremiah, had it not been for the Koran, where it identifies Maryam – the Koranic Mary – as an Israelite temple figure of unequivocally Aaronic lineage (see chapter four). As the son of Maryam, Issa − the Koranic Jesus who was believed to be virgin-born − would have naturally inherited his mother’s Aaronic lineage, apparently to become the head of the house of Aaron in due course. The fact that the Koran recognizes him as al-Masih, or “the Christ,” indicates that he was recognized by his followers, in his time, as the long-awaited priestly messiah whose mission was to end the prolonged Zadokite usurpation of the Israelite priesthood, and to restore it to the house of Aaron to which it legitimately belonged.
The Koranic juxtaposition between the Aaronic Issa and the Zadokite Ezra (see chapter four) seems to indicate a historical connection between the careers of the two men. Ezra, who was active in the middle decades of the fifth century BC, was the person chiefly responsible for the post-exilic revival of the law of Moses, on the basis of which the scattered remnants of the Israelite people were reorganized under Zadokite leadership as the religious community of the “Jews” (yehuwdim, from yehuwdah, the Hebrew for Judah). Disregarding the fact that an Aaronic priesthood still existed in Arabia in his time, and that this priesthood probably commanded an Israelite following of some size, Ezra claimed for himself an Aaronic lineage to which he was not entitled (Ezra 7:1-5). Alternatively, it was his Jewish followers who fabricated this lineage for him during his lifetime, or following his death. This daring action, whether on his part or that of his partisans, would alone have sufficed to elicit an open confrontation on the issue between the houses of Zadok and Aaron. And there is good indication that a contest over the possession of the Ark of Covenant – to the Israelites, the ultimate touchstone of genuine priestly standing – may have been at the heart of the matter.
Of the fate of the Ark of the Covenant after it came to be installed in the temple of Solomon (see 1 Kings 8:1-11), the Received Text of the Hebrew Bible, curiously, has nothing to say, leaving the ultimate fate of the Ark unknown. However, in a book on the antiquities of Arabia written in the early decades of the eighth century AD, an early Muslim historian and epigraphist, Wahb ibn Munabbih (Kitab al-tijan li-muluk Himyar, Hyderabad Deccan, AH 1347, pp.179-180), reports that the Israelites once deposited the Ark in Mecca as they fled through the Hijaz in panic before a powerful coalition of enemies, and that the Ark remained thereafter in Mecca until Issa ibn Maryam arrived in the city to claim it. Wahb, who was the descendant of a prominent Jewish family from the Yemen, was well versed in the Israelite lore of Arabia. What lends special credence to his Ark story is, first, the casual manner in which he relates it, without comment or elaboration, and, second, the fact that he relates it in the context of the history of Mecca, and not that of the Israelites, about which he has much to say elsewhere. Add to this the fact that his story of the Ark makes good historical sense. In a struggle between Issa and the Zadokites over the legitimate right to the Israelite priesthood, what success could have been more dramatic for an Aaronic messiah than suddenly managing to find and take possession of the long lost and virtually forgotten Ark?
The question of the Ark aside, Wahb’s account of its concealment in Mecca and of its subsequent reclamation from there by Issa in that city seems to assume, first, that pre-exilic Israelite history ran its course in Arabia and second, that the geographical setting of Issa’s career was equally Arabian. It was in Arabia, apparently, that he died and was buried. This, at least according to a story originally told by an Arabian notable from Medina, in the Hijaz, and quoted by the great Arab scholar al-Tabari (d. AD 923) in his major historical work Tarikh al-rusul wal-muluk (Cairo edition, 1967, vol.1, pp.603-4):
One of our womenfolk had made a vow to climb to the peak of al-Jamma', a mountain in al-Aqiq, [south of] Medina. So I climbed with her until we reached the mountain top. There stood an enormous sarcophagus with two huge tombstones, one [at each end], which bore inscriptions in a writing unknown to me. I carried the two stones back with me. But as I was crossing a passage down the mountainside, the two of them became too difficult for me to carry; so I dropped one and descended with the other. I asked people who knew Syriac if they could read [the inscription on that stone], but they could not. Then I showed it to people from the Yemen who could write [Hebrew], or who wrote the South Arabian script, and they could not read it. So, when I found no one who could make sense of [the inscription], I put it away at home under a chest, where it remained for years. Then some Persians arrived [in Medina] from [the town of]Maha to buy beads. I asked them: “Do you have a written language?” They answered: “We do.” So I brought out the [inscription] for them [to see] and, behold, they were reading it, as it was in their script: “This is the grave of Issa ibn Maryam, the messenger of God to the people of this land.” It turned out that [Persians] had inhabited the area at that time, and [Issa] died in their midst, so they buried him on top of the mountain.
This story not only confirms the location of the career of Issa ibn Maryam in the Arabian province of the Hijaz, but also relates it to the period of Persian rule in the lands of the Near East (535-330 BC). More interesting, however, is the fact that ¤abar• was aware that the Issa who was buried on top of Mount Jamma', south of Medina, was a person entirely different from the Jesus who was crucified by the Jews in Jerusalem during the reign of the Roman emperor Tiberius. “I have been told,” he says, “that the man taken to be Issa and crucified in his place was an Israelite called Ishubin Fandara” (Tabari, vol.1, p.605). This name is none other than the pejorative name Yeshu' ben Panthera, or ben Pandera (see chapter three), by which the Jewish Talmud refers to the Davidic Jesus who was crucified in the Palestinian Jerusalem, and whom we have agreed to call Jeshu bar Nagara (see chapter seven).
With respect to the dating of the career of the Koranic Jesus who was Issa ibn Maryam, the Damascene Muslim historian, Abul-Qasim Ibn Asakir, writing in the twelfth century AD (Sirat al-Sayyid al-Masih, Suleiman Murad, ed., Amman, 1996, par.10), cites a tradition related by an early Muslim authority who died in AD 721 which asserts that the “ascension” of Issa to God’s presence occurred 933 years before the start of the Muslim era (AD 622). Unless another explanation can be given to this tradition, it means that the “ascension” of Issa (possibly to mean his canonization or apotheosis) occurred is 311 BC, and that his career as a prophet and Aaronic Messiah belonged to the late fourth century BC, and not to the late fifth or early fourth centurs earlier surmised (see chapter four).