Category Archives: Bible and Holy Land

Mormons in Marib

Archaeology and Antiquities, Bible and Holy Land, Yemen


N-H-M in Sabaean

Not being a resident of Utah, I sometimes forget that there are people who take The Book of Mormon (the original and not the Broadway play) seriously. There is a passage in 1 Nephi 16:34 that suggests the place of Ishmael’s burial: “And it came to pass that Ishmael died, and was buried in the place which was called Nahom.” So where might Nahom be? Well, why not Yemen? That is the argument in an article by Warren Aston, who traveled to Yemen and found an inscription on an alter at Marib that referred to Nihm, a tribe. Thus, The Book of Mormon is verified, as innumerable Mormon websites attest, including one on Wikipedia.

There is indeed a Yemeni tribe called Nihm, part of the Bakil confederation. But why exactly would Ishmael end up getting buried in Yemen? There is certainly no indication in the Old Testament of Ishmael going to Yemen. Genesis 25:17 reads “And these are the years of the life of Ishmael, an hundred and thirty and seven years: and he gave up the ghost and died; and was gathered unto his people.” I sort of doubt that the priestly authors mention of “his people” meant the Sabaens down in Yemen. And in Islam Ishmael stops at Mecca. So either the Torah is wrong, Islamic tradition is wrong or the 19th century Book of Mormon is wrong. And, of course, given that this legendary material, they may all be wrong. There are indeed skeptics of Nephi.

The placename fallacy has a long history in pseudo-archaeology. One can rather easily manipulate major biblical placenames in Arabia. The Lebanese scholar Kamal Salibi played this game to the hilt in his imaginative The Bible Came from Arabia. Two individuals in Bahrain have continued the theme. It is difficult to dismiss the political motive (that Abraham and Moses were not herding their flocks and refugees respectively to ancient Israel) that no doubt underlies such attempts to rewrite history. Certainly there is no archaeological evidence for these bizarre claims. And just as certainly there is no end of lunatic archaeology in sight.

UPDATE:
Dr.Mohammed Maraqten, who has excavated at Marib, sends the following details about the altar:

This altar is from Barʾān Temple (Arsch Bilqis), ca. 6 Century B.C. and still in situ.
The complete filiations of the dedicator of this altar to Almaqah reads: Bʿṯtr / bn / s¹wdm / bn / nwʿm / nhmyn
The partly damaged letters are / N / and / H / (like Arabic Hirra) and the complete word is NHMYN and has for sure NOTHING to do with Biblical NḤM with / Ḥ / and the Canaanite root NḤM. The root is NHM and not NḤM.
Two possibilities to understand this word:
– NHMYN (al-NihmÄ«) is Nisbe to the very famous and many time attested in the inscriptions, in the Islamic period and still in the same place northeast of Sanaa. Also the Nisbe NHMYN is attested may times.
– NHMYN is a designation of a profession “Stonemason”, Munahhim or Muhandis, the verb NHM is well known in the inscriptions and the Arabic sources as a Yemeni term in the meaning of “to dress stones”.

Jerusalem Filmed in 1896

Arab-Israeli Conflict, Bible and Holy Land, Film and Video, Islam and Christianity, Palestine

There is a fascinating short video on Youtube of what is apparently the first filming done in Palestine. Check out the blog Hummus for Thought for the Youtube bounce but also for a transcription of the commentary. As the narration indicates, Jerusalem was an interfaith city. There is even a shot of a Jew wearing a tarbush at the wailing wall. At this time under Ottoman control, the population of the three districts that comprised Palestine was 85% Muslim, 10% Christian and 5% Jewish.

Biblical Art in New York

Art, Bible and Holy Land


Gustave Doré (French, 1832-1883), Moses before the Pharaoh, 1878

Sacred Visions
Nineteenth-Century Biblical Art from the Dahesh Museum Collection
October 18, 2013–February 16, 2014

Comprised of approximately 30 works of art, Sacred Visions: Nineteenth-Century Biblical Art from the Dahesh Museum Collection highlights how biblical subject matter was embraced within the academies of 19th-century Europe. Historically ranked at the top of the Academy’s hierarchy of genres, biblical depictions of both Old and New Testament subjects enjoyed a resurgence in the 19th century. This renewed interest may be attributed to several factors, including the developing field of biblical archaeology and the advent of photography, which produced travel books of the Holy Land. During this century of political and religious upheaval, artists – and the larger societies of which they were a part – looked to the Bible to provide inspiration, often in the form of allegory, for contemporary circumstances.

Click here to read an introductory essay to the exhibition by Sarah Schaefer, co-curator of the exhibition.

Museum of Biblical Art
1865 Broadway at 61st Street
New York, NY 10023
Phone: (212) 408-1500

The Death of Bryan

Bible and Holy Land, Humor and Satire, Islam and Christianity, YouTube Watch

by Ian Burrell, The Independent, October 18, 2013

The British public has such “poor religious literacy” that a modern audience would be baffled by the Monty Python film The Life of Brian – because it would not understand the Biblical references, a senior BBC figure has claimed.

Aaqil Ahmed, the BBC’s head of religion and ethics, told The Independent that failings in religious education over two generations were undermining public understanding of contemporary national and international issues. “You had generations that missed out. We have poor religious literacy in this country and we have to do something about it,” he said.

He was speaking at the launch of an ambitious three-part BBC2 series which will address the subject of pilgrimage from a broad perspective and is intended to attract the interest of Atheists as much as religious believers.

“If you tried to make The Life of Brian today it would fall flat on its face because the vast majority of the audience would not get most of the jokes. They don’t have the knowledge,” Ahmed said. He questioned whether modern audiences would appreciate that the “great joke about the Sermon on the Mount” in the 1979 Python film, where a woman asks “What’s so special about the cheesemakers?”, was a reference to Jesus’s words “Blessed are the peacemakers” from the Bible. Continue reading The Death of Bryan →

Prince of Peace, Prince of War

Bible and Holy Land, Ethics, Islam and Christianity, Terrorism Issue


Madonna del Prato, Givanni Bellini, 1505

Today is Christmas, the annual celebration of a Jewish man who literally turned history inside out and gave his name, knowingly or not, to what is the world’s largest religion, Christianity. Within Judaism he is one of many messiah hopefuls; among Muslims he is a major prophet whose followers did not tell the real story that was later revealed to Muhammad, the last of the biblical-line prophets. Regardless of who Jesus really was, one of his titles sounded at this time of year is the “Prince of Peace.” The Gospels quite clearly indicate that Jesus was not a warmonger. Anyone who would say “Blessed are the peacemakers” (Matthew 5:9) or “turn the other cheek” (Matthew 5:39) would hardly charge into any battle with intent to kill. The irony is that the Gospel prophet promoting peace has been turned into the cause for doing exactly the opposite, whether slaughtering fellow Christians, launching pogroms against the Jews or crusading against Muslims. As Mark Twain so eloquently put it:

“Man is a Religious Animal. He is the only Religious Animal. He is the only animal that has the True Religion–several of them. He is the only animal that loves his neighbor as himself and cuts his throat if his theology isn’t straight. He has made a graveyard of the globe in trying his honest best to smooth his brother’s path to happiness and heaven…”

So if the Jesus of the Gospels, even of the Epistles, was so peace-loving, even to the extent of not fighting to save his own life on earth, why are there so many princes of war that think they are being loyal to his memory? I suppose Machiavelli’s The Prince offers as good an explanation as any; this is a book that advocates war to maintain peace rather than peace to eliminate the need for war. Continue reading Prince of Peace, Prince of War →

Let it Snow, dear Sphinx

Archaeology and Antiquities, Bible and Holy Land, Egypt, Orientalism, Poetry


Snow at the Sphinx

As the above photograph shows, even the treasured sands of Egypt are not immune to Mother Nature’s cold warnings. Snow is rare in Egypt and when it falls there is certain to be much interest in what such a climatic omen portends, especially given the mystery that surrounds the Sphinx. After Napoleon’s invasion, unsuccessful as it was from a military standpoint, Egyptomania raged in Europe. There are many poems, as well as paintings, that draw an Orientalist view of the region. Even Mark Twain set down Tom Sawyer over the pyramids. On this Christmas Eve, when the birth of Christ is celebrated throughout the world, including Egypt, it is well to remember that mystery is in the air. Given that General Sisi has admitted that his climb to power was foreordained in a dream, the mysteries coming out of Egypt are as alive as ever.

Oscar Wilde is probably not a name anyone would associate with the night before Christmas. But he did write a semi-humorous and rather long poem in 1894 entitled “the Sphinx.” The whole version can be found here, but I excerpt a few lines to assist in the holiday spirit:

A thousand weary centuries
Are thine, while I have hardly seen
Some twenty summers cast their green
For Autumn’s gaudy liveries.

But you can read the Hieroglyphs
On the great sandstone obelisks,
And you have talked with Basilisks
And you have looked on Hippogriffs. Continue reading Let it Snow, dear Sphinx →

Joshua Davidson and the Spirit of Christmas

Bible and Holy Land, Books You Should Read, Ethics

I suspect that no one reading this blog has ever heard of Joshua Davidson. He was born, actually created, in 1872 as a fictional character in a social commentary novel published by Eliza Lynn Linton and entitled The True History of Joshua Davidson, Christian and Communist, which is available online. I came across this fascinating not-quite-modern-day parable in a published lecture by the British anthropologist E. E. Evans-Pritchard. Linton’s book, originally published anonymously, imagines Jesus as a mid-19th century Englishman who sees the vicars of his day as pharisees and the money-changers outside the fancy cathedrals. In the end he is killed, like Christ, because he dared to live like the Jesus of the Gospels. The book is well worth a read speaking truth to the imperialist and high-church-minded power of Britain well over a century ago. But let the narrative speak for itself.

Continue reading Joshua Davidson and the Spirit of Christmas →

A Wolff in Shepherd’s Clothing, #3

Bible and Holy Land, Books You Should Read, Ethics, Islam and Christianity, Kurds, Lithographs, Orientalism, Travel, Turkey


Dervish,; photograph by Sevryugin Anton (1830 – 1933), the official photographer of the Imperial Court of Iran

In the early 19th century there was a florescence of Protestant missionary interest in saving Muslim, Jewish and other kinds of Christian souls in the Middle East. This thread continues excerpts from one of the earliest accounts from the 19th century, that of Joseph Wolff (1795-1862), a convert from Judaism to Christianity. In 1837 he published a diary of his travels. Like a number of Christians visiting the Muslim world, Wolff is more impressed by Muslim sobriety and devotion in their ritual than he is by the Christians he sees:

There is also an intriguing encounter between the Christian missionary and a Kurdish Muslim dervish:

Chalk one up for the Kurdish dervish over the atheists of Europe.