2017-01-19T09:37:00-08:00
I downloaded the two books, Imaginary Palestine and Jerusalem is Not Jerusalem, by the Iraqi thinker Fadel Al-Rubaie, after the thinker uploaded them to the Internet in the form of an electronic copy as an initiative on his part to be thanked for spreading culture and knowledge to the broad public, and I began to read them from time to time, as a reader who has some historical knowledge would read. He has an interest in historical issues, but I am not a researcher.
The truth is something that is truly astonishing, in many aspects of the two books, and the remarkable state of conformity that exists in the two books between many parts of the Torah and the description of Al-Hamdani and the heritage of Yemen, is indeed an amazing and puzzling matter at the same time, and it has reached a coincidence in very small details, which seem unimportant. For some, it confirms that the correspondence between the details of the biblical narrative and the details that Al-Hamdani narrates, and with the Yemeni dialect and the cultural heritage of Yemen around certain places, is not a coincidence. Rather, you would imagine that the one who wrote the Torah was Al-Hamdani or an old Yemeni man recounting the details of the geography of Yemen.
This remarkable study makes us think about the question: Do we still need other studies on the same topic, or on other topics revolving around the topic? For example, we still need studies on when the religious narrative began to change throughout the ages until we reach this false awareness, if this is true. Study, and we need a real scientific study on the Hebrew language and the ancient Yemeni language…etc., and we also need scientific responses to these two books by researchers and academics, so that we can judge the scientific argument. But in general, we can say that this study can be put under the heading of a strong hypothesis, not a fact, and we await responses to it, as other hypotheses have stronger evidence that undermines this hypothesis. It is a hypothesis, not a fact, and it will not rise to the level of theory because we still need a small piece of evidence to prove everything. What is stated in the book.
The truth is…as I was browsing through the two books, I was astonished by the similarity, and it reached its climax while I was reading a text in the Torah as translated by the researcher. What is amazing is that the designations of the places in the Torah and the closeness of the places in which the Torah speaks apply to places in my region in an amazing way and not the same. The researcher talked about the existence of a distortion in the name of a certain place. There are four similar places in the Torah that apply to what exists in my region in Yemen. The simple silver distortion, as the researcher says, was not a distortion, but rather they are with the same wording. What is most strange is that those areas were the homes of the Al-Yahoud. As grandmothers and grandfathers say, I asked the question in a reverse way: Did the Torah talk about those places in Yemen, or did the Al-Yahoud drop those places in the Torah on Yemeni soil, as is the custom of religious peoples who name places after places sacred to them or names of places that remind them of their homeland?
Something truly amazing, and the holiness of the Torah was revealed as he spoke in a Yemeni dialect, and the narrator was an old Yemeni sheikh.
And the other truth… is that this study can answer old questions I have that I feel and touch, very urgent questions, questions that only a Yemeni person would touch before he is a specialized researcher, serious questions that many do not ask even though Yemeni history imposes them strongly, and I will ask them. In another article.
However… if we raise the idea that this hypothesis is completely correct and turns it into a fact (only a hypothesis), this calls us to ask very serious and perhaps terrifying questions?
1- Can the Torah be considered part of the history, identity and culture of Yemen, and should it be appreciated and venerated as the inheritance of ancient ancestors, for example?
2- Can Judaism be considered an ancient Yemeni heritage that should be preserved?
3- Why is there a disconnect between the ancient inscriptions in Yemen and the biblical event, or even with the Jewish flavor?
4- Do you think that there is a major theft of Yemeni inscriptions by institutions and forces, for fear of such a fact emerging?
4- Were the children of Israel a Yemeni tribe that inhabited part of Yemen, or did they inhabit all of Yemen?
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