A LEBANESE HISTORIAN LOOKS AT JESUS, AND CHRISTIAN TRADITION
Kamal Suleiman Salibi (1929-2011) was a Lebanese historian, professor of history at the American University of Beirut and the founding Director of the Royal Institute for Inter-Faith Studies in Amman, Jordan. He wrote other books such as 'The Historicity of Biblical Israel: Studies in 1 & 2 Samuel,' 'Secrets of the Bible People,' 'The Modern History of Jordan,' 'A House of Many Mansions: The History of Lebanon Reconsidered,' etc.
He wrote in the Introduction to this 1988 book, "Let me invite you to participate in an attempt to resolve one of the most elusive of historical mysteries: the Jesus question. This question concerns the historical reality of Jesus. That he existed, scholars are in no doubt: there is enough evidence outside the Christian scriptures. But the Gospels... give accounts of his life that contradict each other... We must assume that there are reasons for this inconsistency... But first I must present you with my credentials. I am not a specialist in New Testament scholarship, but a teacher and historian with some experience in research... My interest in investigating the New Testament developed out of an earlier historical interest in the Hebrew Bible. The careful study of its texts convinced me that the history of the Israelites... had nothing to do with Palestine ... but actually belongs to the West Arabian provinces of Hijaz and Asir, bordering the Red Sea." (Pg. 1, 4)
He states, "In the epistles he himself wrote, Paul does not mention Tarsus... as his place of birth, nor does he make any personal reference to an early residence in Jerusalem, or to Gamaliel as his instructor in the Jewish law... From the information he personally gives ... the implication is that he was a resident... of Damascus and that his visit to Jerusalem three years after his conversion was his first visit... Possibly, Acts confuses the identity of Paul with that of another person called Saul who was the student of Gamaliel, and who actually lived in Jerusalem." (Pg. 16-17)
He asserts, "We have been extremely cautious in investigating the possibility that Jeshu---the Jesus of the Greek Gospels---came originally from the Hijaz. We now proceed with more confidence." (Pg. 99) He adds, "there were Israelites ... who were unhappy with the plight of their race and yearned for the promised coming of the Messiah, or Christ... who would restore to them their lost dignity as a people by re-establishing the historical Israelite kingdom. Pondering this information in the Hijaz, as he received it from travelers returning from Judea or the Palestinian Galilee, Jeshu bar Nagara saw his opportunity to act. After all, he was an Israelite prince of the royal line... In the Hijaz, he was wasting his time, much as his local predecessors of the house of David had done. If he did have a special political destiny as a true prince of Israel, such a destiny could only be fulfilled in Palestine." (Pg. 107)
He summarizes, "we had to make our first assumption: there must have been some secret connection between the Jesus mission and Arabia which the available Christian scriptures are careful not to divulge. With the help of the Koran and certain early Islamic traditions, we were able to satisfy ourselves that this first assumption was reasonable. There actually was an Arabian prophet called Jesus who did not die on the cross, and whose career antedated the Palestinian Jesus by about four centuries. This earlier Jesus was called Issa; the later one was called Jeshu... there were... no less than three Jesuses whose identities are confused and conflated in the Gospels. The third Jesus was an Arabian fertility god called Issa...
"Of some of our conclusions, we can be reasonably certain:... there was, historically, an Israelite prophet called Jesus (Issa), and also the cult of an Arabian god by the same name (al Issa), apart from the historical Jesus (Jeshu) of the Gospels... Paul, when he visited Arabia, secured copies of local scriptures... which he and others after him used ... to develop the New Testament image of the Gospel Jesus as the eternal Son of God and the living Christ." (Pg. 187-189)
Most in the Western world will not be convinced by Salibi's arguments; but those (particularly with an Islamic or Middle-Eastern background) looking for nontraditional perspectives on Jesus may find it fascinating reading.