“It’s probable that Mecca was founded not by Abraham but by King Nabonidus of the late Babylonian Empire. King Nabonidus worshipped a moon deity and extended his empire into Arabia as far as the modern city of Medina. He was fond of founding shrines, and it would not have been out of character for him to found the shrine at Mecca. The deity fits. The meteorite worship fits. Even the southern focus of Nabonidus’s imperialism fits.”

I’m not familiar with King Nabonidus and can not comment. The Arabs did almost everything they could to erase their pre-Islamic history (a pity actually). The better ancient Arabian coins came from the Kingdom of Nabatea (the Nabateans did a fair amount of trade with the Greeks and Romans). The Nabateans (like the ancient Jews) embraced Hellenic culture and some of their coins were patterned after the Athenian Owl tetradrachmas.

“I doubt that meteorite worship was common among Greeks and Romans any more than the worship of Hanuman (a Hindu monkey deity) is common among Americans.”

You would be surprised. One of my hobbies is collecting ancient coins. It’s quite common to see the depiction of a temple or religious object on the reverse of an ancient coin (similar to the Lincoln memorial on the back of the penny). Typically one sees a cult statue inside the temple (like Lincoln’s statue inside his memorial) or an isolated statue, e.g. Zeus sitting on a throne or Apollo standing. If an egg or conical shaped object is depicted inside a temple or on a cart then it is normally assumed to be a holy meteorite. There were a bunch of meteorite cults in the ancient world. It’s reasonable, since if a person actually found a meteorite after it impacted the ground then the logical place to send the stone would be the local temple, e.g. it’s a “gift” from Zeus, blessing the local village. The ‘betyl’ that attracted Elagabalus’ attention is merely the most famous ancient example. It’s humorous and little pathetic that the Moslems are still doing this with the Kaba.

I noticed how Heliogabalus was usually associated with Astarte, Minerva, and/or Urania. This is similar to the “three daughters” (al-Lat, al-Uzza, and Manat) of Allah in the “satanic verses”. On the other hand, El-Gabal was a solar deity while Allah was a lunar deity, so I doubt there was any direct connection between the two religions.

It’s probable that Mecca was founded not by Abraham but by King Nabonidus of the late Babylonian Empire. King Nabonidus worshipped a moon deity and extended his empire into Arabia as far as the modern city of Medina. He was fond of founding shrines, and it would not have been out of character for him to found the shrine at Mecca. The deity fits. The meteorite worship fits. Even the southern focus of Nabonidus’s imperialism fits.

Considering how Nabonidus attempted to replace the worship of Ishtar and Marduk with his lunar deity, and considering how various aspects of Meccan worship of the pre-Mohammedan era seem to carry the stamp of late Babylonian custom, perhaps the triumph of Islam one millennium later should be seen as the revenge of Nabonidus.

Um, actually, Elagabalus didn’t create the “Deus Sol Invictus” cult; he imported it. Culturally speaking, Elagabalus was a foreigner to Roman culture who sought to replace Roman religious traditions with the worship of El-Gabal. I regard the behavior of Elagabalus and his family toward Roman religion to be similar in spirit to what Jezebel attempted against Israeli religion when she married into the House of Omri.

I doubt that meteorite worship was common among Greeks and Romans any more than the worship of Hanuman (a Hindu monkey deity) is common among Americans. I do find your reference to the importation of the “Deus Sol Invictus” cult by a Syrian priest-emperor to be intriguing, considering the recent rise of another cultural phenomenon centered around the symbol of a rising sun.

Let’s hope America doesn’t turn into the House of the Rising Sun writ large…

http://www.wildwinds.com/coins/ric/elagabalus/_sidon_AE30_SNGCop_255.jpg

Again, one wonders where these sacred rocks ended up.

“Meteorite worship was relatively common in ancient Phoenicia.”

The ancient Greeks and Romans also engaged in meteorite worship. The most famous example was the Roman emperor Elagabalus who created the “Deus Sol Invictus” cult that centered around a conical shaped meteorite. The meteorite was displayed in a temple (called the “Elagabalium”) near the Colosseum in Rome. One can see images of this cult object on the back of Roman coins struck during Elagabalus’ reign. This same meteorite might have been a stone that was earlier worshiped by the Phoenicians.

History does not record what happened to Elagabalus’ meteorite. Who knows? It’s not likely (nickel-iron meteroites tend to rust) but maybe the Kaba stone is the same rock?

You asked; “now where do you get your information (besides Wikipedia?)”

I used The Jewish Virtual Library (a division of the American-Israeli Cooperative Enterprise)and the Catholic library as it is most the most extensive containing also non catholic works for historical references.
http://www.newadvent.org/cathen/13706a.htm
http://www.jewishvirtuallibrary.org/jsource/Judaism/premo.html
Best to start here:
http://www.wsu.edu:8080/~dee/HEBREWS/HEBREWS.HTM

In a Biblical sense, Semites are peoples whose ancestry can be traced back to Shem, Noah’s eldest son. The most prominent Semites today are Arabs and Jews as they both share a common ancient history that is reflected by the many similar stories of Islam and Judaism as well as of course their semitic language.

A HEBREW is someone descended from Heber (or, “Eber”), one of the great-grandsons of Shem. So all Hebrews are Semites, but not all Semites are Hebrews. (Both Sunnite Arabs and Jews are Semites, and Hebrews, as well as Jews.)

Six generations after Heber, Abraham was born to his line, so Abraham was both a Hebrew and a Semite, born of the line of Heber and Shem.

Ishmael was born of Abraham, and (Sunnite) Arabs (and specifically Muslims) consider themselves to be descendants of him, so they are both Semitic and Hebrews. Isaac was born of Abraham, then Jacob of Isaac. Jacob’s name was changed to “Israel,” and he fathered 12 sons. His sons and their descendants are called Israelites, and they would therefore be both Semitic and Hebrew. However, this would not make either Abraham or Isaac “Israelites.” Those who poorly use the words “Jew” and Israelite, call Abraham a Jew, even though Abraham was not even an Israelite, and where the word “Jew” is not used in the Bible until 1,000 years AFTER Abraham.

One of Jacob-Israel’s children was Judah (Hebrew – Yehudah). His descendants were called Yehudim (”Judahites”). In Greek this reads Ioudaioi (”Judeans”). The confusing thing here is that almost all Bible translations employ the word “Jew,” which is a modern, shortened form of the word “Judahite.” Every time you come to the word “Jew” in the Old Scriptures, you should read “Judahite;” and every time you come to the word “Jew” in the New Scriptures, you should read it as “Judean.”

The term Semite was proposed at first for the languages related to the Hebrew by Ludwig Schlözer, in Eichhorn’s “Repertorium”, vol. VIII (Leipzig, 1781), p. 161. Through Eichhorn the name then came into general usage (cf. his “Einleitung in das Alte Testament” (Leipzig, 1787), I, p. 45. In his “Gesch. der neuen Sprachenkunde”, pt. I (Göttingen, 1807) it had already become a fixed technical term.

The ancient Semitic populations were pastoral Nomads who several centuries before the Christian Era were migrating in large numbers from Arabia to Mesopotamia, the coasts of the Mediterranean Sea, and the Nile River delta. Jews and other Semites settled in villages in Judea, southern Palestine.

The tribes which inhabited these territories, and to some extent still inhabit them, show in language, traits, and character a sharply characterized individuality which separates them distinctly from other peoples. Their languages axe closely related to one another, not being almost independent branches of language, like the great groups of Indo-Germanic languages, but rather dialects of a single linguistic group. Physically, also, the Semitic form it is found in Arabia. Here also the phonetics and partly also the grammatical structure of the Semitic language, are most purely, as the vocabulary is most completely, preserved. From these as well as from other circumstances the conclusion has been drawn that Arabia should be considered the original home of the Semitic peoples.

And so in short The growth of Islam in these countries was “NOT” due to a sudden influx of “Arabs” but gradual conversion to Islam by the NATIVE POPULATION who later were termed “Arabs”. The predominant population of Mesopotamia (today’s Iraq), Syria, Jordan, Palestine, Lebanon and Egypt were “Arab” Christians.

“The majority of the Arab population had converted from Judaism to Christianity by the second century such as the Nestorians, Monophysites, Jacobites Copts and Assyrians giving Iraqi’s people of the past (the Assyrians) a legitimate claim to being the first Christian nation in history”

now where do you get your information (besides Wikipedia?)

“majority of the Arab population had converted from Judaism to Christianity by the second century:

arabs were never jews…..

there were JEWS that lived in Iraq for centuries, long before islam was invented….

but arabs that were jews?

come on….