The Arabian Peninsula and the Bible

Description

Biblical studies continue to attract special attention among intellectuals and readers in general, and researchers and historians in particular, particularly when they relate to the Torah’s origins and roots.
The book “Arabia and the Bible” by Ian Montgomery represents one of the pioneering studies in this field, representing the first serious scholarly attempt to link the origins of the Torah and the people of Israel to the Arabian Peninsula.
Although more than eight and a half decades have passed since the book’s publication, the need to translate it and understand its contents still exists, especially in light of the growing debate surrounding recent studies that attribute the Torah to the Arabian Peninsula, and the belief of many researchers that it is the first to link the origins of the Torah and the Children of Israel to the Arabian Peninsula. The importance of this book lies in the fact that its author is the first to shed light on this subject at a time when most biblical studies traced the origin of the Torah to Egypt or Babylon. The current book is an invitation to look at another cultural region from which the author believes the Torah originated: the Arabian Peninsula and southern Arabia. The current book represents a timely new attempt to examine the origin of the Torah, drawing not only on its texts but also on contemporary archaeological evidence and texts. This is a succinct attempt in which the author presents his evidence according to a solid scientific approach based on a careful examination of the texts of the Torah and the archaeological evidence associated with them. His upbringing and academic studies may have had a significant impact on this. The entire book presents an amazingly comprehensive picture of the role of the Arabian Peninsula in the history and development of its neighbors, especially the Hebrews. It discusses the climate changes that may have been the cause of the increased drought in the Arabian Peninsula and the resulting cultural collapse, emphasizing that the increased drought there was not due to water scarcity, but rather because ancient civilizations that knew how to make the most of water supplies declined for various social reasons. When control over water was lost, drought was not the cause, but rather the result, of the collapse of civilizations.