[32V]⋙ PDF Hidden Histories Palestine and the Eastern Mediterranean Basem L Ra'ad 9780745328300 Books

Hidden Histories Palestine and the Eastern Mediterranean Basem L Ra'ad 9780745328300 Books

Download As PDF : Hidden Histories Palestine and the Eastern Mediterranean Basem L Ra'ad 9780745328300 Books

Hidden Histories Palestine and the Eastern Mediterranean Basem L Ra'ad 9780745328300 Books

So many myths are taken as common beliefs by the Judeo-Christian public. This author shows us some alternative interpretations. Did Jesus really exist? Did Moses really exist? Was there ever really a Jewish exodus from Egypt? If Jesus existed was he Jewish? Were there historical realities associated with Solomon and David? Was Hebrew an important and distinct language back in the days before the time of Christ? Definitive answers to these are hard to come by. We don't know many things for certain as cultures hand down mythologies from one to the next as centuries roll by. After reading this book the open-minded reader will be tempted to discard many commonly held beliefs. What to replace them with? Perhaps wisdom is a place where we believe in less and less... Finally we can simply say: there are so many things that I don't believe it that this has become a mental habit. And this is not the same thing as being a "skeptic." But back to the histories presented in this book: especially for those of us who have lived in Arab-speaking indigenous parts of the Middle East we can better understand that the troves of ancient wisdom carried by the Arabic language is indeed vast and frequently overlooked by Westerners who have been taught to avoid deep contact with cultures which have evolved in the Islamic world. Big subject. I highly recommend this book for an eye-opener. Thanks go to Basem Ra'ad!


Tags : Hidden Histories: Palestine and the Eastern Mediterranean [Basem L. Ra'ad] on Amazon.com. *FREE* shipping on qualifying offers. <DIV></DIV><P>For thousands of years, the region of Palestine and the East Mediterranean has been denied an indigenous voice for an inclusive history. Three religions ascribe their origins to this part of the world,Basem L. Ra'ad,Hidden Histories: Palestine and the Eastern Mediterranean,Pluto Press,074532830X,Middle East - General,Middle East;Civilization.,Middle East;Foreign public opinion.,Middle East;History.,Civilization,Foreign public opinion,Great BritainBritish Isles,HISTORY Middle East General,History,History & Theory,History - General History,HistoryWorld,History: World,InspirationalDevotional,Middle East,Middle EastIsrael & Palestine,Middle EastNorth Africa,Middle Eastern history,Non-Fiction,ScholarlyUndergraduate,UNIVERSITY PRESS

Hidden Histories Palestine and the Eastern Mediterranean Basem L Ra'ad 9780745328300 Books Reviews

Basam L. Ra'ad's new book is a companion volume to Shlomo Sand's "The Invention of the Jewish People". It turns out that the Palestinians, now exiled or living on their land under duress, are descended from the people of that land from ancient times ah, Canaanites. The corollary story is another tragic story; of Jews descended from Jewish proselytes of the Ukraine, Western Turkey, Eastern Europe, or North Africa - reviving a modern version of a little-spoken ancient hebrew language, for the purpose of claiming the locus of origin of the Torah Judaism that preceded Talmudic Judaism. Basam Ra'ad neatly summarizes the falsehoods of the bible-as-history, that are relevant to this particular debunking.

To me, it seems a great loss to bury the Jewish histories of large-scale religious conversion and the true stories of origins in other ancient lands and tribal migrations. That would be true history, much more interesting than the improbable, received mythology. The derivative Christian religions kept select old books from Judaism and indeed used the old stories to support the seizure of lands of other unworthy "Canaanites", but in that process the colonizers kept a sense of being merely symbolic "Israelites", recognizing the while that they came from specific nations in Europe. In Palestine, we have a land seizure based upon the bible, but at pains not to identify the natives as even make-believe, "Canaanites".
This book, which is based on archaelogical facts, challenges existing stories on the history of the Levant--a must read for those who are interested in the Near East religions and civilizations. Very well written and subtly funny at times.
So many myths are taken as common beliefs by the Judeo-Christian public. This author shows us some alternative interpretations. Did Jesus really exist? Did Moses really exist? Was there ever really a Jewish exodus from Egypt? If Jesus existed was he Jewish? Were there historical realities associated with Solomon and David? Was Hebrew an important and distinct language back in the days before the time of Christ? Definitive answers to these are hard to come by. We don't know many things for certain as cultures hand down mythologies from one to the next as centuries roll by. After reading this book the open-minded reader will be tempted to discard many commonly held beliefs. What to replace them with? Perhaps wisdom is a place where we believe in less and less... Finally we can simply say there are so many things that I don't believe it that this has become a mental habit. And this is not the same thing as being a "skeptic." But back to the histories presented in this book especially for those of us who have lived in Arab-speaking indigenous parts of the Middle East we can better understand that the troves of ancient wisdom carried by the Arabic language is indeed vast and frequently overlooked by Westerners who have been taught to avoid deep contact with cultures which have evolved in the Islamic world. Big subject. I highly recommend this book for an eye-opener. Thanks go to Basem Ra'ad!