MECCA: Did Diodorus refer to Mecca in the 1st century BC?

Описание: Muslims, desperate to find any reference for Mecca before the 7th century have looked to ancient texts, and have found what they think is a good candidate, a simple sentence penned by Diodorus Siculus in the 1st century BC, where he wrote, “Hieron d’ hagiōtaton hidrutai, timōmenon hupo pantōn Arabōn perittoteron", which in English says: “A very sacred temple has been established there which is highly revered by all the Arabs.” (Diodorus Siculus, tr. Stanley M. Burnstein).

In 1788, Edward Gibbon, in his seminal work entitled the 'Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire', vol.5, took this sentence and concluded that it was referring to the Ka'aba in Mecca, because it was a sacred temple which all the Arabs revered, and only the Ka'aba would have been revered by all the Arabs in the 1st century BC.

He failed, however, to go to the source of that quote and read the full quote, which is a common problem with many people who jump to conclusions without first finding out the background to a certain quote. So, let's go and look a the background to that quote by Diodorus.

As one can expect, ancient literary sources do not have much to say about the Red Sea coast of Arabia. Yet, we are told that a king of Egypt, Ptolemy II Philadelphus (r. 283–246 BCE), sent a fact-finding expedition down the coast of the Gulf of Aqaba (its name today) to chart the region before he launched his campaigns into northern Arabia.

The expedition was led by a certain Aristōn, who produced a report for military use. That report has since disappeared, but is assumed to have been the main source used by the historian and geographer Agatharchides (2nd century BC) in his seminal work, 'On the Red Sea'. This too has disappeared, but some of the text was preserved and reworked into three later studies:

1) The Bibliotheca Historica of Diodorus Siculus (1st century BC)
2) The Geographica of Strabo (1st BC–1st AD)
3) The Bibliotheca of Photius (9th AD) (obviously much later, but the best preserved).

If you read these three sources side-by-side you get a good idea of what Agatharchides had to say about the north-western coast of Arabia, just south of the Gulf of Aqaba.

Agatharchides wrote, “A bay, or gulf (Kolpos), somewhere south of the Gulf of Aqaba, that runs inland about 500 stadia (thus, roughly 90 km). The mouth is too craggy for ships to traverse. Around the bay live a hunting people called something like the Batmizomaneis or Banizomeneis. "A very sacred temple has been established there which is highly revered by all the Arabs” (Edward Gibbon – 1788, Decline and Fall, vol. 5).

Yet, Gibbon only referred to that last sentence, and not what Agatharchides mentioned earlier, thus, suggesting this was the Ka'aba; and that is the problem.

If he had looked further he would have noted that Agatharchides placed the bay and its vaunted temple along the coast, roughly 90 km from the group of islands just outside the isthmus of the Gulf of Aqaba.

Ian David Morris (see his web-site below) has done the best research on this material, and he mentions that "Agatharchides’ bay might run all the way to Ainounah from Tiran Island, where the Gulf of Aqaba opens onto the Red Sea coastline. The cluster of peninsulas, islands and reefs at that point may have presented a treacherous passage for ancient ships, resonating with his account. From there, a traveler would have followed the coast to Ainounah, going “inland” as Agatharchides noted.

Morris maintained that, "recent scholars suggest that the long, rocky bay, must be that which is near Wadi Ainounah (its present name), which is situated just above the sea, and is around 90 km from the Tiran island, as it had a large temple in the 3rd - 1st century BC.

Morris remarks that since the later Islamic Traditions present the Ka'aba in Mecca as the greatest 'temple' of ancient Arabia, going back to the time of Adam and Eve, why then do the earliest historical sources not refer or confirm it?

His conclusion? "If there really was a centripetal temple throughout the millennium between Ptolemy II and Muhammad, then Agatharchides/Diodorus is the one and only ancient source that might explicitly describe it, and even that puts it in the wrong place. The fact that they don't refer to it is a startling oversight".

Note: Agatharchides, Strabo and others traveled down the Western coast of Arabia, and never once in their records referred to any Ka'aba, nor a city called Mecca. The only place they did refer to, where the early Arabs went to, was this "temple" in Ainounah. Yet, it is too far north (692 km north of Mecca), and too earlier (600-700 years too early).

It is obvious from the data provided by Diodorus and Agathrchides that this temple is NOT the Ka'aba, nor the Mecca Muslims are looking for.

Ian David Morris site: http://www.iandavidmorris.com/mecca-b...

© Pfander Centre for Apologetics - US, 2021
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