format_quote Originally Posted by
Ahmed.
Hi Ron
Are you saying its impossible for a man to travel on foot or donkey/horse from Palestine to where Makkah is now?
Hi Ahmed. Yes that's what I am saying because there was no overland route until about the 6th century BC, well over 1,000 years after Abraham roamed the earth.
format_quote Originally Posted by
Ahmed.
Bear in mind that ancient people were a lot taller (at least according to our religion so unless there is evidence to the contrary, vwe cannot really discount that)
Romans averaged about 5'-4" and I understand that a man had to be about 5'-10" to be a Roman soldier. So not much different than we are today.
format_quote Originally Posted by
Ahmed.
so even if Prophet Abraham (pbuh) walked, he could reach there in a few months...
But there was no overland route that Abraham, Hagar and Ishmael could have taken through that deserted, uncharted, untraveled, waterless, foodless Arabian desert wasteland. What would they have had to eat or drink over all those months?
The scriptures tell us that after Hagar and Ishmael were cast out of Abraham's house, she wandered in the wilderness of Beersheba. On the map at the link you can see that is about 20 miles to the southwest of Abraham's home in Hebron. Beersheba means "well of seven" because an oath Abraham made (when he bought back a well that he himself had dug, from the person that had stolen it.) There were and are several wells in Beersheba. One that Isaac opened back up as well. 20 miles is perfectly reasonable geographically.
http://www.israel-a-history-of.com/i...oBeersheba.jpg
Now let's consider the story from a number of Islamic sites
"Abraham took Hagar and her son, Ishmael to a place near the Kabah; he left them under a tree at the site of Zamzam. No one lived in Makkah back then, yet Abraham made them sit there, leaving them with some dates, and a small water-skin. Thereafter he set out towards home."
So if the "well of water" in Beersheba is the well of Zamzam in Mecca, Saudi Arabia. That would mean that between verse 14 when they left Abraham's home and verse 15 when the bottle of water Abraham gave them ran out, rather than wandering around 20 some miles as scripture suggests, Hagar and Ishmael would have had to wander across more than 886 miles of harsh, uncharted, unknown and untraveled waterless desert wasteland, from Hebron to Mecca, over a thousand years before an overland route connected northern Arabia with Yemen in the south.
Then if Abraham wandered with them (contrary to scripture), we are expected to presume that he abandoned his wife Sarah and his son Isaac (in whom God made His covenant) in Hebron, to wander 886 miles with Sarah's bondwoman Hagar, to an uninhabitated desert place (that thousands of years later became Mecca), only to then abandon and Ishmael under a tree, in a place where there were no other inhabitants and thus no farming, pasture, or food except some dates he left them with, and no water except what was in a "small water-skin" he gave them - and thus obviously no chance for survival - and then after abandoning them in that vacant Arabian desert place is supposed to have simply "set out" on his 886 mile wander back home.
Does that seem more reasonable than the historical record we were given through scripture?
format_quote Originally Posted by
Ahmed.
Makkah started off with just a tribe settling there so it wouldn't have been that large a city for generations .......
Indeed. From my understanding it was migrants from Yemen that initially settled the area in around the 4th century AD. I continue to keep looking forward for someone to present some evidence to the contrary.
format_quote Originally Posted by
Ahmed.
....hence early records/arhecgological evidence may not exist other than the reference in the Bible...
There is no reference to Mecca in the Bible as I demonstrated earlier in the thread.
In all of my searching I find no archaeological evidence of Mecca.
But do you understand what you are saying? That there is no evidence whatsoever, that a town that is supposed to have been founded by Adam building the kaaba - that would make it the oldest town on earth - has no archaeological or historical record.
Put another way, that would be like someone suggesting that there is no historical or archaeological record of Jerusalem ever having existed, prior to the 4th century AD! A patently ridiculous idea with, I believe, over a million artifacts just on display. Yet for Mecca, as you yourself seem to indicate, there are none.