جوري;2842237 said:
There you go
vb.tafsir.net/tafsir18585/
can't help if your English sources are lacking.
Post #5 in that thread, confirmed the verse I posted, with: "every one of them
in Zion appeareth before God".
I notice several Islamic "scholars" (Deedat, Naik, Estes, etc.) leave the verse out of the passage that gives the location pin, perhaps banking on their followers not looking the passage up. No shortage of YouTube videos do that too. Here is how it is frequently quoted as they try to make the claim that Baca is Mecca:
"They pass through the Valley of Baca, regarding it as a place of springs, as if the early rain had covered it with blessing..... Better one day in Your courts than a thousand [anywhere else]; I would rather stand at the threshold of God's house than dwell in the tents of the wicked."
They censor out the location of the pilgrimage being "before God in Zion" and replace that and the next two verses with "....." instead. Would you call that being honest?
Yet out of the hundreds of millions of sites on the internet, and no shortage of them proselytizing for Islam and even operated by Islamic scholars, doesn't it seem a bit peculiar that the best you could do for evidence was present a site that repeated the Psalms 84 claim, that is debunked by the passage itself? This even in light of some Muslims suggesting that Mecca was supposed to have predated all other towns on earth?
Consider that in light of the wealth of evidence we have for ancient Arabian towns like Mada'in Saleh:
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mada%27in_Saleh
جوري;2842237 said:
most 'historical things' are written in retrospect, when was the printing press invented for 'historical books' to be that far back in circulation?
The printing press wasn't invented until the 15th century! Before that time scribes made copies. Sometimes on papyrus and some even on animal skins.
The dead sea scrolls that were found at Qumran are dated before the Christian era. Let alone that we have over 5300 partial or complete copies of the Gospel, penned in many languages, from prior to 300 AD.
جوري;2842237 said:
Obviously given the two above posts you can see why most people don't put much stock in the 'bible' as a historical book, given that we don't know who authored it.
Archaeology isn't all that confirms the scriptures. About 1/4 of the Bible is prophecy, and much of that has been fulfilled. Additionally, the Old Testament accounts of Abraham, Sarah, Hagar, Isaac and Ishmael that are make perfect geographical sense. Abraham's home in Hebron is just below Jerusalem, and the wilderness of Beersheba where Hagar wandered with Ishmael, is just below Hebron.
Yet the counter-scriptural suggestion, that Abraham and Ishmael traveled 1200 kilometers to Mecca, is essentially a demograhpical and geographical impossibility. Particularly considering that the trade route along the Red Sea wasn't established until over a thousand years after Abraham roamed the earth.
جوري;2842237 said:
You've a middle eastern 'God' 'Jesus' and whomever preceded him being written about by western scholars - much is lost in the translation. If you can read the Arabic or get someone to translate it to you, you'd probably have a better understanding of the region.
All the best,
The google translator did a good job. That site didn't offer any historical or archaeological evidence of a pre-4th century AD Mecca, that I spotted in a quick scan of it.
