Nice carving. I'm not sure the crosspiece on the staff makes it a cross, but perhaps. I'd have to see other contemporary Christian art.
Pinging SunkenCiv, just FYI.
Posted on 12/29/2012 2:05:01 PM PST by george76
Archaeologists have discovered the ruins of a buried Christian empire in the highlands of Yemen, leading to theories that there may have once been a church in Mecca.
A stone carving of a Christian figure was found in Zafar, some 581 miles south of Mecca, and is thought to have been made in the era of the Prophet Muhammad.
Paul Yule, an archaeologist from Heidelberg in Germany, has dated the 5feet 7inch tall relief which shows a man with chains of jewellery, curls and spherical eyes to around 530AD.
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The figure is barefoot, which was typical of Coptic saints. He is holding a bundle of twigs, a symbol of peace, in his left hand, and there is a crossbar on his staff, making it look like a cross.
The crown on his head is similar to the ones worn by the Christian rulers of ancient Ethiopia, reported ABC News.
All this led Mr Yule to believe that the man was a descendant of conquerors from Africa who came to the region in 525AD to spread Christianity.
(Excerpt) Read more at dailymail.co.uk ...
Was there a church in Mecca? Chiselled stonework with Christian figure discovered at holy site in Yemen
If it was holding a symbol of peace, then we know it has nothing to do with the warring piggod of the cult of islam.
in the era of the Prophet Muhammadin the error of Muhammad
Nice carving. I'm not sure the crosspiece on the staff makes it a cross, but perhaps. I'd have to see other contemporary Christian art.
Pinging SunkenCiv, just FYI.
Before being replaced by a violent replacement cult of Islam that is.
Muhammad was born in Mecca in 570 AD. Two hundred years earlier Emperor Constantine made Christianity the official religion of the Roman Empire. Mecca was at the edge of the Empire. Yes, there were Christian churches there. There were synagogues there too, as well as pagan temples (which is what the Kaaba in Mecca was before Muhammad conquered Mecca).
I’m sure there was a Church in Mecca—as the spread of Christianity in the 7th Century was remarkable, even in Arabia, until it was literally snuffed out by the sword of Mohammed.
Of course the great news is, there IS a Church, even now, in Mecca... (even though the Saudi’s don’t know where it is, and deny it exists...)
There they go again. Don’t they know that this will incite violence?
It is fairly clear that their “prophet” (or at least the people who wrote it all down)...did have some contact with Christians and Jews, albeit they got a very distorted version of the Biblical faiths. We do know that there were types of Christian churches in the 200-600’s or so that either did not believe Jesus was a material (real) person, but rather just a spiritual entity that only appeared human..(so there there was nobody to die on any cross)...and there were a few more odd (to us, anyway) versions..... the Church Councils in the 300-600 years discussed all that stuff and, as we know, decided on the “fully Divine, fully human” formula (the latter part meaning that he really did die on the cross after all).
If we look at where these variant versions were most popular, it was mostly in Egypt and Syria (and trans-caucasia). These are the regions closest to Arabia, and also areas where there was frequent contact vis-a-vis the Arabian desert region.
So, (from my limited knowledge, anyway) it would both seem possible and indeed make sense, stand to reason....
as it would have placed a non-orthodox (what we now call a heretical) variant of Christianity in the region where the authors of their Koran resided.
It would make sense that Christians were in Mecca before the demon visited Mohammed in a cave and convinced him that a minor pagan moon god was the same God as Yahweh/Jehovah. Its too bad that they weren’t more successful. The history of humanity would have been much more peaceful if the locals had laid hands on Mohammed and removed his demons rather than taking up arms and following him to battle.
Mecca could have been Rome and Medina Paris and not the current camel litter boxes infested with benighted bloodthirsty barbarians as they are today.
The upper right has the Icthus Cross with the fish as the crossbar, tail on left.
This is a common misconception. The Edict of Milan was granted by Emperor Constantine in the West and Licinius Augustus in the East in 313 granting religious freedom throughout the Roman Empire. In addition, the Edict of Milan ordered the restitution of property confiscated from Christians.
Christianity had to wait many years later under a different emperor to become the official religion of the empire.
Regardless, there were lots of Christians and Jews living in Mecca when Mo was born.
Agreed. It is generally recognized that Mohammed cobbled his new religion together from information about Christianity he received from a relative of his wife (who was a monk belonging to a heretical sect), some things he knew about Judaism, and native pagan beliefs.
“as it would have placed a non-orthodox (what we now call a heretical) variant of Christianity in the region where the authors of their Koran resided.”
This is my understanding as well after reading a couple of books calling into question the actual historicity of Mohammad himself.
Got thrown out of a facebook forum because I dared to suggest that Mo never existed!
He was nothing but a murderous sand pirate with delusions of spiritual grandeur.
As to Mecca, it is not quite fair to describe the pre-Mohammedan Kaaba as a pagan temple. It was a focus of Arab unity and had areas devoted to the worship of all the Arab tribe in the area, including both Jewish and Christian tribes. Yes, most of its floor and wall space were devoted to pagan cults, but that is not the whole story.
There is a tradition passed down among Arab Christians that when Mohammed destroyed all the pagan idols in the Kaaba, he found Torah scrolls, which he returned to their Jewish Arab owners, and he also found icons of Christ and the Theotokos, which he did not destroy, but allowed to remain in the Kaaba along the the meteorite fragment his followers associate with Abraham.
Please henceforth get your Imperial and Church history straight: St. Constantine (we Orthodox honor both him and his mother St. Helen with the title “Isapostolos” usually Englished as “Equal-to-the-Apostles”) did not make Christianity the official religion of the Empire. He joined his co-Emperor in legalizing Christianity and moved the capital to a city which was consciously built as a Christian city (Constantinople, or New Rome as he called it, had no pagan temples, but many Christian churches). From edict of Milan in 313 until the proclamation of (Nicene) Christianity as the state religion of the Empire in 380 by St. Theodosius, the Empire had no state religion, which Christianity, Judaism and Greco-Roman paganism all being religio licita (though the latter two came under increasing restrictions during that period — the reign of Julian the Apostate, when Christianity was again persecuted excepted).
Now that’s interesting. An Ethiopian-style crown. . . I wonder whether it was a carving to commemorate the Ethiopian invasion of Yemen to free the Christians there from persecution by the Jews.
(Pre-Mohammedan Yemen was a predominantly Jewish kingdom which persecuted its Christian minority until Ethiopia conquered it to put a stop to the persecutions.)
wow! you can get thrown off a site for THAT!???
(there sre some scholars who agree with that, too ... but even if it is wrong and he was 100 percent there, what came out of it has sure caused the world a tremendous amount of grief...)
well, anyway, congratulations!
(there is a pretty nice local fellow here who, some years ago, went to the city dump to scrounge around for some small household items he could repair... they let people in to scrounge and then they get a few dollars from them when the people find anything they want to take home... consider it like a flea market where you bring a shovel is all........so anyway, he found some little kitchen appliance thing and went to check out and the proprietor demanded $10 and this fellow offered $5 and they got into a fight and the customer got evicted. SO for years now, he has claimed to be the only guy any of us know of, who ever got thrown out of the city dump, he takes it as a point of pride.... ha!)
happy new year,
fhc
When was this found? Have the muzzis destroyed it yet?
Actually, the tradition among Arab Christians, which recently got scholarly support from the fact that sections of the Qu’ran are nonsense as Arabic, but perfectly intelligible East Syriac, is that Mohammed started as a missionary from the Church of the East (the Nestorian church centered in what is now Iraq and Iran) then fell prey to demonic delusion and set himself up as a warlord.
Interestingly, one of the Nestorian bishops at the time Mohammed began his career was named Gabriel (I think he was the bishop of what is now Kirkuk), and there is a tradition of some bishops bearing the title “Angel” (cf. the Greek Orthodox Bishop of Bosra-Haran in Syria, who still bears the ancient title “the Angel of Haran”, and the style of address to the bishops of Asia Minor used in the Apocalypse of St. John). It is possible that before he fell into delusion, Mohammed reporting that “the Angel Gabriel said...” was simply reporting instructions from his bishop.
Once a year, in the twelfth Muslim lunar month of Dhu al-Hijjah, Meca is still the number one target-rich location for an immediate 2-mt nuke strike.
Just make sure the target is Saudi Arabia and not Yemen...
We better hope that find is well-guarded, or it will be subjected to the imbecilic taliwacko islamic treatment -- as in the Buddha statues of Bamiyan...
“SO for years now, he has claimed to be the only guy any of us know of, who ever got thrown out of the city dump, he takes it as a point of pride..”
I wear it with pride as well!
The forum was Islam and Christianity, the intent was to “find common ground” but obviously that is impossible. I think we all know how to become a Christian. The only requirement to become a Muslim is to state that allah is god and mo is his prophet. You must absolutely accept all of teachings without question. We as Christians can question our faith, research historians of the period, and critically analyze our faith. Islam has no such parallel. To question Islam is to be an Infidel!
If you’d like to be on or off, please FR mail me.
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If you’d like to be on or off, please FR mail me.
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If you’d like to be on or off, please FR mail me.
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Thanks Pollster1 for the ping and george76 for the topic, alas: "I will pray for him, but if he could punch it would help." [old punchline] |
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They not only located the 'real' Mt. Sinai in Arabia, but they found the rock split by Moses staff that produced millions of gallons of water to sustain the Nation of Israel and the livestock they plundered out of Egypt while they wandered around the desert.
All the altars, michvas and monuments they built remain just as they were 3000 years ago. Their most fascinating find however points to the legitimate claim that Israel has to ALL 'the land between the two great rivers'. Millions of rock carvings liter the peninsula of Saud, they include the outline of two human feet traced by their original owner granting a title deed to the citizens of the ancient Kingdom of Israel. No two footprints are alike and bear the initials of their owner.
Without knowing, the Crown Prince of Saud actually gifted a Korean physician with perhaps the most fabulous artifact mankind has ever found. It's a rock that actually bears a carving made of the Prophet Moses feet and bare his official seal. This artifact was found before the Israeli Antiquity Authority knew for certain Moses had an official seal BTW! You can read Penny & Jim's amazing adventure in Fire on the Mountain.
They not only located the 'real' Mt. Sinai in Arabia, but they found the rock split by Moses staff that produced millions of gallons of water to sustain the Nation of Israel and the livestock they plundered out of Egypt while they wandered around the desert.
All the altars, michvas and monuments they built remain just as they were 3000 years ago. Their most fascinating find however points to the legitimate claim that Israel has to ALL 'the land between the two great rivers'. Millions of rock carvings liter the peninsula of Saud, they include the outline of two human feet traced by their original owner granting a title deed to the citizens of the ancient Kingdom of Israel. No two footprints are alike and bear the initials of their owner.
Without knowing, the Crown Prince of Saud actually gifted a Korean physician with perhaps the most fabulous artifact mankind has ever found. It's a rock that actually bears a carving made of the Prophet Moses feet and bare his official seal. This artifact was found before the Israeli Antiquity Authority knew for certain Moses had an official seal BTW! You can read Penny & Jim's amazing adventure in Fire on the Mountain.
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