Joseph suggests that "we owe it to ourselves as well as to him [Salibi] to scrutinize his thesis and the mass of detailed evidence that he has carefully gathered to defend it." That was precisely what I did in order to reach the conclusion expressed in my review. As one who has done considerable work, academic and in the field, in the area of Semitic languages, Middle Eastern history, and Middle Eastern archaeology [What work? A more detailed list of his accomplishments would be helpful in assessing his qualifications to critique Salibi.], I came to the conclusion that the "mass of evidence" Salibi put forward was not evidence, but based upon accidental "look-alikes" and "sound-alikes" between Palestine and Arabia and between Hebrew and Arabic [but what about the innumerable coordinates of the Old Testament sites found in Asir and mentioned by Joseph?]
I do not wish to intrude on Salibi's field; rather I consider myself already in the field he has entered. [Ah, now we get to the crux of his bile!] I argue, on the basis of evidence from Palestinian archaeology -- which rests upon rather firm cross chronologies [not nearly so firm, as far as I have read -- check out the controversies in the A.N.E. Digest.], stratigraphic sequences, ceramic progressions, epigraphic developments, and other factors -- that his hypothesis is wrong. Salibi, on the other hand, simply dismisses those data and their implications and asserts that biblical scholars and archaeologists are wrong and that he is right [Untrue. Salibi has invited scholars to disprove his theory and critique his analyses.] That is hardly a scientific argument, no matter how it is bolstered by pages of Hebrew/Arabic and geographical similarities.
I will admit that my review, as Joseph has noted, merely summarized content without presenting details of disagreement. In reading the introduction to the volume I listed some five pages of disagreements in my notes. To have presented them in detail, plus similar line-by-line disagreements with his data in succeeding chapters would indeed have produced a review longer than the book itself. In order to assuage Joseph's feelings reagarding that omission [What about assuaging scientific method instead? Hammond seems to personalize everything, a trait that seems common in biblical scholarship, unfortunately.], I would like to present some examples of those "disagreements":
That his "remarkable discovery" was made on linguistic analysis of biblical place names, with little reference to geography [what does Hammond mean? Salibi's whole thesis is based on both geography and place names. Did Hammond even read the book?], because of "disagreement"is hardly a basis for identification such locations.
That his argument rests on "the assumption that the Hebrew bible has been consistently mistranslated." because Hebrew "was out of use" by the 5th or 6th century B.C. is fallacious. Hebrew had to have been in use for reading biblical book from Exilic times onward for cultic purposes [I don't understand Hammond's reasoning. Salibi said Hebrew was no longer a spoken language, which is appartently true, but rather that the spoken language was Aramaic, and it was the influence of Aramaic structure and sound system that distorted and brought about misunderstandings of the Old Testament.], and a number of the apocryphal and pseudoepigraphic books were written in Hebrew. This would not have been possible, or even sensible, if the language was not still in use. [Many works were written in Latin after the demise of that language, too; but the Latin used was hardly that of the Caesars. And in the Near East, Summerian was used as a religious language long after it had ceased to exist as a spoken one. --- Specious reasoning!].
That "Jewish" migrations into Palestine "could well"have been caused by civil war between Judah and Israel in westen Arabia ignores the Davidic kingdom. The tradition that the break between the two sectors took place after the reign of Solomon and before "Judaism" is actually a proper cultic designation: it also ignores the archaelogical remains from that period [Like the lack of any evidence of settlement in Palestinian Jerusalem during the time of Solomon?]
That archaeologists are "misled" in their work and that "no clear evidence has been revealed which may properly be classified as being directly related to Biblical history" ignores internally and externally dated epigraphic and material remains [It is my understanding that most, if not all, of the epigraphic remains are still a subject of hot dispute in the field.]
That there is "no knowledge" of biblical Hebrew's orthography, grammar, syntax, nor idiom, ignores a vast amount of linguistic effort and history that cannot be so casually dismissed. Here again, consultation of grammars, specific word studies, and other research on the language should have been done prior to making the statement. [It appears Salibi did this; but scholars need to review his analyses, I feel.]
That the "Pharaoh of Egypt" was a West Arabian deity cannot be supported on the basis of Egyptian usage or historical fact.[?]
That the reference to "priests" in the "Return" narratives refers to the people of "Qahwan" requires rearrangement of several languages, inn which the root of the word appears as a cognate term [Finally, something very specific.]
That "David's Hebron could hardly have been in Palestine, where no such place appears to exist" is news to this reviewer, who happened to have excavated the site prior to 1967 and did find evidence of Iron Age occupation, not to mention the finding by colleagues of innumerable Iron Age vessels marked "Hebron." That Ėl-Khalil" means "the cave" is quite disrespectful to the Abrahamic tradition, as well as to the Arabic language.
If Hebrew was not the language of the "Hebrews," but a language "widely spoken in western Arabia" why are there diffences between it and Arabic, not top mention, in earlier times between it and both northern and southern Arabic?[There is still a language spoken in southern Arabia that is not Arabic. Why could Hebrew not also have been one?]
Department of Anthropology University of Utah Philip C. Hammond