From Mount Hermon to Mecca

This finally brings us back to the moon-god. After documenting the powerful influence of the other gods in the ancient pantheon on the religion of Muhammad, what can possibly be left that we can lay at the feet of Sîn?

Ritual. Remember from an earlier article we described the akiti festival at ancient Ur, a festival that involved ritual circumambulation of the fields. This practice dates to at least 2500 BC. We speculated that it may have originated even earlier than that, based on the spiral wall around the summit of Mount Hermon, apparently for ritual purposes, that Sir Charles Warren described in his 1869 report for the Palestine Exploration Fund.

Warren, a brilliant man, speculated on the connection between Hermon and the holy city of Islam.

Hermon, no doubt, as being pre-eminent among the high places of Syria and Palestine, must have been the scene of the ancient worship: its stone oval may have been for the same purpose as that of the Kaaba at Mecca.^[1]

Warren then cites the report of Johann Burckhardt, the Swiss explorer who brought Petra to the attention of the West in 1812.

The devotee then begins the Towaf or walk round the Kaaba, keeping that building on his left hand. This ceremony is to be repeated seven times…^[2]

Prior to the age of Mohammed, when idolatry prevailed in Arabia, the Kaaba was regarded as a sacred object, and visited with religious veneration by persons who performed the Towaf nearly in the same manner as their descendants do at present.… The Mohammedan Hadj or pilgrimage, and the visit to the Kaaba, are, therefore, nothing more than a continuation and confirmation of the ancient custom.^[3]

In an earlier article, we learned that the fourth-century bishop Epiphanius connected pagan rituals at Alexandria and Petra. The former involved worshipers circling an idol of a virgin goddess (a ka’iba) seven times; the latter required the faithful to circle the idol of Dushara, a stone cube—a ka’ba.

Warren then added an intriguing note in his report, suggesting another connection between the Kaaba and Mount Hermon.

It appears possible that Hermon may be one of the holy mountains spoken of in the Mohammedan mythology. Burckhardt tells us (vol. i. p. 297), with reference to Adam building the Kaaba, that “he collected the stones for the building from the five holy mountains—Lebanon, Tor Syna (Mount Sinai), El Djoudy [Ararat], Hirra, or Djibel Nour, and Tor Zeyt.” The sheikh of the mosque at Jerusalem tells me that Tor Zeyt is the Mount of Olives, considered holy by them because Isa [Jesus] ascended from it; if this is the case, then this myth would be of later origin than the Christian era. Perhaps by Lebanon, Mount Hermon is intended, and the stone oval may have some connection with the towaf of the Kaaba.

Of the five holy mountains, we have those on which the ark rested, the law was given and from which Isa ascended: this disposed of three; the fourth, Hura, or Gibl Nour, at Mecca, the scene of some local tradition; and the fifth, Lebanon. How comes the latter to be classed among the five, unless it is on account of its connection with some pagan tradition?^[4]

It would be interesting, to say the least, if the black stone in the Kaaba came from Mount Hermon, but the relevant point is the pagan ritual that connects Mount Hermon to the Kaaba—counterclockwise circumambulation of a sacred site.

We can’t know for sure, of course, but at the very least it appears that Muhammad incorporated into his new religion old pagan traditions that had been practiced in Arabia, and specifically Petra, for centuries at least, and in Mesopotamia for millennia. Petra, at the south end of the Jordan Rift Valley, was well within traveling distance of the high place on the summit of Mount Hermon.

To be fair, Christians also have a long history of adopting pagan practices. There is nothing in the Bible about praying to saints (that’s from the Greek hero cults, which in turn came from Canaanite worship of the Rephaim),^[5] exchanging wedding bands (ancient Egypt), or contemplative prayer (Eastern mysticism). But circumstantial evidence points to an archaic ritual that Muhammad may not have recognized as coming from the pagan gods he thought he was rejecting, a rite with a very long pedigree—one that’s documented three thousand years before the birth of Islam at the city of the moon-god, Ur in ancient Sumer.

And it may go all the way back to the Watchers on Mount Hermon.

We have no doubt that Muslims and open-minded people of other faiths will find this particularly hard to accept, and maybe even to take seriously. That’s fine. Facts are stubborn things, and they don’t care whether we believe them or not. Life is much easier when you adjust your worldview to accommodate them rather than trying to force them to conform to your preferred “reality.”

Jesus really meant it when He said that He was the only path to heaven. He backed it up by predicting His own Resurrection, and then fulfilling the prophecy. Without the testimony of the eyewitnesses to the risen Jesus, this book could be filed alongside the “ancient alien” stuff in the paranormal section of the bookstore.

But He did come back. This isn’t a series on apologetics, and there are scholars far more qualified than us to give you the proofs, but the bottom line is the Resurrection is one of the best-attested historical events of the classical era. No serious scholar doubts the historicity of Jesus, although they may deny His divinity. What you do with that evidence is up to you.

So, everything Jesus confirmed, like the Old Testament, is likewise true, and teachings about the nature of the spirit realm from the apostles in the New Testament must be taken seriously as well. When Paul used words like “principalities,” “powers,” “thrones,” “dominions,” and “rulers,” he didn’t mean politicians. When the Hebrew prophets railed against Baal, Asherah, El, and the Rephaim, they weren’t condemning figments of pagan imagination. And when Peter and Jude referred to the angels who sinned, they were writing about ancient entities who are bound in chains right now, as you read this, in pitch darkness.

Derek admits that it took him years to move from a squishy “all roads lead to heaven” theology to grasping the implications of the historical fact of the Resurrection. If Jesus is the only way, then all the other ways must be wrong. That makes life easier and more difficult at the same time: It’s easier to know the path to follow, but it’s also easier to offend people who play the post-modern “No Absolute Truth” card—you know, “This is my truth, but it may not be true for you.”

What drivel. To paraphrase Ravi Zacharias, when you cross the street, it’s either you or the bus. Not both.

Likewise, it’s either Jesus or nothing.

So, when we consider how the religions of the ancient world were transformed after the Resurrection, it seems self-evident that they must have been shaped in response to Jesus’ shocking victory over death. The principalities and powers were shocked. If they’d known what was coming on the morning of the third day, “they would not have crucified the Lord of glory.”^[6]

Quoting Isaiah, Paul wrote: 

What no eye has seen, nor ear heard, 
nor the heart of man imagined, 
what God has prepared for those who love him.”

1 Corinthians 2:9 (ESV)

With our human senses, we cannot imagine what God has prepared for us. Clearly, the rebel gods, the coalition that’s gathered a following more than a billion and a half strong under the sign of the crescent moon, weren’t expecting what happened, either.

Though they can study His Word with supernatural intellects far older and more powerful than we can imagine, they still cannot perceive the “secret and hidden wisdom of God,” which has been decreed and will inevitably come to pass according to His will.

What’s coming is beyond awesome, and I mean that in the original sense of the word—overwhelming, beyond the human capacity to grasp, and unprecedented in history.

What lies ahead is the end of history—the death of the gods.

^[1] Charles Warren, R. E., “The Summit of Hermon, With an Illustration,” Palestine Exploration Fund Quarterly Statement 2.5 (Jan. 1 to March 31, 1870), 214.

^[2] John Lewis Burckhardt, Travels in Arabia, Comprehending an Account of Those Territories in Hedjaz Which the Mohammedans Regard as Sacred (London: H. Colburn, 1829), 172.

^[3] Ibid., 177–178.

^[4] Warren, op. cit., 214–215.

^[5] See pages 87–89 of Derek’s book Last Clash of the Titans.

^[6] 1 Corinthians 2:8.