The incorruptible mighty book
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Peace be with you
Thanks for bringing this thread to the open again
Peace Ayman
??This, then, which they call "stone," is the head of Aphrodite, whom they used to worship and whom they call Chabar.?
The above does not say the pagans call their temple ?Chabar? or ?Chobar? but that they refer to Aphrodite by this name. Aphrodite is probably Hellenized goddess Al-'Uzza the goddess of power. ?Chobar? I believe is the Greek/Latin mis-pronunciation for ?Kabir? which is to say ?Great?. As for John of Damascus the pagans probably refer to their pagan god Al Uzza as ?Great/Kabir?.
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Peace Warner,
??This, then, which they call "stone," is the head of Aphrodite, whom they used to worship and whom they call Chabar.?
The above does not say the pagans call their temple ?Chabar? or ?Chobar? but that they refer to Aphrodite by this name.They refer to the stone by this name and the stone is a symbol of a fertility goddess who was hellenized as Aphrodite. Basically, the temple is this idol's temple.
You didn't quote the previous part about showering the stone with kisses. Of course, this is clearly refering to the black stone which the sectarians still shower with kisses to this day. We can see from putting all the evidence together that this stone is a symbol of the head of the re-born fertility goddess coming out of the vagina-shaped enclosure.
Aphrodite is probably Hellenized goddess Al-'Uzza the goddess of power.
It could be. However, it could also be the hellenized Allat who like Aphrodite was a fertility goddess. On the other hand, the name Al-Uzza suggests more a goddess of power as opposed to fertility. Keep in mind that those three godesses were often combined and reflected different aspect of a mother goddess. So their identification is not absolute but it depends on what was in vogue at the time.
?Chobar? I believe is the Greek/Latin mis-pronunciation for ?Kabir? which is to say ?Great?. As for John of Damascus the pagans probably refer to their pagan god Al Uzza as ?Great/Kabir?.
I disagree. The name John of Damascus is a Romanized name that he was given. He was in reality a Christian Arab whose name was Mansur (see Hoyland). Surely, as an Arab, he knew his own language and the pronunciation of words better than any later generation. His transliteration of the word must be taken as closer to the actual pronunciation at his time than our modern view of how the word should be pronounced. Keep in mind that Mansur predates the invention of Arabic vocalization marks by several generations. Moreover, the word "kabar/kabor" (which could have also been equally vocalized "kobar" and also mean "big/great" is a valid Classical Arabic word. It even appears in the great reading (4035). So if it is a valid Classical Arabic word and it was transliterated by an Arab, then why come here hundreds of years later and claim that it was mis-pronounced?
Peace,
Ayman
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Peace adjwi, maxq, all,
Here is the original thread
http//free-minds.org/forum/index.php?topic=10220.0
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peace all,
I just came across this, I haven't read it yet, thought it might be useful
ARCHAEOLOGY AND THE HISTORY OF EARLY ISLAM THE FIRST SEVENTY YEARS
http//www.krc.ox.ac.uk/Publications/Jeremy%20Johns/Johns%202003(a).pdfAlso, Bro Ayman wrote a post on "how kaaba became a pagan idol" here.
