Yehuda D. Nevo

Yehuda D. Nevo (Hebrew: יהודה נבו; 1932 – 12 February 1992) was an Israeli archaeologist and historian best known for his revisionist studies of early Islam.

Biography

Yehuda was born in Haifa. His father died when he was nine months old and his mother chose not to grow. He moved between various foster families, and grew up with Nachshonim youth company A of Kibbutz Beit Alfa. He married Miriam Dayan, and divorced her after a short period.

His military service

Nevo received an officer even though he did not finish an officer course, and he guided a MK course in Damon. During this, the relationship was lost with two soldiers.

Nevo said that Bibi was initially torture and later a better attitude. Shoshana Har-Zion was later imprisoned in that prison, with two other Israelis, and they will be communicated by the wall, but did not meet. Nevo returned to Israel in a captive exchange deal at the end of 1951. After returning from captivity, he passed the intelligence officers' and set in the Northern Command. On July 12, 1953, Nevo participated in a reward operation in Nabi Samuel, after two soldiers were murdered in Ibn Sapir. With the establishment of a unit 101 in August 1953, there was among the first fighters in the unit and participated in the Kibbia massacre, after which he left the unit. To his testimony, the events in its Tibetan chased him all his life.

After his release from the army

After his release, Nevo was a shepherd in Kibbutz Beit Alfa and also worked as a publisher in Jerusalem. He then served as an archeology researcher. Among other things, Nevo conducted an archaeological survey in the Hula Valley together with Miriam Dayan, as well as an archaeological survey around Kibbutz Metzer. In addition, I recognized the city "watched", which is mentioned in the triple of the third Misss in a nearby Tel and east of Givat Ada. In the early 1960s, he worked for several years on a historic novel dealing with Judea, but finally chose not to publish it.

Nevo was the pioneers of the first period in Israel. For his research, he lived in the Sde Boker Midrash and from there he left with research delegations to carry out his research on the ground. His original last name Dayan chose to change Nabu to avoid repeated wishes in relation to a possible relationship with Moshe Dayan.

The end of his life

Nevo has been ill and on February 12, 1992, he put an end to his life in Beiria. Yehuda was buried in Kibbutz Sde Boker's cemetery, near the place of his main research at the kibbutz called "Lost City". On his childhood and his choice a writer in Michael Lev-Tov's "spirit of things", which scratched the story of the kibbutz in Israel. At the opening of the film, the story is presented on Yehuda Dayan Nevo, based on a French mute film made in 1952 on Kibbutz Beit Alfa.

On his tombstone, he was engraved in accordance with his caption "I saw - Yehuda Nevo". Probably a paraphrase of changing his family's name from Nabo, who became known as Moshe Rabbeinu's burial, and on the poet's song "On the other hand".

His research in the archeology of Islam and its formation

Nevo was active in the Negev Archaeological Project on the ancient Arab period and the rural settlement in the Negev in the 6-8 centuries AD, under the management of the Institute of Archeology near the Hebrew University of Jerusalem. Much of the excavations did with his own hands, without workers while using his friends Amnon Rotenberg and Nurit Tsafrir.

Discovery of the rock addresses

In 1981, he and his research group discovered four hundred rock addresses in Arabic spelling ancient spelling, in the Negev Desert in Israel, near Sde Boker. This discovery led him, along with Judith Koren, Academic information from the University of Haifa, to re -examine the sources of Islam and the ancient Islamic history. The site is called 'The Lost City' (Site 92, Israel survey, Map of Sde Boker West).

Nevo presented the first results of the said project in the third international college: from Jahlia to Islam (June 30 to July 6, 1985).: Yehuda D. Nevo: "Sde Boker and the Central Negev. The 7th to 8th century." He also published continued research in an article on Arab Paganism in the Negev during the Byzantine period in the fifth Coloc-series in this series, in 1990. His latest article on the subject, "Towards a Prehistory of Islam" ("ahead of Islamic History") was published in 1994 after his death, edited by the newspaper editors.

The full texts of the Negev's rock addresses, including copying, decoding and translation, were published by Nevo, Zamira Cohen and Dalia Patman in their book Ancient Arabic Inscriptions from the NEGEV (which sells according to the Aain's initials). Before publishing this book, the findings were gradually published between 1981 and 1982 and 1986-1988. These addresses were the basis for interrogating Islamic sources and ancient Islamic history, which led it to conclusions that contradict the official history of Islamic sources. Nevo belongs to the Revisionist school of Islamic studies.

Development of support for the Revisionist School in Islamic Studies

In his book Crossroads to Islam (in free translation: intersections on the way to Islam: the origins of Arabic religion and Arab state), which he wrote with Judith Academic Hen Koren and who was published after his death, he presented theory about the origins and development of the Islamic state and Islamic religion. Like a number of Western researchers in front of him, each for other reasons, he doubts the historical validity of classical Islamic traditions in the early days of Islam. The first part of the book describes, based on archaeological findings published by other archaeologists in the academic literature, the cessation of maintenance of the distant province of the Middle East by the Byzantine Empire and the Amphia's withdrawal from the region, after the economic motive for holding the province. Based on these findings, there was no Arab occupation from the south, but the Arabs who seized power following the empty space in the Sasanion left, or local, or tribes from the desert recruited before the empire to maintain its borders with the desert, only at one point she stopped paying them and disappearing from the field. Although a condition for "partnership" with Byzantines was the adoption of Christianity, in practice the head of the tribe declared it (and therefore every tribe) does when in practice they remained idolatry as before. Continuing the book, based on the analysis of historical sources and the Negev addresses, describes how, over time, these Arabs adopted the Christian-Christian monotheism of the inhabited population in which they began to control, and subsequently established an independent religion. According to this reading of the historical findings, the stories of Muhammad and the Qur'an are not completely true.

This strong skepticism led to a poignant criticism of other historians. However, the study of Koren and Nevo explaining their approach to the study of Islamic history was published in 1991 and included in the collection of "Rivisionist" articles (The Quest For the Historical Muhammad), which he published with scholar Ibn Warraq.

As stated, other researchers came to similar conclusions before him, such as Wansborough, who investigated in depth the Qur'an text, and reached only this study to conclude that it was a collection of saying that "were in the field" and joined together a holy book only in the mid-8th century, an opinion that Nevo also came from his research on the sails he found in the play.

German theologian Karl-Heinz Ohlig, in an extensive article, built on Nevo's theory as detailed in his book Crossroads to islam and developed it on to another. But a few years later, in the book Die Dunklen Anfänge ("The Dark Starters") that appeared in German only, edited by Olig, he developed his theory in a completely different way and no longer mentions Nevo's work. In this book, Olig claims that while Muhammad was a title ("the acclaimed") and not a personal name (a claim that was taken directly in Nevo's research), but it continues to claim that it was a degree attributed to Jesus, which means the acclaimed prophet of the Arabs was the Christian Jesus - something completely contrary to Nevo's theory.

Nevo's theory of many connections as Polish researcher M. Grodzki and more.

Theory is similar to his research on the formation of Islam is called "Grileh". It also turns out that about 100 years ago, before the development of the "Grone" school, researcher Reinhart Dozy wrote in his book De Israelietan Te Mekka ("The Israelites in Mishnah"), 1864, that Islam was influenced by the beginning of the Simon, retired from the Jewish people and the Head of the Hashavim. Our rabbi and settled in the Arabian Peninsula. And that, following the sons of Simon, the belief in Tahlia was not as described in an Islamic idols but a belief in one invisible god 'Abrahami'. In his opinion, even in the Bible, there are clear clues to this, such as the unreasonable diminishing of the Bnei Shimon tribe among the terms in the book of the desert.

The stone by Ezra Beer Hamzim in Mecca) was in the south and because there was also the "Beit Midrash of the name and past."

In practice, his opinion in Yehuda Nevo's study of the failure of Islamic traditions about Muhammad has also existed for many years at the opinion of Shi'ite Islam.

Research

Nevo discovered Kufic inscriptions in the Negev desert in Israel, four hundred of which were published in Ancient Arabic Inscriptions from the Negev. This led him and Judith Koren, a librarian at the University of Haifa, to re-examine the origins of Islam, and early Islamic history.

They fundamentally doubt the historicity of Islamic traditional accounts of early Islam, thus adhering to the Revisionist School of Islamic Studies. Nevo and Koren co-authored a work called Crossroads to Islam: The Origins of the Arab Religion and the Arab State, which presents a theory of the origins and development of the Islamic state and religion. According to them, the Arabs conquered the Near East with a mixture of pre-Islamic pagan and "Indeterminate Monotheistic" beliefs. The Arab's beliefs were modified in contact with the Jewish-Christian monotheism they encountered in the conquered land. Nevo's research cast doubts on the historicity of the traditional narrative of Muhammad as a prophet and the traditional history of the Quran.

Some of Nevo's work is also published in the book Quest for the Historical Muhammad, edited by Ibn Warraq.

Publications

• Nevo, Yehuda D. (1990). "The Origins of the Muslim Descriptions of the Jahili Meccan Sanctuary", Journal of Near Eastern Studies, no. 1
• Nevo, Yehuda D. (1991). Pagans and herders: a re-examination of the Negev runoff cultivation systems in the Byzantine and early Arab periods, IPS, Negev, Israel, ISBN 965-435-000-9
• Nevo, Yehuda D.; Cohen, Zemira; Heftman, Dalia eds. (1993). Ancient Arabic inscriptions from the Negev, IPS, Negev, Israel, ISBN 965-435-001-7
• Nevo, Yehuda D.; Koren, Judith (2000). "Methodological Approaches to Islamic Studies". The Quest for the Historical Muhammad. New York: Prometheus Books. pp. 420–443.
• Nevo, Yehuda D.; Koren, Judith (2003). Crossroads to Islam: the origins of the Arab religion and the Arab state, Prometheus Books, Amherst, NY, ISBN 1-59102-083-2

External links

• His profile at National Library of Israel