by
Damien F. Mackey
“About the only thing these two idioms have in common is the word elephant, but that was enough to pull
them together to produce white
elephant in the room. … the Wikipedia entry notes that elephant in the room is “not to be
confused with white elephant“.”
Neal’s blog
What a
marvellous thing is text book history, or, ought one say, would-be history!
Both the
prophet Mohammed and the Reformation seem to kick off with a white elephant.
Mohammed
(Muhammad), we are told, was born in “the Year of the Elephant”:
We all
know that the year of the Elephant is the year in which Mohammad was allegedly
born. The year Islam credits for this event is the year 570 A.D. Islamic
tradition says that another major event took place in the same year which is
narrated in Sura 105 “The Elephant”, and what happened to the army that was
marching on Mecca to destroy it and the Kaaba.
And the
gift of a white elephant to pope Leo X may have helped launch the Reformation.
For thus
we read at: https://churchpop.com/2015/12/08/pope-leo-xs-pet-elephant-helped-sparked-reformation/
…. Amazingly, this whole
elephant episode may have helped spark the Protestant Reformation.
Pope Leo X was known for
having an overly extravagant papal court, including, among other things,
regularly throwing lavish masquerades at the Vatican. Soon-to-be Protestant
Reformers were already angry at the Church, but the fact the Pope now had a special pet elephant from India named Hanno
was viewed as the perfect over-the-top example of how corrupt the papacy had
become.
Just one year after the
elephant’s death, Martin Luther published his 95 Theses. One historian writes that Hanno the
elephant “formed the basis for one of the first published criticisms leveled
against him by German supporters of Martin Luther.” ….
I
personally do not believe in all this Year of such-and-such an animal stuff,
e.g. Elephant. However, as a Tiger football supporter from childhood (a family
tradition), I was more than happy to learn in the year 2000, said to be the
Year of the Tiger, that I had been born in the previous Year of the Tiger
(1950). The Richmond Tigers are the reigning premiers.
Be that
as it may, I think that whoever came up with the idea that the prophet Mohammed
was born in the year when a certain Abraha (or Abrahas), of the kingdom of Axum
(or Aksum), invaded Mecca, must have been seeing pink elephants. For as I have
argued in my “Biography of the Prophet Mohammed” series, Mohammed was not a
real historical person, his biography is replete with anachronisms, and,
moreover, as I pointed out in e.g.:
Biography of the Prophet Mohammed (Muhammad) Seriously Mangles History.
Part Two: From Birth to Marriage
the
supposed invasion of Abraha is simply an Islamic appropriation of the real
invasion by the neo-Assyrian king, Sennacherib, against, not Mecca and its
Kaaba, but Jerusalem and its Temple – the date being closer to 700 BC than to 570
AD.
It is just
one of various examples of ancient Ninevite history being absorbed into the
pseudo-history of Mohammed. See e.g. my article:
Prophet Jonah, Nineveh, and Mohammed
Now
Abraha was apparently riding a white elephant.
But, as
if that weren’t enough, Abraha’s elephant is said to have been named Mahmud, or Mahmoud the Praiseworthy.
But,
wait, isn’t that the name-epithet of Mohammed?
“The
One with the Throne is praised (Mahmud) AND HE IS MUHAMMAD”.
Most
strange, too, it is that Martin Luther, who kicked off the Reformation - possibly
on the back of (so to speak) a white elephant - has been described as “another
Nehemiah”.
See e.g. my:
Nehemiah and Martin Luther
in which one
will also read that: “The two men [Nehemiah and Luther] are almost carbon
copies of each other”.
All of a
sudden we are getting too many Nehemiahs for comfort - considering that the
biblical one seems to re-emerge (and, once again, under Persian auspices) during
the life of the Prophet Mohammed:
Two Supposed Nehemiahs: BC time and AD time
Has
someone been seeing too many pink elephants?
Or, put
another way, has white elephant become
something of an elephant in the room?
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