Thursday, July 19, 2018

White elephant in the realm: Birth of Mohammed, Reformation


 Image result for year of elephant


 

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.


 

…. 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.

 

Image result for richmond premiership

 

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?

 

Image result for elephant in the room

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