IMAGInInG ThE “ISrAElITES” • 171in the biblical book of Joshua.^125 at least some al-Muqtaṭafwriters not
only accepted the historicity of biblical narratives but were eager to
show that there was compelling, “scientific” reason to do so.^126
On the other hand, the journals’ editors and writers did not uni-
formly accept the historicity of biblical accounts. Oneal-Hilāl reader
in 1907 inquired of the journal’s editors as to whether they had found
“in the history of ancient egypt anything that corroborates the torah’s
writings about the stories of Joseph and Moses.” this prompted an ex-
tended discussion in which the editors cite, among others, the ancient
Christian and Jewish authors eusebius and Josephus from palestine
and concede that the archaeological evidence is wanting.^127 Similarly,
in a review of a 1907 book by the British orientalist scholar David Sam-
uel Margoliouth, Cairo, Jerusalem, and Damascus, al-Muqtaṭaf notes that
“though the torah records the history of the Jews and their ancestors
in detail, from Creation until around the time of Christ [al-masīḥ],”
nonsectarian historians (“neither Jewish nor Christian nor adherents
of any other religious community”) “treat the torah’s historical ac-
counts as they do the historiographical writing of herodotus.” that is
to say, such historians “only accept from either [the Bible and herodo-
tus] that which is corroborated by [archaeological] remains, conforms
to reason, and does not contradict science.” In their work, explains
al-Muqtaṭaf, these historians are comparable to “doctors, astronomers,
chemists, and physicists.”^128 For this reviewer, Margoliouth, described
as “our dear friend, professor of arabic at Oxford University,” repre-
sented a biblical scholarly approach that (quite rightly, in this review-
er’s opinion) refused to presuppose the accuracy or historicity of the
biblical text.
Al-Muqtaṭaf’s discussion of this work by Margoliouth, the son of an
english Jewish convert and missionary to anglicanism, may indicate
an interest on the part of the reviewer in portraying the Jews’ connec-
tion to Jerusalem as more limited than Margoliouth claimed. Jerusalem,
which the reviewer describes as “the capital of the Jews and the qibla
(^125) the article was by harold Shepstone in TheWorld’sWork. al-Muqtaṭaf 42:3 (March
1913), 272.
(^126) On the role of Protestant missionaries— such as those who taught al-Muqtaṭaf’s
editors at the Syrian Protestant College— in promoting the idea of science as a buttress
for faith, see elshakry, “the Gospel of Science and american evangelism in Late Ottoman
Beirut,” 173. “education in the natural sciences was promoted as one way to aid pupils
on the path to God,” elshakry explains (183).
(^127) al-Hilāl (October 1907– July 1908), 172– 74.
(^128) al-Muqtaṭaf 33:1 (January 1908), 81.