From: bes@ddsw1.mcs.com (Bes)
Subject: Re: new to this group
Date: Fri, 2 Oct 1992 13:29:31 GMT
Organization: ddsw1.MCS.COM Contributor, Chicago IL
X-Newsreader: Tin 1.1 PL3

>>rcmolden@parmesan.cs.wisc.edu (Robertc. Moldenhauer) writes:
: 
: I have always been skeptical about "revived" ideas, because they tend to 
: obfuscate the study of the originals.  I think the classic example is the 
: modern "Druids" who are largely a 19th century invention.  How can yu possibly
: recreate a part of a culture of a people that disappeared from the face of 
: the earth over a millenium ago?  Nabateans, Babylonians, Sabaeaens, Hyxos,
: Phonecians (debatably)/Punic, Moabites ..., the list is long ... played their
: parts in civilisation and left the stage, reincorporated into other groups.
: We do not know anything near enough to try to recreate a culture for them.
: When I was in Oman this summer I saw several examples of "South Arabian Script"
: was this the language of the Sabaeans?  WHo knows?  
: What I seen in this group is a sycratistic tendancy, anything that's called
: "new age" such as astrology hooked to the Sabaeans.  it's like Ethiopian 
: folklore that trys to claim the Queen of SHeba for themselves, although their 
: civilisation isn't old enough.  True, the dead can't sue, but I still don't
: like to see their name abused.  <<


I agree with all of the above with exception of the word "revived" attached
in context to the Sabaean movement.
This would be correct if we were running around pretending to
anachronisticaly believe that Sabaeans are Nabateans, Babylonian etc. These
names are cultures of a particular country. But Sabaeanism is more used as
an adjective to describe a "type" or quality or branch of philosophy that
has views no unsimilar to the peoples of similar culture.

Using your logic, an American should be of the belief of the natives they
deposed, or a Christian should be still practicing the culture that was so
indegenous to Jerusalem during the time of Tiberius.

No, I think you are mistaken in your purist approach as Sabaeanism is a
philosophy that was well acknowledged in the middle ages to be other than
that of the pagan Arabs.

excerpt from Kitab-el-Milel-we-el-Ne'hel by Abu-lFat'h Mohammed
esch-Schahristani:

"Others divide these according to opinions and religious persuasions....
This division consists in 1: According different religions and religious
sects and 2: In those who follow their own head and the philosophical
systems. To the followers of religion in a wider meaning belong the Magi,
the Jews, the Christian and the followers of Islam: to the followers of
their own opinions belong the fatalist philosophers, the Sabaeans, the
worshipper of stars and idols and the Brahmans.."

Then again from Moreh-han-Nebukum of Scheich Abu-Amran Musa ben Meimun
el-Qorthobi called Maimonides:

I quote 63th chapter:
.."You know of the spreading of the opinions of the Sabaeans until the time
of Moses and you know that all humans  of the time with the exception of a
few were worshippers of idols, meaning they believed in Spiritual Beings,
pulling down of higher powers and making of talismans."

71st chapter:
"the Sabaean sect believed that the dieties were the spirits of the
spheres."

from the 29th chapter of thethird book:
"As it is known, our father Abraham, peace be with him, was educated or
raised in the religion of the Sabaeans who maintained that there was no God
beside the stars...

In correspondence with these Sabaean opinions, these pagan erected statues
for heavenly bodies, golden for the sun, and silver for the moon, and
accredited certain metals and climates to the stars.."

excerpts from Historia Anteislamica by Abulfeda:

"The Sabaeans maintain: Schith (Seth) sired yet another son whose name is
Ssabi ben Schith. From this Ssabi are derived the Sabaeans.....

"..The Egyptians were Sabaeans and idolaters....

"The Romans followed the religion of the Sabaeans and had idols after the
name of the seven planets whom they worshipped...

"The emperor reigning before him followed the Christian religion but Ducius
rebelled against him and re-established idolatry and the religion of the
Sabaeans....

"Before the conversion of Constantine to Christendom he and his predecessors
followed the religion of the Sabaeans; they worshipped idols, fashioned
after the names of the seven planets...."

And in his Historia Dynastiarum by Gregorius Abulfarag Barhebraeus
pgs495-497, Abulfarag lists on page 2 of the Arabic text and page 2 of the
Latin translation, the seven basic peoples or tribes from which all other
people stem, namely: the Persians, Chaldean, the Greek, Egyptian, Turks,
Indians, and the Chinese and further remarks:
"All these people were Sabaeans, they worshipped idols in the image of
higher substances and spherical bodies."

Abulfarag mentions three different persons of antiquity which carried the
name Hermes, and goes on to remark:

"one says: the first Hermes built 180 cities of which the smallest was Roha
(Edessa), he also ordered the people to worship, fast and pray, give alms
and celebrate a festival when the planets entered their houses and when they
reached their point of culmination; further when the moon rises and the sun
enters one of the twelve signs of the zodiac. He also ordered them to
sacrifice the first fruit and the best of incense and of sacrificial animals
and wine and forbade them drunkenness and the consumption of impure food. The
Sabaeans believed that Schith (Set) the Egyptian Agathodaemon, was the
teacher of Hermes.......

"The great mass of Greeks were Sabaeans. They worshipped the stars and
idolatry was their religion.....

"What we know for sure regarding the teachings of the Sabaeans is that their
religion was in essence identical with the religion of the Old Chaldeans"

It seems to me by the looks of these works and many others that Sabaeanism
is not an ethnocentric identity but rather a religious or philosophical view
that distinguished them from Jews and Christians as they did not followed a
"revealed book" and had philosphers and followed their own head worshipping
the stars and planets.

Bes

Xref: sparky alt.religion.sabaean:42 alt.pagan:10660 alt.magick:5104 alt.astrology:1977