hazor statue

Allah” Of The Mus­lims?: The Mys­te­ri­ous Hazor Statue

He it is who cleaves out the morn­ing, and makes night a repose, and the sun and the moon two reck­on­ings (of Time). That is the decree of the Mighty, the Wise.” [Qur’an 6:97]

For years the Chris­t­ian mis­sion­ar­ies have been enter­tain­ing the idea that Allah” of the Qur’an was in fact a pagan Arab moon god of pre-Islam­ic times. This the­o­ry was first pop­u­larised by a fanat­i­cal, mid-West­ern clos­et-fas­cist polemi­cist by the name of Dr. Robert Morey, of which his decep­tive meth­ods have already been exposed in the past. The fol­low­ing page is found in Appen­dix C : The Moon God And Archael­o­gy” from Morey’s The Islam­ic Inva­sion and lies at the heart of the mis­sion­ary pro­pa­gan­da todayRobert Morey, The Islam­ic Inva­sion : Con­fronting The World’s Fastest-Grow­ing Reli­gion (Har­vest House Pub­lish­ers, 1992), p. 214 :

    Appendix C of Robert Morey book

Nat­u­ral­ly the mis­sion­ar­ies get very excit­ed at the idea of any­thing that has the poten­tial” of demean­ing Islam< and lift­ed (or should we say, pla­gia­rised) this claim of Morey. This the­o­ry” lat­er became wide­spread and gained noto­ri­ety among gullible Chris­tians, so much so that Jack T. Chick, anoth­er Chris­t­ian polemi­cist, drew a fic­tion­alised racist car­toon sto­ry enti­tled Allah Has No Son”. More exam­ples of this oppor­tunis­tic pro­pa­gan­da being repeat­ed at var­i­ous mis­sion­ary web­sites all over the WWW [1][2][3] could also be found.

We have pre­vi­ous­ly dis­cussed the word Allah” from an ety­mo­log­i­cal per­spec­tive, as well as hav­ing shown how the word Allah” is con­sis­tent­ly trans­lat­ed as Elo­him” in a Hebrew trans­la­tion of the Qur’an. It is obvi­ous that these pseu­do-schol­ars” have no idea about what they are deal­ing with, much less under­stand the sub­ject mat­ter. It is there­fore our inten­tion here to expose the igno­rance these mis­sion­ar­ies have about one of the best-known objects from Israel/​Palestine and is now cur­rent­ly on exhi­bi­tion in the Israel Muse­um, Jerusalem. The find­ings in this paper has also been incor­po­rat­ed in Islam­ic Aware­ness’ lat­est pub­li­ca­tion, Reply to Robert Morey’s Moon-God Allah Myth : A Look At The Archae­o­log­i­cal Evi­dence, of which this author is one of the co-writers.

The Shrine At Hazor (Area C)

It is known among Near East­ern arche­o­log­i­cal cir­cles that the stat­ue which the mis­sion­ar­ies claim to be the moon-god Allah” (as par­rot­ed from Robert Morey) comes from the ruins of Hazor (Area C), a very promi­nent bronze-age city in Galilee (in present-day Israel/​Occupied Pales­tin­ian Ter­ri­to­ries) and belongs to a shrine, 4.753.4 m in size, fur­nished with an offer­ing table, a lion ortho­stat, the stat­ue in ques­tion, and ten ste­lae, all made from region­al black basalt.Yigael Yadin, Hazor (Hoff­man und Campe, Ham­burg, 1976), pp. 44 – 45

    Hazor

The shrine is described as follows :

At Hazor, a small shrine in Area C of the Low­er City prob­a­bly served fam­i­lies resid­ing near­by. It com­prised a sin­gle broad room and was built on the inner slope of the Mid­dle Bronze Age ram­part. A row of eleven ste­lae were erect­ed in this room-the cen­tral one of which was carved in relief, depict­ing two hands in prayer pos­ture below a moon-and-cres­cent sym­bol. The shrine includ­ed also a minia­ture relief of a crouch­ing lion, a stat­ue of a sit­ting male fig­ure (pos­si­bly depict­ing a god or a priest) and an offer­ing table made of one stone slab.Ami­hai Mazar, Archae­ol­o­gy of the Land of the Bible (Dou­ble­day, 1990), pp. 253 – 54

The cen­tral ste­lae shows a pair of hands raised (stip­u­lat­ed to be in ado­ra­tion) below a cres­cent plus cir­cle sym­bol, usu­al­ly con­sid­ered to depict the cres­cent moon plus the full moon. The oth­er ste­lae are plain. There­fore the whole shrine has been inter­pret­ed as refer­ing to the moon-cult.

Descrip­tion of The Hazor Statue

It is with­out a shad­ow of doubt that Robert Morey has attempt­ed to present the Hazor stat­ue as the moon god”. Note the fol­low­ing descrip­tion of Dia­gram #1 by Morey :

    The Moon god on all four sides…”

Now let us focus on dis­cussing the object itselfYigael Yadin, op. cit., which is cur­rent­ly being fawned upon by the rabid Chris­t­ian mis­sion­ar­ies and parad­ed by them as the moon god idol, Allah.

    Hazor figurine

The stat­ue — 40 cm in height — depicts a male per­son with an invert­ed cres­cent sus­pend­ed from his neck­lace and hold­ing a cup in his right hand, cer­tain­ly as an offering.

The stat­ue was found decap­i­tat­ed, and the head was dis­cov­ered lying on a floor at a low­er lev­el. It depicts a man, pos­si­bly a priest, seat­ed on a cube­like stool. He is beard­less with a shaven head ; his skirt ends below his knees in an accuen­tat­ed hem ; his feet are bare. He holds a cup in his right hand, while his left, clenched into a fist, rests on his left knee. An invert­ed cres­cent is sus­pend­ed from his neck­lace.Trea­sures of The Holy Land : Ancient Art From The Israel Muse­um (Met­ro­pol­i­tan Muse­um of Art, NY:1986), p. 107

Pic­tures and descrip­tions of the shrine and the stat­ue may be found in vir­tu­al­ly every com­pre­hen­sive pub­li­ca­tion on the archae­ol­o­gy of Israel/​Palestine.See for exam­ple Amnon Ben-Tor (ed.), The Archael­o­gy of Ancient Israel (New Haven, Lon­don, 1992) and Ephraim Stern (ed.), The New Ency­clo­pe­dia of Arche­o­log­i­cal Exca­va­tions in the Holy Land, Vol 2 (The Israel Explo­ration Soci­ety, Car­ta, Jerusalem), cf. the rest of the cit­ed schol­ar­ly works in this arti­cle (with the excep­tion of Morey’s polem­i­cal work).

Is this stat­ue there­fore the Allah” of the Mus­lims ? The answer is an obvi­ous no. The stat­ue is not even an idol” at all — it does not rep­re­sent any deity, but a human wor­ship­per or priest of a deity which may well have been a Canaan­ite moon god.For the wor­ship of the moon in the Canaan­ite realm the most recent com­pre­hen­sive treat­ment is Gabriele Theuer, Der Mond­gott in den Reli­gio­nen Syrien-Palaesti­nas, OBO 173, Fri­bourg (Switzer­land), 2000 (in Ger­man). The stat­ue is also described in a cap­tion as a Basalt stat­ue of deity or king from the ste­lae tem­ple”.Michael Avi-Yon­ah (ed., Eng­lish), Ency­clo­pe­dia of Arche­o­log­i­cal Exca­va­tions in the Holy Land, Vol. II (The Israel Explo­ration Soci­ety and Mas­sa­da Press, Jerusalem, 1976), p. 476

But one is com­pelled to ask, was the decap­i­ta­tion of the head of the stat­ue inten­tion­al or oth­er­wise and if so, what was its sig­nif­i­cance ? This was addressed by Beth Alpert Nakhai as follows :

A decap­i­tat­ed basalt stat­ue of a seat­ed man, his head lying near­by, was also found in the niche. This stat­ue resem­bled the decap­i­tat­ed stat­ue from the Ortho­stat Tem­ple and again the inten­tion­al behead­ing is con­sid­ered indica­tive of the indi­vid­u­al’s spe­cial sta­tus.…Beth Alpert Nakhai, Archael­o­gy and the Reli­gions of Canaan and Israel, (Amer­i­can Schools of Ori­en­tal Research, 2001), p. 130

It should be not­ed that there are indeed dis­sent­ing opin­ions among schol­ars as to the nature of the stat­ue, of which the more pop­u­lar opin­ions are (a) a god, (b) a king, or (c) a priest.Yigael Yadin in Hazor (Hoff­man und Campe, Ham­burg, 1976) pro­posed all three opin­ions, of which he argues in favour of the first opin­ion, i.e. that the stat­ue is a deity. How­ev­er, he cer­tain­ly nei­ther makes men­tion of nor does he con­nect the stat­ue to Allah. But to the schol­ars who reject opin­ion (a), it seems illog­i­cal that a god should hold offer­ing ves­sels in his hand(s); the god is usu­al­ly the one who receives offer­ings, there­fore the stat­ue should, in all prob­a­bil­i­ty depict a wor­ship­per to a god, who him­self is in a way con­sid­ered present, either invis­i­bly or in the upright stones (ste­lae) of the sanc­tu­ary. Fur­ther, how could a god’s stat­ue be arranged any­where but in the cen­tre of the sanc­tu­ary ? The stat­ue in ques­tion is seat­ed at the left fringes of the shrine, which can hard­ly be the prop­er posi­tion for a revered god. Regard­less of the dif­fer­ing opin­ions, how­ev­er, cer­tain­ly no seri­ous schol­ar — includ­ing those who con­sid­ered the pos­si­bil­i­ty that it could be a god — has ever iden­ti­fied the stat­ue with Allah.

Con­clu­sions

It is clear that, con­trary to what Robert Morey or the Chris­t­ian mis­sion­ar­ies would like to them­selves admit, the fig­ure pre­sent­ed as the moon-god” is not even remote­ly con­nect­ed to Islam, much less relat­ed to the pan­theon of the pre-Islam­ic Arab deities in the city of Makkah and their claim is swift­ly refut­ed by sol­id, over­whelm­ing archae­o­log­i­cal evi­dence. More­over, this fig­ure was found in the ancient ruins of Hazor (locat­ed in present-day Israel) and is not nec­ces­sar­i­ly believed to have even rep­re­sent­ed a deity. In com­ment­ing on the issue, the Bible schol­ar and mis­sion­ary Rick Brown admits that :

It is some­times claimed that there is a tem­ple to the moon god at Hazor in Pales­tine. This is based on a rep­re­sen­ta­tion there of a sup­pli­cant wear­ing a cres­cent-like pen­dant. It is not clear, how­ev­er, that the pen­dant sym­bol­izes a moon god, and in any case this is not an Arab reli­gious site but an ancient Canaan­ite site, which was destroyed by Joshua in about 1250 BC.Rick Brown, Who Is Allah”?, Inter­na­tion­al Jour­nal of Fron­tier Mis­sions 23:2 (Sum­mer 2006), p. 79

Thus, the con­tents of the Morey’s incon­se­quen­tial polemic of the so-called cult” of the moon-god have got noth­ing to do with seri­ous ancient Near East­ern schol­ar­ship and should there­fore be utter­ly dis­missed out­right by any objec­tive per­son. Its obvi­ous inten­tion is clear­ly to defame Mus­lims and the reli­gion of Islam — and noth­ing else.

We would also like to add that the find­ings in this paper has also been incor­po­rat­ed in Islam­ic Aware­ness’ lat­est pub­li­ca­tion, Reply to Robert Morey’s Moon-God Allah Myth : A Look At The Archae­o­log­i­cal Evi­dence, of which this author is one of the co-writ­ers. The paper also looks at var­i­ous aspects of the prop­a­ga­tion of the moon-god myth not cov­ered in the scope of this arti­cle, there­fore we would implore the inter­est­ed read­ers to have a look at the paper by Islam­ic Aware­ness in order to under­stand how the argu­ment that Allah is the moon-god” is, at best, fallacious.

And only Allah knows best ! The Mysterious Hazor Statue 1

Acknowl­edge­ments

The author would like to thank Dr. Ste­fan J. Wim­mer from the Uni­ver­si­ty of Munich and the Friends of Abra­ham Soci­ety for the help offered in obtain­ing infor­ma­tion and the rel­e­vant mate­r­i­al on the stat­ue of Hazor. Dr. Wim­mer is not asso­ci­at­ed with bis​mikaal​lahu​ma​.org.Endmark

Cite this arti­cle as : Mohd Elfie Nieshaem Juferi, “Allah” Of The Mus­lims?: The Mys­te­ri­ous Hazor Stat­ue,” in Bis­mi­ka Allahu­ma, Octo­ber 15, 2005, last accessed March 19, 2024, https://​bis​mikaal​lahu​ma​.org/​i​s​l​a​m​/​a​l​l​a​h​-​h​a​z​o​r​-​s​t​a​t​ue/

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7 responses to “Allah” Of The Mus­lims?: The Mys­te­ri­ous Hazor Statue”

  1. adam Avatar

    this is a great article !

  2. Baz Al Avatar
    Baz Al

    Where can we find the exis­tence of the ear­li­est writ­ten inscrip­tion of the word Allah الله ?

  3. Maaz Kalim Avatar
    Maaz Kalim

    @Aaron Shaffi­er : Ha ! You’re one heck of a slay­er, Mr Israeli Tour Guide”!

    Whilst Thank­ing You for not both­er­ing to deflect towards the geopol­i­tics for exer­cis­ing the sur­pris­ing instance of utmost neu­tral­i­ty by recog­nis­ing the mod­ern State of Israel (per a stereo­typ­i­cal world­view) would be just cheesy and cliché, bring­ing-it-up is rather nec­es­sary to expose such perceptions.

    Before reply­ing def­i­nite­ly to your point, I’m hav­ing a lit­tle hard time in dis­cern­ing the pro­claimed Cross” in the 2nd pic[ture], par­tic­u­lar­ly giv­en its res­o­lu­tion. Is it inside that cir­cle embossed on the idol ?

  4. Maaz Kalim Avatar
    Maaz Kalim

    @Suhanna : Great !

    Cus the very same can be said about lit­er­al­ly every monothe­ist reli­gion, let alone the sur­viv­ing Abra­ham­ic ones.

    I’m at odds whether your beef is with Islam (and/​or its most pop­u­lar coun­ter­parts under the brand of Islam”: Mohammedism) or all of such reli­gions, equal­ly — then.

  5. Aaron Shaffier Avatar

    If you have Chris­tians try to claim that the cres­cent at Hazor is a pro­to Islam­ic sym­bol, just ask them what the cross­es found in the same tem­ple represent.

    https://​www​.imj​.org​.il/​h​e​/​c​o​l​l​e​c​t​i​o​n​s​/​393992
    https://​www​.imj​.org​.il/​h​e​/​c​o​l​l​e​c​t​i​o​n​s​/​394217

  6. Suhanna Avatar
    Suhanna

    Any god that put wom­en’s class beneath men and make men as wom­en’s guardian that need to be obeyed is a false god ! Any god that con­done mur­der for the apos­tates is a dev­il in dis­guise. Any god that say i need humans to bow to me sev­er­al times a day or they will be sent to the hell­fire for dis­obey­ing is actu­al­ly Lucifer himself.

    1. Bismika Allahuma Team Avatar

      It seems that you have a fixed mind­set about Islam. The sub­sti­tute for your igno­rance is to learn more about Islam and the Mus­lims and do not read mate­ri­als from Islam­o­phobes who prop­a­gate the myth that Mus­lims wor­ship the dev­il. The issues you have men­tioned here have already been addressed on this web­site itself.

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