Adam’s Temple Has Two Holy Locations

Göbekli Tepe is a temple located in southeastern Turkey near the Syrian border. It is a 11-12,000 year-old archaeological site widely considered the world’s oldest temple. Dating to around 9500–8000 BCE, this Pre-Pottery Neolithic site features massive T-shaped stone pillars, some weighing 10 tonnes, arranged in circles, predating Stonehenge by 6,000 years. It is the oldest pagan, polytheistic temple known.

Prophet Adam, whose name is mentioned 25 times in the Qur’an, was the first monotheist to build a temple for monotheists in Arabian, some six thousand years after Gobekli Tepe. This earliest monotheistic Temple was rebuilt many centuries later in Arabia by Abraham, the Hebrew (Genesis 14.13) and Ismael, Abraham’s son.

According to Ibn Abbas, Prophet Adam built the House from (the Rocks of) five mountains; Mount Sinai, the Mount of Olives, Lebanon, and al-Judi, and constructed its foundations from Mount Hira. When Prophet Adam returned to Mecca he circumambulated the House for a week, as the Torah tells the Jews to do on the yearly pilgrimage to Jerusalem for Sukkot, (during the week of Sukkot, the Torah tradition of circling involves parading with the Four Species around the synagogue’s platform daily, symbolizing the ancient Temple ritual of circling the Jerusalem altar.

In the pagan Greco-Roman Empire during the days of Jesus, the Jerusalem Temple (Beit HaMikdosh) was well known, while the Kaaba, the House of God (Baitullah) in Mecca was not known by name at all. The first Roman reference to the Baitullah is from Diodorus Siculus, a first century BCE Roman historian who wrote that in Arabia there was a (pagan) temple greatly revered by the Arabs.

According to G. E. Von Grunebaum, who I studied with at UCLA in 1959-60, Mecca was also mentioned by Ptolemy, a second century Alexandrian mathematician, astronomer, and geographer, “The name he gives it allows us to identify it as a South Arabian foundation created around a sanctuary.” (G. E. Von Grunebaum, Classical Islam: A History 600–1258, p. 19)

Yet both of these cities and their sanctuaries, one almost unknown by the Romans and the other totally destroyed by the Romans in 70 CE; were destined, just a few centuries after Rome itself was looted and sacked; to become widely known throughout a world much larger than that of the Roman Empire, and each of them became for millions of monotheistic believers, like the navel of the spiritual world.

During the Middle Ages in both Europe, North Africa and west Asia; Jerusalem and Macca were frequently portrayed by Christians, Jews, and Muslims, in the center of their maps, because they were central to their religious connection to the One God of Abraham, Ishmael and Isaac.

To this very day Jerusalem and Mecca remain much smaller than the capitals of the great Empires of the past (Rome and Constantinople) and the recent present (London and Paris). Yet the spirit that continues to rush forth from those two geographically tiny places, provides inspiration to billions of Christians, Jews and Muslims throughout the world.

These two physical places now function like a pair of lungs recycling the words and the spirit of the Abrahamic Prophets who walked their streets so many centuries ago.

Indeed, much of the ancient folklore about these two holy places is very similar; as the following fable illustrates, and shows how today these two holy places can be seen a one pair of lungs spreading the spirit of monotheistic holiness throughout the world.

“God made human beings because God loves stories.” (Elie Wiesel) “There are all kinds of stories. Some are taken from reality and processed through inspiration, other rise up from an instant of inspiration; and become real after being told again and again.” (Isabel Allende)

Some stories are true because they accurately describe a unique event that happened at a certain time and place. Other stories are events that once happened and have subsequently been dramatized by creative minds or faithful hearts. Archetypical stories that have been retold over the course of thousands of years are true; not because they actually occurred once; but because they continually reoccur in many places and times.

This narration was transmitted orally in both Arabic and Hebrew for many centuries, and finally written down in several versions in the 19th century; explains how the paired lungs came to be. Some say this happened in the generation when Abraham was born.

Two brothers who inherited a ‘valley to hilltop’ farm from their father, divided the land in half so each one could farm his own section. Over time, the older brother married and had four children, while the younger brother was still not married.

One year there was very little rain, and the crop was very meager. This was at the beginning of a long term draught that would turn the whole valley into an arid, treeless, desert where even grain did not grow, and all the springs dried up.

The younger brother lay awake one night praying and thought. “My brother has a wife and four children to feed and I have no children. He needs more grain than I do; especially now when grain is scarce.”

So that night the younger brother went to his barn, gathered a large sack of wheat, and left his wheat in his brother’s barn. Then he returned home.

Earlier that very same night, the older brother was also lying awake praying for rain when he thought: “In my old age my wife and I will have our grown children to take care of us, as well as grandchildren to enjoy, while my brother may have no children. He should at least sell more grain from his fields now, so he can provide for himself in his old age.”

So that night, the older brother also gathered a large sack of wheat, and left it in his brother’s barn, and returned home.

The next morning, the younger brother, surprised to see the amount of grain in his barn seemed unchanged said “I did not take as much wheat as I thought. Tonight I’ll take more.” That same morning, the older brother standing in his barn, was thinking the same thoughts.

After night fell, each brother gathered a greater amount of wheat from his barn and in the dark, secretly delivered it to his brother’s barn. The next morning, the brothers were again puzzled and perplexed. “How can I be mistaken?” each one thought. “There’s the same amount of grain here as there was before. This is impossible! Tonight I’ll make no mistake – I’ll take two large sacks.”

The third night, more determined than ever, each brother gathered two large sacks of wheat from his barn, loaded them onto a cart, and slowly pulled his cart toward his brother’s barn. In the moonlight, each brother noticed a figure in the distance. When the two brothers got closer, each recognized the form of the other and the load he was pulling, and they both realized what had happened.

Without a word, they dropped the ropes of their carts, ran to each other and embraced.

God loved the two brothers for their exemplary love and concern for each other, but a place is never holy just through the choice of man, but because it has been chosen in Heaven. Thus God’s prophets made the two brothers’ descendants worthy to worship in a holy House rebuilt in that valley; and a holy House later built on that hill.

When all those, both near and far, who revere this place of spirit lungs as a standard, share it in love with everyone else who reveres it, then God will do as Abraham requested, and “Make this (place) a land of Peace, and provide its people with the produce of of the land”. (Qur’an 2:126).

Then the children of Adam and Abraham live in Holiness, Peace and Prosperity. Jews and Christians believe the hill is Jerusalem. Muslims believe the valley is Mecca. I believe that all three are correct.

Christian, Islamic and Jewish traditions all teach that their holy sanctuary is at the center of the world. But how can the world possibly have more than one religious center?

Because religious centers are not the same as geometric centers. All astronomers know that the Sun is the center of our entire solar system, but the center of each planet’s individual orbit is a slightly different point within the Sun called the barycenter, which lies close to the Sun’s central core. The Earth’s orbit around the Sun’s barycentre is an ellipse and not a perfect circle with only a one point center.

If you have only a limited human view of the surface of our planet as a two dimensional plane like a circle; there can be only one center. But if you share God’s view of the surface of Planet Earth as a three dimensional sphere; then more than one center is possible. And one pair of lungs are much more central in the human body than one heart.

The Qur’an refers to Prophet Abraham as a community or a nation: “Abraham was a nation/community [Ummah]; dutiful to God, a monotheist [hanif], not one of the polytheists.” (16:120) If Prophet Abraham is an Ummah; then fighting between the descendants of Prophets Ishmael and Isaac is a civil war and should always be avoided. And prior to the 20th century Arabs and Jews never did make war with each other. “Lo yisa goy el goy kherev velo yilmedu od milkhama” “Nation shall not lift sword against nation, neither shall they learn war anymore. (Isaiah 2:4)

If all Arabs and Jews can live up to the ideal that ‘the descendants of Abraham’s sons should never make war against each other’ is the will of God; we will help fulfill the 2700 year old vision of Prophet Isaiah: “On that day there will be a highway from Egypt to Assyria. The Assyrians will go to Egypt, and the Egyptians to Assyria. The Egyptians and Assyrians will worship together. In that day Israel  will join a three-party alliance with Egypt and Assyria, a blessing upon the heart. The LORD of Hosts will bless them saying, “Blessed be Egypt My people, Assyria My handiwork, and Israel My inheritance.”…(Isaiah 19:23-5)