Biblical Hebrew Forum

[Yohanan bin-Dawidh <yohanan.bin.dawidh AT gmail.com>]

Ishnian:

It is a Western Idea that Ishmael is the father of the Arabs, not an Islamic
idea, or a Jewish idea.

The actuality of the issue is that Arabs were already in existence when
Ishmael was born, and Ishmael, and his offspring married into the Arab
peoples, plus the peoples that we currently refer to as Arabs are not the
ancient Arabs. The ancient Arabs did not even speak what we currently refer
to as Arabic, which is a language that evolved out of Nabaetan Aramaic.
Modern Arabs are made of descendents of several different tribal peoples
throughout the Near East and Africa.

Regards,

Yo*h*anan bin-Dawidh