A Rare Glimpse into the Old World of the Near East

In what has been passed down to us about Jesus’ life, there is not a single detail that is not in total conformity with the language and mode of thinking of the Near East – a culture completely different from our own.

In this book we travel with the author, a Lebanese Christian born in 1869, back into this vanished Biblical world. He had experienced it first-hand, since during his boyhood outer living conditions were still identical with those of Jesus’ time. And, together with Lamsa, he may be the last person ever to have spoken about it.

When Abraham Rihbany tells us about the domestic life of his family and the world of Syrian shepherds and farmers, the Biblical world is coming to life before our very eyes: the colorful commotion of the marketplace, the discomforts of travelling, the birth of children, the struggle for one’s daily bread, the Eastern manner of speech – in short, Rihbany immerses us in the old world of the Near East, and we see Jesus the man in his own Hebrew-Aramaic culture.

This is a powerful and warmhearted book. It is a first-hand account – a bridge between our world of today and the world of Jesus and the Biblical patriarchs.

  Abraham Rihbany, 1869-1947

Soon after Abraham Rihbany, a Lebanese Christian born in 1869, arrived in the United States in 1891, he began travelling throughout the country, giving lectures about his Near Eastern homeland. His listeners immediately perceived that here was a man who had grown up in Jesus’s homeland and who had a perfect knowledge of its people and customs. Rihbany’s lectures appeared as newspaper articles, and the articles were published together as this book in 1916, which met with great success and went through several editions.

Rihbany spoke very early about the political problems of the Near East and took part in the Versailles Peace Conference in 1919. Rihbany is the author of five books. He died in Boston in 1947.