I've read lots of sites and answering-christianity which claims Paran in the Bible is Mecca ... I want to discuss my opinion on why this is false.
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Firstly ... The Wilderness of Paran is about 200km south west of the Dead Sea (NBD) and is approximately 1,000km from Mecca!
The Wilderness of Paran is 1,000km from Mecca, why are people still making silly assumptions that Paran is Mecca? Paran was a wilderness territory, not a city. Paran is in the area of Sinai, some 600 Miles away from the City of Mecca. Why do people make so many false assumptions that Paran is Mecca?
Also you may want to see Numbers 13 - How possibly can the twelve spies leave Paran (verse 3), go staight into Canaan and explore the whole country (verse 21-22), cut some grapes (verse 23) and bring them back to Paran FRESH (v27) in a mere 40 days if they were travelling a total of 2000km?
1km = roughly 0.6211 Miles .... Lets do some maths guys ... 2,000km divided by 0.6211 gives us 1242.2 Miles.
How possibly can people walk 1,242.2 Miles and bring Grapes back FRESH? say Even if it took them 20 days to walk at the fastest, please remember the Grapes were not ordinary, it took the strength of two People to carry it ... 1,242.2 Miles divided by 20 gives 62.11 Miles to travel per day.
Are people saying that Joshua and Celab walked a Minimum of 60 Miles per day with all that weight and brought the grapes back fresh? That doesn't sound right to me.
Some interesting pictures of Israelis biking through Paran can be seen here ... http://www.geocities.com/Colosseum/Aren ... tion19.htm
and a view of Paran in modern Israel today can be seen here ... http://www.eretz.com/eretzmag/gallery/e66gl52f.htm.
Paran is 1,000KM away from Mecca ... How can it possibly be Mecca? Are people this stupid?
I would like to know people's input on this.
Thanks.