QUEEN OF SHEBA UNIVERSITY

sheba.edu@gmail.com
Bernard Leeman
Queen of Sheba University is a cyber-university initially incorporated as a Not for Profit
Corporation in the United States in the State of Florida on 13 November, 2008, Corporate
Number N08000010216. It initially operated under Florida laws allowing the establishment
and operation of cyber universities offering degrees affiliated to religious organisations, in
this case pre-Deuteronomic Judaism as practised in the time of the Queen of Sheba and
maintained for centuries in Arabia and Ethiopia/Eritrea until the 1980s. Sheban Judaism
may possibly be linked to Daoist traditions concerning Xi Wang Mu, (China) Seiobo (Japan)
and Si Wang Mu (Korea) whose career has significant parallels with the Queen of Sheba (the
Queen of the South).
Queen of Sheba University was established as a result of my correspondence with Professor
Kamal Salibi (formerly of the American University, Beirut). Salibi and I had reached
identical conclusions in respective publications on ancient West Arabia (1984) and
Ethiopia/Eritrea (2005) that the Hebrew Old Testament was a highly accurate account of
historical events that played out in West Arabia and to a lesser extent Ethiopia/Eritrea, not
Palestine/
Maybe in the not so distant future the period between the 1970s and present will be regarded
as a transition in Biblical Studies from faith based certainty to a more rational approach
analysing evidence that was previously denigrated or ignored for reasons involving politics,
religion, chauvinism, racism, status and very bad scholarship. Since the 1970s onwards
Biblical archaeology has suffered a catastrophic plunge in credibility to such an extent that
it has been replaced by Near eastern archaeology at reputable institutions. Although the
establishment of the State of Israel seemed a logical and just solution to two thousand years
of persecution emanating from New Testament passages, its location has proved extremely
controversial with appalling consequences. When mass Jewish migration started in the 1920s
it was generally assumed that Palestine was the Promised Land of Canaan, the land that
Joshua invaded, where David slew Goliath and where Solomon built the First Temple.
However, by 2000 even the top Israeli archaeologists had concluded that the Old Testament
account was either highly exaggerated or total fantasy. There was simply no archaeological
evidence.
The acrimonious three decade maximalist-minimalist dispute was resolved in a
compromise that cynics believe was a craven ploy to ensure critical Israeli academics kept
their jobs. The Old Testament narrative was accepted but with reservations on details.
Modern Israel is recognised as the location of the Biblical Promised Land. Most
fundamentalist Christians pretend the debate never happened.
In 1984, when the controversy was nearing its peak, Kamal Salibi proposed a reasonable
solution arguing that the Old Testament was accurate but had, up until the Babylonian
captivity, occurred in West Arabia. The hypothesis was not new but more convincing that
previous arguments. His book The Bible came from Arabia was fiercely condemned,
sometimes by eminent authorities who later admitted they had not read it. However, at least

one respected academic suggested that there was considerable merit in Salibis work and a
conference should be held to discuss it. Nothing more was done.
In 2005 my book on the Queen of Sheba was almost totally ignored. A reviewer with no
knowledge of the subject gave it an unfavourable review in Hamburg Universitys journal
Aethiopica. Nevertheless, working from completely different sources, my conclusion
matched Salibis. Blocked for publication in New York, it has seen over 10,000 free
downloads on the Internet.
Meanwhile, Old Testament denial had been joined by Judaism denial, mostly championed by
Professor Thomas Thompson, who argued that Judaism had been invented as a false religion
with a bogus history in Jerusalem around 450 BC. Salibi and I knew that Thompson had been
fully aware of both our theories but had deliberately excluded any mention in what seems to
have been a campaign to discredit Judaism irrespective of evidence. We therefore decided to
create the Queen of Sheba University to be a centre where students could study about the
Arabian and Ethiopian/Eritrean origins of Judaism and see how they were used as the basis of
Hilkiah and Ezras modern Judaism, throwing light on Christs disputes with Second
Temple Judaism, and also showing how they influenced the rise of Islam.
Queen of Sheba University offered a PhD degree by thesis and course work free of charge but
the handful of students who enrolled found the work far too demanding and soon dropped
out. Although the universitys degrees would have been legal, they had little chance of being
accredited since (i) no religious (i.e. Christian or Jewish) accreditation agency would evaluate
them and (ii) Phoenix University Arizonas tortuous experience of obtaining accreditation,
even with substantial backing from industry and academia, suggested our institution would
have no chance. From my experience working in Catholic schools, teaching twice at a
Protestant seminary and giving a lecture at the main Ethiopian Orthodox seminary in Addis
Ababa, I am convinced that most members of a faith studying for a degree are mere fellow
travellers, more interested in a paid career than their subject matter.
Negotiations began with Sheba University College, Mekele, Ethiopia, to incorporate Queen
of Sheba courses into its curriculum but the Ethiopian government then forbade distance
degree courses. Since there seemed little point maintaining a registered office in Florida, the
university quit the United States. Since Kamal Salibis death it has remained a focal point for
academics to store material for a future course or as a module for study in high schools,
recognised universities and perhaps an institution affiliated with the Beta Israel. Works are
downloaded daily and at present Queen of Sheba publications (including some works on
Southern Africa and Judaism in Norman England) are in the top 3% of downloads on
academia.edu.

Bernard Leeman
14 April 2015