Regarding Salibi, there is no evidence in his writing that he has a pan-arabic bias
It seems to me that all of his revisionist work revolved around proving that things happened and ethnic groups of interest originated in Arab peninsula rather than where the rest of the research clearly tells us. Of course he regarded Jerusalem as Holy City (in addition to Judaism, both Islam and Christianity do so, too), still, the most important implication of his work is that Jews have no historical claim on the land of Israel (but frankly, his arguments are rather weak). All in all, clearly a pan-arabic bias.
Finkelstein […] contradicts Salibi’s analysis
We can argue about specific (I would say minor) details or the scale of some events, but Finkelstein, Mazar, and others clearly show that Salibi is quite off. Also, a strong argument against Salibi is the change in and subsequent commonality of religious beliefs of all cultures that came into contact with Proto-Indo-Europeans in 4000–3000 BC (from Levant to India, and later also Europe and China). To his (Salibi’s) defense — a lot of the archaeological research I refer to came only after he published his books.
I will eventually get round to my ultimate points about Christianity in future articles
I look forward to it ;)
