Alberto Fratini and Carlo Prato’s study, God-Fearers/Worshippers: A Solution to the Ancient Problem of the Identity of the Sabians, proposes a groundbreaking theory that identifies the Sabians mentioned in early Islamic texts with the God-Fearers (sebomenoi ton theon), a group of non-Jewish sympathizers of Judaism who worshiped the Most-High God but did not fully convert.
Their research, which builds upon the 1977 discovery of an ancient inscription listing “pious God-Fearers” alongside Jews in Aphrodisia, argues that previous scholarly interpretations—such as those equating the Sabians with the Harranians or the Mandaeans—were based on flawed etymological and methodological approaches.
Instead, Fratini and Prato suggest that the term Sabians originally referred to monotheistic adherents who were neither fully Jewish nor Christian, fitting the description of the widespread but loosely organized group of God-Fearers in the Greco-Roman world. Their work challenges conventional linguistic theories and reinterprets historical sources to provide a more coherent explanation for the religious and cultural identity of the Sabians.
God-Fearers were everywhere, but why?
