An Anthropologist Looks at Genesis 2

 

Dr. Alice C. Linsley

God created the first parents.

Stories about first parents abound in Africa. The first parents of the Mbiti Pygmy are called Tole and Ngolobanzo.

The first father of the Maasai is known as Maasinta. He had a special relationship with the Sky God who gave the Maasai their first cattle.

Gikuyu and Mumbi are said to be the first ancestors of the Gikuyu of East Africa. Here is a portion of their story:

Now you know that at the beginning of things there was only one man (Gikuyu) and one woman (Mumbi). It was under this Mukuyu that He first put them. And immediately the sun rose and the dark night melted away. The sun shone with a warmth that gave life and activity to all things. The wind and the lightning and thunder stopped. The animals stopped moaning and moved, giving homage to the Creator and to Gikuyu and Mumbi. And the Creator, who is also called Murungu, took Gikuyu and Mumbi from his holy mountain to the country of the ridges near Siriana and there stood them on a big ridge. He took them to Mukuruwe wa Gathanga about which you have heard so much. But He had shown them all the land - yes, children, God showed Gikuyu and Mumbi all the land and told them: "This land I hand over to you, O Man and Woman. It is yours to rule and to till in serenity, sacrificing only to me, your God, under my sacred tree.

 

The historical Adam and Eve are the first parents of the early Hebrew. Some of their descendants appear to have inherited Adam’s red skin tone. It is noted that Esau a Horite ruler in Edom had a red or ruddy skin tone (as did David, the son of Jesse). Jeff A. Benner, an expert on ancient Hebrew, explains:

We are all familiar with the name "Adam" as found in the book of Genesis, but what does it really mean? Let us begin by looking at its roots. This word/name is a child root derived from the parent דם meaning, "blood". By placing the letter א in front of the parent root, the child root אדם is formed and is related in meaning to דם (blood).

By examining a few other words derived from the child root אדם we can see a common meaning in them all. The Hebrew word אדמה (adamah) is the feminine form of אדם meaning "ground" (see Genesis 2:7). The word/name אדום (Edom) means "red". Each of these words have the common meaning of "red". Dam is the "red" blood, adamah is the "red" ground, edom is the color "red" and adam is the "red" man. There is one other connection between "adam" and "adamah" as seen in Genesis 2:7 which states that "the adam" was formed out of the "adamah".

In the ancient Hebrew world, a person’s name was not simply an identifier but descriptive of one's character. As Adam was formed out of the ground, his name identifies his origins.

 

Adam's name refers to blood (dam) and the color red. His descendants are remembered as red people. One of those descendants is Abraham who ruled in the territory of Edom. The Greeks called Edom Idumea, which means "land of red people." Some of the red peoples are listed in Genesis 10. They are identified by the DD biradical, which refers to the color red. In ancient Egyptian didi refers to red fruit. In Yoruba, red is diden, a variant of the biblical word Dedan (Gen. 10).

A common belief among many pre-literate peoples is that skin tone comes from the soil where their first parents were created. This is called “autochthonous origin” and the belief is expressed in the Shilluk creation story. The Shilluk of Sudan call the Creator Jouk. Jouk made white people out of white sand and the Shilluk out of black soil. When the Creator came to Egypt, he made the people there out of the red silt of the Nile.

 

God places the first parents in Eden.

The term Eden is not originally Hebrew. "Eden" derives from the Akkadian term edinu, which refers to a fertile plain or a well-watered territory. Akkadian is the oldest known Semitic language and predates Hebrew by nearly 2000 years.

Eden was a vast well-watered region that extended from the sources of the Nile in Uganda and Ethiopia to the Tigris and Euphrates in Mesopotamia (Gen. 2:10-14). The Pishon flowed through Ha-vila (place of waters parting). The Gihon flowed around the whole land of Kush. The southern region of Eden was rich in gold, onyx, and bdellium. Bdellium is a semi-transparent oleo-gum resin extracted from Commiphora wightii and from Commiphora africana. These trees grow in Ethiopia, Eritrea, and other parts of sub-Saharan Africa.

Humans become estranged from God.

After their disobedience Adam and Eve experienced fear and they hide from the Creator. Their distance from the Divine Presence grew greater when they were driven from Paradise. 

Many African narratives explain the distance between God and humans. Some speak of a time at the beginning when the sky was low. It was necessary for people to be careful while cultivating or pounding grain to avoid striking God's resting place with their hoes or pestles. The Akan of Ghana tell the story of how God once lived on earth, but an old woman kept striking Him with her pestle. Then one day, God withdrew to the sky.

Another African story tells how "in the beginning death had not yet entered the world. There was plenty to eat, but a woman became greedy and tried to pound more grain that she was allotted. This required using a longer pestle. When she raised it to pound the grain, it struck the sky and God became angry and withdrew far into the heavens. Since then, people must toil the earth, death and disease trouble the people and it is no longer easy to reach God." (Richard Bush, ed. The Religious World, MacMillan Publishers,1982, p. 38).

Consider the following story related to anthropologist Charles Kraft while he was studying tribal peoples in northern Nigeria. Kraft asked, "What did your people believe about God before the missionaries came?" In response, an old chief told this story:

"Once God and his son lived close to us. They walked, talked, ate, and slept among us. All was well then. There was no thievery or fighting or running off with another man's wife like there is now. But one day God's son ate in the home of a careless woman. She had not cleaned her dishes properly. God's son ate from a dirty dish, got sick, and died. This, of course, made God very angry. He left in a huff and hasn't been heard from since." (Charles Kraft, Christianity in Culture, Orbis Books, 1990, p. 153)

Related reading: An Anthropologist Looks at Genesis One; The Father of Adam and Eve; Three Portraits of Adam

The Horite Hebrew of Eden

 

Biblical Eden had forests, grasslands, marshes, rivers and lakes to sustain early humans, large herds, fish, and birds. The region was well watered by extensive inter-connected water systems including the Nile, Lake Victoria, the Tigris and the Euphrates.

Alice C. Linsley

Recently, I was asked how the history of the biblical Horites connects to Eden. The Horites were a group of priests who believed in God Father and God Son. The Nilotic Horites referred to the son of God as Horus. Thus, their name Horite, which can be written also as Horim. Jews refer to their parents and ancestors as their "horim." The Ancient Pyramid Texts make it clear that the Horite and the Sethite Hebrew worshiped the same God and served the same king.

There are texts in the Bible that come from the Horite and Sethite Hebrew. Genesis 3:15 and Psalm 91 refer to the trampling of the serpent. Psalm 91:12-13 - "They will bear you up in their hands, that you do not strike your foot against a stone. You will tread upon the lion and cobra, the young lion and the serpent you will trample down."

In Srimad Bhagavatam 10:16 we find a parallel to Genesis 3:15 where we are told that the serpent's head will be crushed under the feet of the Woman's Son. The Hindu text reads: "The Ancient Man danced on the serpent, who still spewed poison from his eyes and hissed loudly in his anger, and he trampled down with his feet whatever head the serpent raised, subduing him calmly..." (Cited in Andrew Wilson, Ed. World Scriptures, p. 449.)

The same is expressed in the earlier Horite Hebrew texts from 4200 years ago. Utterance 388 of the Pyramid Texts speak of how the Son of God, Horus "has shattered (crushed) the mouth of the serpent with the sole of his foot."

The root of the word Horus is HR. It means "Most High One" in ancient Egyptian. The faith of the Horite Hebrew is older than that of the Jews. Genesis 36:31 says that the Horite kings who ruled Edom and Seir reigned before there was any king in Israel.

How does this relate to Eden? 

The oldest known site of Horite Hebrew worship is Nekhen, located in Eden. Nekhen was a flourishing shrine city 5800 years ago. Genesis describes Eden as a vast well-watered region that extended from the Gihon and Pishon rivers at the source of the Nile in Uganda and Ethiopia to the Tigris and Euphrates in Mesopotamia. 

The phrase "east of Eden" in the Hebrew is quimat-Eden, an ancient Nilotic reference to a place of bulrushes. Quimat is derived from the root qma, an ancient Egyptian word that refers to bulrushes. 

The term "Eden" derives from the Akkadian term edinu, which refers to a fertile plain. Akkadian is the oldest known Semitic language.

It is evident that belief in God Father and God Son has deep roots among Abraham's Nilotic ancestors. He was a descendant of Nimrod, a son of Kush (Gen. 10). Kush/Cush refers to a region and population of the Nile Valley. 

The Nilotic Hebrew looked for a Righteous Ruler who would overcome death and lead His people to immortality. They produced the oldest known resurrection texts.

Related reading: Horite Mounds; The Substance of Abraham's Faith, Righteous Rulers and the Resurrection; Eden Was a Well-Watered Region; Early Resurrection Texts

What the Bible Says About Eden

Alice C. Linsley

The Eden described in the Bible was a vast well-watered region that extended from the source of the Nile to the Tigris-Euphrates (Genesis 2). The biblical description comes from writers who lived long after the time that this region (shown in red) was wet.

Rock paintings of boats, people fishing and herding cattle have been found around the Sahara. These tell the story of life during the African Humid Period (the Aqualithic) when the wet Sahara sustained large herds.

Memory of Eden is preserved in Akkadian documents and ancient Egyptian texts. According to Genesis 13:10, the Garden of the Lord was well watered, like “the land of Egypt.” The Afro-Asiatic word for garden or virgin forest is egan, and the Hebrew word gan for garden, is cleared related. In Akkadian, the region is called Edinu and the word is derived from the Akkadian word edû - flow, spring (a Sumerian loan word). E. A. Speiser believed that the Sumerian word eden refers to a plain or a steppe (The Anchor Bible, Genesis, p. 16). However, the biblical description is of a flood plain, not an arid plain.

The Paradise of Eden is described as a well-watered garden. This was not a small garden that could be managed by a single gardener. It was God's garden. Today the region shown on the map is one of the driest on Earth.

If you are a gardener (as I am), you recognize the value of water, especially in hot weather. The text says that springs came up from the earth. This suggests that the biblical writer is making a play of words Eden = edû , meaning "flow" or "spring."

Genesis 2 gives the account of 4 major rivers: the Gihon and the Pishon in Africa, and the Tigris and Euphrates in Mesopotamia. The Ethiopians identify the Gihon with the Abay River, which circles the former African kingdom of Gojjam. Genesis 2:13 states that the Gihon "winds through all the land of Kush." The Pishon "winds through the whole land of Havilah" (Gen. 2:11). Havilah is both a place name and the name of one of Kush's sons (Gen. 10:7). This identifies the Gihon and Pishon with the Upper Nile region.

This ancient paradise supported forests (Gen. 2:9). Some believe that the earliest of Abraham’s ancestors were forest dwellers. This pushes those ancestors to a time before memory, and yet the Paradise they enjoyed is remembered. Jung might suggest that the Paradise of Genesis reflects the collective memory of Abraham’s Proto-Saharan ancestors.

Many discoveries, such as the 8000 year Dufuna boat, ancient petroglyphs of boats and cows in the  Sahara, and 9000-10,000 year burial sites provide evidence of extensive water systems and human populations. The paleoanthropologist, Paul Sereno, unearthed 9,700 year skeletons at Gobero in Niger. These were buried on the edge of a paleolake on the northwestern rim of the Chad Basin. The Gobero site is the earliest known cemetery in the Sahara and the skeletons found there indicated that some of the people were at least 6 feet tall.

Gobero skeleton (G3B8) measures 6 feet, 6 inches
Photo: Mike Hettwer, courtesy Project Exploration

At the time of the Gobero population, humans were dispersed globally, and during the time of Noah these populations were not destroyed. 

Many peoples have their point of origin in archaic Eden. This is the point of origin of the biblical Hebrew clans. The oldest identified Horite Hebrew shrine cities were Nekhen and Nekheb on the Nile. These twin cities date to 3,800 BC.

Painted tomb at Nekhen

The rulers of Tyre, an ancient seat of wisdom, are traced back to Eden. "Son of Man, raise a lament over the king of Tyre and say to him: Thus says the Lord God: You were the seal of perfection, full of wisdom and flawless beauty. You were in Eden, in the Garden of God; every precious stone was your adornment... and gold beautifully wrought for you, mined for you, prepared the day you were created." (Ezekiel 28:11-18)

Related reading: Boat Petroglyphs in Egypt's Eastern Desert; The Search for Eden; Paradise of Ancient Memory

Paradise of Ancient Memory

Biblical Eden was a well-watered region with forests and grasslands. The region had inter-connected water systems including the Nile, Lake Chad, Lake Victoria and the Benue-Niger Trough.

Biblical Eden

Alice C. Linsley

Kush (Cush) is first mentioned in Genesis 10 as the father of the archaic rulers Nimrod and Ramah. They controlled commerce on the water ways in their territories. Nimrod ruled in the Tigris-Euphrates Valley and Ramah ruled in southwestern Arabia. Beside providing a means to transport cargo, the rivers supplied the necessary water for mining. Genesis 2:11 alludes to the gold of Kush where the river Pishon flowed through the land of Ha'vilah.

The term "Havilah" refers to the place where the waters form a V, likely the head of the Nile formed by the White Nile and the Blue Nile. Another river mentioned is the Gihon which flowed through the land of Kush (Gen. 2:13). Possibly, the Pishon and the Gihon are ancient references to the White Nile and the Blue Nile.

In 2007, archaeologists from the Oriental Institute discovered a 4000 year gold-processing center along the middle Nile in the Sudan. The site is called Hosh el-Guruf and is located about 225 miles north of Khartoum where two rivers flow into the Nile, forming a V shape.  More than 55 grinding stones were found at the site and the water was used to separate the flakes from the particle residue. Similar grinding stones have been found in Egypt and at Timnah in southern Israel.

The Oriental Institute expedition that discovered the gold operation at Hosh el-Guruf also discovered a cemetery with Kushite artifacts at the nearby site al-Widay. These included high-status pottery vessels like those produced at Kerma in Sudan. Kerma flourished from between 2500-1500 BC. In 2300 B.C., the peoples living between the first and second cataracts were under different rulers. The territories were called Irtjet, Setju, Medja, and Wawat. Later all of the land between the first and the second cataracts was called Wawat. Wawa is a redoubling or reduplication of the term for water and indicates a well-watered region.

In addition to an abundance of gold, the Ha'vilah region of the Upper Nile is described as having onyx and bdellium. Onyx was used in Egypt as early as the Second Dynasty to make bowls and other pottery items. It was mined south of there and also in areas of Eurasia that came under Egyptian control. Bdellium is a resin that comes from trees that grow in the Upper Nile region, especially in Ethiopia.

The term "Kushite" does not designate a single people but rather a regional identity that includes many peoples of the Nile Valley, Lake Chad, and the Sahara during the African Humid Period. The Nilotic peoples of East African and the people of Yemen have been linked by archaeologists. The flora and fauna of these areas are the same.

Linguistically, the peoples of the eastern African plate and the southwestern Arabian plate share many common roots. Many of these are found in the Luo languages and in the Nilo-Saharan Nobiin language. Key roots pertain to the pastoralism of the Nilo-Saharans before Abraham's time. These include the terms for cattle, sheep, goatskin, hen, cock, livestock enclosure, butter, milk and blood. This suggests that Abraham's Proto-Saharan ancestors were part of the C-Group Culture.

Mineral and ore deposits in the Upper Nile where the Gihon and Pishon form a V were exposed by water erosion and by the rifting in that area.

This is the vast region called "Eden" in the Bible. The Tigris-Euphrates Valley marked the northeastern boundary. Eden was not a small garden, but rather a vast being well-watered region. The phrase "east of Eden" in the Hebrew is quimat-Eden and is an ancient Nilotic reference to a place of bulrushes. Quimat is derived from the root qma, and ancient Egyptian word that refers to bulrushes.

The Bible names two sites from which massive amounts of gold were exported: Havilah and Ophir. Havilah is in Africa (Gen. 2:11) and Ophir is in southwest Arabia (the territories of Sheba and Ramah). It appears that both mining regions were under the control of Horite smiths.

The Horites were devotees of the Creator Ra and his son Horus, born of Hathor who conceived when she was "overshadowed" by the Creator whose emblem was the Sun. Gold was associated with the Sun and with Horus. In fact, the word oro - gold - comes from Horos/Horus. Mining operations were under auspices of the miners' patroness Hathor, as at the Timna Valley copper mines. A temple dedicated to Hathor was discovered at the southwestern edge of Mt. Timnah by Professor Beno Rothenberg of Hebrew University.

For Abraham's Horite ancestors, the Sun and the dung beetle spoke to them of their deity, HR (Horus in Greek). He was regarded, with his father Ra, as the fixer of boundaries. In ancient Greek philosophy horos refers to the boundaries of an area, or a landmark, or a term. From horos come the English words hour, horizon and horoscope. The association of Horus with the horizon is seen in the word Har-ma-khet, meaning Horus of the Horizon. Today "horoscope" connotes astrology, but originally it referred to someone who observes the hours or watches the times. The Indo-European root for year - yeHr - is a reference to Horus.

Related reading: Kushite Diversity; Kushite Gold; The Gold of Ophir; The Afro-Asiatic Metal Workers; The Urheimat of the Canaanite Y; What Paradise Must Have Been Like; Archaic Rulers, Ascendancy, and the Foreshadowing of Christ; Religion of the Archaic Rulers; Monuments of the Ancient Kushites

Climate Studies and the Book of Genesis

Alice C. Linsley

Plato recounts that "Many great deluges have taken place during the nine thousand years" since Athens and Atlantis were preeminent. In these floods, water rose from below, and only those who lived on the mountains survived. He reports that the third great flood before Deucalion washed away most of Athens' fertile soil. [Timaeus 22; Critias 111-112]

The ancient Egyptians believed that flooding represented divine punishment of rebellion against Ra/Atum's appointed ruler. "People have become rebellious [lawless]. Atum said he will destroy all he made and return the earth to the Primordial Water which was its original state." (Genesis 1:2)

The African Humid Period

Noah was a Proto-Saharan ruler at a time when the Sahara was wet. According to Dr Kevin White, “Over the last 10,000 years, there have been two distinct humid phases, separated by an interval of highly variable but generally drying conditions between roughly 8,000 and 7,000 years ago. Another drying trend took place after about 5,000 years ago, leading to today’s parched environment.”

Noah lived during the time of wetness in the region of Lake Chad during the “Aqualithic" or African Humid Period (8000-4000 BC), also known as the Holocene Wet Period. This was before the rise of the first dynasty of Egypt. This places Noah and his sons in relatively recent history, not at the dawn of human existence.

The word Chad/Tchad is related to the Nilotic Luo word chaddhoreh, meaning a wound or a bruise. In Isaiah 1:6 the King James Version translates chabbarah as "bruises." The Luo word also refers to a depression where something has been cut out, plucked out, or bruised. A depression of this type is called chaddhoreh in Luo. The word "Chad" describes the basin which filled with water during the prolonged period of wetness.

About 7500 years ago Lake Chad was 130 feet deeper than it is today and covered an area of about 135,000 square miles (350,000 sq km). The footprint of ancient Mega-Chad has been confirmed by satellite photography. 

During the African Humid Period the Nile waters swelled from increased rainfall and cut a deeper and wider floodplain, extending well into Sudan to the west. There was then water access to the Giza Pyramids and both Nekhen and Nekheb (Elkab) were on the banks of that great north-flowing river.

Fortified oasis of Djado in Niger along the banks of a dry riverbed.
The ruins are about 1000 years old.

The Djado Plateau lies in the Sahara, in northeastern Niger. It is known for its cave art, but is now largely uninhabited, with abandoned towns and forts still standing. Ancient rivers cut deep canyons in the red rocky landscape. The many archaeological sites are a testament to the fact that the climate was once favorable to human habitation. There is evidence of widespread human settlements in the region over 50,000 years ago.

Ancient water systems connected the Nile and Central Africa. This is evident in the map below showing the African Sheer Zone.

Rifting, combined with prolonged rains, caused this entire region to flood. Lake Chad is located at the boundary of Niger, Nigeria, Chad, and Cameroon.


Mega-Nile

The eastern Sahara Desert was once home to a large lake in the White Nile Valley floor. This is likely the western boundary of Biblical Eden, a vast watery world that extended to the Tigris-Euphrates Valley and the Indus River Valley. According to this report, the mega lake was probably formed more than one hundred thousand years ago in the White Nile River Valley in Sudan.

Between 10 and 12 thousand years ago the Nile system filled with waters from the Angolan Highlands, the result of geological uplift which created Lake Victoria and directed its excess flow north in the White Nile. The White Nile provides most of the Nile's water during the dry season. During this period, there were water routes between the Nile and the Chadic and Niger water systems through a series of shallow lakes in the Sahara. This explains the common plant and animal species found in all three water systems.

As the Sahara dried out, human populations and their cattle found it necessary to move toward the major water systems of the Benue Trough, Lake Chad, and the Nile. The Sahara became increasingly depopulated. In the words of Leviticus 26:19, the heavens became like iron and the earth like brass.

The now dry Botswanan basin was once a sea filled with water from the Angolan Highlands. Some of Africa's earliest human populations lived on the edges of this great lake and evidenced by thousands of man-made stone tools found there. The tools include mace heads and date to between 80,000 and 100,000 years.


Arid Phase in the Southern Levant

A core drilled from the Sea of Galilee was subjected to high resolution pollen analysis for the Bronze and Iron Ages. The detailed pollen diagram (sample/~40 yrs) was used to reconstruct past climate changes and human impact on the vegetation of the Mediterranean zone of the southern Levant. The chronological framework is based on radiocarbon dating of short-lived terrestrial organic material. The results indicate that the driest event throughout the Bronze and Iron Ages occurred ~1250–1100 BC, at the end of the Late Bronze Age. This likely was one factor among many that contributed to the so-called "Iron Age Collapse". Read the full report here.

(The term "Gurian Wet Period" was coined by British archaeologist John Sutton and appeared in the Journal of Africa History 1974; Antiquity 1977). 


Related reading: When the Sahara Was Wet: Water Systems Connected Nile and Central Africa; Genesis and Climate Change; Rock Art in Sudan and Somalia; Africa in the Days of Noah; Boat Petroglyphs in Egypt's Eastern Desert; Climate Change Indicates a Dynamic Earth; Climate Cycles and Noah's Flood; NASA on Carbon Emissions

Answers to High Schoolers' Questions About Adam and Eve

Alice C. Linsley


It is ironic that people insist on reading Genesis 1-3 as history and and yet ignore the historicity of Genesis 4-11. In this later section we find data that is verified by the sciences, especially kinship analysis, DNA studies, migration studies, climate studies, archaeology and linguistics. Were we to pursue the picture of Abraham's ancestors presented in Genesis 4-11 we would better understand the Nilo-Saharan context of the Genesis 1-3 accounts. Only when we put this material in its proper cultural context will we be able to reconcile science and Scripture.

This continues the series on Answers to High Schooler's Questions About Genesis


Q: How did Adam come to earth? Was he made on earth or in heaven and poofed to earth?

A: Genesis tells us that God formed the man from the dust of the earth. The word human reflects this belief. Human is related to the word humus, meaning soil or dirt. Likewise, in many places in the Bible the word Adam is a synonym of human being.


Q:  Were Adam and Eve real?  I  mean did they really exist?

A:  Keep in mind that the Bible presents Adam in two different ways: as the first created human, and as the founder of the line of ruler-priests who are associated with Abraham and his territory in Edom. The idea of Adam as the first man comes from Biblical writers who are speaking analogically (using an analogy). They draw a parallel between the first Adam who caused sin and death and the New Adam - Jesus Christ - who redeems the world from sin and death. This is not to be taken as history.

On the other hand, Adam as the first of the line of rulers associated with the great kings of ancient Israel, has an enormous amount of Biblical support and also aligns with data in the sciences. The Biblical writers recognized that the people among them with red skin were of an ancestral line of extreme antiquity. Some of these people were rulers in Edom. These are listed in Genesis 36. Esau the Elder and Esau the Younger were among them. Esau is specifically described as being red in Genesis 26. King David was also red and he had Edomite ancestry.

The Hebrew word for red is edom and it is a cognate to the Hausa word odum, meaning red-brown. Both are related to the word dam, meaning blood, and to the name of the first man Adam, who was formed from the red clay which washed down to the Upper Nile Valley from the Ethiopian highlands. These soils have a cambic B horizon. Chromic cambisols have a strong red brown color. It is evident then that the Upper Nile is the urheimat of the Adam and Eve story.

Jeff A. Benner, an expert on ancient Hebrew, explains:

We are all familiar with the name "Adam" as found in the book of Genesis, but what does it really mean? Let us begin by looking at its roots. This word/name is a child root derived from the parent דם meaning, "blood". By placing the letter א in front of the parent root, the child rootאדם is formed and is related in meaning to דם (blood). 

By examining a few other words derived from the child root אדם we can see a common meaning in them all. The Hebrew word אדמה (adamah) is the feminine form of אדם meaning "ground" (see Genesis 2:7). The word/name אדום (Edom) means "red". Each of these words have the common meaning of "red". Dam is the "red" blood, adamah is the "red" ground, edom is the color "red" and adam is the "red" man. There is one other connection between "adam" and "adamah" as seen in Genesis 2:7 which states that "the adam" was formed out of the "adamah".

In the ancient Hebrew world, a person’s name was not simply an identifier but descriptive of one's character. As Adam was formed out of the ground, his name identifies his origins. (From here.)

If Adam and Eve are the first created humans, they would have lived about 3.6 million years ago. That is when the first humans appear on the Earth's surface, and these were fully human. Genesis tells us that Abraham's ancestors came out of Africa. The descendants of Noah were Nilo-Saharans. The Bible sometimes refers to these peoples ar "Kushites." Kush is the Nile Valley, especially the upper Nile region which is where the oldest human fossils have been found. Further, the names Adam (ha-dam, the Blood) and Eve (ha-vah, the Birther) and the creation stories of Genesis 1-4:16 are traceable back to Abraham's Nilo-Saharan ancestors.


Q:  Eve is called the "mother of all living" in Genesis 3:20. Why is Adam never called the "father of all living"?

A:  It is also possible that the ancients from whom we received the information in Genesis knew more than we recognize about the durability of the Mt-chromosome, and the loss of the original Y-chromosome. The most recent male ancestor of all males today lived in Africa around 59,000 years ago. The so-called "Mitochondrial Eve" is dated to about 143,000 years ago. She is considered the mother of modern humans. She is not the mother of archaic humans. That Eve would have lived much earlier.



Q: What fruit did Adam and Eve eat?

A: This information is not found in Genesis. In many works of art the fruit is shown as an apple. An older tradition maintains that the fruit was a fig from the Sycamore Fig tree (Ficus sycomorus) which was abundant along rivers in the region where Eden was located. This tradition is also represented in paintings by the fig leaves covering Adam and Eve's private parts.

The Syacmore fig is a large edible fruit which ranges from green to yellow or red when ripe. In its natural habitat, the tree can bear fruit year round, peaking from July to December. Jesus “cursed” the Sycamore Fig tree when it failed to produce fruit, suggesting that the tree's failure to bear fruit was an effect of the corruption of creation (the Fall).

The next day as they were leaving Bethany, Jesus was hungry. Seeing in the distance a fig tree in leaf, he went to find out if it had any fruit. When he reached it, he found nothing but leaves, because it was not the season for figs. Then he said to the tree, “May no one ever eat fruit from you again.” And his disciples heard him say it. (Mark 11: 12-14)

Range of the Syacmore Fig tree

The Sycamore Fig grew in abundance along the Nile, the region from which Abraham's ancestors came. It was cultivated by the Egyptians and the Kushites. Zohary and Hopf, authors of Domestication of Plants in the Old World (Oxford University Press), assert that Egypt was "the principal area of sycamore fig development." They note that "the fruit and the timber, and sometimes even the twigs, are richly represented in the tombs of the Egyptian Early, Middle and Late Kingdoms. In numerous cases the parched sycons bear characteristic gashing marks indicating that this art, which induces ripening, was practiced in Egypt in ancient times."

In ancient Egyptian iconography the Sycamore stands on the threshold of life and death, veiling the threshold by its abundant low-hanging foliage. The caskets of some Egyptian mummies were made from the wood of the Sycamore Fig tree. Pharaohs called the Sycamore Fig trees Nehet.




Q: Why did Adam and Eve eat the forbidden fruit?

A: Eve ate the forbidden fruit first and then gave some to Adam. She was tempted by the serpent who appealed to her God-inspired appreciation of beauty. Genesis 3:6 says that the woman saw that the fruit was “pleasing to the eye.” Here we see how the Good in us can be used to make us sin. This is why Genesis 3:1 describes the serpent as “more crafty than any of the wild animals the Lord God had made."

Q: Why didn't Adam stop Eve from sinning?

A: Genesis 3:6 says that "her husband" was with her when she took and ate the fruit, but does not offer an explanation as to why he failed to stop her. The book of Genesis typically does not speculate about why men failed to do right. For example, we are not given an explanation about Noah’s drunkenness that led him to curse his son/grandson, or about Lot’s drunkenness that led to incest with his daughters. Both stories indicate that drunkeness is a condition that leads to bad things. Perhaps the moral of this story is that moral weakness in husbands and fathers leads to bad things.



Q: Why did God have to punish all of us if only Adam and Eve sinned?

A: God does not punish us. We suffer the consequences of sin and death because these are characteristics of the fallen world in which we live. God's gifts of forgiveness, strength, wisdom, patience and joy enable us to live in the fallen world as people who grow in the image and likeness of God, according to our original blessing.



Q: Why did God place the tree of knowledge of good and evil in the garden?

A: Genesis does not answer this question. However, Genesis 3:3 tells us that this tree was in the middle of the garden, which means it was at the sacred center. Among many tribes, the sacred center is where knowledge is revealed. For example, the Lakota vision quest (Hunblecheya) requires that the participant remain at the center of the circle drawn by the shaman until he receives a vision from the Great Spirit about his role and destiny.



Q: Who did Adam and Eve's children marry?

A: God commanded Adam and Eve to "be fruitful and increase in number and fill the earth and subdue it." (Gen. 1:28) Abraham's ancestors obviously took this command seriously because their rulers had two wives and usually two concubines. Marriage partners were carefully selected, especially for rulers and their heirs.  We do not know what rules governed the selection of marriage partners among the earliest humans 3.4-3.6 million years ago, but analysis of the Genesis King Lists reveals a sophisticated marriage and ascendency structure for Abraham's ancestors.




Q: What was going on between Adam and Eve and Noah? How can that be enough time to populate the earth?

A: If Adam and Eve are the first created humans, they lived at least 3.6 million years ago since that is the age of  the oldest human fossils. Noah lived much later, between 2490-2415 B.C. when the Sahara experienced a wet period (Karl W. Butzer 1996).

Before Noah's time there were already human populations dispersed around the world. There were numerous river populations in China between 7000-2000 B.C. In southern Africa, there were forest populations who mined red ochre from the Lebombo Mountains more than 30,000 years ago.  This blood-like substance was used to bury nobles in the hope of life beyond the grave. The practice was widespread, perhaps global, before the time of Noah.

Noah's immediate descendants included Shem, Ham and Japheth, whose lines intermarried. This means that these ruling lines were genetically related.

Ham lived between 2438-2363 B.C. and became the father of Kush. Kush lived between 2417-2342 B.C. and became the father of Raamah and Nimrod. Kush ruled in the Upper Nile and his son Nimrod established a kingdom in the Tigris-Euphrates Valley (Gen. 10:8-12).

Obviously, there is a gap of time between Adam and Eve and Noah, plenty of time for populations to migrate. The Kushite marriage and ascendancy structure drove the migration of peoples out of Africa.


Q: Were there other people on earth besides Adam and Eve that God created too?

A: Genesis does not address this question. The material in Genesis comes to us from a people who spread far and wide. This is refered to as the Kushite migration out of Africa, although there were various migrations both in and out of Africa before the time of Kush (Gen. 10). Findings in molecular genealogy indicate that most of the peoples of the world are their descendants, but perhaps not all people. More research needs to be done.


Q: Why did God create the man first

A: So that the stronger of the species could protect the weaker of the species. Unfortunately, Adam failed to protect his wife from the serpent's wiles.

Q: How long were Adam and Eve in the garden before they sinned?

A: This is not answered in Genesis, but the suggestion is that they lived there a good while as caretakers of the ground, the plants and the animals. Eden time probably seemed different than our time since they enjoyed perfect communion with a timeless.


Q: When they were in the garden before the fall, did Adam and Eve have sex

A: Very likely. They were told to bring forth offspring. Sex is not an effect of the Fall. Shame and sexual perversion are.


Q: Why did Adam name the animals. Why didn't God name them?

A: Naming is a way of making sense of our world. Perhaps God thought that this was important for Adam's cognitive development. God alone could create the animals, but by allowing the man to name the animals, God grants him a way to share in the creative process.

St. Anthony the Great offers this explanation:  "God, by His Logos, created the different kinds of animals to meet the variety of our needs: some for our food, others for our service. And He created man to apprehend them and their actions and to appraise them gratefully. Man should therefore strive not to die, like the non-rational animals, without having attained some apprehension of God and His works."


Related reading: Adam and Eve: The "Blood" and the "Birther"; DNA Confirms the Kushite Migration Out of Africa; Questions High Schoolers Ask About Genesis;  Answers to High Schoolers Questions About God

What Paradise Must Have Been

Alice C. Linsley


Christ came to restore Paradise according to ancient Church teaching. It is said that by His Cross and Resurrection the “curse is made void,” “Adam is renewed” and “Eve is set free.”

So what was Paradise like? How can we best describe it?

Some believe that Paradise is a metaphysical concept intending original or primal innocence. That may be true, but Genesis maintains that Paradise was also a physical reality experienced by Abraham’s earliest ancestors.

The Paradise of Eden is described as a well-watered garden. If you are a gardener (as I am), you know how welcome water is, especially in hot weather. The text says that springs came up from the earth and there were rivers.

There were many trees and shrubs. Some believe that the earliest of Abraham’s ancestors were forest dwellers. This pushes those ancestors to a time before memory, and yet the Paradise they enjoyed is remembered. Jung might suggest that the Paradise of Genesis reflects the collective memory of Abraham’s people who originated in ancient Kush.

Today much of ancient Kush is desert. It is hard to believe that the region was ever a well-watered area but many discoveries, such as the 8000 year old Dufuna boat in the Sahara, provide considerable evidence that it was.

Today those who dwell in the region labor hard to sustain their families. They sweat under a crushing sun. The water is mostly gone. There is little rest. The infant mortality rate is high and many women die in childbirth or are ostracized because of fistulas. Death is commonplace and familial; its immediacy disturbing to those of us who try to hide it in clinics, hospitals, hospices and nursing homes.

Yes, the curse is real and most immediately felt in the very place that the Bible claims the Fall took place. So we have no reason to doubt that Paradise was likewise real.

What do you think Paradise must have been like? That’s something to ponder because Christ came to restore Paradise and you might want to consider what that will be like.

I'd love to read your thoughts! Leave a comment.

The Serpent of Eden

Alice C. Linsley


Genesis tells us that Eden was a vast well-watered region extending from the Upper Nile Valley to the Tigris/Euphrates Valley.  This was the center of the Afro-Asiatic Dominion and here the oldest known divine promise was made to Mankind (Gen. 3:15).  Actually, that promise was made to "the Woman" (not Eve) concerning her Offspring who would crush the head of the serpent.[1]  To crush the head is an image of utter defeat.  So this is a promise about the victory of the Son over all that the serpent of Eden represents.

Nubian jar 300 BC

To better understand the Son's victory, we will explore what the Serpent of Eden represents in the context of the binary framework of Afro-Asiatic worldview in which the foremost distinction is always between the Creator God and the creation. This stands in contrast to religions in which this distinction is erased.

The serpent motif is found in Africa, Arabia, Pakistan, India, Central Asia and the Americas.  It is a significant symbol among traditional Africans and Native Americans, and in Judaism, Christianity, Islam, Hinduism and Buddhism. It is often found with symbols of the Sun and the Tree of Life. The great antiquity of these symbols is attested by their wide diffusion [2], yet their meaning has remained fairly stable in each religion.

Among archaic peoples the serpent was regarded as having powers to communicate [3], to deceive, to heal, to hide, to reveal and to protect. The oldest serpent veneration is associated with the 70,000 year old python stone carved in a mountainside in Botswana.

In Hindu mythology, the serpent-dragon RahuKetu tried to drink the nectar of immortality churned by the devas. The Solar and Lunar deities saw RahuKetu trying to do this and told Vishnu. Vishnu then threw his discus, cutting the dragon into Rahu (head) and Ketu (below the head) [4], but the dragon had already consumed the nectar and was thus immortal. Essentially, the serpent takes on divinity.

In the Gilgamesh Epic (Babylonian tale) Gilgamesh retrieves the Plant of Rejuvenation from the bottom of the sea. One evening as he was bathing in a pool, a serpent appeared and ate the Plant that Gilgamesh had left on the shore. The serpent then sloughed its skin and disappeared.  Here too is the implication that the serpent becomes immortal.

In Buddhist mythology, Buddha is often shown meditating under the hood of a seven-headed serpent (naga in Sanskrit; nahash in Hebrew). The serpent protects him from the rain. In another story, the celestial nagas shower the earth with rain as a blessing. They are deities in Buddhism, no longer simple creatures.

Jesus thought of the serpent as a creature with both positive and negative qualities, but never as an immortal being. He used serpent imagery to condemn the hypocrisy of the Jewish rulers: "Ye serpents, ye generation of vipers, how can ye escape the damnation of Gehenna?" (Matthew 23:33)  Yet earlier in Matthew's Gospel He sent forth his Apostles with this exhortation: "Behold, I send you forth as sheep in the midst of wolves: be ye therefore wise as serpents, and harmless as doves" (Matthew 10:16).

The ancient Greeks considered snakes sacred to Asclepius, the god of medicine. Asclepius carried a staff with one or two serpents wrapped around it. This has become the symbol of modern physicians. The ancient symbol of Ouroboros consists of a dragon or a snake curled into a hoop, consuming its own tail. In this image the serpent represents the eternal cycle of life.

As snakes shed their skins, revealing shiny new skins underneath, they symbolize rebirth, transformation, immortality, and healing.  In his novel The Voyage of the Dawn Treader C. S. Lewis uses this image to describe how sin can be sloughed only with Aslan's help. Eustace has turned into a dragon [5] and before he can step into the waters (Baptism) he must shed his scaley layers.  He sheds three layers but can't free himself to be the human he was originally created. Aslan must rip away the layers of sin before Eustace can step free.

In ancient Egyptian mythology, Apopis was a water serpent and a symbol of chaos. He is shown (right) being slain by Hathor, Ra's cat. Another story tells of how each night Apopis attacked Ra, the High God, but the serpent Mehen coiled himself around Ra's solar boat to protect Ra. This also illustrates the binary nature of ancient Egyptian thought, since the power of Mehen to protect is superior to the power of Apopis to destroy. This binary element is key to understanding the victory of Jesus Christ, whose victory is assured because He is one with the Father, not a creature.

In Exodus we read how Moses held up a rod which turned into a serpent and all who looked upon it were spared when they were bitten by vipers. The exalted Serpent was superior in every way to the serpents who attacked the Israelites in the wilderness. The Church Fathers interpreted this as a sign pointing to Jesus on the Cross. The Apostle John had this in mind when he wrote about how Jesus would be "lifted up from the earth" and thereby draw all Mankind to the Father (John 3: 14 and John 12:32).

The serpent of Eden is like those vipers in the wilderness. It is intent on spreading its poison and it achieves that end by means of confusion and deceit.  Here is how the serpent is described:

Now the serpent was more crafty than any of the wild animals the Lord God had made. He said to the woman, "Did God really say, 'You must not eat from any tree in the garden'?"

The woman said to the serpent, "We may eat fruit from the trees in the garden, but God did say, 'You must not eat fruit from the tree that is in the middle of the garden, and you must not touch it, or you will die.' "

"You will not surely die," the serpent said to the woman. "For God knows that when you eat of it your eyes will be opened, and you will be like God, knowing good and evil." (Gen. 3:1-5)

The serpent of Eden symbolizes deception, the promise of forbidden knowledge and self-elevation. It is not a deity, but it is "more cunning than any beast of the field which the Lord God had made."  Nevertheless, the serpent of Eden is very much a creature. The distinction between the Creator and the creature is clear.
 
The rabbis identify the serpent of Eden as Satan, the one who decieves and accuses 364 days of the year. Only on Yom Kippur is Satan not able to accuse.  That is the Day of Atonement. For those who believe that Jesus is the Son promised to the Woman in Eden, that is the day of Christ's atoning work on the Cross.  That day the Crucified One ripped away the great deception so that we who believe in Him might step free.
 
 
NOTES
1. The "Woman" of Gen. 3:15 is Mary, the Mother of Christ, our God. She is sometimes shown standing on a hemisphere with the serpent beneath Her foot.
 
2. Diffusion is the process by which a cultural trait, material object, idea, symbol or behavior pattern is spread from one society to another, often traceable to a central point or a point of origin. A principle of anthropology states that the wider the diffusion of a culture trait, the older the trait.  The point of origin for serpent veneration appears to be southern Africa.

3. Shinto shrines have snake pits where shamans go into trace states to communicate with the serpents and to communicate a message to humans from the serpent.

4. Ketu is the name of one of the 3 founders of the Jebusites. There are two Jebu territories and three founding brothers: Yoruba, Egba and Ketu. This 3-clan patriarchal confederation is typical of Abraham's African ancestors. Jebusite influence is reflected by the presence of the bronze serpent in the Israelite cult with many such serpent images having been found at Canaanite shrines in Gezer, Hazor, Meggido and Jerusalem.

5. In Christian iconography the serpent of Eden is often shown as a dragon.  Many famous paintings depict the serpent's defeat by either St. George or St. Michael, the Archangel.


Related reading:  Serpent Symbolism; The Cosmic Serpent Exposed; The Serpent from Africa to India

Abraham's Nilo-Saharan Ancestors

Alice C. Linsley


Twentieth century scholarship has failed to account for the purpose of the Bible. We might say that it serves as a sacred text and leave it at that. But why should this text be so influential for both good and bad? Why have few cultural anthropologists taken the text as seriously as biblical archaeologists? What do many dismiss the biblical record as baseless when there is so much material evidence to support what Genesis tells us about Abraham's people?

Part of the answer is that European scholars have turned a blind eye to the African origins of Abraham's ancestors. A few have explored the connections between Abraham’s people and Egypt, but none have traced Abraham’s ancestors back to pre-dynastic times to the Upper Nile, to the Sudan and to the Neolithic river systems of Nigeria. None have connected the Afro-Asiatic kingdom-builders as the descendents of the prehistoric Africans who were world explorers. Archaeologist Thomas Strasser of Providence College (Rhode Island) reports that humans left Africa hundreds of thousands of years ago and traveled north and east by boat. Stone hand axes unearthed on Crete indicate that ancient Africans used rafts or other seagoing vessels to cross from northern Africa to Europe and the Near East via larger islands in the Mediterranean.


Ignoring the African antecendents of Abraham's people has enabled white supremacists to claim that the curse of Ham is a curse on all black people. It has led young Earth creationists to conclude that the various people groups (with their various languages, cultures, and distinctive physical characteristics, including skin color) arose as a result of God's supernatural judgment at the Tower of Babel..."

It isn’t difficult for someone with some anthropological training to expose the fallacy of these views using the biblical text. For example, white supremacists should be told that analysis of the kinship pattern of Abraham's ancestors reveals that the lines of Ham and Shem intermarried. That being the case, which descendents would be cursed?

Young-Earth Creationists should be told that there are 17 language families in the world. Each breaks down into hundreds of languages, dialects and sub-dialects. All the peoples mentioned in Genesis 10 belong to only one language family: the Afro-Asiatic. The Bible is their story because the promise of the Son was made to their ancestors in Eden (Gen. 3:15). Most of these people are of African origin and dark skin color so it is ignorant to say that skin color variation is the result of God's judgment.

Today it is virtually impossible to ignore the African origins of Abraham’s people since every field employed in the study of Genesis points us that direction. Long before the emergence of a people called Israel, ruler-priests controlled vast areas of the ancient world. They built kingdoms with cities, temples and water shrines. They practiced animal sacrifice at fire altars and offered prayers with incense. They regarded water as the element of purification and a symbol of life. They observed sacred laws and spread across the earth. Afro-Asiatic rulers apparently felt enjoined by divine authority “to multiply and spread” across the Earth.

These ruler-priests married the daughters of other ruler-priests and thereby preserved their priestly bloodlines through endogamy. The endogamous marriage pattern of two priestly lines intermarrying can be traced from Genesis 4 to Jesus, son of Mary, daughter of the shepherd-priest Joachim.

Some argue that this is the purpose of the Bible. Whether one agrees or not, this view of the Bible raises interesting etiological questions. Why did the rulers of Genesis marry as they did? Why did they maintain two wives in separate households on a north-south axis? Why were the wives a half-sister and a patrilineal parallel cousin? What is the origin of this marriage pattern?

Genesis is the account of ancient Afro-Asiatic rulers, the first known kingdom builders whose dominion extended from Africa to India. There is scholarly debate over whether the Semites originated in Asia or in Africa. Noting the linguistic similarities between Semitic and Sanskrit words, many scholars have insisted that they moved westward from Asia into Africa. As evidence they offer the correspondence between the Hindu heroes Adimo, Heva, Sherma, Hama and Jiapheta and their Genesis counterparts Adam, Eve, Shem Ham, and Japheth. For these scholars, the Genesis prehistory reflects pre-Vedic legends of early humanity. But what if the reverse is true? What if the correspondence is due to the eastward movement of Abraham’s ancestors from Africa? This is the more likely scenario given the overwhelming evidence for the northeast migrations of peoples from Africa. Add to this the fact that the oldest artifacts to support the biblical worldview are found in Africa. Then there is the drive of kingdom-builders to search for and conquer new territories.

If the migration of Abraham’s ancestors was eastward and the stories reach as far as the Indus River Valley, these stories must be viewed as a seedbed of a widespread worldview. In fact, they must be the stories told from Africa to India. At the oldest level these stories share common motifs of Trees, Serpents, Water, and the Sun. All of these are found ar the Nile temples and shrines of Memphis, Heliopolis and Hierakonpolis, but they did not originate there. They came from deeper within Africa.

It seems to me that the purpose of the Bible must have something to do with what came from that deeper African religion and in my thinking this is the most important area yet to be explored by Biblical Anthropologists.


Related reading:  Saharan Antecedents of Pharaonic Egypt; The Christ in Nilotic Mythology; Biblical Anthropology and Antecedents

Glimpses of Eden

"When the flush of a new-born sun fell first on Eden's green and gold, Our father Adam sat under theTree and scratched with a stick in the mould; And the first rude sketch that the world had seen was joy to his mighty heart, Till the Devil whispered behind theleaves,'It'spretty, but is it Art?" --Rudyard Kipling (The Conundrum of the Workshops)

"One foot in Eden still, I stand And look across the other land. The world's great day isgrowing late, Yet strange these fields that we have planted So long with crops of love and hate." --Edwin Muir (One Foot in Eden)

"To sit with a dog on a hillside on a glorious afternoon is to be back in Eden, where doing nothing was not boring - it was peace." --Milan Kundera
 
"There is a contest old as Eden, which still goes on - the conflict between right and wrong, between error and truth. In this conflict every human being has a part." --Matthew Simpson

Of man's first disobedience, and the fruit
Of that forbidden tree, whose mortal taste
Brought death into the world, and all our woe,
With loss of Eden, till one greater Man
Restore us, and regain the blissful seat. --John Milton (Paradise Lost)

Eden Was a Well-Watered Region

Henry Breasted's map of the Fertile Crescent. He coined the term "Fertile Crescent."

Alice C. Linsley

According to the Genesis 2 description, Eden was a vast well-watered region that corresponds to the Fertile Crescent shown on the map above. This is the home of the biblical Hebrew who dispersed out of Africa in Canaan, Arabia, Mesopotamia, Iraq, and Anatolia.

In the garden of Eden narratives, we find clues as to the cultural contexts of the narrators. The term Eden derives from the Akkadian term edinu, which refers to a fertile plain or a well-watered region. The Hebrew word gan (garden) is related to the Kushite term egàn, which refers to a virgin forest.

Cain moved "east of Eden" (Gen. 4:15) and his descendants are found in the land of Kenan/Kenites, which is the land of Canaan, or כנען, pronounced kena'an.

Cain was a sent-away son who established his territory "east of Eden" which is to say that he moved away from his brother Seth who is associated with the Upper Nile Valley. (See An Anthropologist Looks at Genesis 5.)

The phrase "east of Eden" in the Hebrew text is "quimat-Eden" and appears to be a Nilotic reference. Originally, the word was probably qma, and ancient Egyptian word that refers to bulrushes. So it is possible that Cain went to the place of bulrushes, which would be the Nile Valley. In Exodus 2:1-10, we read the story of how Moses; mother hid her infant in the bulrushes of the Nile.

Perhaps Eden simply refers to a well-watered region, just as the Hebrew word gihon (Genesis 2) refers to a gushing spring. One of the rivers that bounded Eden to the south is called the Gihon. It is likely one of the rivers at the source of the Nile in the Ethiopian highlands. The earliest human populations settled by major water sources which sustained them.


Abraham's ancestors were Nilotes and Proto-Saharans

The book of Genesis contains the oldest layers of information about Abraham's Nilo-Saharan ancestors who ruled territories along the Nile when the Sahara was wet (Neolithic Subpluvial). At that time the water systems of the Sahara were larger and interconnected.  This has been confirmed by geological and hydrological studies of Central Africa and by discovery of proto-Saharan petroglyphs of boats and cows.

It has also been attested by the discovery of an 8000-year black mahogany dugout in Dufuna in the Upper Yobe valley along the Komadugu Guna River in Northern Nigeria. The Dufuna boat (shown above) is about 2500 years older than the oldest known boat in Egypt.

The area shaded in red is the location of biblical Eden. It was said to be a well-watered area. Today this is one of the driest regions on earth, but during Noah's time and before it was vastly wetter. Abraham's ancestors came from this region. It is the point of origin of the Abrutu or Habiru (Hebrew) who preserved for us in a biblical record the traditions, beliefs, and practices of their ancestors.

Biblical Eden had forests, sustained large herds in the grasslands.
The region was well watered by extensive, inter-connected water systems
including the Nile, Lake Chad, Lake Victoria and the Benue-Niger Trough

Mega-Nile was once comparable in surface area to Lake Michigan (22,394 sq miles) in the US, Lake Tanganyika (12,703 sq miles) in East Africa, and Lake Baikal (12,248 sq miles) in Siberia. Here is the latest information on the vast expanse of the Nile during the last interglacial period.

Between 12,000 and 10,000 years ago the Nile filled with waters from the Angolan Highlands. Before this time, the streams of the Ugandan highlands flowed west to join the Congo River, which drains into the Atlantic. Geological uplift about 12,000 years ago tilted the region to create Lake Victoria and direct its excess flow north into the White Nile. The waters of the White Nile provide most of the Nile's water during the dry season. Essentially the entire Albertine Rift was a vast flood plain extending 3,700 miles from Syria to central Mozambique.

Likewise, the now dry Botswanan lake basin in southern Africa was once a sea, filled by water from the Angolan Highlands. Thousands of manmade stone tools have been found in the area dating to between 80,000 and 100,000 years.

Between 12,000 and 7,000 years ago Lake Chad filled its present drainage basin and spilled southwest out the Benue River to the Atlantic. It was called "Lake Mega Chad" and during that time it was the world's largest lake with a surface five times larger Lake Superior. The local population calls Lake Chad the "Sea of Noah" and the regional place names "Benue" and "Borno" also refer to Noah. 

Genesis 2:10-14 says that Eden was watered by four rivers: the Tigris, the Euphrates, the Pishon and the Gihon. Two rivers are in Mesopotamia and two are in Africa. This is the place of origin of the ruler-priests and of "him that holds the scepter from the house of Eden" (Amos 1:5). They are "the mighty men of old" who spread across this region. This is the point of origin of the practices associated with the priests of ancient Yisrael/Israel: circumcision, animal sacrifice, two-wife marriage pattern for rulers, sent-away royal sons, and the Holy Name YHWY.

The Ethiopians identify the Gihon with the Abay River, which encircles the former African kingdom of Gojjam. The Pishon "flows through the whole land of Havilah" (Gen. 2:11) which was rich in gold and bdellium, a semi-transparent oleo-gum resin extracted from Commiphora wightii and from Commiphora africana. These trees only grow in Ethiopia, Eritrea, and other parts of sub-Saharan Africa.

Havilah was a son of Kush (Gen. 10:7) and the "Kushites" lived in the upper Nile region and the Sudan. Kushite kings also ruled in Egypt and were the first to unite the peoples of the Upper and Lower Nile.

The description of Eden as a well-watered region is supported by climate and geological studies. These four rivers encompass the heart of Eden in the ancient world which was ruled by a network of kings, priests, and clan chiefs. They controlled the major water systems and built shrines and temples along the rivers. They exacted taxes on cargo that moved along the rivers between twin cities that set up effective maritime checkpoints.

Related reading: Boats and cows of the Nilo-Saharans; Noah's Flood: Where and When?; The Gold of Ophir; Sudan is Archaeologically Rich; The Ancient Egyptians Were Sea-Faring

Why Jesus Visited Tyre

Alice C. Linsley

Tyre is mentioned often in the Old and New Testaments, often in connection with Sidon. One of the more intriguing passages that mentions Tyre is Ezekiel 28:11-19:

"Son of Man, raise a lament over the king of Tyre and say to him: Thus says the Lord God: You were the seal of perfection, full of wisdom and flawless beauty. You were in Eden, in the Garden of God; every precious stone was your adornment... and gold beautifully wrought for you, mined for you, prepared the day you were created."

The ruins of Tyre

This is one of the rare references to Eden outside Genesis and it deserves closer inspection. Here the 'Son of Man' is the prophet Ezekiel through whom God declares judgement on the King of Tyre who is pictured as adorned with jewels and exalted. Ezekiel uses the exile from paradise to describe the king's fall from glory. But is there more here?  Yes, there is a Messianic message.

Ezekiel is told to prophecy against the King of Tyre because he was no longer “perfect.”  The ruler who was once full of wisdom in the Garden has fallen into sin and is being judged. Here we have a glimpse of God's economy by which guidance is always delivered in the proper order. The Father first sends the Son to those whose ancestors were in Eden and the people of Tyre recognized Him. Likewise, the angels first appear to the shepherd kings of Bethlehem, David’s people, to declare the coming of the Son, and the shepherds went straight away to worship Him.

Another example involves Jesus at Capernaum on the northwestern edge of the Sea of Galilee. The Sea of Galilee was between the territory of the Aramaeans (descendants of Nimrod) and that of the Afro-Arabian descendants of Joktan, Peleg’s brother. In Peleg’s time, the Aramaean and the Afro-Arabian descendants of Kush became separate kingdoms. Joktan’s holding extended from Jok-neam in the hill country southwest of the Sea of Galilee to Jok-deam, in the hill country just south of Hebron. Peleg’s holding extended north from the Sea of Galilee to Damascus. By the time we meet Abraham in Genesis 12, the Aramaeans controlled the water systems of Mesopotamia. Terah’s holding extended the length of the Euphrates, from Haran in the north to Ur in the south.

The Sea of Galilee sat between the two kingdoms and was controlled by the rulers on both sides. The two ruling houses intermarried. At Capernaum Jesus comes as Immanuel to both the Aramaeans and the Afro-Arabians. Both are his people since His ancestry is traced by both lines. So Jesus is first known at Capernaum. Mark and Matthew agree on this point, though they present their material differently.

In Mark’s Gospel, Jesus' true identity is recognized in the ancient island city of Tyre, not on a mountain as in Matthew's Gospel. For Mark, the Messiah’s appearing means the beginning of the restoration of Paradise. Perhaps the evangelist was thinking of this passage from Ezekiel 28. That would explain why Mark makes so much of Jesus’ visit to Tyre.

Tyre was the home of Hiram I, the father of the Tyrian king who helped to build Solomon’s temple. Hiram I was kin to David and sent skilled artisans to help David build a palace in Jerusalem, “the city of the Great King” (Matt. 5:35). Hiram is also known as "Huram" and "Horam", which are versions of the names Hur, Hor and Harun (Aaron), as in Jabal Harun, the Mountain of Aaron.

According to Midrash, Hur was Miriam’s husband, and a brother-in-law to Moses. Hur’s grandson was one of the builders of the Tabernacle. I Chronicles 4:4 lists Hur as the "father of Bethlehem," a settlement in the heartland of Horite Hebrew territory.

In other words, King Hiram I and David were descendants of Horite Hebrew ancestors, a caste of ruler-priests who anticipated the fulfillment of Genesis 3:15. Their Horite Hebrew lineage went back to Eden. The Horites believed that the promised Seed of the Woman would be born of their blood and they expected Him to visit them. In Mark 7:24, this expectation was fulfilled when the Son of God visited Tyre, where we are told Jesus “could not pass unrecognized.”


Related reading:  Horite Territory; Who Were the Horites?; The Holy One Hidden and Revealed; The Nazareth-Egypt Connection; Sidon Archaeological Site Alters Global Views