gobekli tepe - genesis of the gods (53 page)

Movses Khorenatsi, the father of Armenian history, who lived in the fifth century AD, wrote extensively on the region’s mythological past, in particular the life and exploits of Armenian cultural heroes thought to be descended from Noah (Armenians themselves believe they are descended from Noah
¹¹
). For instance, Hayk, the conqueror of King Bel, or Nimrod, is said to have been the great-great-great grandson of Japheth, the son of Noah. Shem, Noah’s chosen heir, is also connected with Armenia’s legends, and according to Movses, after the ark came to rest, Shem departed with his sons and came upon a mountain, which he afterward named Sim (or Simsar, which means Mount Sim).
¹²

According to Movses, Noah, having departed from the ark, established a dwelling for himself and his family (afterward named Thamanin, the modern Cizre in southeast Turkey), while Shem continued northwestward with his sons, and that

coming to a plain in the high mountains, he stopped by a river and named the mountain Sim after his own name. He gave this region to his youngest son Tarpan [the Armenian word for ark is
Tapan
]. . . . Tarpan remained with his sons and daughters in the region given to him by his father and called it Taron and later Taruperan after his own name.
¹³

Taron, or Taruperan, was, as we have already seen, the name of an ancient Armenian kingdom embracing the plain of Mush, implying, quite clearly, that Mount Sim overlooked the plain, which, of course, it does. Thus Yeghrdut was founded either on or very close to the spot where Shem and his sons are supposed to have set up camp after leaving the ark. As Movses Khorenatsi’s home village was nearby Chorene, immediately south of Yeghrdut, it seems unlikely that the monks of the monastery would
not
have been aware of this clearly local tradition featuring Shem, the son of Noah.

Movses Khorenatsi’s geographical positioning of Mount Sim and the wanderings of Noah and his family also make it clear that Mount Ararat is
not
the Place of Descent, the site where Noah’s ark came to rest after the Flood. Shem is said to have traveled “northwest” to reach Sim Mountain in the kingdom of Taron (see figure 36.2), which fits perfectly with the ancient belief that the ark went aground on Mount al-Judi, the modern Cudi Dağ in southeast Turkey. In other words, the story as preserved in Movses’s fifth-century history of Armenia was written with Mount al-Judi in mind as the Place of Descent, and
not
Mount Ararat, which lies some distance to the east-northeast of Sim Mountain.

Figure 36.2. Map of eastern Turkey showing the candidates for the Place of Descent in Noahic tradition. Note also the route taken by Noah’s son Shem from the Place of Descent to Sim Mountain, said to overlook the kingdom of Taron, that is, the plain of Mush.

All these Armenian traditions indicate that the plain of Mush and the surrounding mountain ranges were seen as important to the events portrayed in the generations between Adam and Abraham, although what they did not do was give credence to the belief that here also was the terrestrial Paradise. What I needed was better confirmation that Armenia, and in particular the area under discussion, was once believed to have been the site of Eden, something that Movses Khorenatsi worryingly makes no mention of in his history of Armenia.

As we see next, that confirmation is provided by the Reverend Marmaduke Carver, who in his fabulous work
A Discourse of the Terrestrial Paradise,
published in 1666, did so much to show that the area between Thospites Lake (Lake Van), the Tigris Tunnel in Sophene, and Bingöl Mountain in the Armenian Highlands was the true site of the terrestrial Paradise.

37

THE SECRETS OF ADAM

T
he Reverend Marmaduke Carver wished also to find absolute confirmation that the southern part of Armenia Major, modern eastern Turkey, was the authentic site of the Garden of Eden. Writing in
A Discourse of the Terrestrial Paradise,
he notes: “Tradition successfully continued in these parts [i.e., after the Flood], that hereabout was the place of Adam’s Paradise,”
¹
adding:

The Author that affirms this is Methodius. . . . Now this ancient Author
(in lib. Revel.)
speaking of the death of Seth, and the secession of his posterity from the posterity of Cain, hath among other things this remarkable passage:
Mortuo
Seth
separavit se Cognatio ejus à sobole
Caini,
redierúntque ad natale solum. Nam & Pater corum vivens prohibuerat nè miscerentur. Et habitavit Cognatio
Seth
in
Cordan
monte, Paradiso terrestri proximo.
²

The Latin text translates as: “[After the death of Adam] Seth separated from the issue of Cain and returned to his native country, for his father had forbidden their lives to mix. And Seth lived with his kin on Mount Cordan, next to the terrestrial Paradise.”

Having cited Methodius’s words, Carver notes: “If the terrestrial paradise were near the Mount Cordan, and that Mount Cordan or Gordiæus stood in the same place where Ptolemy hath set it; then we may rest secured, that the happy seat of our First Parents Habitation was at or about the very place that we have described.”
³

THE REVELATIONS OF METHODIUS

Very pertinent words indeed, so who was Methodius and where was Mount Cordan, or Gordiæus? Methodius of Olympus was a theologian and prolific writer of the early fourth century (he died ca. AD 311). The quotation cited by Carver, or variations of it, is from a work accredited to Methodius entitled the
Apocalypse
or
Revelations
(
Revelatio
). It contains a commentary on the book of Genesis and an account of the coming of the Antichrist and the inevitable end of the world. However, there is a problem, as there is no record of Methodius ever having written such a book. Moreover, it is quite clear from its contents that the
Apocalypse
was written in response to the Arab invasion of Asia Minor in the second half of the seventh century AD, three hundred years after Methodius’s death. In other words, its author was most likely a Christian writer of the seventh century who wanted to bolster the tract’s value by accrediting it to Methodius.

Exactly who penned this pseudepigraphical, or falsely attributed, work is unclear (the author is now referred to as Pseudo-Methodius), although what
is
important is that it was written originally in Syriac, the language of Northern Mesopotamia, meaning that it could well have originated from somewhere close to the city of Edessa, modern Şanlıurfa. This seems certain, as just a year or two after its initial circulation, modified versions, known today as the
Edessene Apocalypse,
were being produced in the area, quite possibly in one of the monasteries locally.
⁴

WHERE IS
CORDAN MONTE?

Which version of the
Apocalypse
the Reverend Marmaduke Carver consulted for his book is not cited. Most likely it was a volume in the York Minster Library, where the churchman did much of his research for
A Discourse of the Terrestrial Paradise.
Yet if we accept Carver’s translation as authentic (and I have certainly found a Latin version of the
Apocalypse
with a date of 1593 that contains these exact same lines
⁵
), it implies that in the late seventh century an accomplished theological writer, living close to Edessa and the site of Göbekli Tepe, possessed knowledge implying that Seth, his father Adam, his mother Eve, and their extended family group inhabited “Cordan monte,” or Mount Cordan. Even more significant is his conviction that this mountain was situated
proximo,
or “next,” to the terrestrial Paradise; that is, the Garden of Eden.

Carver assumed that “Cordan monte” was a reference to the Gordiæus Mountains (also written Gordyene or Corduene), which, he says, the Greco-Roman geographer Ptolemy (AD 90–168) located in the district of Armenia Major. Apparently, Ptolemy saw them as at “the same latitude with the springs of the Tigris: Strabo joins them with Mount Taurus.”
⁶
Today, this mountain range is identified with the Kardu Mountains, which are farther south and include Mount al-Judi, the traditional resting place of the ark. Yet the classical writers located the Gordiæus Mountains north of here, in the Eastern Taurus range, which borders the plain of Mush on its southern side.

So this fixed the mythical world of Adam, Eve, Seth, and their extended family firmly within reach not just of the source of the Tigris, but also Sim Mountain, where Shem and his sons settled, and the Yeghrdut monastery was founded in the fourth century AD. Is this where Adam and Eve came to rest after being expelled from the Garden of Righteousness, somewhere in the vicinity of Yeghrdut, where afterward Shem established his own home? Interestingly, it was Shem who Noah sent to retrieve Adam’s skull from its place of burial in order that it might be brought on to the ark,
⁷
even though the bodies of Eve, Seth, and all the other early patriarchs were left in situ
.
Apparently, the site of Adam’s burial was the “Cave of Treasures,” located on a “Holy Mountain”
⁸
that was said to overlook the site of the original Garden of Eden.
⁹
Did this cave exist somewhere near Yeghrdut, and could it be found today?

Of course, the historical validity of any such material is at best questionable, and yet there is no denying that the power of belief in a fictional mythos can be just as real as if not more real than, a tangible, mundane reality. Moreover, mythical data can encode within it kernels of truth that can manifest in the real world, and so nothing should be ignored or dismissed out of hand without due consideration.

THE SEED OF SETH

So to suddenly find that Adam and Eve’s homeland after their expulsion from the Garden of Eden was somewhere in the vicinity of the Eastern Taurus Mountains was very compelling indeed. Moreover, the introduction of Seth to the story was also highly significant, as it was the “seed of Seth,” or Seth’s descendants, who were to inherit God’s kingdom after the death of Adam. This belief is derived from a passage in Genesis 4:25, which reads:

And Adam again knoweth his wife, and she beareth a son, and calleth his name Seth, “for God hath appointed for me another seed instead of Abel:” for Cain had slain him.

The words “another seed” is interpreted as meaning that through Seth, the third son of Adam, God created a new branch of humanity that some Jews and early Christians believed was the only truly righteous tribe of God. Everybody else was descended of Cain, Seth’s evil brother, and was thus wicked by descent.

Many Gnostic sects that thrived in the first five centuries of the Christian era saw Seth as the first of three manifestations of Christ himself. The others would seem to have been Shem, the son of Noah, and Jesus Christ himself. Indeed, the heavenly Seth was seen to have manifested in this world through the incarnation of Jesus, the two being synonymous with each other.

THE NAG HAMMADI LIBRARY

Gnostic followers of Seth, or Sethites as they were known, flourished among religious sects and secret groups that thrived in regions such as Palestine, Syria, Asia Minor, Egypt, and Armenia. They had their own gospels, or scriptures, many of which were found together inside a cave near Nag Hammadi in Middle Egypt in 1945. What became known as the Nag Hammadi library is the most important collection of Gnostic and Sethite texts ever studied. One theory is that the codices may have belonged to a local Coptic monastery and were buried following Bishop Athanasius’s condemnation of the use of non-canonical holy books, that is, those not officially recognized by the Roman Church, in AD 367.

Among the Sethian titles in the Nag Hammadi collection are the
Three Steles of Seth, Zostrianos
(some see Zostrianos as a manifestation of Zoroaster, the divine leader of the Zoroastrians), the
Second Treatise of the Great Seth,
the
Paraphrase of Shem
(or Seth),
Allogenes,
the
Trimorphic Prottenoia,
and
Melchizedek.
These Gnostic gospels have some very interesting things to say about Seth, who is occasionally confused or identified with Shem,
¹⁰
the son of Noah. For instance, it is suggested that before his death, Adam transmitted to Seth certain matters concerning everything from the divine or angelic nature of humankind to the movement of the stars and heavenly bodies, and the knowledge of a coming catastrophe involving fire and water. These “secrets of Adam” are said to have been recorded before being hidden away until humanity was ready to receive them. Some of these secrets were to be revealed, periodically, through the appearance of four Phosters, that is, revealers or illuminators, who would incarnate for this express purpose,
¹¹
while others would remain hidden until the right time for their discovery.