Posted on 08/25/2004 6:17:55 PM PDT by missyme
What there was in the beginning, in the world of the Bible, is what there was in the land now called Iraq.
There is nothing left of the Garden of Eden, no artifact at the confluence of the Tigris and Euphrates rivers where myth has placed the Temptation and the Fall. But the great cities and empires from the Books of Genesis and Kings and Chronicles have left their traces: Ur, where Abraham was born; rapacious Assyria with its capital, Nineveh, and Babylon, where the ancient Israelites were carried into captivity and where, as the psalm tells us, they wept when they remembered Zion.
Beneath the sands and silt of Iraq, for millennium after millennium, truths have waited to be pieced together about these legendary places that loom so large in the faith and culture of Jews, Christians and Muslims.
"This is where the first writing began, where the first ideas of law and religions were written down," says archeologist McGuire Gibson at the University of Chicago. Golden calves, winged bulls and rampant lions have emerged from the dust, helping explain the consequential journey from the opulent polytheism of Mesopotamia to the more ascetic monotheism of the Promised Land.
It is a story that has emerged slowly, painstakingly, over the past century from some 10,000 scientific excavations in Iraq and innumerable ones in Israel.
Across the Middle East, the quest for sacred artifacts and for the lessons they can teach us is taking on new urgency. Archeology is growing more sophisticated; the technology of dating relics is improving. Driven by curiosity and faith, ambition and sometimes avarice, diggers yearn to unearth the Bible, to try to solve its mysteries and reveal its secrets.
It is the most challenging of archeological obstacle courses. In Iraq, the fall of Saddam Hussein raised hopes that new money and new freedoms would help open up many sites to more scientific investigation and restoration.
But the ravages of war are clouding that prospect. In Israel, a rising tide of funds for Bible-related projects is flowing into Jerusalem and its environs, but archeology is an overlooked casualty of the intifada: the violence has cut down the number of active digs.
Indeed the hunt for treasure and truth is growing ever wilder and more worrisome. In the lawless deserts of occupied Iraq, history—both of the Bible and of the larger ancient world that scriptures only hint at—is being pillaged on an epic scale for a black market where irreplaceable fragments of our past are sold to sophisticated collectors, or just to the highest bidder on eBay.
"It's wiping out a whole field of knowledge, of social and cultural history," says Gibson, "just so somebody can have a beautiful object sitting on the mantelpiece."
In Israel, much care is taken to preserve the slightest trace that might reveal literal truths about the mystical teachings of scripture. The tragedy of Iraq is that contexts are disappearing as fast as the objects them—selves. Archeologists are like crime-scene investigators trying to discover how whole societies lived and died. And to do that they need to know when, how—and especially where—each clue is found.
"You take an object out of context, you are losing about 80 percent of the information it can give you," says Gibson. Near Nasiriya, in southern Iraq, a 2,700-year-old Sumerian site known as Um Al Agareb, "Mother of Scorpions," is crisscrossed by the tire tracks of looters' trucks. Holes are everywhere. "It makes you cry," says John Russell, an American archeologist who advised the Iraqi Culture Ministry until June.
For believers contemplating the rise of the looters, lines from the Revelation of Saint John the Divine may come to mind: "Babylon the great is fallen, is fallen."
"There is nothing left of the Garden of Eden, no artifact at the confluence of the Tigris and Euphrates rivers where myth has placed the Temptation and the Fall."
MYTH?
Excuse me but the Bible is not a "myth".
Take it easy when you're digging - those WMD are around there somewhere...
Then again, maybe the Garden was washed away by the Great Flood.
Scoffer.
i caught that "myth" thing, too. and this for chrisey dicktopher: you cannot have it both ways, and if you think it was a myth, then you cannot get all upset about the place where, if it is a myth, it didn't take place. and if it isn't a myth -- right answer, by the way -- then it is also true that it does not require the preservation of artifacts to make it so. hell, one supposes, is teeming with people who fell one artifact shy of faith. also lawyers.
History is a dangerous business. Things get destroyed. Word of mouth stories take on 'factual' auras.
In 2004, we can't find people agreeing on what all of us, the still-living, have all seen and all read. Even tho we have all seen the same things---interpretations differ.
Imagine if, 300 years from now, all documents from our lifetimes were destroyed EXCEPT for a large collection of MAD Magazines. How would historians describe our era?
Next they'll be telling us that they've found God and are threatening to cut off his head if wChristians don't commit Jyhad on theirselves, or wahtever.
Blech.
In order for Satan's plan to work all religions must inevitably believe in one God
Archaeologists just may uncover but misinterpret the beginning of a satanic untruth unknowingly starting the beginning of the release of the Antichrist upon man !
Just my theory
more negative cr*p designed to obfuscate rather than inform: The fact is the whole country was unavailable for digging for decades. Before they dig for ancient cities, they have to dig for this:
http://freedomstruth.blogspot.com/2004/07/saddams-mass-graves.html
http://freedomstruth.blogspot.com
The Bible does not say WHERE the Garden of Eden was. So what's wrong with saying that "myth" has placed it in such-and-such a place?
No, no, no, no! "Myth" has it that Eden was located at the joining of the Tigris and the Euphrates. That's not biblical, and in fact, it represents a historicism which is fatal to Christianity!
I believe the ancient scriptures are deserving of a better parallel than "a large collection of MAD Magazines."
Faith doesn't need evidence. It's an oxymoron.
Yes it does. Genesis Chapter 2
for photographic evidence of ancient city-sites throughout the area once known as Mesopotamia, go to:
http://www-oi.uchicago.edu/OI/IS/SANDERS/PHOTOS/meso_map.html
just mouse-click on the name of a town for thumbnails.
Christopher Dickey is 1300 years too late in his "grieving" process. Where has he been? In fact the US presence is probably the last great hope that whatever measly stuff is left will be protected...maybe
Mohameddans have all but destroyed what Christian life there was starting...1300 years ago!
Lighten up. What a hair-trigger! The article said that "myth" had PLACED the Garden of Eden in a certain place. The Bible does NOT say where it was. There's nothing offensive about saying that its location is a matter of myth, or speculation.
Really? Then archaeologists should have had no trouble locating it. So? Where is it?
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