tigris river – Lynn Brown Writer

Murder Motive

Crime Scene

Courtroom Drama

The Wanderer

Problem Child: Murderer

Cain was every parent’s worst nightmare.

When he was sixty-eight years old and should have known better, he murdered his younger brother, according to Genesis.

Murder Motive

Why? Because his brother followed the rule for sacrificing to God: give the first of your harvest. Abel went further: he sacrificed the fatty potions from the best of his flock. His sacrifice was accepted.

Cain offered some of his produce, which implies that he kept the best for himself. This man was selfish, greedy, and he had a bad attitude! There’s no way I would do business with him.

Of course, Cain’s sacrifice was rejected. He was furious, and he pouted.

God wanted to re-establish a relationship with Cain and fix his attitude. He said, “Why are you angry? Why is your face downcast? If you do what is right, will you not be accepted? But if you do not do what is right, sin is crouching at your door. It desires to have you, but you must master it.” (NIV)

Crime Scene

Here’s problem solving for you: Cain said to Abel, “Let’s go to the field.” (That’s where Cain feels most comfortable.) There Cain killed his brother. That’ll show the little twerp to upstage him!

Courtroom Drama

God is back. “Where is your brother Abel?”

“I don’t know. Am I my brother’s keeper?” What a lying, snotty response!

“What have you done? Listen! Your brother’s blood cries out from the ground.” God tells Cain that as a result of his sin, the ground will no longer respond to his farming and he will become a restless wanderer.

Stubborn Cain tries emotional sabotage. “Today you are driving me from the land. (Not true: he just isn’t able to farm it.) I will be hidden from your presence. (Not true: the Judeo-Christian God is omnipresent. We’ll see that Cain doesn’t care about this anyway.) I will be a restless wanderer on the earth. (True.) And whoever finds me will kill me. (God never said this. Even so, doesn’t he deserve it?)

God puts a mark or seal on Cain to prevent his murder. This is the beginning of what will later become writing. It is probably the source of the early practice of a personal seal with which to “sign” documents.

The Wanderer

So Cain and his wife “went out of the Lord’s presence and lived in the land of Nod, east of Eden.” East of Eden covers a large area. However, if Eden is, as I proposed, the eastern section of the Turkish plateau, then Cain traveled beyond the mountains.

The Bible does not tell us where “Nod” was, but the important thing may be that it means “away from the presence of God.” As pointed out earlier, this is impossible with the Judeo-Christian God. Therefore, this must refer to where Cain connected with God: his parents, the angel with the flaming sword blocking the way to the Garden of Eden, and his own judgement.

In other words Cain not only “went out from the Lord’s presence” but he also lived there. He never repented, never returned.

Genesis says Cain built a city and named it after his son Enoch. We have no idea where that city was. There are educated guesses, but no proof.

My guess is that traveling east instead of south indicates that he followed the Tigris River instead of the Euphrates River into what is today called Mesopotamia. There, he built the city. In my opinion, it no longer exists, but I could be proven wrong!

Since he was “a wanderer,” he probably did not remain there, but continued to travel along the Tigris.

Suggested reading: Genesis 4:1-17

Photo credit: Alex Mihai C on Unsplash

Just the Facts, Ma’am

Dream Time

Treasure Hunt for Eden

Hunting the Pishon and Gihon Rivers

Finding the Treasure: the Location of the Garden of Eden

Treasure Hunt: the Garden of Eden

We will have to take Moses’ word for it.

We have seen that cultural legends, evolution, and radiographic dating have serious flaws. Moses’ Genesis is the only authority that remains.

Just the Facts, Ma’am

Let me remind you that Moses is writing in Hebraic narrative style. It’s like he is writing a military report to the pharaoh. Just…the…facts. No metaphors. No similes. No literary license.

Dream Time

Some cultural legends call this period of man the Dream Time.

I love that name. It evokes your best dreams when everything is beautiful. Events make you happy. Exciting things are happening. People are known as Great Kings or Giants or Gods by the people telling the legends. Animals can talk with you and they all love you. And everyone’s a vegetarian—and I don’t just mean humans!

According to Moses, the Dream Time for humans began with a garden created especially for the first human (a male) in 4008 or 4010 B.C. Moses even tells us where it was!

Unfortunately, he describes it in ancient Egyptian geographical terms and possibly some terms that trace back to the Dream Time itself.

We have to solve puzzles to follow the map to the treasure! What fun!

Treasure Hunt for Eden

There are seven clues in Genesis chapter 3, verses 8-14.

The Garden of Eden was east, in Eden.
A river watering the garden flowed from Eden.
From there, the river separated into four headwaters.
First river: Pishon. It ran through the land of Havilah, where there was gold.
Second river: Gihon. It ran through Cush.
Third river: Tigris. It ran along the east side of Asshur.
Fourth river: Euphrates.

The first thing I see is that many place names have changed since Genesis was written. The clues start in Eden. But we don’t know where Eden is.

Let’s look at the names that are the same today. We know the Tigris and Euphrates Rivers. We’ll work backward.

Find the headwaters of the Tigris and Euphrates Rivers.

Well, they don’t exactly come together, but it’s close. They joined when the directions were written. Time changes geology.

Surprise! It’s in the country of Turkey!

The two rivers are in a ring of mountains. Mountains! Many cultural legends tell of one or more mountains! Maybe Eden is inside the ring of mountains: the plateau.

The garden is “in the east, in Eden” and a river flowed through there to the source of the four rivers.

So that means that Eden is the area of the Turkish plateau north of the sources of the Tigris and Euphrates! Bingo!

But where are the other rivers?

Hunting the Pishon and Gihon Rivers

We know by satellite imaging that Turkey used to be a lush environment. Ancient dry riverbeds would have been flowing with water. Some may have connected.

The ancient gold mines were in the Gediz Basin. And, as Moses notes, “the gold there was good; aromatic resin and onyx are also there.”

Doesn’t that sound like an Egyptian prince? Gold and the precious stone onyx for décor. Aromatic resin for, among other things, mummification.

The Gediz Basin is on the western edge of Turkey. Maybe the Gediz River used to be the mouth of the Pishon River. It may have connected to Lake Tuz and then connected to the headwaters of the Tigris and Euphrates.

The Gihon River flowed through Cush.

Cush meant “black” in Ancient Egyptian. The Nubian Kingdom south of Egypt was sometimes referred to as Cush because the Cush (black skinned) people lived there.

All cultures have known the 4 directions, sometimes called the 4 pillars. We call them north, south, east, and west.

In the time of Genesis, Egyptians named the directions with colors. Black was the color for north.

The Karasu River flows north to the Black (North) Sea! This was the far north of civilization.

Finding the Treasure: the Location of the Garden of Eden

Now we know the four rivers that flowed out of the Garden. Their headwaters were probably where the Tigris and Euphrates are closest together.

Is there a river that flows into that spot, creating the headwaters of the rivers? Yes! It’s the Murat River!

The Garden of Eden was along the Murat River!

Read it for yourself in Genesis 3:8-14 (chapter 3, verses 8-14).

Photo credit: Bkamprath