the real Eden

[marduk]

http://psd.museum.upenn.edu/epsd/epsd/e1199.html
link is to page of the electronic Pennsylvania Sumerian Dictionary considered the most up to date resource of its kind anyhwere on Earth, which proves that the word Eden is attested from as early as 3000bce
In Sumerian where it means plain, steppe, or open country. In Hebrew it is a loan word and the meaning has changed to Garden
this proves without a doubt that the idea of Eden being a paradise is a total fallacy like most of the rest of the old testament
here is another sumerian word that people of faith may find familiar
http://psd.museum.upenn.edu/epsd/epsd/e135.html
as you can see the name Adam is also not Hebrew on origin and the fact that both these words predate the existence of any Hebrew man, culture or otherwise should be enough for anyone with a brain to see that anyone who claims that the Bible is the word of god really doesn't have a clue what they are talking about unless the god in question is a Pagan deity called Enlil
aye thankyou

[Minimalist]

http://www.jesusneverexisted.com/babylon.htm#Hammurabi

Copied "Garden of Eden" Story
"Said to be somewhere along the river Euphrates, the Garden of Dilmun was where Babylonians believed that mankind was created. The similarities between the Dilmun epic and the Garden of Eden story found in the Book of Genesis are too similar to be ignored."
– G. Phillips (The Moses Legacy, p5/6)

Copied "Floating Baby" Legend
"The Moses birth story…is quite obviously a folk-tale, for it echoes almost word for word the birth legend of King Sargon the Great, who founded the dynasty of Akkad a thousand years earlier. The similarity is astonishing."
– Magnus Magnusson (The Archaeology of the Bible Lands-BC, p58)

Though the so-called ‘Exile’ lasted barely half a century – from the capture of Jerusalem in 597 BC to the rise of a new dynasty in 539 BC– during this period the Jews borrowed extensively from their host culture. Notably, certain priests (so-called ‘prophets’) wrote texts which explained the tribal misfortune of the Jews in terms of neglect of a particular deity and of the desirability of priestly rule. The book of Eli’jah (literally, ‘God is Jehovah’) is a story set three centuries earlier. In this tale, the prophet denounces King Ahab and his wife Jezebel for that most dastardly of crimes, having a barbecue for the wrong god. Just in case indignant words are not enough, the hero personally slays several hundred rival priests of Baal.

But if fidelity to the correct god is the only way of keeping your skin, why does the ‘righteous’ man suffer? The Babylonians had a poem which addressed the very issue from at least 2000 BC. A righteous man, Tabu-utel-bel, suffered unjustly at the hands of the gods and was stricken by a terrible disease. The reflective story is rehashed by the exiled Jews as the book of Job.

Of particular significance, in view of the subsequent appearance of the book of Genesis, were Babylonian stories of a Great Flood (complete with a hero, an ark and animals); an Assyrian tale of a ‘tower of Babel’; the early life of King Sargon of Sumaria (who as an infant was floated down the Tigris in a reed boat and subsequently brought up by a princess); and a tale of the giving of the law to King Hammurabi of Babylon by the sun god Shamash – 3,654 lines of text inscribed on an eight-foot high block of black diorite.

Wonder of wonders, on this ancient tablet of stone, carved six hundred years before ‘Moses’, are ‘some fifty articles of the so-called Mosaic laws, the identity of which is practically verbatim.’ (Bratton, p37)

[marduk]

Enlil didn’t send the original flood.
But he was blamed for sending a later one as being the head of the Sumerian pantheon he was regarded as responsible for those sort of events and the two stories were later confused and mixed together You see in Sumeria the belief that gods controlled all things was very prevalent. Gods made the grass grow; they made the sun come up and made the rainfall. I guess it’s a need of mankind to believe that when things go wrong it isn’t our fault. Blame someone higher up and we feel personally vindicated and sleep better at night. Of course blaming a god can be a large error if he isn’t responsible and can hear you. Which is why in all cases that Enlil is blamed for sending the flood the text isn’t actually Sumerian. It’s Akkadian. The Akkadian empire followed Sumer in Mesopotamia and was primarily a Semitic culture the same as Judaism is today. The civilisation was based on the Sumerian model and used the same alphabet although the language itself was different in the same way that today French and English use the same alphabet but the language is different. This is the point at which many of the old stories were mistranslated and entered human consciousness in the form that we recognise them today. For example if you still have any doubts that the god worshipped around the world today by Catholicism and Judaism isn’t Enlil then how do you explain the details contained in the flood that he was said to have sent.
Details such as

Gilgamesh: -
When a seventh day arrived
I sent forth a dove and released it.
The dove went off, but came back to me;
no perch was visible so it circled back to me.

Genesis 7
8 And he sent forth a dove from him, to see if the waters were abated from off the face of the ground. 9 But the dove found no rest for the sole of her foot, and she returned unto him to the ark, for the waters were on the face of the whole earth

Gilgamesh
I sent forth a raven and released it.
The raven went off, and saw the waters slither back.
It eats, it scratches, it bobs, but does not circle back to me.

Genesis 7
7 And he sent forth a raven, and it went forth to and fro, until the waters were dried up from off the earth

Even the wording is unchanged, he sent forth a bird, then sent forth another bird, the only thing that is markedly different between these two stories is the ending where YHWH proclaims to Noah “I will not again curse the ground any more for man's sake; for the imagination of man's heart is evil from his youth; neither will I again smite any more every thing living, as I have done”
The reason for this difference comes down to the timing of the individual stories creation. The first was written after Enlil had fallen from favour as the head of the pantheon. The world was now under the protection of Enki who had never sent a flood and had actively participated in lessening the effects of the first one whereas the Noah story was written at a time when early Judaism desperately needed something to believe in and wanted to keep that belief as a way forward. In other words YHWH was a keeper and Enlil had already been discarded.

[Guest]

this proves without a doubt that the idea of Eden being a paradise is a total fallacy like most of the rest of the old testament

i guess i need to make a statement before everyone else does and reaches the conclusion and suppoirt marduk. though his dictionary is correct the application of the word and its meaning is not.

no where on the Bible does it say that the word 'eden' means garden. over time the correct phrase has been shortened and the word eden has become synomonous with paradise but that is about it.

the correct term in the Bible is: 'garden of eden', or as the following verse says:

Now the LORD God had planted a garden in the east, in Eden; and there he put the man he had formed. 9

Gen. 2:8

at no time is Eden refered to as the sole entity but the actual location OF THE GARDEN. thus paradise can refer to the actual garden that was located in eden and not themeaning of the word itself.

http://www.biblegateway.com/passage/?se ... l%2028:13;

this should correct marduk's conclusion and statement.

as for the name Adam, marduk will need to not limit his link to just what he wants everyone to see. i will need to wait till i get home and do some research but there is more to the name than what marduk is leading everyone to think.

the word may pre-date the nation of israel man but not God's people as Noah pre-dates the sumerians. to limit oneself to using only the sumerians as a benchmark is not right and opens the doors to being mis-led when application of names and other information is examined.

there are too many variables too stand steadfast upon one civilization.

[marduk]

the word may pre-date the nation of israel man but not God's people as Noah pre-dates the sumerians

Then I find it interesting that the name Noah which is a hebrew name managed to exist before the emergence of either the Hebrews or their language around 1200bce
and in fact as we have already discussed before and to which I am still waiting to see the proof of Arch there is no earlier record of a deluge story anywhere exept in the records of the mesopotamians to which the Hebrews had access around 650bce for the first time in their history
so did you manage to find the proof that the Noah story is older than the Gilgamesh epic which you claimed you had and for which we are still waiting for several months later.

the rest of your post was quite frankly laughable. I loved that you linked to the New international version of the bibal because you think it proves something. You realise of course that it was written in 1978

you can live in denial if it makes you feel warm and safe but to everyone else who approaches this scientifically it just means that your responses are made from a desperate need to remain ignorant of the truth, a policy which has formed the bedrock of organised religion right from the very beginning

so I'll say it once again
the two original links I posted prove that both Eden and Adam were in use as Sumerian words and are originals in that language which being the first in existence does not have loan words from any other

you will now of course need to prove that the Hebrews had either a time machine or that for some reason they destroyed all the evidence of their ancient existence as did the ancient societies and civilisations that according to you must have lived beside them and who all reported them as the new guys on the block having emerged from a race of shepherds living in Canaan
good luck with that eh


on another note perhaps you can explain to me how this god that you think is so powerful happily led his chosen people into slavery to these horrible pagan races you hate so much on two seperate occasions
doesn't sound so omnipotent to me

I realise of course Arch that you will entirely fail to either address these questions or possibly to understand them but we're all used to that with you so hey
post what you like you've already been proved wrong
again

[Guest]

i am not going to get into an argument, i was pointing out a error in thinking as the bad information skewered the conclusion made.

as for the age of the Bible, it really doesn't matter which version or which century you use, they will say the same thing unless someone is using a perverted version.

the archaeological study bible , printed in 2005, says the same thing as the one i quoted and so will the king james version of 1611.

as for your earlier record, oldest discovered does not mean first one written, secular people like to assume such things because they place their belief in what they have in hand and not what the truth is.

also, there is only one tablet per se that contains the gilgamesh account (i know there are several tablets but only one copy) where as the Bible has many translations, mss. , versions which all agree over a multitude of centuries.

so what you are telling me is that you would place 1 solitary copy over a millenia or two of multitudes of production from ancient times to the present and, save for minor changes, has the exact same wording . then have the audacity to say the hebrews copied from that one nation??/ sorry but i will stick to my beliefs and let you laugh at me then.

[marduk]

the archaeological study bible , printed in 2005, says the same thing as the one i quoted and so will the king james version of 1611

Well its good to know that Gilgamesh dates from at least 4000 years earlier then isn't it

also, there is only one tablet per se that contains the gilgamesh account

there are lots of different copies of Gilgamesh from many different periods in history including even Assyrian and Hittite versions

i am not going to get into an argument, i was pointing out a error in thinking as the bad information skewered the conclusion made.

But Arch an argument is exactly what you wanted.
you were pointing out that for you this is a matter of faith with no supporting evidence whatsoever.
which is why once again even though this post was in response to your claim that I had said this without posting any links in support of the claim (which was a bltant lie) you are still completely unable to provide any links of your own
so is it just an inability to accept that I know more about the origins of your bible than you or that I might be the resident expert at something like Franks stated that got you off to this stage where I called you on it and you were found wanting Arch
If I were you I'd quit while you're behind
It won't get any better than this for you from this point on.
Were I to reveal everything I know about your Holy book it would be a bad day for the pope and the chief Rabbi indeed

My last post said

I realise of course Arch that you will entirely fail to either address these questions or possibly to understand them

I love being right you know

[Minimalist]

From Haaretz.com (the Israeli newspaper.)

http://www.haaretz.com/hasen/spages/776922.html

The project of sifting layers of Temple Mount dirt has yielded thousands of new artifacts dating from the First Temple period to today. The dirt was removed in 1999 by the Islamic Religious Trust (Waqf) from the Solomon's Stables area to the Kidron Stream Valley.

We have discussed this operation before.

The oldest artifacts found are remnants of tools like a blade and scraper dating back 10,000 years. Some potsherds and shards of alabaster tools date from the Bronze Age - the 3rd and 2nd millennia B.C.E. (the Canaanite and Jebusite eras). Only a handful of potsherds were found from the 10th century B.C.E. (the reigns of King David and King Solomon), but numerous artifacts date from the reigns of the later Judean kings (the 8th and 7th centuries B.C.E.), such as stone weights for weighing silver.

Bold face added.

Yet again, more evidence that the modern archaeological findings that Jerusalem was insignificant during the 10th century but grew to prominence 200-250 years later. Finkelstein will be proud.

[Guest]

Well its good to know that Gilgamesh dates from at least 4000 years earlier then isn't it

again, oldest discovered does not mean first written or spoken. the need to attribute everything to the sumerian civilization is a false one as it omits and eliminates any contribution made by contemporary nations.

sumerian may have been the first (so they think) to write everything down but that does not mean they were the originators of everything. who is to say that they didn't borrow from existing peoples?

plus to say it is thus is presumptuous because the evidence does not support that contention. all that is there is a stone tablet or two there is no supporting discoveries that support the idea the sumerians were the first ones to create the story nor is there supporting evidence that the hebrews/israelites copied from them.

those are theories based only in hypothesis.

including even Assyrian and Hittite versions [/quote

those are their own accounts andi have not seen any documentation supporting your claim. you may love the sumerians and have studied them bt you are making the mistake of elevating them beyond what is true.

But Arch an argument is exactly what you wanted.

not at all. you had misinformation about my document so i corrected that data, you are the one who went balllistic because your conclusions were shot down by the correction.

which is why once again even though this post was in response to your claim that I had said this without posting any links in support of the claim (which was a bltant lie) you are still completely unable to provide any links of your own

i did link--right to the 'horses mouth' so to speak. i gave you the passages of scriptures that proved your information incorrect.

Were I to reveal everything I know about your Holy book it would be a bad day for the pope and the chief Rabbi indeed

i don't deal with delusions of granduer, there is nothing you know that would do such a thing nor canyou prove it so stop making yourself out to be more than you are.

you are not right, and it was shown to be so. your little dictionary does not provide conclusive proof of anything it just shows the KNOWN or accepted origins of words and does not take into account people who lived before the sumerians and would have influenced their culture.

[Barracuda]

Was there a guy named Joe living in Chicago in 1920?

I wasn't alive in 1920, and I wasn't living in Chicago. I don't personally know any guys named Joe who claim to have lived in Chicago in 1920. but I bet there was one.

[Beagle]

Was there a guy named Joe living in Chicago in 1920?

I wasn't alive in 1920, and I wasn't living in Chicago. I don't personally know any guys named Joe who claim to have lived in Chicago in 1920. but I bet there was one.

"Say it aint so, Joe"

[Minimalist]

[Beagle]

Can't put one by you, Min.

[Guest]

link is to page of the electronic Pennsylvania Sumerian Dictionary considered the most up to date resource of its kind anyhwere on Earth, which proves that the word Eden is attested from as early as 3000bce

i would have liked to explored this source but i see that the links are very limited in nature and one cannot investigate it at their leisure.

could you post a general link that allows exploration please.

[Guest]

Yet again, more evidence that the modern archaeological findings that Jerusalem was insignificant during the 10th century but grew to prominence 200-250 years later. Finkelstein will be proud.

that is the kind of logic that sets archaeology back 1,ooo years. we still have the palace and other 10th century construction which demnstrates the opposite.

you know better than that minimalist.