mysteries and the unusual in the bible

1. mysteries and the unusual in the bible compiled by Charles W. Webb BTh MD Bethlehem Lutheran Church Glen Arbor, MI

2. GARDEN OF EDEN

3. The Bible says regarding the location of Eden: A river flowed out of Eden to water the garden, and there it divided and became four rivers. The name of the first is the Pishon. It is the one that flowed around the whole land of Havilah, where there is gold. And the gold of that land is good; bdellium and onyx stone are there. The name of the second river is the Gihon. It is the one that flowed around the whole land of Cush. And the name of the third river is the Tigris, which flows east of Assyria. And the fourth river is the Euphrates. Genesis 2:10-14

4. THEREFORE many have assumed that the original garden was located somewhere in the Mesopotamian region (around present day Iraq) where the modern Tigris and Euphrates rivers flow.

5. PROBLEM: The worldwide flood occurred many centuries AFTER Adam and Eve were expelled from the garden. Sedimentary layers of rock , often miles thick, bear testimony to this massive watery upheaval which tore apart and buried forever the pre-Flood world.

6. After the Flood, the survivors (Noah's family) moved to the plain of Shinar (Sumeria/Babylonia) which is where we find rivers today called Tigris and Euphrates. These are therefore clearly not the same rivers. OIL! They run on top of Flood-deposited layers of rock containing billions of dead things (killed by the Flood). These rivers were probably named after the original pre-Flood rivers, just as settlers from the British Isles to America and Australasia applied familiar names to many places in their like “AVON“. What’s on top of them today?

7. Note also, that the Bible speaks of one river breaking into four. This is not what is found in the Middle East today. THERE ARE TWO RIVERS FROM A DIFFERENT SOURCE. Tragically, the Garden was destroyed by the Flood. Its actual location on the globe can never be established with any degree of certainty. There is a particularly fascinating twist to this tale: Ethiopia is mentioned as being near or surrounding the Garden of Eden in Genesis 2:13 “And the name of the second river is Gehon: the same is it that compasseth all the land of Ethiopia.” WEST OF PROPOSED EDEN?

8. Are you ready for this? Did you perhaps ask the next question once and felt embarrassed?

9. Did Adam have a belly-button? The answer to this one is a resounding NO, Adam didn’t and neither did Eve. Why?

10. Because your belly-button (navel), or “tummy-button” as it's sometimes called, is a sign that you were once attached to your mother. You depended on that life-line—the umbilical cord—for your nourishment from her body as you developed inside her.

11. But our first parents, Adam and Eve, didn't develop that way. I believe that God would not have planted on them a “faux BB” just to make them look like their descendants. Lack of a belly-button would certainly have been a big attraction in the pre-Flood world. You can just hear the grandchildren and great-grandchildren asking, “Why don't you have a belly-button, grandpa?”

12. When God created Adam and Eve in mature form, the day they were created they might have appeared to be, say, 30 years old. But God wouldn't want or need to create the appearance of a false history, any more than the mature trees created by God would have had growth rings initially. Those are things which would develop in their offspring as a result of processes later on.

13. YET, YOU CANNOT FIND A SINGLE ARTIST’S PICTURE THAT doesn’t DEPICT BOTH ADAM AND EVE WITH BELLY BUTTONS!! How odd!

14. RELATED POINT “…the LORD God formed man of the dust of the ground… And the LORD God caused a deep sleep to fall upon Adam, and he slept: and he took one of his ribs, and closed up the flesh instead thereof; And the rib, which the LORD God had taken from man, made he a woman, and brought her unto the man.” Genesis 2:7,21-22

15. Meaning of Adam Adam: Heb. adam "man," lit. "(the one formed from the) ground" (Heb. adamah "ground") L. homo "man," humanus "human," humus "earth, ground, soil." Adam's apple (1755) perhaps is an inexact translation of Heb. tappuah haadam, lit. “man's swelling”.

16. Meaning of EVE Eve: life,living, source of life

17. Yeah! Someone is bound to ask: “Where’s the hole he took the rib from?” and “Why doesn’t man have a missing rib? (both men and women have 12 pairs) Interesting! I have the explanation.

18. Well, it says that God closed up the area he had taken the bone from and the rib regrew. Since he is genetically programmed to have 12 pairs, so would his descendents. Or looke at it this way: even if you lose a finger in an accident, your descendents will not have missing fingers.

19. An interesting point in this regard. What if man had not fallen into sin? Since Eve was made from Adam, she had his DNA or genetic makeup, right? Of course, God had to tweak it a bit to make a female out of a male! Other than that, wouldn’t she be a clone of man? What would their offspring look like? This is Seth:

20. This is his other brother, Enos

21. This is his other brother, Lemuel, etc.

22. The mystery: Where is the Holy Grail? According to Christian mythology, the Holy Grail was the cup used by Jesus at the Last Supper.

23. It is said to possess miraculous powers. (“grail” is from the Latin and actually means, “platter” not “cup”) The connection of Joseph of Arimathea with the Grail legend dates from the late 12th century. Joseph is supposed to have received the Grail from an apparition of Jesus and sent it with his followers to Great Britain.

24. Later writers recounted how Joseph used the Grail to catch Christ's blood while burying him and that in Britain he founded a line of guardians to keep it safe. The quest for the Holy Grail makes up an important segment of the King Arthur legend.

25. Belief in the Grail and interest in its potential whereabouts never ceases. Ownership has been attributed to various groups, including the Knights Templar, probably because they were at the peak of their influence around the time that Grail stories started circulating.

26. Then, there are cups claiming to be the Grail in several churches, for instance, the Saint Mary of Valencia Cathedral, which contains an artifact, the Holy Chalice supposedly taken by Saint Peter to Rome in the first century, and then to Huesca in Spain by Saint Lawrence in the 3rd century.

27. HOWEVER The Valencia chalice does hold some merit as a contender for the true grail as it has been scientifically asserted to have been created between 400 YEARS BC and 100 YEARS AD in the Middle East.

28. Other stories claim that the Grail is buried beneath Rosslyn Chapel or lies deep in the spring at Glastonbury Tor in England. Still other stories claim that a secret line of hereditary protectors keep the Grail, or that it was hidden by the Templars in Oak Island, Nova Scotia’s famous “Money Pit”. DISCUSSION: WHY DO WE NEED RELICS?

29. FINAL POINT: NO WAY OF KNOWING. • IS IT IMPORTANT? • RELICS IN GENERAL. Like Thomas. Prove existence. Magical.

30. Mystery: Where is the Ark of the Covenant?

31. The Ark of the Covenant is a chest described in the Bible as containing • the tablets of stone on which were inscribed • the Ten Commandments • Aaron’s rod • manna. • The ark was kept in Jerusalem until the Babylonians plundered and destroyed the temple.

32. From then, the Ark entered the domain of legend as it vanished forever. Some of the theories for where it may be are: Intentional concealment by the priests under the Temple Mount in Jerusalem. Intentional removal from Jerusalem in advance of the Babylonians and taken to a place unknown Removal of the Ark by the Ethiopian prince Menelik I.

33. Removal of the Ark by the Ethiopian prince Menelik I. Interesting facts: Bathsheba was Solomon’s mother by an adulterous liaison with David. Bathsheba means “daughter of Sheba”. Sheba was Ethiopia. The Queen of Sheba visited Solomon and by legend had a child by her, Menelik I. Were the Shebas related?

34. Modern excavations near the Temple Mount in Jerusalem have found tunnels, but digging beneath the Temple Mount is heavily restricted. One of the most important Islamic shrines, the Dome of the Rock, sits in the location where the First Temple of Solomon is alleged to have stood. THIS IS IMPORTANT BECAUSE:

35. ….according to the Bible, King Solomon, when building the temple, had the Ark of the Covenant put on a platform which could be lowered down into a tunnel system if the Temple were ever overrun. This would make it a plausible location.

37. Theories abound • The Ethiopian Orthodox Church claims to possess the Ark of the Covenant, or Tabot, in Axum. The object is currently kept under guard in a treasury near the Church of Our Lady Mary of Zion and is used occasionally in ritual processions. Replicas of the Axum tabot are kept in every Ethiopian church, each with its own dedication to a particular saint, the most popular of these include Mary, George and Michael. • Supposedly, the ark was brought to Ethiopia by Menelik I with divine assistance, while a forgery was left in the Temple in Jerusalem.

38. The Lemba people of South Africa and Zimbabwe have claimed that their ancestors carried the Ark south, calling it the ngoma lungundu or "voice of God", eventually hiding it in a deep cave in the Dumghe mountains, their spiritual home. There are claims that it is in France, America, Italy, and Ireland. Take your pick! It is the chief focus of the movie series, “Raiders of the Lost Ark.”

39. DISCOVERY CHANNEL HAS A VIDEO ON THE ARK OF THE COVENANT http://dsc.discovery.com/videos/ solving-history-ark-of-the-covenant/

40. Where were SODOM and GOMORRAH?

41. Genesis 19:23-29 Sodom and Gomorrah Destroyed The sun had risen on the earth when Lot came to Zoar. Then the LORD rained on Sodom and Gomorrah sulfur and fire from the LORD out of heaven. And he overthrew those cities, and all the valley, and all the inhabitants of the cities, and what grew on the ground. 26But Lot’s wife, behind him, looked back, and she became a pillar of salt. And Abraham went early in the morning to the place where he had stood before the LORD. And he looked down toward Sodom and Gomorrah and toward all the land of the valley, and he looked and, behold, the smoke of the land went up like the smoke of a furnace. So it was that, when God destroyed the cities of the valley, God remembered Abraham and sent Lot out of the midst of the overthrow when he overthrew the cities in which Lot had lived.

42. Possible candidates for Sodom or Gomorrah are the sites discovered or visited by Walter E. Rast and R. Thomas Schaub in 1973, including Bab edh-Dhra, which was originally excavated in 1965 by archaeologist Paul Lapp. Other possibilities also include Numeira, es-Safi, Feifeh and Khanazir, which were also visited by Schaub and Rast. All sites were located near the Dead Sea, with evidence of burning and traces of sulfur on many of the stones and a sudden stop of inhabitation towards the end of the Early Bronze Age.

43. BEWARE: ARCHEOLOGY MAY POINT BUT IT DOESN’T NECESSARILY CONFIRM! LOOK AT THE EVIDENCE! Nothing at this or any other site definitely identifies it as Sodom and Gomorrah. There’s no road sign that definitely says, “You are there”! The definite site is still unknown.

44. How many kinds did Noah bring into the ark, 2 or 7? Genesis 7:2-3 and Genesis 6:19-20 Two (Genesis 6:19-20) - "And of every living thing of all flesh, you shall bringtwoof every kind into the ark, to keep them alive with you; they shall be male and female. Of the birds after their kind, and of the animals after their kind, of every creeping thing of the ground after its kind, two of every kind will come to you to keep them alive.“ Seven (Genesis 7:2-3) - "You shall take with you of every clean animal by sevens,a male and his female; and of the animals that are not clean two, a male and his female; also of the birds of the sky, by sevens, male and female, to keep offspring alive on the face of all the earth."

45. Genesis 6:19-20 simply instructs Noah to preserve two of every kind. Genesis 7:2-3 is additional information where seven of the clean animals were to be taken and two of every other kind. The reason for this is that the extra animals were for sacrifice. "Then Noah built an altar to the LORD, and took of every clean animal and of every clean bird and offered burnt offerings on the altar," (Gen. 8:20).

46. The 6th chapter of Genesis makes no mention of any 'clean' animals, while the 7th chapter specifically delineates between the clean and unclean animals. Genesis 7:2 says Noah was to bring in 7 pairs of 'clean' animals and 2 pairs of every kind of 'unclean' animal. However, these verses say nothing about two pairs entering the ark. They simply say that it was pairs of clean and unclean animals or birds and creatures which entered the ark.

47. Obviously if there had not been more than two of each of these clean species, they would have become extinct by being sacrificed on the altar. But in the case of the unclean animals and birds, a single pair would suffice, since they would not be needed for blood sacrifice. Logically, to have seven pairs also means that there are two pairs, since the two are included in the seven. If one verse said take only one pair and another verse said seven pairs, that would be a contradiction.

48. Two creation accounts or one? PROBLEM: Genesis 1 declares that animals were created before humans, but Genesis 2:19 seems to reverse this, saying, "the Lord God formed every beast of the field and brought them to Adam to see what he would call them," implying Adam was created before they were.

49. SOLUTION: Genesis 1 gives the order of events; Genesis 2 provides more content about them. Genesis 2 does not contradict chapter 1, since it does not affirm exactly when God created the animals. He simply says He brought the animals (which He had previously created) to Adam so that he might name them.

50. The focus in chapter 2 is on the naming of the animals, not on creating them. Genesis 1 provides the outline of events, and chapter 2 gives details. Taken together, the two chapters provide a harmonious and more complete picture of the creation events. The differences, then, can be summarized as follows: GENESIS 1: Chronological order / Outline / Creating animals GENESIS 2: Topical order / Details / Naming animals