Some of the descendants of Cush (e.g. Nimrod) lived in Mesopotamia.
The Cush in Genesis 2 makes sense in the context if it is identified
with the Cassites.
Gordon Brown
Quoting Bruce Paul <luke15twenty@yahoo.com>:
> Dear Dick
>
> The Tigris and Euphrates rivers are in Mesopotamia, and have
> headwaters that flow right out of the East Anatolian Fault in
> Western Turkey – a direct extension of the Great Rift Valley that
> the Dead Sea rift is also a part of. The issue is . . . where were
> the other two rivers, the Gihon & the Pishon?
>
> Josephus and the book of Jubilees both define this Gihon to be the
> Nile River, which is further confirmed by the Hebrew word Cush used
> in the Genesis 2:13 description of this river, which invariably
> refers to the land south of Egypt each of the 29 times this word is
> used. In fact, present-day Ethiopians still call the top of the Blue
> Nile the Ghion River.
> __________________________________________________________________
> From my book
>
>
> According to Genesis 2:11-12, "The name of the first is Pishon: that
> is it which compasseth the whole land of Havilah, where there is
> gold; And the gold of that land is good: there is bdellium and the
> onyx stone." The name of the River Pishon itself is not very
> helpful, but the name of the people Havilah identifies the area. The
> people are Arabian (as seen in Genesis 25:18 and 1 Samuel 15:7) and
> are thought to be one of the Joktanean tribes in northern Arabia.
> This reference to the "land of HAVILAH" suggests Moses was
> identifying this river with the man for whom the region was
> named—Noah's grandson (see Genesis 10:7). In other words, the area
> didn't take on this identity of the "land of HAVILAH" until after
> the great flood and during a time more contemporary with the Exodus.
> Also, during the time of the Exodus, a region east of Medina and
> toward the middle of the Arabian Peninsula, called Mahd ed Dahab,
> "the Cradle of Gold," was renowned for its pure gold and even today
> remains one of the only gold-producing areas in Saudi Arabia. The
> Hebrews understood this gold of Ophir to be of the most excellent
> quality (see Job 22:24), and later the Greeks would extol Arabia's
> gold as being so pure that it didn't need to be smelted. Southern
> Arabia was also one of the few places in the world where bdellium
> was produced, and the semiprecious onyx can still be found
> throughout the Arabian Shield.
>
> Some remarkable Space-Shuttle Radar-Imaging photos were released to
> the public in the early 1990’s by Farouk El-Baz of the Center for
> Remote Sensing at Boston University that confirm this hypothesis.
> These satalite images of the northern Arabian panintula show a
> three-to-six-Km-wide river from the Hijaz Mountains near Medina, up
> 530 miles northeast into the Persian Gulf, just off the coast of
> present-day Kuwait. This matches our Biblical and historical
> information perfectly, so we can fairly confidently state that this
> first river mentioned in Genesis 2 was in Arabia. The headwaters for
> this river can also be traced from the Medina area all the way to
> Jabal al Lawz, which is where we would suggest was the location of
> the real Mount Siani.
>
> Affirming these locations of the Pishon and Gihon is a mosaic map of
> the rivers of paradise in a 7th-century Byzantine church's
> baptismal near Jabaliyah, north of Gaza City. The river's wavy
> bands are combined with human characters and partial spellings of
> the river's names to define their locations. This clearly
> demonstrates that the early church believed the Pishon and Gihon to
> be in Arabia and Africa, the very locations the scriptures identify
> as their locations.
> ____________________________________________________________
>
> So we see 2 rivers in Mesopotamia with headwaters in Western Turkey
> (500 miles apart from each other), one in Arabia with headwaters
> near the Gulf of Aqaba, ant the fourth in Africa with Headwaters
> near Lake Tana. All of these river headwaters are coincidental to
> the Great Rift Valley and the only way to join all these river
> headwaters is through an underground river source just as Genesis
> 2:6 suggests - "But there went up a mist from the earth, and watered
> the whole face of the ground."
>
> My book, however, goes much further than just reviewing the Genesis
> 2 narrative. The book looks at remnant images residing within
> ancient Sumerian and Egyptian mythology; ancient Jewish apocrypha
> texts like the Book of Jubilees, and of course the Bibles other
> references to this land of Eden.
>
> The most compelling evidence in my mind, however, is how this
> approach unfolds so many mysteries within the Bibles text, such as
> the nature of the Tree of Life – which according to Dr James Harris
> is tied to the Menorah and the El Yah term for God in the ancient
> Proto-Canaanite language. See:
> http://net.lib.byu.edu/imaging/negev/Names.html
>
> Bruce
>
> Dick Fischer <dickfischer@verizon.net> wrote: Hi Bruce,
>
> Don’t wish to throw any kinks in your theory but there are some
> considerations. The rivers of Eden are in Mesopotamia. Ezekiel was
> among the captives in Babylon by the “river Chebar” (Ezek. 1:3;
> 3:15, 23), corresponding to nar Kabari meaning the “great canal,”
> the largest of three or four navigable canals that watered the
> fields of ancient Nippur. The tree of life appears to correspond
> with the date palm, the “sacred tree” depicted in numerous Sumerian
> cylinder seals – again Mesopotamia, not Israel.
>
> Dick Fischer
> Dick Fischer, Genesis Proclaimed Association
> Finding Harmony in Bible, Science, and History
> www.genesisproclaimed.org
>
>
> -----Original Message-----
> From: asa-owner@lists.calvin.edu
> [mailto:asa-owner@lists.calvin.edu] On Behalf Of Bruce Paul
> Sent: Wednesday, June 06, 2007 12:09 PM
> To: asa@calvin.edu
> Subject: [asa] Re: The Eden in Israel Proposition - Reconciling the
> story of creation with science
>
> I'm trying to find a few apologists / thinkers review a book I’m
> just about to have published. I began a study of the Eden in Israel
> proposition while investigating the work and purpose of the Holy
> Spirit. Because "Living Water" is Scripture's principal metaphor for
> the Holy Spirit, I was going through every verse in the Bible
> referring to water, wells, rivers, and springs, and it soon became
> clear that the river in Eden is a type of the Holy Spirit. An
> interesting principle of scripture I've often meditated on is how
> God regularly visits certain places over and over again, such as the
> temple residing on the very location where Abraham took Isaac to be
> sacrificed. After working through my study, I became convinced that
> the first river from Eden mentioned in Genesis 2, was the same
> river mentioned in Ezekiel 47, and both of these were for-runners
> of the River of Life found in Revelation 22.
>
> I had come to believe these were all one in the same river because:
>
> 1. All three of these rivers appear during principal
> transformational points of the earth throughout redemptive history.
>
> · Eden 's River at the beginning of creation(Gen 1-2).
>
> · Ezekiel's river during the New Millennium (Eze 40-47)
>
> · The River of Life when the New Jerusalem comes down
> from heaven (Rev 21-22).
>
> 2. All three rivers were accompanied by a version of the Tree of Life
> · Eden 's River with the Tree of Life (Gen 2:9)
>
> · Ezekiel's River has trees on either side of the
> river. The Ezekiel 47 passage records that there will be all kinds
> of trees for food, which ties Ezekiel's orchard together with Eden
> (Gen 2:9), but the trees will bear fruit every month and the leaves
> are for healing, which ties it together with the River of Life in
> (Rev 22:2).
>
> · The River of Life has two Trees of Life on either
> side of the river (Rev 22:2)
>
> 3. All three of these rivers have an incredibly vast distribution
> · Eden 's River turns into four other rivers that water
> the whole surface of the earth (Gen 2:6).
>
> · Ezekiel's river flows down to the dead sea, but
> Zechariah 14 suggests that it will also flow down to the
> Mediterranean Sea (Zec 14:8)
>
> · The River of Life will go out to all the nations (Rev 22:2)
>
> 4. All three of these rivers have a remarkable source
> · Eden 's River flowed out of Eden (Gen 2:10).
>
> · Ezekiel's river flows out of the altar outside the
> temple (Eze 47:1)
>
> · The River of Life flows from God's thrown and from
> the Lamb (Rev 22:1)
>
>
>
> I realized there is a very logical conclusion in associating these
> three rivers together! If Eden 's river flows from the same point
> these other two rivers come from, Eden had to have originally been
> in the region we now know as Israel . My mind started to race as I
> began to appreciate the principle implication of this hypothesis,
> that the very ground that saw the first sin and failure would become
> the very ground of redemption and restoration. Why else would
> Israel be the Promised Land if God didn't have an extraordinary
> plan in mind for this territory, and under premise of the Eden in
> Israel Proposition, He was winning humanity back on the very ground
> that saw man's original fall from grace.
>
> Invigorated by this glorious possibility, and equipped with a
> geology background that enabled me to proficient review maps of the
> region, I tried to understand how Eden 's River could have acted as
> the source of the four other great rivers mentioned in the Genesis 2
> account. But once the source of the first river was fixed, the
> pattern was obvious; all four rivers in the Eden narrative are
> coincidental to the Great Rift Fault. The Tigris and Euphrates flow
> directly out of the East Anatolian Fault (which is actually an
> extension of the Great Rift Valley), the Gihon (assuming that
> Josephus and the book of Jubilees are correct in suggesting the Nile
> is the Gihon) and the Pishon (assuming that Farouk El-Baz’s Kuwait
> river in Arabia is the Pishon) also have headwaters that are
> suspiciously coincidental to the Great Rift Valley.
>
> Tying this together with Genesis 2:6, “But a mist used to rise
> from the earth and water the whole surface of the ground,” it seems
> apparent that the water was flowing underground from the center of
> all these river headwaters from an area we now know as Israel . I’ve
> recently discovered that Dr A. Yahuda suggested the water from Eden
> flowed underground 70 years ago, but I believe I’m the first to put
> together this connection with the Great Rift Valley .
>
> Soteriology, Pneumatology, Eschatology, and even Hermeneutics all
> have wide-ranging implications effected by this Eden in Israel
> proposition, yet there's a theme that can be found weaving its
> narrative throughout all these fields of endeavor, tying them all
> together and affecting the very way we live - The message and
> mandate defining our inheritance within the Kingdom of God . The
> Eden in Israel proposition doesn’t contradict conservative
> evangelical Christian doctrine. Yet, many of the implications of
> this proposition are unconventional, and challenge many traditional
> concepts in scripture. The mysteries uncovered by this theory are,
> however, nothing less than astonishing, and provide a remarkable
> framework for understanding the message of God's Kingdom and His
> purposes with the land of Israel . I believe this work is only the
> beginning; inspiring many other works to follow, resolving mysteries
> that have confounded and separated the Church for thousands of years.
>
> This book is an honest endeavor from a Christian geologist’s
> perspective to reconcile many issues of science and the history of
> religion, together with a conservative evangelical perspective on
> the authority and inspiration of the scriptures. If you or anyone in
> your group would be interested in reviewing this 124 page book, let
> me know and I’ll send along a pdf copy.
>
> Kindest Regards
>
> Bruce Paul
>
> bruce@faith-friends.com
>
>
> ---------------------------------
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Received on Wed Jun 6 20:30:31 2007
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