The Second Garden

76:3.1As time passed in the sec­ond gar­den, the con­se­quences of de­fault be­came in­creas­ingly ap­par­ent. Adam and Eve greatly missed their for­mer home of beauty and tran­quil­lity as well as their chil­dren who had been de­ported to Eden­tia. It was in­deed pa­thetic to ob­serve this mag­nif­i­cent cou­ple re­duced to the sta­tus of the com­mon flesh of the realm; but they bore their di­min­ished es­tate with grace and for­ti­tude.

76:3.2Adam wisely spent most of the time train­ing his chil­dren and their as­so­ciates in civil ad­min­is­tra­tion, ed­u­ca­tional meth­ods, and re­li­gious de­vo­tions. Had it not been for this fore­sight, pan­de­mo­nium would have bro­ken loose upon his death. As it was, the death of Adam made lit­tle dif­fer­ence in the con­duct of the af­fairs of his peo­ple. But long be­fore Adam and Eve passed away, they rec­og­nized that their chil­dren and fol­low­ers had grad­u­ally learned to for­get the days of their glory in Eden. And it was bet­ter for the ma­jor­ity of their fol­low­ers that they did for­get the grandeur of Eden; they were not so likely to ex­pe­ri­ence un­due dis­sat­is­fac­tion with their less for­tu­nate en­vi­ron­ment.

76:3.3The civil rulers of the Adamites were de­rived hered­i­tar­ily from the sons of the first gar­den. Adam’s first son, Adam­son (Adam ben Adam), founded a sec­ondary cen­ter of the vi­o­let race to the north of the sec­ond Eden. Adam’s sec­ond son, Eve­son, be­came a mas­terly leader and ad­min­is­tra­tor; he was the great helper of his fa­ther. Eve­son lived not quite so long as Adam, and his el­dest son, Jansad, be­came the suc­ces­sor of Adam as the head of the Adamite tribes.

76:3.4The re­li­gious rulers, or priest­hood, orig­i­nated with Seth, the el­dest sur­viv­ing son of Adam and Eve born in the sec­ond gar­den. He was born one hun­dred and twenty-nine years af­ter Adam’s ar­rival on Uran­tia. Seth be­came ab­sorbed in the work of im­prov­ing the spir­i­tual sta­tus of his fa­ther’s peo­ple, be­com­ing the head of the new priest­hood of the sec­ond gar­den. His son, Enos, founded the new or­der of wor­ship, and his grand­son, Ke­nan, in­sti­tuted the for­eign mis­sion­ary ser­vice to the sur­round­ing tribes, near and far.

76:3.5The Sethite priest­hood was a three­fold un­der­tak­ing, em­brac­ing re­li­gion, health, and ed­u­ca­tion. The priests of this or­der were trained to of­fi­ci­ate at re­li­gious cer­e­monies, to serve as physi­cians and san­i­tary in­spec­tors, and to act as teach­ers in the schools of the gar­den.

76:3.6Adam’s car­a­van had car­ried the seeds and bulbs of hun­dreds of plants and ce­re­als of the first gar­den with them to the land be­tween the rivers; they also had brought along ex­ten­sive herds and some of all the do­mes­ti­cated an­i­mals. Be­cause of this they pos­sessed great ad­van­tages over the sur­round­ing tribes. They en­joyed many of the ben­e­fits of the pre­vi­ous cul­ture of the orig­i­nal Gar­den.

76:3.7Up to the time of leav­ing the first gar­den, Adam and his fam­ily had al­ways sub­sisted on fruits, ce­re­als, and nuts. On the way to Mes­o­po­ta­mia they had, for the first time, par­taken of herbs and veg­eta­bles. The eat­ing of meat was early in­tro­duced into the sec­ond gar­den, but Adam and Eve never par­took of flesh as a part of their reg­u­lar diet. Nei­ther did Adam­son nor Eve­son nor the other chil­dren of the first gen­er­a­tion of the first gar­den be­come flesh eaters.

76:3.8The Adamites greatly ex­celled the sur­round­ing peo­ples in cul­tural achieve­ment and in­tel­lec­tual de­vel­op­ment. They pro­duced the third al­pha­bet and oth­er­wise laid the foun­da­tions for much that was the fore­run­ner of mod­ern art, sci­ence, and lit­er­a­ture. Here in the lands be­tween the Tigris and Eu­phrates they main­tained the arts of writ­ing, met­al­work­ing, pot­tery mak­ing, and weav­ing and pro­duced a type of ar­chi­tec­ture that was not ex­celled in thou­sands of years.

76:3.9The home life of the vi­o­let peo­ples was, for their day and age, ideal. Chil­dren were sub­jected to courses of train­ing in agri­cul­ture, crafts­man­ship, and an­i­mal hus­bandry or else were ed­u­cated to per­form the three­fold duty of a Sethite: to be priest, physi­cian, and teacher.

76:3.10And when think­ing of the Sethite priest­hood, do not con­fuse those high-minded and no­ble teach­ers of health and re­li­gion, those true ed­u­ca­tors, with the de­based and com­mer­cial priest­hoods of the later tribes and sur­round­ing na­tions. Their re­li­gious con­cepts of De­ity and the uni­verse were ad­vanced and more or less ac­cu­rate, their health pro­vi­sions were, for their time, ex­cel­lent, and their meth­ods of ed­u­ca­tion have never since been sur­passed.