Mesopotamia

• Mesopotamia

130:0.3Af­ter their stay in Rome they went over­land to Tar­en­tum, where they set sail for Athens in Greece, stop­ping at Nicopo­lis and Corinth. From Athens they went to Eph­esus by way of Troas. From Eph­esus they sailed for Cyprus, putting in at Rhodes on the way. They spent con­sid­er­able time vis­it­ing and rest­ing on Cyprus and then sailed for An­ti­och in Syria. From An­ti­och they jour­neyed south to Sidon and then went over to Da­mas­cus. From there they trav­eled by car­a­van to Mes­o­po­ta­mia, pass­ing through Thap­sacus and Larissa. They spent some time in Baby­lon, vis­ited Ur and other places, and then went to Susa. From Susa they jour­neyed to Charax, from which place Gonod and Ga­nid em­barked for In­dia.

78:6.6Five per cent of the And­ites, the very su­pe­rior cul­ture of the coastal dis­trict about the mouths of the Tigris and Eu­phrates who had kept them­selves free from in­ter­mar­riage with the in­fe­rior neigh­bor­ing tribes­men, re­fused to leave their homes. This group rep­re­sented the sur­vival of many su­pe­rior Nod­ite and Adamite strains.

78:6.7The And­ites had al­most en­tirely evac­u­ated this re­gion by 6000 B.C., though their de­scen­dants, largely mixed with the sur­round­ing San­gik races and the An­don­ites of Asia Mi­nor, were there to give bat­tle to the north­ern and east­ern in­vaders at a much later date.

79:1.7Thus, while they dis­persed over the East­ern Hemi­sphere, the And­ites were dis­pos­sessed of their home­lands in Mes­o­po­ta­mia and Tur­kes­tan, for it was this ex­ten­sive south­ward move­ment of An­don­ites that di­luted the And­ites in cen­tral Asia nearly to the van­ish­ing point.

79:1.4When cli­matic con­di­tions made hunt­ing un­prof­itable for the mi­grat­ing And­ites, they did not fol­low the evo­lu­tion­ary course of the older races by be­com­ing herders. Com­merce and ur­ban life made their ap­pear­ance. From Egypt through Mes­o­po­ta­mia and Tur­kes­tan to the rivers of China and In­dia, the more highly civ­i­lized tribes be­gan to as­sem­ble in cities de­voted to man­u­fac­ture and trade. Ado­nia be­came the cen­tral Asian com­mer­cial metropo­lis, be­ing lo­cated near the pres­ent city of Ashkhabad. Com­merce in stone, metal, wood, and pot­tery was ac­cel­er­ated on both land and wa­ter.

77:4.11Some of the early as­so­ciates of Van sub­se­quently set­tled about the shores of the lake which still bears his name, and their tra­di­tions grew up about this lo­cal­ity. Ararat be­came their sa­cred moun­tain, hav­ing much the same mean­ing to later-day Van­ites that Sinai had to the He­brews. Ten thou­sand years ago the Van­ite an­ces­tors of the As­syr­i­ans taught that their moral law of seven com­mand­ments had been given to Van by the Gods upon Mount Ararat. They firmly be­lieved that Van and his as­so­ciate Amadon were taken alive from the planet while they were up on the moun­tain en­gaged in wor­ship.

77:4.12Mount Ararat was the sa­cred moun­tain of north­ern Mes­o­po­ta­mia, and since much of your tra­di­tion of these an­cient times was ac­quired in con­nec­tion with the Baby­lo­nian story of the flood, it is not sur­pris­ing that Mount Ararat and its re­gion were wo­ven into the later Jew­ish story of Noah and the uni­ver­sal flood.

122:8.5At the noon­tide birth of Je­sus the ser­a­phim of Uran­tia, as­sem­bled un­der their di­rec­tors, did sing an­thems of glory over the Beth­le­hem manger, but these ut­ter­ances of praise were not heard by hu­man ears. No shep­herds nor any other mor­tal crea­tures came to pay homage to the babe of Beth­le­hem un­til the day of the ar­rival of cer­tain priests from Ur, who were sent down from Je­ru­sa­lem by Zach­a­rias.

122:8.6These priests from Mes­o­po­ta­mia had been told some­time be­fore by a strange re­li­gious teacher of their coun­try that he had had a dream in which he was in­formed that “the light of life” was about to ap­pear on earth as a babe and among the Jews. And thither went these three teach­ers look­ing for this “light of life.” Af­ter many weeks of fu­tile search in Je­ru­sa­lem, they were about to re­turn to Ur when Zach­a­rias met them and dis­closed his be­lief that Je­sus was the ob­ject of their quest and sent them on to Beth­le­hem, where they found the babe and left their gifts with Mary, his earth mother. The babe was al­most three weeks old at the time of their visit.

122:8.7These wise men saw no star to guide them to Beth­le­hem. The beau­ti­ful leg­end of the star of Beth­le­hem orig­i­nated in this way: Je­sus was born Au­gust 21 at noon, 7 B.C. On May 29, 7 B.C., there oc­curred an ex­traor­di­nary con­junc­tion of Jupiter and Sat­urn in the con­stel­la­tion of Pisces. And it is a re­mark­able as­tro­nomic fact that sim­i­lar con­junc­tions oc­curred on Septem­ber 29 and De­cem­ber 5 of the same year. Upon the ba­sis of these ex­traor­di­nary but wholly nat­u­ral events the well-mean­ing zealots of the suc­ceed­ing gen­er­a­tion con­structed the ap­peal­ing leg­end of the star of Beth­le­hem and the ador­ing Magi led thereby to the manger, where they be­held and wor­shiped the new­born babe. Ori­en­tal and near-Ori­en­tal minds de­light in fairy sto­ries, and they are con­tin­u­ally spin­ning such beau­ti­ful myths about the lives of their re­li­gious lead­ers and po­lit­i­cal heroes. In the ab­sence of print­ing, when most hu­man knowl­edge was passed by word of mouth from one gen­er­a­tion to an­other, it was very easy for myths to be­come tra­di­tions and for tra­di­tions even­tu­ally to be­come ac­cepted as facts.

66:0.2About five hun­dred thou­sand years ago and con­cur­rent with the ap­pear­ance of the six col­ored or San­gik races, Cali­gas­tia, the Plan­e­tary Prince, ar­rived on Uran­tia. There were al­most one-half bil­lion prim­i­tive hu­man be­ings on earth at the time of the Prince’s ar­rival, and they were well scat­tered over Eu­rope, Asia, and Africa. The Prince’s head­quar­ters, es­tab­lished in Mes­o­po­ta­mia, was at about the cen­ter of world pop­u­la­tion.

66:3.1The head­quar­ters of the Plan­e­tary Prince was sit­u­ated in the Per­sian Gulf re­gion of those days, in the dis­trict cor­re­spond­ing to later Mes­o­po­ta­mia.

66:3.2The cli­mate and land­scape in the Mes­o­po­ta­mia of those times were in ev­ery way fa­vor­able to the un­der­tak­ings of the Prince’s staff and their as­sis­tants, very dif­fer­ent from con­di­tions which have some­times since pre­vailed. It was nec­es­sary to have such a fa­vor­ing cli­mate as a part of the nat­u­ral en­vi­ron­ment de­signed to in­duce prim­i­tive Uran­tians to make cer­tain ini­tial ad­vances in cul­ture and civ­i­liza­tion. The one great task of those ages was to trans­form man from a hunter to a herder, with the hope that later on he would evolve into a peace-lov­ing, home-abid­ing farmer.

78:8.11From 2500 to 2000 B.C. the no­mads were on a ram­page from the At­lantic to the Pa­cific. The Ner­ites con­sti­tuted the fi­nal erup­tion of the Caspian group of the Mes­o­po­ta­mian de­scen­dants of the blended An­don­ite and And­ite races. What the bar­bar­ians failed to do to ef­fect the ru­ina­tion of Mes­o­po­ta­mia, sub­se­quent cli­matic changes suc­ceeded in ac­com­plish­ing.

79:3.6The Dra­vid­ian cen­ters of cul­ture were lo­cated in the river val­leys, prin­ci­pally of the In­dus and Ganges, and in the Dec­can along the three great rivers flow­ing through the East­ern Ghats to the sea. The set­tle­ments along the sea­coast of the West­ern Ghats owed their promi­nence to mar­itime re­la­tion­ships with Sume­ria.

79:3.7The Dra­vid­i­ans were among the ear­li­est peo­ples to build cities and to en­gage in an ex­ten­sive ex­port and im­port busi­ness, both by land and sea. By 7000 B.C. camel trains were mak­ing reg­u­lar trips to dis­tant Mes­o­po­ta­mia; Dra­vid­ian ship­ping was push­ing coast­wise across the Ara­bian Sea to the Sume­rian cities of the Per­sian Gulf and was ven­tur­ing on the wa­ters of the Bay of Ben­gal as far as the East In­dies. An al­pha­bet, to­gether with the art of writ­ing, was im­ported from Sume­ria by these sea­far­ers and mer­chants.

79:7.6The sim­i­lar­i­ties be­tween cer­tain of the early Chi­nese and Mes­o­po­ta­mian meth­ods of time reck­on­ing, as­tron­omy, and gov­ern­men­tal ad­min­is­tra­tion were due to the com­mer­cial re­la­tion­ships be­tween these two re­motely sit­u­ated cen­ters. Chi­nese mer­chants trav­eled the over­land routes through Tur­kes­tan to Mes­o­po­ta­mia even in the days of the Sume­ri­ans. Nor was this ex­change one-sided—the val­ley of the Eu­phrates ben­e­fited con­sid­er­ably thereby, as did the peo­ples of the Gangetic plain. But the cli­matic changes and the no­madic in­va­sions of the third mil­len­nium be­fore Christ greatly re­duced the vol­ume of trade pass­ing over the car­a­van trails of cen­tral Asia.

78:0.1The sec­ond Eden was the cra­dle of civ­i­liza­tion for al­most thirty thou­sand years. Here in Mes­o­po­ta­mia the Adamic peo­ples held forth, send­ing out their progeny to the ends of the earth, and lat­terly, as amal­ga­mated with the Nod­ite and San­gik tribes, were known as the And­ites. From this re­gion went those men and women who ini­ti­ated the do­ings of his­toric times, and who have so enor­mously ac­cel­er­ated cul­tural prog­ress on Uran­tia.

81:1.1For about thirty-five thou­sand years af­ter the days of Adam, the cra­dle of civ­i­liza­tion was in south­west­ern Asia, ex­tend­ing from the Nile val­ley east­ward and slightly to the north across north­ern Ara­bia, through Mes­o­po­ta­mia, and on into Tur­kes­tan. And cli­mate was the de­ci­sive fac­tor in the es­tab­lish­ment of civ­i­liza­tion in that area.

62:1.3With the pass­ing of time the sea­coast of In­dia south­west of the moun­tains grad­u­ally sub­merged, com­pletely iso­lat­ing the life of this re­gion. There was no av­enue of ap­proach to, or es­cape from, this Mes­o­po­ta­mian or Per­sian penin­sula ex­cept to the north, and that was re­peat­edly cut off by the south­ern in­va­sions of the glaciers. And it was in this then al­most par­a­di­si­a­cal area, and from the su­pe­rior de­scen­dants of this lemur type of mam­mal, that there sprang two great groups, the simian tribes of mod­ern times and the pres­ent-day hu­man species.

62:2.1A lit­tle more than one mil­lion years ago the Mes­o­po­ta­mian dawn mam­mals, the di­rect de­scen­dants of the North Amer­i­can lemur type of pla­cen­tal mam­mal, sud­denly ap­peared. They were ac­tive lit­tle crea­tures, al­most three feet tall; and while they did not ha­bit­u­ally walk on their hind legs, they could eas­ily stand erect. They were hairy and ag­ile and chat­tered in mon­key­like fash­ion, but un­like the simian tribes, they were flesh eaters. They had a prim­i­tive op­pos­able thumb as well as a highly use­ful grasp­ing big toe. From this point on­ward the pre­hu­man species suc­ces­sively de­vel­oped the op­pos­able thumb while they pro­gres­sively lost the grasp­ing power of the great toe. The later ape tribes re­tained the grasp­ing big toe but never de­vel­oped the hu­man type of thumb.

80:7.9By 5000 B.C. the three purest strains of Adam’s de­scen­dants were in Sume­ria, north­ern Eu­rope, and Greece. The whole of Mes­o­po­ta­mia was be­ing slowly de­te­ri­o­rated by the stream of mixed and darker races which fil­tered in from Ara­bia. And the com­ing of these in­fe­rior peo­ples con­tributed fur­ther to the scat­ter­ing abroad of the bi­o­logic and cul­tural residue of the And­ites. From all over the fer­tile cres­cent the more ad­ven­tur­ous peo­ples poured west­ward to the is­lands. These mi­grants cul­ti­vated both grain and veg­eta­bles, and they brought do­mes­ti­cated an­i­mals with them.

79:1.5But ever-in­creas­ing drought grad­u­ally brought about the great And­ite ex­o­dus from the lands south and east of the Caspian Sea. The tide of mi­gra­tion be­gan to veer from north­ward to south­ward, and the Baby­lo­nian cav­al­ry­men be­gan to push into Mes­o­po­ta­mia.

80:1.8For these and other rea­sons, not the least of which was more fa­vor­able paths of mi­gra­tion, the early waves of Mes­o­po­ta­mian cul­ture made their way al­most ex­clu­sively to Eu­rope. And it was these cir­cum­stances that de­ter­mined the an­tecedents of mod­ern Eu­ro­pean civ­i­liza­tion.

80:5.1The tribes of north­ern Eu­rope were be­ing con­tin­u­ously re­in­forced and up­stepped by the steady stream of mi­grants from Mes­o­po­ta­mia through the Tur­kes­tan-south Rus­sian re­gions, and when the last waves of And­ite cav­alry swept over Eu­rope, there were al­ready more men with And­ite in­her­i­tance in that re­gion than were to be found in all the rest of the world.

81:6.1While bi­o­logic evo­lu­tion has pro­ceeded ever up­ward, much of cul­tural evo­lu­tion went out from the Eu­phrates val­ley in waves, which suc­ces­sively weak­ened as time passed un­til fi­nally the whole of the pure-line Adamic pos­ter­ity had gone forth to en­rich the civ­i­liza­tions of Asia and Eu­rope. The races did not fully blend, but their civ­i­liza­tions did to a con­sid­er­able ex­tent mix. Cul­ture did slowly spread through­out the world. And this civ­i­liza­tion must be main­tained and fos­tered, for there ex­ist to­day no new sources of cul­ture, no And­ites to in­vig­o­rate and stim­u­late the slow prog­ress of the evo­lu­tion of civ­i­liza­tion.

76:1.1It re­quired al­most a full year for the car­a­van of Adam to reach the Eu­phrates River. Find­ing it in flood tide, they re­mained camped on the plains west of the stream al­most six weeks be­fore they made their way across to the land be­tween the rivers which was to be­come the sec­ond gar­den.

76:1.2When word had reached the dwellers in the land of the sec­ond gar­den that the king and high priest of the Gar­den of Eden was march­ing on them, they had fled in haste to the east­ern moun­tains. Adam found all of the de­sired ter­ri­tory va­cated when he ar­rived. And here in this new lo­ca­tion Adam and his helpers set them­selves to work to build new homes and es­tab­lish a new cen­ter of cul­ture and re­li­gion.

76:1.3This site was known to Adam as one of the three orig­i­nal se­lec­tions of the com­mit­tee as­signed to choose pos­si­ble lo­ca­tions for the Gar­den pro­posed by Van and Amadon. The two rivers them­selves were a good nat­u­ral de­fense in those days, and a short way north of the sec­ond gar­den the Eu­phrates and Tigris came close to­gether so that a de­fense wall ex­tend­ing fifty-six miles could be built for the pro­tec­tion of the ter­ri­tory to the south and be­tween the rivers.

76:1.4Af­ter get­ting set­tled in the new Eden, it be­came nec­es­sary to adopt crude meth­ods of liv­ing; it seemed en­tirely true that the ground had been cursed. Na­ture was once again tak­ing its course. Now were the Adamites com­pelled to wrest a liv­ing from un­pre­pared soil and to cope with the re­al­i­ties of life in the face of the nat­u­ral hos­til­i­ties and in­com­pat­i­bil­i­ties of mor­tal ex­is­tence. They found the first gar­den par­tially pre­pared for them, but the sec­ond had to be cre­ated by the la­bor of their own hands and in the “sweat of their faces.”

80:1.3For more than thirty thou­sand years Egypt re­ceived a steady stream of Mes­o­po­ta­mi­ans, who brought along their art and cul­ture to en­rich that of the Nile val­ley. But the ingress of large num­bers of the Sa­hara peo­ples greatly de­te­ri­o­rated the early civ­i­liza­tion along the Nile so that Egypt reached its low­est cul­tural level some fif­teen thou­sand years ago.

81:2.12The And­ites of Tur­kes­tan were the first peo­ples to ex­ten­sively do­mes­ti­cate the horse, and this is an­other rea­son why their cul­ture was for so long pre­dom­i­nant. By 5000 B.C. the Mes­o­po­ta­mian, Tur­kes­tan, and Chi­nese farm­ers had be­gun the rais­ing of sheep, goats, cows, camels, horses, fowls, and ele­phants. They em­ployed as beasts of bur­den the ox, camel, horse, and yak. Man was him­self at one time the beast of bur­den. One ruler of the blue race once had one hun­dred thou­sand men in his colony of bur­den bear­ers.

78:7.1The river dwellers were ac­cus­tomed to rivers over­flow­ing their banks at cer­tain sea­sons; these pe­ri­odic floods were an­nual events in their lives. But new per­ils threat­ened the val­ley of Mes­o­po­ta­mia as a re­sult of pro­gres­sive ge­o­logic changes to the north.

78:7.2For thou­sands of years af­ter the sub­mer­gence of the first Eden the moun­tains about the east­ern coast of the Med­i­ter­ra­nean and those to the north­west and north­east of Mes­o­po­ta­mia con­tin­ued to rise. This el­e­va­tion of the high­lands was greatly ac­cel­er­ated about 5000 B.C., and this, to­gether with greatly in­creased snow­fall on the north­ern moun­tains, caused un­prece­dented floods each spring through­out the Eu­phrates val­ley. These spring floods grew in­creas­ingly worse so that even­tu­ally the in­hab­i­tants of the river re­gions were driven to the east­ern high­lands. For al­most a thou­sand years scores of cities were prac­ti­cally de­serted be­cause of these ex­ten­sive del­uges.

78:7.3Al­most five thou­sand years later, as the He­brew priests in Baby­lo­nian cap­tiv­ity sought to trace the Jew­ish peo­ple back to Adam, they found great dif­fi­culty in piec­ing the story to­gether; and it oc­curred to one of them to aban­don the ef­fort, to let the whole world drown in its wicked­ness at the time of Noah’s flood, and thus to be in a bet­ter po­si­tion to trace Abra­ham right back to one of the three sur­viv­ing sons of Noah.

78:7.4The tra­di­tions of a time when wa­ter cov­ered the whole of the earth’s sur­face are uni­ver­sal. Many races har­bor the story of a world-wide flood some time dur­ing past ages. The Bib­li­cal story of Noah, the ark, and the flood is an in­ven­tion of the He­brew priest­hood dur­ing the Baby­lo­nian cap­tiv­ity. There has never been a uni­ver­sal flood since life was es­tab­lished on Uran­tia. The only time the sur­face of the earth was com­pletely cov­ered by wa­ter was dur­ing those Archeo­zoic ages be­fore the land had be­gun to ap­pear.

78:7.5But Noah re­ally lived; he was a wine maker of Aram, a river set­tle­ment near Erech. He kept a writ­ten rec­ord of the days of the river’s rise from year to year. He brought much ridicule upon him­self by go­ing up and down the river val­ley ad­vo­cat­ing that all houses be built of wood, boat fash­ion, and that the fam­ily an­i­mals be put on board each night as the flood sea­son ap­proached. He would go to the neigh­bor­ing river set­tle­ments ev­ery year and warn them that in so many days the floods would come. Fi­nally a year came in which the an­nual floods were greatly aug­mented by un­usu­ally heavy rain­fall so that the sud­den rise of the wa­ters wiped out the en­tire vil­lage; only Noah and his im­me­di­ate fam­ily were saved in their house­boat.

78:7.6These floods com­pleted the dis­rup­tion of And­ite civ­i­liza­tion. With the end­ing of this pe­riod of del­uge, the sec­ond gar­den was no more. Only in the south and among the Sume­ri­ans did any trace of the for­mer glory re­main.

78:7.7The rem­nants of this, one of the old­est civ­i­liza­tions, are to be found in these re­gions of Mes­o­po­ta­mia and to the north­east and north­west. But still older ves­tiges of the days of Dala­ma­tia ex­ist un­der the wa­ters of the Per­sian Gulf, and the first Eden lies sub­merged un­der the east­ern end of the Med­i­ter­ra­nean Sea.

80:6.2The Nile val­ley be­gan to suf­fer from floods shortly be­fore the Mes­o­po­ta­mian val­leys but fared much bet­ter. This early set­back was more than com­pen­sated by the con­tin­u­ing stream of And­ite im­mi­grants, so that the cul­ture of Egypt, though re­ally de­rived from the Eu­phrates re­gion, seemed to forge ahead. But in 5000 B.C., dur­ing the flood pe­riod in Mes­o­po­ta­mia, there were seven dis­tinct groups of hu­man be­ings in Egypt; all of them, save one, came from Mes­o­po­ta­mia.

96:0.1In con­ceiv­ing of De­ity, man first in­cludes all gods, then sub­or­di­nates all for­eign gods to his tribal de­ity, and fi­nally ex­cludes all but the one God of fi­nal and su­preme value. The Jews syn­the­sized all gods into their more sub­lime con­cept of the Lord God of Is­rael. The Hin­dus like­wise com­bined their mul­ti­far­i­ous de­i­ties into the “one spir­i­tu­al­ity of the gods” por­trayed in the Rig-Veda, while the Mes­o­po­ta­mi­ans re­duced their gods to the more cen­tral­ized con­cept of Bel-Mar­duk. These ideas of mono­the­ism ma­tured all over the world not long af­ter the ap­pear­ance of Ma­chi­venta Mel­chiz­e­dek at Salem in Pales­tine. But the Mel­chiz­e­dek con­cept of De­ity was un­like that of the evo­lu­tion­ary phi­los­o­phy of in­clu­sion, sub­or­di­na­tion, and ex­clu­sion; it was based ex­clu­sively on cre­ative power and very soon in­flu­enced the high­est de­ity con­cepts of Mes­o­po­ta­mia, In­dia, and Egypt.

64:3.3While the tribes of the north grew more and more to fear the ice, those liv­ing near the home­land of their ori­gin be­came ex­ceed­ingly fear­ful of the wa­ter. They ob­served the Mes­o­po­ta­mian penin­sula grad­u­ally sink­ing into the ocean, and though it emerged sev­eral times, the tra­di­tions of these prim­i­tive races grew up around the dan­gers of the sea and the fear of pe­ri­odic en­gulf­ment. And this fear, to­gether with their ex­pe­ri­ence with river floods, ex­plains why they sought out the high­lands as a safe place in which to live.

80:7.5Pres­ently Greece and the Aegean Is­lands re­gion suc­ceeded Mes­o­po­ta­mia and Egypt as the Oc­ci­den­tal cen­ter of trade, art, and cul­ture. But as it was in Egypt, so again prac­ti­cally all of the art and sci­ence of the Aegean world was de­rived from Mes­o­po­ta­mia ex­cept for the cul­ture of the Ad­am­son­ite fore­run­ners of the Greeks. All the art and ge­nius of these lat­ter peo­ple is a di­rect legacy of the pos­ter­ity of Adam­son, the first son of Adam and Eve, and his ex­traor­di­nary sec­ond wife, a daugh­ter de­scended in an un­bro­ken line from the pure Nod­ite staff of Prince Cali­gas­tia. No won­der the Greeks had mytho­log­i­cal tra­di­tions that they were di­rectly de­scended from gods and super­hu­man be­ings.

95:1.9In one gen­er­a­tion the Salem head­quar­ters at Kish came to an end, and the pro­pa­ganda of the be­lief in one God vir­tu­ally ceased through­out Mes­o­po­ta­mia. But rem­nants of the Salem schools per­sisted. Small bands scat­tered here and there con­tin­ued their be­lief in the one Cre­ator and fought against the idol­a­try and im­moral­ity of the Mes­o­po­ta­mian priests.

78:8.3The peace­ful grain grow­ers of the Eu­phrates and Tigris val­leys had long been ha­rassed by the raids of the bar­bar­ians of Tur­kes­tan and the Ira­nian pla­teau. But now a con­certed in­va­sion of the Eu­phrates val­ley was brought about by the in­creas­ing drought of the high­land pas­tures. And this in­va­sion was all the more se­ri­ous be­cause these sur­round­ing herds­men and hunters pos­sessed large num­bers of tamed horses. It was the pos­ses­sion of horses which gave them a tremen­dous mil­i­tary ad­van­tage over their rich neigh­bors to the south. In a short time they over­ran all Mes­o­po­ta­mia, driv­ing forth the last waves of cul­ture which spread out over all of Eu­rope, west­ern Asia, and north­ern Africa.

78:8.4These con­querors of Mes­o­po­ta­mia car­ried in their ranks many of the bet­ter And­ite strains of the mixed north­ern races of Tur­kes­tan, in­clud­ing some of the Adam­son stock. These less ad­vanced but more vig­or­ous tribes from the north quickly and will­ingly as­sim­i­lated the residue of the civ­i­liza­tion of Mes­o­po­ta­mia and pres­ently de­vel­oped into those mixed peo­ples found in the Eu­phrates val­ley at the be­gin­ning of his­toric an­nals. They quickly re­vived many phases of the pass­ing civ­i­liza­tion of Mes­o­po­ta­mia, adopt­ing the arts of the val­ley tribes and much of the cul­ture of the Sume­ri­ans. They even sought to build a third tower of Ba­bel and later adopted the term as their na­tional name.

78:8.5When these bar­bar­ian cav­al­ry­men from the north­east over­ran the whole Eu­phrates val­ley, they did not con­quer the rem­nants of the And­ites who dwelt about the mouth of the river on the Per­sian Gulf. These Sume­ri­ans were able to de­fend them­selves be­cause of su­pe­rior in­tel­li­gence, bet­ter weapons, and their ex­ten­sive sys­tem of mil­i­tary canals, which were an ad­junct to their ir­ri­ga­tion scheme of in­ter­con­nect­ing pools. They were a united peo­ple be­cause they had a uni­form group re­li­gion. They were thus able to main­tain their racial and na­tional in­tegrity long af­ter their neigh­bors to the north­west were bro­ken up into iso­lated city-states. No one of these city groups was able to over­come the united Sume­ri­ans.

78:8.6And the in­vaders from the north soon learned to trust and prize these peace-lov­ing Sume­ri­ans as able teach­ers and ad­min­is­tra­tors. They were greatly re­spected and sought af­ter as teach­ers of art and in­dus­try, as di­rec­tors of com­merce, and as civil rulers by all peo­ples to the north and from Egypt in the west to In­dia in the east.

80:9.6For al­most twenty thou­sand years the An­don­ites had been pushed far­ther and far­ther to the north of cen­tral Asia by the And­ites. By 3000 B.C. in­creas­ing arid­ity was driv­ing these An­don­ites back into Tur­kes­tan. This An­don­ite push south­ward con­tin­ued for over a thou­sand years and, split­ting around the Caspian and Black seas, pen­e­trated Eu­rope by way of both the Balkans and the Ukraine. This in­va­sion in­cluded the re­main­ing groups of Adam­son’s de­scen­dants and, dur­ing the lat­ter half of the in­va­sion pe­riod, car­ried with it con­sid­er­able num­bers of the Ira­nian And­ites as well as many of the de­scen­dants of the Sethite priests.

80:9.7By 2500 B.C. the west­ward thrust of the An­don­ites reached Eu­rope. And this over­run­ning of all Mes­o­po­ta­mia, Asia Mi­nor, and the Danube basin by the bar­bar­ians of the hills of Tur­kes­tan con­sti­tuted the most se­ri­ous and last­ing of all cul­tural set­backs up to that time. These in­vaders def­i­nitely An­donized the char­ac­ter of the cen­tral Eu­ro­pean races, which have ever since re­mained char­ac­ter­is­ti­cally Alpine.

133:9.1The car­a­van trip across the desert was not a new ex­pe­ri­ence for these much-trav­eled men. Af­ter Ga­nid had watched his teacher help with the load­ing of their twenty camels and ob­served him vol­un­teer to drive their own an­i­mal, he ex­claimed, “Teacher, is there any­thing that you can­not do?” Je­sus only smiled, say­ing, “The teacher surely is not with­out honor in the eyes of a dili­gent pupil.” And so they set forth for the an­cient city of Ur.

133:9.2Je­sus was much in­ter­ested in the early his­tory of Ur, the birth­place of Abra­ham, and he was equally fas­ci­nated with the ru­ins and tra­di­tions of Susa, so much so that Gonod and Ga­nid ex­tended their stay in these parts three weeks in or­der to af­ford Je­sus more time to con­duct his in­ves­ti­ga­tions and also to pro­vide the bet­ter op­por­tu­nity to per­suade him to go back to In­dia with them.

133:9.3It was at Ur that Ga­nid had a long talk with Je­sus re­gard­ing the dif­fer­ence be­tween knowl­edge, wis­dom, and truth. And he was greatly charmed with the say­ing of the He­brew wise man: “Wis­dom is the prin­ci­pal thing; there­fore get wis­dom. With all your quest for knowl­edge, get un­der­stand­ing. Ex­alt wis­dom and she will pro­mote you. She will bring you to honor if you will but em­brace her.”

133:9.4At last the day came for the sep­a­ra­tion. They were all brave, es­pe­cially the lad, but it was a try­ing or­deal. They were tear­ful of eye but coura­geous of heart. In bid­ding his teacher farewell, Ga­nid said: “Farewell, Teacher, but not for­ever. When I come again to Da­mas­cus, I will look for you. I love you, for I think the Fa­ther in heaven must be some­thing like you; at least I know you are much like what you have told me about him. I will re­mem­ber your teach­ing, but most of all, I will never for­get you.” Said the fa­ther, “Farewell to a great teacher, one who has made us bet­ter and helped us to know God.” And Je­sus replied, “Peace be upon you, and may the bless­ing of the Fa­ther in heaven ever abide with you.” And Je­sus stood on the shore and watched as the small boat car­ried them out to their an­chored ship. Thus the Mas­ter left his friends from In­dia at Charax, never to see them again in this world; nor were they, in this world, ever to know that the man who later ap­peared as Je­sus of Naz­a­reth was this same friend they had just taken leave of—Joshua their teacher.

133:9.5In In­dia, Ga­nid grew up to be­come an in­flu­en­tial man, a wor­thy suc­ces­sor of his em­i­nent fa­ther, and he spread abroad many of the no­ble truths which he had learned from Je­sus, his beloved teacher. Later on in life, when Ga­nid heard of the strange teacher in Pales­tine who ter­mi­nated his ca­reer on a cross, though he rec­og­nized the sim­i­lar­ity be­tween the gospel of this Son of Man and the teach­ings of his Jew­ish tu­tor, it never oc­curred to him that these two were ac­tu­ally the same per­son.

133:9.6Thus ended that chap­ter in the life of the Son of Man which might be termed: The mis­sion of Joshua the teacher.

141:8.3They stopped in Jeri­cho on the way up to Je­ru­sa­lem and were over­taken by a del­e­ga­tion from Mes­o­po­ta­mia that had come to con­fer with Je­sus. The apos­tles had planned to spend but a day here, but when these truth seek­ers from the East ar­rived, Je­sus spent three days with them, and they re­turned to their var­i­ous homes along the Eu­phrates happy in the knowl­edge of the new truths of the king­dom of heaven.

90:3.84. Sin—pun­ish­ment for taboo vi­o­la­tion. In com­par­a­tively re­cent times it has been be­lieved that sick­ness is a pun­ish­ment for sin, per­sonal or racial. Among peo­ples travers­ing this level of evo­lu­tion the pre­vail­ing the­ory is that one can­not be af­flicted un­less one has vi­o­lated a taboo. To re­gard sick­ness and suf­fer­ing as “ar­rows of the Al­mighty within them” is typ­i­cal of such be­liefs. The Chi­nese and Mes­o­po­ta­mi­ans long re­garded dis­ease as the re­sult of the ac­tion of evil demons, al­though the Chaldeans also looked upon the stars as the cause of suf­fer­ing. This the­ory of dis­ease as a con­se­quence of di­vine wrath is still preva­lent among many re­put­edly civ­i­lized groups of Uran­tians.

80:7.10About 5000 B.C. a mighty host of pro­gres­sive Mes­o­po­ta­mi­ans moved out of the Eu­phrates val­ley and set­tled upon the is­land of Cyprus; this civ­i­liza­tion was wiped out about two thou­sand years sub­se­quently by the bar­bar­ian hordes from the north.

139:6.9Na­than­iel’s fa­ther (Bartholomew) died shortly af­ter Pen­te­cost, af­ter which this apos­tle went into Mes­o­po­ta­mia and In­dia pro­claim­ing the glad tid­ings of the king­dom and bap­tiz­ing be­liev­ers. His breth­ren never knew what be­came of their one­time philoso­pher, poet, and hu­morist. But he also was a great man in the king­dom and did much to spread his Mas­ter’s teach­ings, even though he did not par­tic­i­pate in the or­ga­ni­za­tion of the sub­se­quent Chris­tian church. Na­than­iel died in In­dia.

62:4.3Thus it was that the Pri­mates came to oc­cupy a re­gion on the west coast of the Mes­o­po­ta­mian penin­sula as it then pro­jected into the south­ern sea, while the less in­tel­li­gent and closely re­lated tribes lived around the penin­sula point and up the east­ern shore line.

137:2.2That day, as Je­sus and his four dis­ci­ple-apos­tles de­parted for Gal­i­lee, there was a great tu­mult in the camp of John’s fol­low­ers. The first great di­vi­sion was about to take place. The day be­fore, John had made his pos­i­tive pro­nounce­ment to An­drew and Ezra that Je­sus was the De­liv­erer. An­drew de­cided to fol­low Je­sus, but Ezra re­jected the mild-man­nered car­pen­ter of Naz­a­reth, pro­claim­ing to his as­so­ciates: “The Prophet Daniel de­clares that the Son of Man will come with the clouds of heaven, in power and great glory. This Galilean car­pen­ter, this Ca­per­naum boat­builder, can­not be the De­liv­erer. Can such a gift of God come out of Naz­a­reth? This Je­sus is a rel­a­tive of John, and through much kind­ness of heart has our teacher been de­ceived. Let us re­main aloof from this false Mes­siah.” When John re­buked Ezra for these ut­ter­ances, he drew away with many dis­ci­ples and has­tened south. And this group con­tin­ued to bap­tize in John’s name and even­tu­ally founded a sect of those who be­lieved in John but re­fused to ac­cept Je­sus. A rem­nant of this group per­sists in Mes­o­po­ta­mia even to this day.

95:1.1By 2000 B.C. the re­li­gions of Mes­o­po­ta­mia had just about lost the teach­ings of the Sethites and were largely un­der the in­flu­ence of the prim­i­tive be­liefs of two groups of in­vaders, the Bed­ouin Semites who had fil­tered in from the west­ern desert and the bar­bar­ian horse­men who had come down from the north.

95:1.2But the cus­tom of the early Adamite peo­ples in hon­or­ing the sev­enth day of the week never com­pletely dis­ap­peared in Mes­o­po­ta­mia. Only, dur­ing the Mel­chiz­e­dek era, the sev­enth day was re­garded as the worst of bad luck. It was taboo-rid­den; it was un­law­ful to go on a jour­ney, cook food, or make a fire on the evil sev­enth day. The Jews car­ried back to Pales­tine many of the Mes­o­po­ta­mian taboos which they had found rest­ing on the Baby­lo­nian ob­ser­vance of the sev­enth day, the Sha­bat­tum.

95:1.3Al­though the Salem teach­ers did much to re­fine and up­lift the re­li­gions of Mes­o­po­ta­mia, they did not suc­ceed in bring­ing the var­i­ous peo­ples to the per­ma­nent rec­og­ni­tion of one God. Such teach­ing gained the as­cen­dancy for more than one hun­dred and fifty years and then grad­u­ally gave way to the older be­lief in a mul­ti­plic­ity of de­i­ties.

95:1.4The Salem teach­ers greatly re­duced the num­ber of the gods of Mes­o­po­ta­mia, at one time bring­ing the chief de­i­ties down to seven: Bel, Shamash, Nabu, Anu, Ea, Mar­duk, and Sin. At the height of the new teach­ing they ex­alted three of these gods to su­prem­acy over all oth­ers, the Baby­lo­nian triad: Bel, Ea, and Anu, the gods of earth, sea, and sky. Still other tri­ads grew up in dif­fer­ent lo­cal­i­ties, all rem­i­nis­cent of the trin­ity teach­ings of the And­ites and the Sume­ri­ans and based on the be­lief of the Salemites in Mel­chiz­e­dek’s in­signia of the three cir­cles.

95:1.5Never did the Salem teach­ers fully over­come the pop­u­lar­ity of Ishtar, the mother of gods and the spirit of sex fer­til­ity. They did much to re­fine the wor­ship of this god­dess, but the Baby­lo­ni­ans and their neigh­bors had never com­pletely out­grown their dis­guised forms of sex wor­ship. It had be­come a uni­ver­sal prac­tice through­out Mes­o­po­ta­mia for all women to sub­mit, at least once in early life, to the em­brace of strangers; this was thought to be a de­vo­tion re­quired by Ishtar, and it was be­lieved that fer­til­ity was largely de­pen­dent on this sex sac­ri­fice.

95:1.6The early prog­ress of the Mel­chiz­e­dek teach­ing was highly grat­i­fy­ing un­til Na­bo­dad, the leader of the school at Kish, de­cided to make a con­certed at­tack upon the preva­lent prac­tices of tem­ple har­lotry. But the Salem mis­sion­ar­ies failed in their ef­fort to bring about this so­cial re­form, and in the wreck of this fail­ure all their more im­por­tant spir­i­tual and philo­sophic teach­ings went down in de­feat.

95:1.7This de­feat of the Salem gospel was im­me­di­ately fol­lowed by a great in­crease in the cult of Ishtar, a rit­ual which had al­ready in­vaded Pales­tine as Ash­toreth, Egypt as Isis, Greece as Aphrodite, and the north­ern tribes as As­tarte. And it was in con­nec­tion with this re­vival of the wor­ship of Ishtar that the Baby­lo­nian priests turned anew to stargaz­ing; as­trol­ogy ex­pe­ri­enced its last great Mes­o­po­ta­mian re­vival, for­tunetelling be­came the vogue, and for cen­turies the priest­hood in­creas­ingly de­te­ri­o­rated.

95:1.8Mel­chiz­e­dek had warned his fol­low­ers to teach about the one God, the Fa­ther and Maker of all, and to preach only the gospel of di­vine fa­vor through faith alone. But it has of­ten been the er­ror of the teach­ers of new truth to at­tempt too much, to at­tempt to sup­plant slow evo­lu­tion by sud­den rev­o­lu­tion. The Mel­chiz­e­dek mis­sion­ar­ies in Mes­o­po­ta­mia raised a moral stan­dard too high for the peo­ple; they at­tempted too much, and their no­ble cause went down in de­feat. They had been com­mis­sioned to preach a def­i­nite gospel, to pro­claim the truth of the re­al­ity of the Uni­ver­sal Fa­ther, but they be­came en­tan­gled in the ap­par­ently wor­thy cause of re­form­ing the mores, and thus was their great mis­sion side­tracked and vir­tu­ally lost in frus­tra­tion and obliv­ion.

95:1.10It was the Salem mis­sion­ar­ies of the pe­riod fol­low­ing the re­jec­tion of their teach­ing who wrote many of the Old Tes­ta­ment Psalms, in­scrib­ing them on stone, where later-day He­brew priests found them dur­ing the cap­tiv­ity and sub­se­quently in­cor­po­rated them among the col­lec­tion of hymns as­cribed to Jew­ish au­thor­ship. These beau­ti­ful psalms from Baby­lon were not writ­ten in the tem­ples of Bel-Mar­duk; they were the work of the de­scen­dants of the ear­lier Salem mis­sion­ar­ies, and they are a strik­ing con­trast to the mag­i­cal con­glom­er­a­tions of the Baby­lo­nian priests. The Book of Job is a fairly good re­flec­tion of the teach­ings of the Salem school at Kish and through­out Mes­o­po­ta­mia.

95:1.11Much of the Mes­o­po­ta­mian re­li­gious cul­ture found its way into He­brew lit­er­a­ture and liturgy by way of Egypt through the work of Amen­emope and Ikh­na­ton. The Egyp­tians re­mark­ably pre­served the teach­ings of so­cial obli­ga­tion de­rived from the ear­lier And­ite Mes­o­po­ta­mi­ans and so largely lost by the later Baby­lo­ni­ans who oc­cu­pied the Eu­phrates val­ley.

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.

78:0.2This pa­per de­picts the plan­e­tary his­tory of the vi­o­let race, be­gin­ning soon af­ter the de­fault of Adam, about 35,000 B.C., and ex­tend­ing down through its amal­ga­ma­tion with the Nod­ite and San­gik races, about 15,000 B.C., to form the And­ite peo­ples and on to its fi­nal dis­ap­pear­ance from the Mes­o­po­ta­mian home­lands, about 2000 B.C.

146:1.4It was at Rim­mon that To­dan first heard the gospel of the king­dom, and he later car­ried this mes­sage into Mes­o­po­ta­mia and far be­yond. He was among the first to preach the good news to those who dwelt be­yond the Eu­phrates.