second garden

75:6.1When Adam learned that the Nod­ites were on the march, he sought the coun­sel of the Mel­chiz­e­deks, but they re­fused to ad­vise him, only telling him to do as he thought best and promis­ing their friendly co-op­er­a­tion, as far as pos­si­ble, in any course he might de­cide upon. The Mel­chiz­e­deks had been for­bid­den to in­ter­fere with the per­sonal plans of Adam and Eve.

75:6.2Adam knew that he and Eve had failed; the pres­ence of the Mel­chiz­e­dek re­ceivers told him that, though he still knew noth­ing of their per­sonal sta­tus or fu­ture fate. He held an all-night con­fer­ence with some twelve hun­dred loyal fol­low­ers who pledged them­selves to fol­low their leader, and the next day at noon these pil­grims went forth from Eden in quest of new homes. Adam had no lik­ing for war and ac­cord­ingly elected to leave the first gar­den to the Nod­ites un­op­posed.

75:6.3The Edenic car­a­van was halted on the third day out from the Gar­den by the ar­rival of the se­raphic trans­ports from Je­ru­sem. And for the first time Adam and Eve were in­formed of what was to be­come of their chil­dren. While the trans­ports stood by, those chil­dren who had ar­rived at the age of choice (twenty years) were given the op­tion of re­main­ing on Uran­tia with their par­ents or of be­com­ing wards of the Most Highs of Nor­la­ti­adek. Two thirds chose to go to Eden­tia; about one third elected to re­main with their par­ents. All chil­dren of pre­choice age were taken to Eden­tia. No one could have be­held the sor­row­ful part­ing of this Ma­te­rial Son and Daugh­ter and their chil­dren with­out re­al­iz­ing that the way of the trans­gres­sor is hard. These off­spring of Adam and Eve are now on Eden­tia; we do not know what dis­po­si­tion is to be made of them.

75:6.4It was a sad, sad car­a­van that pre­pared to jour­ney on. Could any­thing have been more tragic! To have come to a world in such high hopes, to have been so aus­pi­ciously re­ceived, and then to go forth in dis­grace from Eden, only to lose more than three fourths of their chil­dren even be­fore find­ing a new abid­ing place!

• after default, Adam abandoned Garden of Eden; caravanned to

75:7.1It was while the Edenic car­a­van was halted that Adam and Eve were in­formed of the na­ture of their trans­gres­sions and ad­vised con­cern­ing their fate. Ga­briel ap­peared to pro­nounce judg­ment. And this was the ver­dict: The Plan­e­tary Adam and Eve of Uran­tia are ad­judged in de­fault; they have vi­o­lated the covenant of their trustee­ship as the rulers of this in­hab­ited world.

• located between Tigris and Euphrates rivers

76:0.1When Adam elected to leave the first gar­den to the Nod­ites un­op­posed, he and his fol­low­ers could not go west, for the Eden­ites had no boats suit­able for such a ma­rine ad­ven­ture. They could not go north; the north­ern Nod­ites were al­ready on the march to­ward Eden. They feared to go south; the hills of that re­gion were in­fested with hos­tile tribes. The only way open was to the east, and so they jour­neyed east­ward to­ward the then pleas­ant re­gions be­tween the Tigris and Eu­phrates rivers. And many of those who were left be­hind later jour­neyed east­ward to join the Adamites in their new val­ley home.

• caravan to s.g. took 1 year
• located between Tigris and Euphrates rivers

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.

• 1 of 3 original selections for Garden of Eden
• defense wall extended 56 miles between rivers
• located between Tigris and Euphrates rivers

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.

• religious life difficult to organize; Nodites in charge

76:2.3In the days of the first Eden, Adam had in­deed sought to dis­cour­age the of­fer­ing of an­i­mal sac­ri­fice so that Cain had a jus­ti­fi­able prece­dent for his con­tentions. It was, how­ever, dif­fi­cult to or­ga­nize the re­li­gious life of the sec­ond Eden. Adam was bur­dened with a thou­sand and one de­tails as­so­ci­ated with the work of build­ing, de­fense, and agri­cul­ture. Be­ing much de­pressed spir­i­tu­ally, he in­trusted the or­ga­ni­za­tion of wor­ship and ed­u­ca­tion to those of Nod­ite ex­trac­tion who had served in these ca­pac­i­ties in the first gar­den; and in even so short a time the of­fi­ci­at­ing Nod­ite priests were re­vert­ing to the stan­dards and rul­ings of pre-Adamic times.

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.

• herds, seeds, plant bulbs, and cereals caravanned to

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.

• cradle of civilization for 30,000 years

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.

• civilization artificial; had not evolved

78:2.3The civ­i­liza­tion, so­ci­ety, and cul­tural sta­tus of the Adamites were far above the gen­eral level of the evo­lu­tion­ary races of Uran­tia. Only among the old set­tle­ments of Van and Amadon and the Ad­am­son­ites was there a civ­i­liza­tion in any way com­pa­ra­ble. But the civ­i­liza­tion of the sec­ond Eden was an ar­ti­fi­cial struc­ture—it had not been evolved—and was there­fore doomed to de­te­ri­o­rate un­til it reached a nat­u­ral evo­lu­tion­ary level.

• culture terminated by infiltration of inferiors

78:6.8The cul­tural age of the sec­ond gar­den was ter­mi­nated by the in­creas­ing in­fil­tra­tion of the sur­round­ing in­fe­rior stocks. Civ­i­liza­tion moved west­ward to the Nile and the Med­i­ter­ra­nean is­lands, where it con­tin­ued to thrive and ad­vance long af­ter its foun­tain­head in Mes­o­po­ta­mia had de­te­ri­o­rated. And this unchecked in­flux of in­fe­rior peo­ples pre­pared the way for the later con­quest of all Mes­o­po­ta­mia by the north­ern bar­bar­ians who drove out the resid­ual strains of abil­ity. Even in later years the cul­tured residue still re­sented the pres­ence of these ig­no­rant and un­couth in­vaders.

• farming and gardening chief pursuits

81:1.6The evo­lu­tion­ary peo­ples (no­tably the Chi­nese) early learned to plant seeds and to cul­ti­vate crops through ob­ser­va­tion of the sprout­ing of seeds ac­ci­den­tally moist­ened or which had been put in graves as food for the de­parted. But through­out south­west Asia, along the fer­tile river bot­toms and ad­ja­cent plains, the And­ites were car­ry­ing out the im­proved ag­ri­cul­tural tech­niques in­her­ited from their an­ces­tors, who had made farm­ing and gar­den­ing the chief pur­suits within the bound­aries of the sec­ond gar­den.