"And a river went out of Eden to water the garden; and from thence it was parted, and became into four heads.  The name of the first is Pison: 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.  And the name of the second river is Gihon: the same is it that compasseth the whole land of Ethiopia. And the name of the third river is Hiddekel: that is it which goeth toward the east of Assyria.  And the fourth river is Euphrates." Genesis 2:10-14

Even before we went on our expedition to the Dead Sea, we had obtained a startling satellite image  of  a configuration of rivers which seemed to fit the above description much better than any other theory so far proposed. Because we had been advised on how much secrecy was important to the making of television documentaries, we kept the information confidential.

As you all know, the advice by Channel 4 in the UK  and NBC in the  USA was essentially self-serving and was a disservice to science and the free flow of information.  We have therefore decided to publish the image  to allow investigators to continue the work that the television companies have tried to stymie.

 

In the coming weeks we will try and tie together all the actors regarding the Northern Theory that the Biblical account does not refer to events in Mesopotamia, but rather all of them took place in Turkey. From Eden, to the Flood, via the Tower of Babel Account, through the story of Abraham all took place in a relatively small area between the Black Sea in the North and the Ararat range in the East.

It is quite remarkable that one of the four rivers out of Eden runs directly to the Ararat range and it is quite likely that the Biblical account describes a  situation that after the great catastrophe of the flood where the survivors were at Ararat, they proceeded to "go home", that is follow the river back to Eden. Along the way some of them stopping to create events that were to be known as "The Tower of Babel" saga.  Could it only have been a coincidence that language experts trace the origins of the indo-European language to precisely this region?

One final point this week. It is of course obvious that rivers do not rise in the desert, they rise in mountains. The Southern theory was always just wishful thinking.

Press References:
Chicago Sun Times
A Turkish Web Site

Michael S. Sanders

Irvine,  California

01/06/2001