Immeasurably greater discoveries than in the past have been made in the middle of our century in many fields of science. These discoveries have completely changed our knowledge of the world and of the history of mankind. The conversion of matter into energy (atomic fission) has been proven in actuality and not only in theory. From the knowledge of the material world was eliminated the myth of the eternity of matter. It turned out that the Universe had a beginning, although the many millions of years of the existence of Earth and the millions of years of the existence of stellar worlds may appear similar to eternity.

In mankind’s history the myth of the half-a-million-year-old existence of mankind must also collapse, although it was never genuinely proven, but simply assumed. On the contrary, there are many facts which completely exclude this erroneous theory.

Now, with the aid of radioactive testing of excavated bones and coals from fires, it has been established that mankind’s antiquity does not go back beyond the limits of Biblical chronology, and the stunned archaeological world has been forced to stand still in bewilderment; however, by inertia it continues to insist upon the mythical theory of counting the ages of mankind according to old data. Yet this theory must inevitably be discarded.

The many thousand years of antiquity of Egyptian and Babylonian dynasties have been rejected. It turned out that their first dynasties appeared not earlier than 3,000 B.C., while the remains of the first people in mankind’s homeland – Mesopotamia – have been dated at 5,000 B.C. or just a little bit earlier. Amazing discoveries were made by archaeologists in mankind’s common homeland – in southern Mesopotamia and Palestine, and the composite data of archaeological excavations for the past 30 years was for the first time translated into Russian.

This is only the beginning of research; many more things will be discovered in the future. But even the data already obtained is sufficient to be synchronized with the Biblical narrative on the first people on earth.

With great spiritual interest we may now augment our knowledge of what is spoken of so little in the Holy Scriptures – of the first, antediluvian mankind, and of the first people after the Deluge. For this truly constitutes the first Old Testament Church – from Adam to Abraham.

All the Old Testament books are dedicated to the period of the Old Testament Church from Abraham to the Nativity of Christ, and only the first pages of the Bible are dedicated to the initial period before Abraham. The first Old Testament Church remained a mystery and could even appear to be a legend. And only in our times this mystery has begun to be revealed in all its entrancing beauty.

Our church age, the age of man as Seraphim, the Seraphim of wisdom, wishes to know all that has been unknown up to now. We are fortunate to be living in a time of great discoveries in the sphere of knowledge about the initial Old Testament Church.

We who are living at the end of human history are linked to the first mankind by the forthcoming great miracle: one of the first people on earth, the seventh after Adam – Enoch, who was taken up into heaven alive, will return to earth to preach to mankind about Christ and will denounce the arriving Antichrist. Together with the Prophet Elias, who was also taken up into heaven alive, Enoch will come down to earth before the end of the world, as it is written in the Apocalypse (Rev. 11:3-12).

We should be interested in facts which confirm the occurrence of the Deluge and that all of mankind perished in the waters, because the second destruction of mankind – from fire – is also near, as has been prophesied by Apostle Peter regarding the end of the world: “But the day of the Lord will come… in which the heavens shall pass away with a great noise, and the elements shall melt with fervent heat, the earth also and the works that are therein shall be burned up” (2 Peter 3:10). Apparently universal fission will occur, after which will come the Last Judgment and a new heaven. “The heavens, being on fire, shall be dissolved, and the elements shall melt with fervent heat” (2 Peter 3:12).

In what other words could one talk about universal atomic fission at that time? “Nevertheless we, – continues the Apostle, – according to His promise, look for new heavens and a new earth, wherein dwelleth righteousness.”

Our Lord Jesus Christ compared the mankind before the end of the world with the mankind before the Deluge. Just as people then were occupied only with their worldly interests and did not want to know anything spiritual, “for they were flesh,” and just as there were few chosen ones then, so shall it be at the end of the world.

During the Deluge the elect were saved in the Ark, while of the last chosen ones Apostle Paul has said: “We which remain shall change and shall be caught up in the clouds to meet the Lord, Who comes to judge the living and the dead” (1 Thess. 4:17).

Enoch, the first one to prophesize the Lord’s coming with a multitude of angels to effect the Last Judgment over mankind, is due to return once again to earth before this Last Judgment. He will testify to the last generation of men about the coming end of the world, so that at least some would repent before it is too late.

How wonderful this all is, how remarkable is God’s foreordainment to have one of the first people on earth serve as a living witness and provide the last warning to the last generation of mankind.

How remarkable that the only words of the righteous Enoch to have reached the Christian world from the depth of ages speak precisely of the end of the world and of the Lord’s coming with an innumerable multitude of angels to judge mankind. These words of Enoch were recorded by Christ’s apostle Jude, the Lord’s brother. Perhaps Apostle Jude heard a confirmation of Enoch’s prophecy from Christ the Saviour Himself, and wrote about it. Here is what Apostle Jude writes in his general epistle: “And Enoch also, the seventh from Adam, prophesied of these, saying: Behold, the Lord cometh with a multitude of His angels, to execute judgment upon all, and to denounce all that are ungodly among them of all their ungodly deeds which they have ungodly committed, and of all the blasphemies which ungodly sinners have spoken against Him” (Jude 1:14-15).

The Old Testament Church is divided into two periods: the initial one from Adam to Abraham, and the one from Abraham to the coming to earth of the Son of God.

Little is known of the first period and a great deal of the second one, but the significance of the first period is no less than that of the second, both by nature of the events which occurred therein – the creation of the immortal Adam and the salvation of the family of righteous Noah during the destruction of all mankind in the Deluge, – and by the majesty of God’s elect who were living then, His interlocutors, one of whom – Enoch – was even taken up to heaven alive.

Out of 24 names of the first people on earth belonging to the initial Old Testament Church, eight were canonized by Christ’s Holy Church. It may be assumed that the remaining ones, though not canonized, were righteous people nevertheless. By God’s Providence Noah became the father of the entire new mankind. Only he and his wife, sons, and their wives were allowed to enter the Ark, while all others perished. Noah married when he was 500 years old, and 100 years later the Deluge came upon the earth. Had Noah married at a different age, his father Lamech and his grandfather Methuselah, who had died several years before the Deluge, would have also perished in the Deluge, while his grandsons were born already after the Deluge.

Other great forefathers, though not canonized, were relatives to the saints: Jared was the father of the holy denizen of the heavens Enoch, Cainan was Enoch’s son, while Maleleel was his grandson.

Just as after the description of the lives of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob there is a break in the Biblical narrative until the times of Moses, so in the account of the life of Noah and his sons there is a break until the time of the last representatives of this period – the high priest and king Methuselah, and the progenitor of the new period – the forefather Abraham.

This opus is dedicated to a description of the first period of the Old Testament Church. On the basis of the latest archaeological excavations and research we will follow the distant past of the first mankind and see God’s wise management, revealed to the God-seer Moses by the original Old Testament Church, whose righteous ones the Church of Christ has included among its select saints.

Paradise is the beginning and end of creation, a perfect beginning and an even more perfect end, the Garden of Eden and the eternal Heavenly Kingdom. “And He that sat upon the throne said: Behold, I make all things new. And I saw a new heaven and a new earth” (Rev. 21, 1:5).

Was the Paradise in which the immortal Adam lived really located on earth? Where is that desirable place in which man lived in bliss? Where is it – the sacred site of mankind’s origin? God’s mystery is sealed and will nevermore be revealed. Nevermore will the foot of man step on the land of Paradise. A Cherubim with a fiery sword has been placed to guard the gates of Eden, so that no mortal can ever enter it. Neither Adam, nor his descendants, nor any mortal man. God’s mystery. In vain do the Muslims point at the bend between Tigris and Euphrates to the south of Baghdad as the site of Paradise. This is a groundless fantasy meant to feed the vanity of the caliphs of Baghdad, similar to the one in which the supposed meeting site of Adam and Eve after their expulsion from Paradise was somewhere near Mecca. This traditional site was even indicated on a Biblical map published in the mid-20th century. Here is what the God-seer Moses wrote down concerning the location of Paradise: “And the Lord God planted a garden eastward in Eden… 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 Pheison: that is it which compasseth the whole land of Havilah, where there is gold. And the name of the second river is Gihon: the same is it that compasseth the whole land of Cush. And the name of the third river is Hiddekel (Tigris): that is it which goeth toward the east of Assyria. And the fourth river is Euphrates” (Gen. 2:8. 10-14).

“A river went out of Eden” should be understood as “a river flowed through Eden,” for a river flowing out of Eden cannot “thence” branch into four rivers. It is clear that the ancients counted not from the source, as we do, but from the delta; thus the river which irrigated Paradise had four large tributaries or four rivers. It can be said both ways, i.e. that during the time of Paradise these were tributaries, and afterwards they were rivers, since they emptied separately into the ancient contours of the Persian Gulf.

The location of Paradise should be sought not between these rivers (as it is said in the Bible), but at the river at which all the aforementioned rivers or tributaries came together: Tigris on the territory fronting Assyria, Euphrates, Gihon (or Geon) which encompassed the land of Cush (the site of the ancient and famous city of Kish), and the fourth river Pheison, “where there is gold,” obviously the Karkheh River with its old riverbed, flowing down from the northern mountains of the land of Elam, since there are no other places in the region of Mesopotamia where gold can be found.

Now it is a left-hand tributary of the Tigris River, but back in Roman times it emptied directly into the Nar-Maratu (Persian) Gulf, just as did Tigris and Euphrates (Professor Turayev. “History of the Ancient Middle East”, p. 59).

Thus it is perfectly clear that Paradise was geographically situated at the outermost Middle East, fronting the Persian Gulf, on the shores of the confluence of four great and at that time prominent rivers.

Currently this entire region is the territory of the huge Lake Hor-al-Hammar. Extremely interesting is the topography of this region in the times of the adamites, as reconstructed by archaeologists. This entire territory was flooded by a sea gulf, which from the times of Abraham gradually began to recede, but in the 1st century B.C. all four rivers were still emptying directly into it. And only in much later times did the water recede even further into the contemporary contours of the Persian Gulf, remaining only in the abovementioned lake and a multitude of marshes.

Thus it may be assumed that after Adam’s expulsion from Paradise this entire territory descended about a dozen and a half meters, and the waters of the Persian Gulf covered the lowlands. Such are the paleographic contours of this region in the times of the adamites.

The borders of the Persian Gulf at the river’s delta are receding even now at a rate of 7 km every 100 years. According to modern geological data, this entire large territory has colossal oil lakes with hidden gases under it, which explains the aforementioned up-and-down movements of the surface of the earth. The God-seer Moses writes: “And He expelled Adam, and He placed at the east of the Garden of Eden a Cherubim, and a flaming sword which turned every way, to guard the way to the Tree of Life.” At the time of the Sumerians (the culture of the cities of Ur, Eridu, and Obeida, divided by an intermediate 3-meter layer of sediment into antediluvian and postdiluvian periods), the huge territory was flooded by water; there existed an enormous sea gulf, on whose shores stood elevated the first cities in the world: Eridu and Ur. These were the settlements of Adam and his closest 136 descendants. Paradise, Eden was flooded by water and became forever inaccessible. Even now it is impossible to search for it, since it is located at the bottom of the opaque Lake Hammar, which is white as milk from the lime salt dispersed in it. And what remains could one find on the territory of Paradise? This mystery is sealed forever. Interestingly enough, all Iranian peoples preserve the traditional knowledge of the site of Paradise being located under water, at the bottom of the sea (gulf).

However, another discovery has been made which sheds light on the life of Adam: he apparently lived at the seashore and could always look towards the East, where under the azure blue waters lay the beautiful Paradise of the sweetness of unearthly existence. Adam prayed, having deep faith in that the time would come when his Descendant would “bruise the serpent’s head” and return Paradise to mankind. The Holy Fathers interpreted God’s words, spoken to the devil in Adam’s presence, in the following manner: “It (in the translation of the 70 it is said ‘He’) – the seed of Adam’s wife – shall bruise you in the head” (Gen. 3:15).

For Adam it was not as important that the devil be punished for being the origin of the Fall as that he – Adam – be forgiven his sin.

In reconstructing the contours of the ancient shores of this gulf, paleogeography established another interesting fact: Euphrates had an old riverbed not to the left of Eridu and Ur, as it does now, but flowed between them, so that Ur stood on the left shore, where the river flowed into the gulf, while Eridu stood on the right shore, opposite Ur.

This is of great significance, which we will discuss later, when we review which of these two cities has the greater basis to be regarded as the very first city in the world, as Adam’s first place of settlement after his expulsion from Paradise.

The Immortal Adam

Adam was a man not born, but created directly by God. He was created immortal, like unto the angels, king and ruler over all the other creatures that lived in Paradise, both on land, and in the water, and in the air. Adam knew neither illness, nor death; this was the sinless Adam, whose image was shown to us by the second Adam – Christ.

After the days of creation a great static condition became established in nature, in the kingdom of living creatures, in the sea, in the air, and on land; no new creations appeared. Man was the crown of creation.

And God gave man a great mission – to reign over all creation and live in Paradise, where God had established a wondrous world order, having subjected all living beings to man. In this kingdom of grace there was an established peace, where blood did not flow in front of the immortal Adam, where there was no violent death in the animal world, “for to all in Paradise God gave all kinds of grasses and fruit,” and all animals, birds, and fish were subjected to man, and God gave Adam such great wisdom, that he could call each creature by its name.

God gave his blessing to humans to multiply, populate the earth, and be masters over it and all living creatures on it, and spread the kingdom of grace all over the world. But Adam did not fulfill this mission, through his sin death came into the world, and Adam himself became mortal.

The mystery of Adam’s immortal human nature has been carried by him into the grave and has not been preserved among his descendants. Neither did God reveal it to men through His great seer of mysteries, the Prophet Moses.

This mystery, like the mystery of Eden, has remained sealed forever. Even in the days of grace, when the Holy Spirit descended upon mankind, instructing Christ’s apostles and the Holy Fathers and teachers of the Church in God’s mysteries, even then the mystery of immortality was not revealed. In what manner were Adam’s human body, flesh, and organism immortal, not subject to illness, or old age, or depletion, or death? We can only have faith in that this mystery will be revealed after the resurrection of the dead, when our bodies will arise anew and will live eternally with our immortal soul, not needing food or drink, and never growing old. Such precisely was Adam, in the opinion of the Church Fathers.

Adam possessed divine reason, since the words about Adam knowing all creatures by name should be understood in the sense that all the physical laws of the universe and the animal world, at which his descendants arrived with great difficulty and will still be arriving in the future, were originally revealed to him.

The Heavenly Kingdom is Paradise regained, and the state of righteous souls is paradisiacal bliss, which also includes perfect knowledge, for it is truly a majestic quality and is worthy even of angelic minds, which hymn in continuous glorification the wisdom of the Creator and His creations.

Adam became completely different after his expulsion from Paradise, similar in everything to us mortals, who are subject to illness, old age, death, and corruptibility, only the human age in those days was different – a thousand years.

But let us return to the originally-created Paradise. Was it simply one of many sectors of lands with common flora and fauna? The Bible says: “And the Lord God planted a garden eastward in Eden, and there He put the man whom He had formed” (Gen 2:8). Consequently, Paradise was created by God’s special providence, with especially beautiful trees and flowers, and not all the living creatures existing then in the world became its residents, but only those chosen by God for their king – Adam.

The God-seer Moses did not tell us anything about which living creatures populated Paradise, and all our assumptions would be baseless. However, it may be said with assurance that within the confines of Paradise all creatures were subservient to Adam and Eve. This stamp of subservience has remained in the so-called domestic animals which God left to Adam after his expulsion from Paradise. Domestic animals differ biologically from similar wild ones, which remains one of the world’s mysteries. All domestic animals began to spread from the territory of the Middle East, from the place where Eden had stood – from Sumer and South Mesopotamia.

The Tree of Life

What was the Tree of Life like, that eating of its fruit Adam could live forever? What was this food for eternal life? According to ancient patristic opinion, the fruits of the Tree of Life were a paradisiacal representation of the Heavenly Bread that had come down from Heaven, and eating of which man would live eternally. This was a heavenly meal; just as under the guise of earthly fruit – bread and wine – man receives the heavenly food of Christ’s Body, so in Paradise Adam received the food of incorruptible and eternal life in the form of the fruits from the Tree of Life.

Having lost this heavenly food, Adam also lost eternal immortality: “And He drove out Adam, and placed a Cherubim to guard the way to the Tree of Life.”

Adam’s lament for the lost Paradise is above all a lament for the Tree of Life, a lament for immortality.

The Serbian Church has preserved an ancient custom: the lament over the Tree of Life that was in Paradise. On the feast of Christ’s Nativity, a tree with lives is brought out in Serbian churches – an oak, which symbolizes eternity, since it can live for thousands of years; the oak is adorned with a few apples, and the people sing mournful hymns, full of reverence, and then lower the trunk into a fire, while the leaves immediately become scorched. These leaves the faithful piously take home in memory of the Tree of Life. No one, however, touches the apples.

By what unfathomable paths, through many millennia, have the Serbian people preserved to this day this traditional Adamite mystery and, by the testament of the Holy Fathers of the Serbian Church, are due to preserve it even until the end of the world.

Thus probably lamented the Adamites, commemorating the paradisiacal Tree of Life.

In Christian times the paradisiacal Tree of Life has been replaced by the Life-giving Tree of the Lord’s Cross, which also grants eternal life.

The First Service to God on Earth

The first Adamite settlements were in Eridu and Ur on the shores of the gulf which had submersed the huge territory of the lost Paradise. From the high shore the Adamites looked directly towards the east, to the place where Paradise had been situated, and prayed facing the east, facing the place where God had appeared to Adam and spoke with him.

Let us allow ourselves, on the basis of the Biblical narrative, a brief discussion on the expulsion of Adam.

Adam settled “across from Paradise.” Adam’s desire to remain within the vicinity of Paradise is quite understandable. An angel with a flaming sword stood at the gates of Paradise. Something had to force Adam to leave this place and go elsewhere. And so it happened. By the will of God the gulf began to push forward and flooded the territory of Paradise and the entire surrounding area. But where could Adam go? The way to the north was barred by the high waters of the Euphrates River. From the east advanced the waters of the gulf, which in geology is called a sea transgression. To the west stretched the barren sands of the Al Khajar desert. The only way left was to go up along the right shore of the Euphrates, and as soon as the gulf waters ceased to advance, stop at an elevation.

The first settlers of Sumer regarded themselves as the people, or perhaps even the children, of God, on Whose bounties depended their well-being. In any case, the most ancient structure known to us on the territory of Sumer in Eridu was a shrine, which was subsequently replaced by a whole series of sacred buildings. The erection of these edifices was crowned in the beginning of the third millennium B.C. by the building of a real “cathedral.” The first farmers who settled in Eridu erected a square shrine on a sandy hill near the sea (temple XVI, i.e. the most ancient one, from 5,000 years B.C.), with an area of only 3 square meters; it was built from long gum-state bricks, prismatic in form. Except for this remembrance of their piety, the first settlers apparently left nothing else besides painted ceramics and several clay beads. As a result of its seventh reconstruction, the shrine turned into a spacious temple (temple XI), which preserved the greatly-honored remnants of more ancient shrines (Gordon Childe, The Most Ancient Near East, 1956, p.180).

Eridu was the sacred site of the first Adamites, the site where the first temple on earth was erected, and this was reflected in the name of the settlement – Hier-Idu (Hier – sacred, phonetically changed to “Er”). At the same time, according to the most ancient cuneiform tablets, Eridu was also the capital of the “ten antediluvian kings,” the last of them being Noah – Utnapishtim in Babylonian terminology. There is no doubt that the “ten antediluvian kings” are the ten antediluvian patriarchs, from Adam to Noah.

All data confirms that of the three most ancient cities – Eridu, Ur, and Obeid, – it was specifically Eridu which was Adam’s first place of settlement.

Cuneiform records called the ten antediluvian patriarchs kings. But the terminology does not matter. Both concepts – eldest in the generation or king – are close in meaning, but most importantly, Eridu was named as the capital of the first king, the first elder in Adam’s lineage.

I believe that the word and concept of “king” appeared considerably later, when people multiplied, when cities and regions appeared, and the concept of “king” was then applied to the elders of the first mankind as well.

Adam was the patriarch of the entire antediluvian mankind, its supreme leader and elder, its “king,” but was he the first high priest? Apparently not, since the first service to God began only with Adam’s son Seth.

Adam did not consider himself worthy after his fall, after mankind had suffered a catastrophe because of him, to call upon the Lord on behalf of all the people.

Originally Adam, Abel, and Cain performed sacrificial offerings. Under Seth this was replaced by universal calling upon the Lord God and universal singing of hymns to God, united with the same sacrificial offering. The sacrifices served as a prototype of the slaughter of the Eternal Lamb for the sins of the world. It is interesting to note that the custom of sacrificial offerings existed among all the peoples in the ancient world. Seth was the first to raise his hands to Heaven as a high priest for the entire human generation, still very small at that time. It was specifically Seth who established the first communal altar to God.

Was this altar preserved? Was it not on that same hill – the site of the first altar – that the most ancient temple in Eridu was built, 3 square meters in size and dated 5,000 years B.C.? This temple was subsequently rebuilt 16 times over the course of millennia, but the original structure remained in the center untouched.

Why did ancient mankind preserve it so carefully? The answer suggests itself; however, decades of archaeological excavations would have to pass before a convincing discussion of this could take place. But in the meantime let us again turn to Gordon Childe’s book: “In any event, the most ancient of all the structures known to us on the territory of Sumer is the shrine in Eridu.”

If over the course of millennia the Sumerians were able to preserve the sacred remnants of the first temple, there were sufficient reasons for this. Perhaps it was not in this 3-meter temple, or rather altar that Seth performed his services to God, but in any case it may be presumed that it was precisely on this site. It should be noted that Seth lived for 912 years and died 12 years before the birth of Noah (see the table of the lifespan of the patriarchs). 900 years was a long term, and during this while the temple could have been expanded and decorated several times.

We have already noted and will repeatedly dwell on the fact that in Eridu, as in other cities, were found additional cultural layers of the Adamites, and after the Deluge the subsequent layers of the Sumerian culture.

It would be interesting to know whether many people attended the first service. Of course there would be Adam, Eve, Seth, his son Enos, and who else? The first service was naturally attended by the many sons and daughters of Adam, and perhaps with their own children. The God-seer Moses says: “Adam lived a hundred and thirty years, and began a son in his own likeness, after his image; and called his name Seth. And the days of Adam after he had begotten Seth were eight hundred years; and he begat sons and daughters” (Gen. 5:3-4). About the first service it is known that it took place after the birth of Enos. Enos was born in 235, when Seth was 100 years old. In this interim of one hundred years Adam could have had not only many sons and daughters, but grandchildren as well.

All the patriarchs, including Noah, lived for over 900 years. Only Enoch lived on earth a short while – a total of 365 years, after which he was taken up into heaven alive. Such a lifespan for the patriarchs was not so great, if one takes into account the fact that Adam and his descendants were due to live in Paradise eternally.

Shem lived for 600 years, and apparently so did Japheth. Afterwards the lifespan gradually began to be reduced to 400-300 years, and by the time of Abraham his lifespan of 175 years was already regarded as a blessedly long life. Even in our times there are people who live to the age of 150. In general, man’s biological life should last 150 years, but it is reduced through illnesses arising out of abnormal nutrition and behavior.

Let us now turn to an amazing fact that is not often noticed in the history of the Old Testament, but which, nevertheless, is of enormous significance in understanding many events. It should be remembered that all the patriarchs from Adam to Lamech, Noah’s father, lived simultaneously. Adam was able to – and, apparently, did – converse with Lamech for 60 years of latter’s life, and also with Noah’s grandfather, Methuselah, and Adam could tell them everything he himself knew about Paradise and the creation of the world. Lamech and Methuselah undoubtedly passed this information on to Noah, while in Noah’s grandchildren’s and great-grandchildren’s times there already appeared the most ancient Sumerian cuneiform – in 3,000 B.C. according to archaeological data, which corresponds to the age of Noah’s grandchildren.

Here is a table of the patriarchs’ lifespans:

According to this data, the Deluge took place in the year 1656 from the creation of the world.

How wisely everything was provided for by God’s Providence – none of the patriarchs perished in the waters of the Deluge, neither Noah’s father, nor his grandfather. The Deluge occurred two years after the death of Noah’s grandfather Methuselah, while Noah’s father Lamech died even earlier. Thus none of the righteous ones perished in the waters of the Deluge.

Thus we see that besides Moses’s knowledge based upon Divine Revelation, all the accounts of Paradise, the Fall, the Tree of Life, the ten patriarchs, the Deluge, Noah and his three sons could have been known to people through direct transmission from generation to generation. Therefore, there is nothing surprising in the fact that all the above-listed events were known to the Sumerians and recorded by them. These events came down to us in Babylonian cuneiform tablets, albeit in a highly distorted form. At that time true worship of God was forgotten, and to the records was added the pagan mythology of those times and, therefore, the names of all the patriarchs were changed, and many dates and events were garbled.

Founding of the first cities

It is up to future excavations, whose present results are greatly inadequate for drawing any conclusions, to establish exactly when the Adamite settlements began to turn into cities.  It may be assumed, however, that cities began to appear in the middle of the first millennium after the creation of Adam, approximately in the time of Jared, the great-great-grandson of Seth.  Jared was born in 460, lived for 960 years, and died 320 years before the Deluge.  At that time mankind numbered more than several thousand people, which is the reason why the need arose to create large settlements and to build cities.  The most ancient, or rather the first city in the world known to archaeology was Eridu or Hieridu – it is natural to assume that the prefixes “hier,” which means sacred, and “er” are one and the same.

 Jared’s son Enoch was taken up alive into heaven after the birth of his own son Methuselah (grandfather of Noah), in order to again return to earth during the reign of the Antichrist and be slain together with the prophet Elijah.  Thus all of Adam’s descendants will necessarily taste death, since immortality was lost in Paradise through the Fall.

 Now let us turn to the first cities in the world – Eridu, Ur, and Obeid.  Here is what is written about them on the archaeological map of Mesopotamia, published in 1954 by the scholarly National Geographic Society in the U.S.:

“Eridu.The first capital of Lower Mesopotamia existed in approximately 4,000-5,000 B.C.  The temple that was excavated here is the oldest religious structure known to man.”

“Ur. During excavations in 1929 there were three cultural layers of settlements found, covered by 11 pounds of silt that had settled down from the water or had been deposited by a great flood similar to the one described in the Bible (the Deluge).  Below this layer (diluvium) of the Deluge lie the cultural layers of pre-historic Ur.”

“Obeid. The Obeidian period (the most ancient in the history of mankind) begins in the fifth millennium B.C. and represents an early Babylonian civilization.  Bricks made out of clay form the first walls of the city.”

“There is another very ancient city up the Euphrates River, and that is Erech (or Uruk) on the shores of the vanished gulf.  Very effective cylindrical seals were used here back in the 4th millennium.”

“Sumerian inscriptions from 3,000 B.C. are samples of the most ancient writing known to man.”

 All of these cities, except for Uruk, were located within an area of visibility of each other, on the shores of the ancient sea gulf that existed in the time of the Adamites.  The cities stood at the mouth of the “great Euphrates River,” as Moses frequently called it, where it flowed into the gulf.

The culture of Adam’s descendants

What were the Adamites like?  Similar to Neanderthal cavemen or highly-cultured people?

 Let us see what the Bible says about this, and what archaeological data tells us.

 The Book of Genesis says: “Abel was a keeper of sheep, but Cain was a tiller of the ground” (Gen. 4:2).  One of Cain’s descendants, Jubal, “was the father of all such as play the harp and pipes” (Gen. 4:21).

 What has archaeology found out?  Excavations have shown that both the Obeidian and the Jerichovian cultures, the initial human cultures of Mesopotamia and Palestine, from their earliest period had agriculture and cattle-raising, worked on metals, built cities and temples with mosaics.  Other signs of the high culture of the people of those times were also evident.  Thus both in Mesopotamia and in Palestine there was no such division as existed in Europe, where the culture of the Cainite branch developed independently and went sequentially from one Paleolithic period to another, from the Shellian culture to the Magdalenian, knowing neither the Neolithic, nor metal.

A study of fossilized human remains found in Europe created the impression of the so-called Stone, Iron, and Bronze Ages, but this can only be attributed to Europe, and provisionally at that.  In general, even in the 19th century the Stone Age was still prevalent in many corners of the globe.       

 In the cradle of mankind that we are describing, everything existed simultaneously: both the Paleolithic-type sharp stone tools, and the polished instruments we see in Europe during the Neolithic age, and metal items.

 In the table shown below, terms such as Paleolithic, Neolithic, and the Bronze Age are absent, since all of this occurred simultaneously; for this reason the concepts of “periods” and “culture” are used.

 Now let us look at the extraordinarily interesting chronological table of the most ancient cultures of the Middle East, cited in Gordon Childe’s book.  It represents a summary of contemporary archaeological data, in which of greatest interest is the chronology.

 As we can see, the most ancient cultures known to archaeology existed not earlier than 5,000 years B.C.

 The earliest cultures are as follows: in Palestine – the Natufian, in Southern Mesopotamia or Sumer – the Proto-Obeidian.  The Tasian culture in Egypt, a somewhat later one, came from Mesopotamia.

 Gordon Childe’s table is a revolution in the fields of Egyptology and Assyriology.  It sheds light on the pre-history of mankind in its cradle in Mesopotamia and the Palestine, and coincides with the Biblical chronology in not indicating a greater ancientness of human culture than 5,000 years B.C.  Moreover, the existence of the supposedly many thousand years old first Egyptian cultures has been set at a time later than 2,850 years B.C., which entirely accords with the Bible.

 This means that the so-called “scientific” fantasies about the amazing antiquity of the Egyptian dynasties, presumably contradicting Biblical chronology, have been conclusively disproved.  This is a good lesson for the future to adopt a critical approach to all kinds of scientific sensations about the antiquity of one discovery or another.  The time has come to cease making up improvable dates and base science only on facts.

 Let us look at the most interesting epoch of the first cultures, the first archaeological traces of man in mankind’s ancestral home: the Early Obeidian period in Sumer and the Jerichovian and Natufian periods in Palestine, i.e. the first Adamite settlements.  Jericho is contemporary with Obeid, which means it is also contemporary with the period of Adam’s life.  Consequently, at the end of his life Adam could have easily lived in Jericho or its environs, on the territory of the future Jerusalem.  This is very important for us, because it provides a fully realistic substantiation for the church tradition that the redeeming sacrifice on Golgotha was fulfilled over Adam’s grave, where even at the present time there is an altar to the holy forefather Adam.

 Let me present excerpts from the archaeological research of the past decades, pertaining to the first human cultures on earth.

 “The quantity of radioactive carbon (C-14) contained in one of the bowls from Jarmo forces us to attribute the absolute date of this settlement to 5,000 B.C.”

 Unfortunately we are still incapable of describing in any detail the culture of the Early Obeidian period in Sumer; however, there is a great deal of data on its contemporary cultures in northern Mesopotamia – Halaf, Sammara, Kasuno, and Jarmo.

 “The seeds of wheat and barley, and the grain bruisers and sickles found in Jarmo attest to highly-developed agriculture; at the same time, 95% of the excavated bones belong to domestic animals: sheep, cows, pigs, dogs.”

 Let us not forget that Cain was a farmer, while Abel was a shepherd.  “The residents of the Halafian culture settlements skillfully worked on obsidian and other hard metals, out of which they made vases and other artifacts, and carved out ornaments in different geometric shapes” (p. 161).

 “The residents of settlements built simple adobe homes.  Their tools were of stone with polished blades; moreover, they used knife-shaped blades made from obsidian, and sculpted baked animal figurines and statuettes of women” (p. 166).

 A great number of such excerpts may be presented in confirmation of the high culture of the Adamites.