Flood Not World Wide
Among the many mistaken and unscriptural notions, commonly taught in nearly all the Judeo-Christian churches, is the idea that the flood mentioned in the Bible, covered all the earth. Their teachings make many of our people simply throw their minds out of gear and makes all too many of them unable to reason and accept the truth when it is presented to them.
The Bible states everybody on earth was drowned except Noah and his family, who escaped death by being in the ark. Many Judeo-Christian churches have firmly insisted the Bible says this, when there is ample proof THE FLOOD WAS NOT WORLD WIDE.
With this teaching the churches have destroyed the faith of multitudes of people; and that is what his false teaching was designed by Satan and his children to do. They have made atheists or agnostics out of hundreds of thousands of people who might have become active Christians, if they had only been taught the truth about the Bible.
That there was a flood called Noah�s flood that drowned all the men upon the earth at that time in the world�s history, except for his wife, his sons and their families. This is the common teaching among most Protestant Denominations, the Catholic Church. Some Fundamentalists groups and some Pentecostal groups do not teach this. Then there are many people outside of the church who don�t know one way or the other, and could really care less.
Some of them think this is nonsense, they think the Bible story is a myth. Some say that is not important anyway. Then there is the great, vast bulk of the population, know so little about the Bible, they don�t know if there might have been a flood or not.
Those who do study the Bible, and are willing to go through the Scriptures and see what the Bible actually teaches about where was the flood in Noah�s time. First of all let us look at the Book of Genesis.
It is amazing how people can read a verse of scripture, and think to themselves: Yes that�s right. Then they put their brain in neutral and simply become brain dead. They will study no further; they have found the truth; and God help the person who disagrees with them.
Such is the case when a discussion comes up concerning Noah�s flood. Many read Genesis 6:13-17:
�And God said unto Noah, The end of all flesh is come before me; for the earth is filled with violence through them; and, behold, I will destroy them WITH THE EARTH ...And, behold, I, even I, do bring a flood of waters upon the earth, to destroy all flesh, wherein is the breath of life, from under heaven; and every thing that is in the earth shall die.�
These are the verses most generally used when defending the destruction of the entire earth by Noah�s flood. Now first off we know that the earth was not destroyed. Yet, if one is to believe that the flood was universal, they must also believe that the entire world was destroyed at that time. Because that is what is says �I will destroy them WITH THE EARTH.�
By this one verse we know that the flood was not universal. But let�s go on because those who believe in the entire world being flooded will not be content with this verse.
But one can just see them beginning to foam at the mouth, and wish to destroy me, and accuse me of trying to destroy God�s Word. And nothing could be further from the truth. We simply believe in reading and �UNDERSTANDING� all of God�s Word and not present some stupid argument that the atheists and other non-believers can latch upon like a dog on a bone.
First. Let�s look at what Strong�s Concordance has to say about the word earth. I suppose you all will accept that Strong�s is an authority. If you do not, then there is nothing which can be used as an authority for anything. Strong�s relates:
In the Old Testament the following is used almost every time. #127: soil; country, earth, ground, husband, land. #776: a land; common, country, earth, field, ground, land, nations, way, wilderness, world. In the following one is used only once and the other only a few times. #2789: a piece of pottery; earth; sherd, stone. #6083: dust; clay, earth, mud: ashes; dust; earth; ground, mortar; powder; rubbish.
In the New Testament the following is used almost every time: #1093: soil; region; country; earth; ground; land; world. Once as #3625: Part of the globe; the Roman Empire; Once as #1919: worldly; in earth; terrestri�al. Once as #2709: The ground; subterranean, under the earth. Once as #3749: eartern-ware; of earth; earthen.
�And the flood was forty days upon the earth; and the waters increased, and bare up the ark, and it was lift up above the earth. And the waters prevailed exceedingly upon the earth: and all the high hills, that were under the whole heaven, were covered. {Well so far so good. Everything is going to die and everything is covered, but in the next verse it says} Fifteen cubits upward did the waters prevail; and the mountains were covered.� (Genesis 7:17-20)
There are two possibilities of this specific verse. First of all 15 cubits is believed by most Bible scholars to equal approx. 22 � feet. In other words a foot and a half for each cubit. Now, if this means 22 � feet above the highest hill then the earth was covered. If it means 22 � feet above the location of the Ark or where the Ark was built. Then you are in trouble, the water would not have been deep enough to cover the entire planet.
But let�s go on and read some other verses:
�And all flesh died that moved upon the earth, both of fowl, and of cattle, and of beast, and of every creeping thing that creepeth upon the earth, and every man: All in whose nostrils was the breath of life, of all that was in the dry land, died.� (Genesis 7:21-22)
So far everything that we have read, is quite familiar to those who teach about the flood. And it does sound pretty complete. It sounds pretty complete as far as the destruction of everything outside of the Ark. And of course, we know, from the contents of the scriptures that all of the animals and people inside the Ark did not die. The real question is, after reading and studying God�s Word and trying to find out about the flood.
Which must be understood in order to understand history a little better. When God said in His Word; The Earth, did He mean the planet earth? Or did He mean the Land? Did He mean the planet earth, which would mean the entire earth? Or did He actually mean the land which was being spoken about?
Part of this mistaken idea about the flood is due to the many translations found in the commonly used King James Bible. Part of it appears clearly to be false. If you will carefully read even the King James Bible.
In Genesis chapter 6, we read that Yahweh found the people so corrupt He regretted He had ever created them, so He decided to wipe them out by a flood. He warned righteous Noah of the coming flood and told Noah to build a great boat, or ark, in which he and his family might find safety and where they might preserve a few of each kind of the animals from that area. Genesis chapter 7 tells how Noah received the final warning the time was not at hand and he should move into the ark. Then it says, according to the King James Bible:
�And it came to pass after seven days, that the waters of the flood were upon the earth. In the six hundredth year of Noah�s life, in the second month, the seventeenth day of the month, the same day were all the fountains of the great deep broken up and the windows of heaven were opened. And the rain was upon the earth forty days and forty nights. And the waters prevailed, and were increased greatly upon the earth forty days and forty nights...And the waters prevailed, and were increased greatly upon the earth; and the ark went upon the waters. And the waters prevailed exceedingly upon the earth; and the ark went upon the waters. And the waters prevailed exceedingly upon the earth; and all the high hills that were under the whole heaven were covered. Fifteen cubits upward did the waters prevail; and the mountains were covered. And all flesh died that moved upon the earth; and all the high hills that were under the whole heaven were covered. Fifteen cubits upward did the waters prevail; and the mountains were covered. And all flesh died that moved upon the earth; and every man...And the waters prevailed upon the earth an hundred and fifty days. And Yahweh remembered Noah and every living thing, and all the cattle that was with him in the ark; and Yahweh made a wind to pass over the earth and the water assuaged...And the waters returned from off the earth continually and after the end of the hundred and fifty days the waters were abated. And the ark rested, in the seventh month, on the seventeenth day of the month, upon the mountains of Ararat. And the waters decreased continually until the tenth month; in the tenth month; on the first day of the month, were the tops of the mountains seen.� (Genesis 7:1-12, 18-21, 24, 8:1-5)
Now let�s see what the translators have done to what Moses originally wrote. Remember the King James Bible says that the rain was upon the earth and the waters increased greatly upon the earth and all flesh died that moved upon the earth. Definitely not! Remember that in Genesis 4:14, when Yahweh has driven Cain away in punishment for his murder of Abel, the King James Bible quotes Cain as saying,
�Behold, thou hast driven me out this day from the face of the earth.�
So what did Cain do, climb into his rocket ship and take off for outer space? Of course not! He was not driven from the face of the earth, and he never said so, only the translators said so.
Turn to Genesis 4:11-14 where in speaking about Cain we read:
�And now art thou cursed FROM THE EARTH...And Cain said unto the Lord, My punishment is greater than I can bear. Behold, thou hast driven me out this day FROM THE FACE OF THE EARTH...��
It is clear that Cain was only being driven out from the place where he was, to another place. But Cain said to the Lord �thou hast driven me out this day FROM THE FACE OF THE EARTH.� If we used just that phrase one could easily say that Cain was removed off of the earth entirely.
Because it says from the face of the earth. But then the scriptures show that Cain clearly understood what had happened.
�And from thy face shall I be hid; and I shall be a fugitive and a vagabond in the earth.�
Here we have two things pointed out to us.
One: That the scriptures are only concerned with a certain geographical area of the world. Cain knew this, otherwise he would not have made the proviso statement: �from thy face shall I be hid.� This clearly shows that when Cain moved out of that specific geographical area, that
God was no longer concerned with him, and he would be, in effect, hidden from God�s eyes.
Second: That Cain clearly knew that he was being driven from one area of the earth to another. And not literally from off the earth entirely, the planet earth, but from the land wherein he had dwelt. And that he would sill be on the planet earth.
The word Cain used as ad-aw-maw, meaning the ground. Yahweh had told him that his farming would no longer be successful, so Cain said, �Thou hast driven me off of the ground.� Yu have probably noticed that Cain�s descendants today are not farmers, they run pawnshops and other money lending institutions.
When we come to Genesis chapter 7 where it is talking about the flood, wherever it says the flood covered the earth, the Hebrew word used in the original writing by Moses was eh-rats, meaning the land. The flood did cover THE PARTICULAR LAND WHERE IT OCCURRED. It was a local flood which covered on particular region or land, not the whole earth.
Notice that it specifies, �Fifteen cubits upward did the waters prevail; and the mountains were covered.� In ancient times two different lengths of the cubit were in use. The sacred cubit of 25 inches and the common cubit of 20-5/8th inches.
Therefore, the waters rose above the tops of the mountains it is speaking of either 25 feet 9 inches or 31 feet 3 inches according to which cubit you use. If this meant that all the mountains on earth were covered, the waters would have to cover Mount Everest, which is nearly six miles high. Therefore, all the earth would be covered by water six miles deep. In that case, where could it have run off to when the flood subsided?
No, that does not mean that the Bible was that badly mistaken, only the translators made this mistake. The translators took the Hebrew word eh-rets, which means that land and mistranslated it to mean the whole world. A little later, we shall look over the evidence which proves where that land was.
If the whole earth was covered by six miles of water, then all nations must have been completely exterminated. However, Babylonian, Egyptian and Chinese history runs right through this period without a break. The Bible gives the date of the flood as commencing in 2345 B.C., and ending in 2344 B.C. In lower Sumer, later called Chaldea, which occupied the same Plains of Shinar to which Noah�s family journeyed after the flood, the city of Ur of the Chaldees was the leading city from about 2400 B.C., until about 2285 B.C.
Its history is not broken by any flood in this period. Farther to the north, Babylon was rising to power from about 2400 B.C., on and reached a great height of civilization under the famous King Hammurabi, who lived at the same time as the Hebrew patriarch Abraham, about 2250 B.C.
There is no break in this history due to a flood. In Egypt, the eleventh dynasty began to reign about 2375 B.C., over a great and powerful nation. The eleventh dynasty ruled to about 2212 B.C., and was followed by the twelfth dynasty, which ruled to about 2000 B.C. There was no break in the eleventh dynasty at the time of Noah�s flood, 2345 B.C. The nation continued to be large and powerful throughout this period.
Accurate history of China begins nearly 3000 B.C. The Shu King historic record of China, shows that King Yao came to the throne in 2356 B.C., 11 years before the start of Noah�s flood, and ruled China for many years after the flood. During the reign of Yao, the Shu King reports that the Hwang Ho river, which drains the mountains and a great basin in Sinkiang province, had excessive floods for three generations. Here again, there was no break in history. The Chinese nation was not wiped out. Its own records show it continued in existence right through the period of Noah�s flood.
Therefore, the Bible is correct in stating the flood covered only eh-rets, that land. The translators are wrong when they change the meaning of what Moses really wrote in Genesis chapter 7, and say the flood covered all the earth.
This leaves us ready to inquire where the flood did occur. For this, we will have to start with Adam and Eve and trace where they and their descendants went. They started out in the garden of Eden. Genesis 2:10-14 tells us that a river went out of Eden and this river divided into four streams. It names these four rivers; Pison and Gihon, neither of which can be identified among the rivers existing today. Hiddekel, which is the ancient name of the Tigris and the Euphrates rivers.
The Tigris and Euphrates rise in what is today extreme southeastern Turkey, a little north of modern Iraq. Making some allowances for the fact that many rivers have changed their courses considerably in the passing of several thousand years, this still placed the Garden of Eden at the northern end of ancient Addak.
When Adam and Eve were driven out of the Garden of Eden, Genesis 3:24 tells us Yahweh placed cherubim with a flaming sword AT THE EAST SIDE of the Garden of Eden, to keep Adam and Eve from returning and having access to the tree of life.
If this guard was to accomplish anything, it must have been placed between Adam and the Garden of Eden. So we see that Adam and Eve were driven out to the east, from Eden, Adam�s course would naturally have led him across northern Iran, around the southern end of the Caspian Sea, into what was formerly called Chinese Turkestan and today is known as Sinkiang province in the extreme west of China.
In the southern part of Sinkiang there is a great basin, rimmed by high mountains on all sides, with an outlet on the eastern end of it, through the mountains where the headwaters of the Hwang-Ho river, the Yellow river rises.
This basin is nearly all desert today, but it bears evidence of a fertile and heavily inhabited past. Explorers have found ruins of ancient cities, uncovered by the drifting sands of the desert. Also the known geological structure shows, in ancient times at least, beneath this desert lay enormous underground natural reservoirs, caverns filled with water. It is the same geological structure which furnishes ARTESIAN WELL WATER in many parts of the world today.
The real scene of the Iliad and the Odyssey can be identified not in the Mediterranean Sea, where it proves to be weakened by many incongruities, but in the north of Europe. The sagas that gave rise to the two poems came from the Baltic regions, where the Bronze Age flourished in the 2nd millennium B. C. and many Homeric places, such as Troy and Ithaca, can still be identified.
The blond seafarers who founded the Mycenaean civilization in the 16th century B. C., brought these tales from Scandinavia to Greece after the decline of the �climatic optimum.�
Then they rebuilt their original world, where the Trojan War and many other mythological events had taken place, in the Mediterranean; through many generations the memory of the heroic age and the feats performed by their ancestors in their lost homeland was preserved, and handed down to the following ages.
This key allows us to easily open many doors that have been shut tight until now, as well as to consider the age‑old question of the Indo‑European diaspora and the origin of the Greek civilization from a new perspective. (Felice Vinci, Omero nel Baltico, with introduction by R. Calzecchi Onesti and F. Cuomo. Publisher: Fratelli Palombi Editori, 2nd edition 1998, Rome. ISBN: 88‑7621‑211‑6 (an English translation is available by contacting the author).
Ever since ancient times, Homeric geography has given rise to problems and uncertainty. The conformity of towns, countries and islands, which the poet often describes with a wealth of detail, with traditional Mediterranean places is usually only partial or even nonexistent.
We find various� cases in Strabo (the Greek geographer and historian, 63 B. C. ‑ 23 A.D.), who, for example, does not understand why the island of Pharos, situated right in front of the port of Alexandria, in the Odyssey inexplicably appears to lie a day�s sail from Egypt.
There is also the question of the location of Ithaca, which, according to very precise indications found in the Odyssey, is the westernmost in an archipelago which includes three main islands, Dulichium, Same and Zacynthus. This does not correspond to the geographic reality of the Greek Ithaca in the Ionian Sea, located north of Zacynthus, east of Cephallenia and south of Leucas. And then, what of the Peloponnese, described in both poems as a plain?
In other words, Homeric geography refers to a context with a toponym with which we are familiar, but which, if compared with the actual physical layout of the Greek world, reveals glaring anomalies, which are hard to explain, if only on account of their consistency throughout the two poems.
For example, the �strange� Peloponnese appears to be a plain not sporadically but regularly, and Dulichium, the �Long Island� (in Greek �dolichos� means �long�) located by Ithaca, is repeatedly mentioned not only in the Odyssey but also in the Iliad, but was never discovered in the Mediterranean.
Thus we are confronted with a world which appears actually closed and inaccessible, apart from some occasional convergences, although the names are familiar (this, however, tends to be more misleading than otherwise in solving the problem).
A possible key to finally penetrating this puzzling world is provided by Plutarch (46 ‑ 120 A.D.). In his work De facie quae in orbe lunae apparet (�The face that appears in the moon circle�), he makes a surprising statement: the island of Ogygia, (where Calypso held Ulysses before allowing him to return to Ithaca) is located in the North Atlantic Ocean, �five days� sail from Britain.�
Plutarch�s indications lead us to identify Ogygia with one of the Faroe Islands (where we also come across an island with a Greek‑sounding name: Mykines), Starting from here, the route eastwards, which Ulysses follows (Book V of the Odyssey) in his voyage from Ogygia to Scheria allows us to locate the latter, i.e. the land of the Phaeacians, on the southern coast of Norway, in an area perfectly fitting the account of his arrival, where archaeological traces of the Bronze Age are plentiful.
Moreover, while on the one hand �sker� in Old Norse means a �sea rock�, on the other in the narration of Ulysses�s landing Homer introduces the reversal of the river current (Od., V, 451‑453), which is unknown in the Mediterranean world but is typical of the Atlantic estuaries during high tide.
From here the Phaeacians took Ulysses to Ithaca, located on the far side of an archipelago, which Homer talks about in great detail. At this point, a series of precise parallels makes it possible to identify a group of Danish islands, in the south of the Baltic Sea, which correspond exactly to all of Homer�s indications.
Actually, the South‑Fyn Archipelago includes three main islands: Langeland (the �Long Island;� which finally� unveils the puzzle of the mysterious island of Dulichium), Aer� (which corresponds perfectly to Homeric Same) and T�singe (ancient Zacynthus).
The last island in the archipelago, located westwards, �facing the night,� is� Ulysses�s Ithaca, now known as Ly�. It is astonishing how closely it coincides with the directions of the poet, not only in its position, but also its topographical and morphological features. And here, amongst this group of islands, we can also identify the little island �in the strait between Ithaca and Same, where Penelope�s suitors tried to waylay Telemachus.
Moreover, the Elis, i.e. one of the regions of the Peloponnese, is described as facing Dulichium, thus is easily identifiable with a part of the large Danish island of Zealand. Therefore, the latter is the original �Peloponnese,� i.e. the �Island of Pelops�, in the real meaning of the word �island� (�n�sos� in Greek). On the other hand, the Greek Peloponnese (which lies in a similar position in the Aegean Sea, i.e. on its southwestern side) is not an island, despite its name.
Furthermore, the details reported in the Odyssey regarding both Telemachus�s swift journey by chariot from Pylos to Lacedaemon, along �a wheat‑producing plain,� and the war between Pylians and Epeans, as narrated in Book XI of the Iliad, have always been considered inconsistent with Greece�s uneven geography, while they fit in perfectly with the flat island of Zealand.
Let us look for the region of Troy now. In the Iliad it is located along the Hellespont Sea, which is systematically described as being �wide� or even �boundless.� We can, therefore, exclude the fact that it refers to the Strait of the Dardanelles, where the city found by Schliemann lies.
The� identification of this city with Homer�s Troy still raises strong doubts: we only have to think of Finley�s criticism in the World of Odysseus. It is also remarkable that Schliemann�s site corresponds to the location of the Greek‑Roman Troy; however, Strabo categorically denies that the latter is identifiable with the Homeric city (Geography 13, 1, 27).
On the other hand, the Danish Medieval historian Saxo Grammaticus, in his Gesta Danorum, often mentions a population known as �Hellespontians� and a region called Hellespont, which, strangely enough, seems to be located in the east of the Baltic Sea. Could it be Homer�s Hellespont? We can identify it with the Gulf of Finland, which is the geographic counterpart of the Dardanelles (as both of them lie northeast of their respective basins).
Since Troy, as we can infer from a passage in the Iliad (XXI, 334‑335), lay North‑East of the sea (further reason to dispute Schliemann�s location), then it seems reasonable, for the purpose of this research, to look at a region of southern Finland, where the Gulf of Finland joins the Baltic Sea.
In this area, west of Helsinki, we find a number of name‑places which astonishingly resemble those mentioned in the Iliad and, in particular, those given to the allies of the Trojans: Askainen (Ascanius), Karjaa (Caria), N�sti (Nastes, the chief of the Carians), Ly�kki (Lycia), Tenala (Tenedos), Kiila (Cilla), Raisio (Rhesus), Kiikoinen (the Ciconians) etc.
There is also a Padva, which reminds us of Italian Padua, which was founded, according to tradition, by the Trojan Antenor and lies in Venetia (the �Eneti� or �Veneti� were allies of the Trojans). What is more, the place‑names Tanttala and Sipil� (the mythical King Tantalus, famous for his torment, was buried on Mount Sipylus) indicate that this matter is not only limited to Homeric geography, but seems to extend to the whole world of Greek mythology.
What about Troy? Right in the middle of this area, halfway between Helsinki and Turku, we discover that King Priam�s city has survived the Achaean sack and fire. Its characteristics correspond exactly to those Homer handed down to us: the hilly area which dominates the valley with its two rivers, the plain which slopes down towards the coast, and the highlands in the background. It has even maintained its own name almost unchanged throughout all this time. Today, Toija is a peaceful Finnish village, unaware of its glorious and tragic past.
Various trips to these places, from July 11 1992 onwards, have confirmed the extraordinary correspondence between the Iliad�s descriptions and the area surrounding Toija. What is more, there we come across many significant traces of the Bronze Age. Incredibly, towards the sea we find a place called Aijala, which recalls the �beach� (�aigialos�), where, according to Homer, the Achaeans beached their ships (Il., XIV, 34).
The correspondence extends to the neighboring areas. For example, along the Swedish coast facing Southern Finland, 70 km north of Stockholm, the long and relatively narrow Bay of Norrt�lje recalls Homeric Aulis, whence the Achaean fleet set sail for Troy. Nowadays, ferries leave here for Finland, following the same ancient course.
They pass the island of Lemland, whose name reminds us of ancient Lemnos, where the Achaeans stopped and abandoned the hero Philoctetes. Nearby is �land, the largest island of the homonymous archipelago, which probably coincides with Samothrace, the mythical site of the metalworking mysteries.
The adjacent Gulf of Bothnia is easily identifiable with Homer�s Thracian Sea, and the ancient Thrace, which the poet places to the North‑West of Troy on the opposite side of the sea, probably lay along the northern Swedish coast and its hinterland (it is remarkable that the Younger Edda identifies the home of the god Thor with Thrace). Further south, outside the Gulf of Finland, the island of Hiiumaa, situated opposite the Esthonian coast, corresponds exactly to Homer�s Chios, which, according to the Odyssey, lay on the return course of the Achaean fleet after the war.
In short, apart from the morphological features of this area, the geographic position of the Finnish Troas fits Homer�s directions like a glove. Actually, this explains why a �thick fog� often fell on those fighting on the Trojan plain, and Ulysses�s sea is never as bright as that of the Greek islands, but always �dark‑wine� and �misty.�
As we travel through Homer�s world, we experience� the harsh weather which is typical of the Northern world. Everywhere in the two poems the weather, with its fog, wind, rain, cold temperatures and snow (which falls on the plains and even out to sea), has little in common with the Mediterranean climate; moreover, sun and warm temperatures are hardly ever mentioned. There are countless examples of this; for instance, when Ulysses recalls an episode of the Trojan War:
�The night was bad, after the north wind dropped,
and freezing; then the snow began to fall like icy frost
and ice congealed on our shields.� (Od., XIV, 475‑477)
In a word, most of the time the weather is unsettled, so much so that a bronze‑clad fighting warrior invokes a cloudless sky during the battle (Il., XVII, 643‑646). We are worlds away from the torrid Anatolian lowlands. The way in which Homer�s characters are dressed is in perfect keeping with this kind of climate. In the sailing season they wear tunics and heavy cloaks which they never remove, not even during banquets. This attire corresponds exactly to the remains of clothing found in Bronze Age Danish graves, down to such details as the metal brooch which pinned the cloak at the shoulder (Od., XIX, 226). Moreover, this fits in perfectly with what Tacitus states on Germanic clothing:
�The suit for everyone is a cape with a buckle�
(�sagum fibula consertum�; Germania, 17, 1).
This northern collocation also explains the huge anomaly of the great battle which takes up the central books of the Iliad. The battle continues for two days (Il., XI, 86; XVI, 777) and one night (Il., XVI, 567). The fact that the darkness does not put a stop to the fighting is incomprehensible in the Mediterranean world, but it becomes clear in the Baltic setting.
What allows Patroclus�s� fresh troops to carry on fighting through to the following day, without a break, is the faint night light, which is typical of high latitudes during the summer solstice.
This interpretation corroborated by the overflowing of the Scamander during the following battle (in the northern regions this occurs in May or June owing to the thaw)� allows us to reconstruct the stages of the whole battle in a coherent manner, dispelling the present‑day perplexities and strained interpretations. Furthermore, we even manage to pick out from a passage in the Iliad (VII, 433) the Greek word used to denominate the faintly‑lit nights typical of the regions located near the Arctic Circle: the �amphilyke nyx� is a real �linguistic fossil� which, thanks to the Homeric epos, has survived the migration of the Achaeans to Southern Europe.
It is also important to note that the Trojan walls, as described by Homer, appear as a sort of rustic fence made of wood and stone, similar to the archaic Northern wooden enclosures (such as the Kremlin Walls up to the 15th century) much more than the mighty strongholds of the Aegean civilizations.
Troy, therefore, was not deserted after the Achaeans plundered and burnt it down, but was rebuilt, as the Iliad states:
�At this point Zeus has come to hate Priam�s stock, so Aeneas�s power will rule the Trojans now and then his children�s children and those who will come later on.� (Il., XX, 306‑308)
On the contrary, Virgil�s quite tendentious, and much more recent, tale of Aeneas�s flight by sea from the burning city of Troy (a homage paid to the emperor Augustus�s family, considered Aeneas�s descendant) is absolutely unrelated to the real destiny of the Trojan hero and his city after the war. As regards this �Finnish� Aeneas, the first king of the dynasty that, according with Homer, ruled Troy after the war (that is a kingdom which, under Priam, dominated a vast area in southern Finland; Il., XXIV, 544‑546) it should be very tempting to suppose a relationship between his name and �Aeningia,� Finland�s name in Roman times (Pliny, Natural History, IV, 96).
It is remarkable that farmers often come across Bronze and Stone Age relics in the fields surrounding Toija. This is proof of human settlements in this territory many thousands of years ago. Further, in the area surrounding Salo (only 20 km from Toija), archaeologists have found splendid specimens of swords and spear points that date back to the Bronze Age and are now on display in the National Museum of Helsinki.
These findings come from� burial places, which include tumuli made of large mounds of stones that can be found at the top of certain hills, which rise from the plain today, but which, thousands of years ago, when the coastline was not as far back as it is nowadays, faced directly onto the sea. This relates to a passage in the Iliad, where Hector challenges an Achaean hero to a duel, undertaking, in case of victory, to give back the corpse of his opponent;
�so that the long‑haired Achaeans can bury him and erect a mound for him on the broad Hellespont, and some day one of the men to come, sailing with a multioared ship on the wine‑dark sea, will say: �This is the mound of a man slain in ancient times, he excelled but renowned Hector killed him.� (Il., VII, 85‑90; the description of Achilles� tomb in the last canto of the Odyssey is analogous)
These Homeric mounds �on the broad Hellespont� and the Bronze Age ones near Salo are remarkably similar.
Let us now examine the so‑called Catalogue of Ships from Book II of the Iliad, that lists the twenty‑nine Achaean fleets which took part in the Trojan War, together with the names of their captains and places of origin. This list unwinds in an anticlockwise direction, starting from Central Sweden, traveling along the Baltic coasts and finishing in Finland.
If we combine this with the data contained in the two poems and in the rest of Greek mythology, we may completely reconstruct the Achaean world around the Baltic Sea, where, as archaeology confirms, the Bronze Age was flourishing in the 2nd millennium B. C., favored by a warmer climate than today�s.
In this new geographical context, the entire universe belonging to Homer and Greek mythology finally discloses itself with its astonishing consistency. For example, by following the Catalogue sequence, we immediately locate Boeotia (corresponding to the area around Stockholm). Here it is easy to identify Oedipus�s Thebes and the mythical Mount Nysa (which was never found in the Greek world), where the Hyads nursed baby Dionysus.
Homer�s Euboea coincides with today�s island of �land, located off the Swedish coast in a similar position to that of its Mediterranean counterpart. Mythical Athens, Theseus�s native land, lay in the area of present day Karlskrona in southern Sweden (this explains why Plato, in his dialogue Critias, refers to it as being an undulating plain full of rivers, which is totally alien to Greece�s rough morphology).
The features of other Achaean cities, such as Mycenae or Calydon, as described by Homer also appear completely different from those of their namesakes on Greek soil. In particular, Mycenae lay in the site of today�s Copenhagen, where the island of Amager possibly recalls its ancient name and explains why it was in the plural.
Here, in the flat island of Zealand (i.e. the Homeric �Peloponnese�), we can easily identify Agamemnon�s and Menelaus�s kingdoms, Arcadia, the River Alpheus, and in particular, king Nestor�s Pylos, whose location was held to be a mystery even by the ancient Greeks.
By setting Homer�s poems in the Baltic, this age‑old puzzle is also solved at once. What is more, it is equally easy to solve the problem of the strange border between Argolis and Pylos, which is mentioned in the Iliad (IX, 153) but is �impossible� in the Greek world.
After the Peloponnese, the Catalogue mentions Dulichium and continues with Ithaca�s archipelago, which was already identified by making use of the indications the Odyssey supplies. We are thus able to verify the consistency of the information contained in the two poems as well as their congruity with the Baltic geography.
After Ithaca, the list continues with the Aetolians, who recall the ancient Jutes. They gave their name to Jutland, which actually lies near the South‑Fyn Islands. Homer mentions Pylene in the Aetolian cities, which corresponds to today�s Pl�n, in Northern Germany, not far from Jutland. Opposite this region, in the North Sea, the name of Heligoland, one of the North Frisian Islands, recalls Helike, a sanctuary of the god Poseidon mentioned in the Iliad (it is remarkable that an old name for Heligoland was Fositesland, where �Fosite,� an ancient Frisian god, is virtually identical to Poseidon).
As regards Crete, the �vast land� with �a hundred cities� and many rivers, which is never referred to as an island by Homer, it corresponds to the Pomeranian region in the southern Baltic area, which stretches from the German coast to the Polish same. This explains why in the rich pictorial productions of the Minoan civilization, which flourished in Aegean Crete, we find no hint of Greek mythology, and ships are so scantily represented.
It would also be tempting to assume a relationship between the name �Polska� and the Pelasgians, the inhabitants of Homeric Crete. At this point, it is also easy to identify Naxos (where Theseus left Ariadne on his return journey from �Crete� to �Athens�) with the island of Bornholm, situated between Poland and Sweden, where the town of Neks� still recalls the ancient name of the island.
Likewise, we discover that the Odyssey�s �River Egypt� probably coincides with the present‑day Vistula, thus revealing the real origin of the name the Greeks gave to Pharaohs� land, known as �Kem� in the local language.
This explains the incongruous position of the Homeric Egyptian Thebes, which, according to the Odyssey, is located near the sea. Evidently the Egyptian capital, which on the contrary lies hundreds of kilometers from the Nile delta and was originally known as W�se, was renamed by the Achaeans with the name of a Baltic city, after they moved down to the Mediterranean.
The real Thebes probably was the present‑day Tczew, on the Vistula delta. To the north of the latter, in the center of the Baltic Sea, the island of F�r� recalls the Homeric Pharos, which according to the Odyssey lay in the middle of the sea at a day�s sail from �Egypt� (whereas Mediterranean Pharos is not even a mile�s distance from the port of Alexandria). Here is the solution to another puzzle of Homeric geography that so perturbed Strabo.
The Catalogue of Ships now touches the Baltic Republics. Hellas lay on the coast of present‑day Esthonia, and thus next to the Homeric Hellespont (i.e. the �Helle� Sea�), today�s Gulf of Finland.
In this area also lies Kurland; the Curians� country, that is the mythical Curetes, linked with the worship of Zeus‑ where is found the figure of a supreme god, who is called Dievas in Lithuania and Dievs in Latvia; in local folklore he shows features typical of Hellenic Zeus (the genitive case of the name �Zeus� in Greek is �Di�s;� Il., I, 5). Moreover, Lithuanian has very archaic features and a notable affinity with the ancient Indo‑European language.
Phthia, Achilles�s homeland, lay on the fertile hills of southeastern Esthonia, along the border with Latvia and Russia, stretching as far as the Russian river Velikaja and the lake of Pskov. Myrmidons and Phthians lived there, ruled by Achilles and Protesilaus (the first Achaean captain who fell in the Trojan War) respectively. Next, proceeding with the sequence, we reach the Finnish coast, facing the Gulf of Bothnia, where we find Jolkka, which reminds us of Iolcus, Jason�s mythical city.
Further north, we are also able to identify the region of Olympus, Styx and Pieria in Finnish Lapland (which in turn recalls the Homeric Lapithae, i.e. the sworn enemies of the Centaurs who also lived in this area).
This location of Pieria north of the Arctic Circle is confirmed by an apparent astronomical anomaly, linked to the moon cycle, which is found in the Homeric Hymn to Hermes: it can only be explained by the high latitude. The �Home of Hades� was even further northwards, on the icy coasts of Russian Karelia: here Ulysses arrived, his journeys representing the last vestige of prehistoric routes in an era which was characterized by a very different climate from today�s.
In conclusion, from this review of the Baltic world, we find its astonishing consistency with the Catalogue of Ships; which is, therefore, an extraordinary �photograph� of the Northern Early Bronze Age peoples‑ as well as with the whole of Greek mythology. It is very unlikely that this immense number of geographic, climatic, toponymical and morphological parallels is to be ascribed to mere chance, even leaving aside the glaring contradictions arising from the Mediterranean setting.
As regards Ulysses� trips, after the Trojan War, when he is about to reach Ithaca, a storm takes him away from his world; so he has many adventures in fabulous localities until he reaches Ogygia, that is one of the Faroe Islands.
These adventures, presumably taken from tales of ancient seamen and elaborated again by the poet�s fantasy, represent the last memory of the sea routes followed by the ancient navigators of the Northern Bronze Age out of the Baltic, in the North Atlantic (where the �Ocean River� flows, i.e. the Gulf Stream), but they became unrecognizable because of their transposition into a totally different context.
For example, the Eolian island, ruled by the �King of� the winds,��son of the Knight,� is one of the Shetlands (maybe Yell), where there are strong winds and ponies. Cyclops lived in the coast of Norway (near Tosenfjorden: the name of their mother is Toosa): they coincide with the Trolls of the Norwegian folklore.
The land of Lestrigonians was in the same coast, towards the North; Homer says that there the days are very long (the famous scholar Robert Graves places the Lestrigonians in the North of Norway; moreover, in that area we find the island of Lam�j, which is probably the Homeric Lamos).
The island of sorceress Circe; where there are clear hints at the midnight sun (Od., X, 190‑192) and the revolving dawns (Od., XII, 3‑4), typical phenomena of the Arctic regions, is one of the Lofoten, beyond the Arctic Circle. Charybdis is the well‑known whirlpool named� Maelstrom, south of the island of Moskenes (one of the Lofoten).
South of Charybdis Odysseus meets the island Thrinakia, that means �trident:� really, near the Maelstrom lies Mosken, a three‑tip island. The Sirens are shoals and shallows, off the western face of the Lofoten, before the Maelstrom area, which are made even more dangerous by the fog and the size of the tides.
The sailors could be attracted by the misleading noise of the backwash (the �Sirens� Song� is a metaphor similar to Norse �kenningar�) on the half‑hidden rocks into deceiving themselves that landing is at hand, but if they get near, shipwreck on the reefs is inevitable.
Besides, we can find remarkable parallels between Greek and Norse mythology: for example, Ulysses is similar to Ull, archer and warrior of Norse mythology; the sea giant Aegaeon (who gave his name to the Aegean Sea) is the counterpart of the Norse sea god Aegir, and Proteus, the Old Man of the Sea (who is a mythical shepherd of seals, who lives in the sea depths and is capable of foretelling the future) is similar to the �marmendill� (mentioned by the� H�lfs Saga ok H�lfsrekka and the Landn�mab�k), a very odd creature, who resembles a misshapen man with a seal‑shaped body below the waist, and has the gift of prophecy but only talks when he feels like it, just like Proteus.
On the other hand, there are remarkable analogies between the Achaean and Viking ships: by comparing the details of Homeric ships with the remains of Viking ships found in the bay of Roskilde, we realize that their features were very similar.
We refer to the flat keel (one infers this from Od., XIII, 114), the double prow (we can deduce this from the expression �amphi�lissai� Homer frequently uses with regard to their double curve, i.e. at the stern and the prow), and the removable mast ‑this is a sophisticated feature typical of Viking ships, which was typical of Homeric ships, too: many passages in both the Iliad (I, 434; I, 480) and the Odyssey (II, 424‑425; VIII, 52) confirm without a shadow of doubt that the operations of setting up and taking down the mast were customary at the beginning and the end of each mission.
More generally speaking, apart from the respective mythologies, remarkable parallels are found between the customs of the Achaeans and those of the populations of Northern Europe, although they are separated by almost 3000 years. The systems of social relations, interests and lifestyles of the Homeric world and Viking society, despite the elapsed years, are surprisingly similar.
For instance, the �agor�,� the public assembly in the Homeric world, corresponds to the �thing� of the Vikings: this was the most important political moment in the running of the community for both peoples.
In his turn, Tacitus informs us that at his time the northern populations held public assemblies (Germania, chap. 11), that appear to be very similar to the �thing� (therefore, to the �agor�,� too). In a word, the parallels between the Homeric Achaeans, who lived during the Bronze Age, the Germans of the Roman period, and the Medieval Vikings testify to the continuity of the Northern world throughout the ages.
We should note that many Homeric peoples, as the Danaans, Pelasgians, Dorians, Curetes, Lybians and Lapithae, whose traces are not found in the Mediterranean, probably still exist in the Baltic world: they find their present counterparts in the Danes, Poles, Thuringians, Kurlandians, Livonians and Lapps (this identification is supported by their respective geographic locations).
Moreover, both poems mention the Sintians, mythical� inhabitants of Lemnos who were linked with the smith god Hephaestus (Il., I, 594; Od., VIII, 294): their name is exactly the same as today�s Sintians, i.e. a tribe of Gypsies�, who traditionally are metalworkers and coppersmiths. We also note a possible relationship between the �Argives,� another name for the Achaeans, �Argeioi� in Greek i.e., (V)argeioi, considering the usual loss of the initial V (the �digamma�) in the Homeric language, and the �Varangians� (Swedish Vikings).
As regards the Homeric Danaans (�D�naioi� in Greek, who were also Achaeans), at the beginning of the Gesta Danorum, Saxo Grammaticus states that �Dudon,� who� wrote a story about Aquitania, believes that the Danes owe their origins and name to the Danaans� (I, I, 1).
This comparison has hitherto been interpreted as a means of exalting the origin of the Danes, but now one could start to see them in a new light. If we still dwell upon the digamma, we should consider now the relationship between the Greek words �aret� (valour) and ��te� (fault or error) and their Latin counterparts �virtus� and �vitium�
respectively (apart from the initial V, the vowels A and I are often interchangeable: for example, �ambush� corresponds to the Italian �imboscata�).
By applying the same alteration (i.e. A?VI) to the name of the Achaeans (�Achaioi� in Greek), we get the word �Vikings.� In a word, Argeioi, Danaioi, and Achaioi, i.e. the three main names Homer gives the peoples comprising the protagonists of his poems, possibly came down to modern times as Varangians, Danes, and Vikings (never found in the Mediterranean area, even in ancient times) respectively.
Here, therefore, is the �secret� which is hidden inside� Homer�s poems and is responsible for all the oddities of Homeric geography: the Trojan War and the other events Greek mythology handed down were not set in the Mediterranean, but in the Baltic area, i.e. the primitive home of the blond, �long‑haired� Achaeans (the Odyssey claims that Ulysses was fair‑haired; XIII, 399; XIII, 431).
On this subject, the distinguished Swedish scholar, Professor Martin P. Nilsson, in his works reports considerable archaeological evidence uncovered in the Mycenaean sites in Greece, corroborating their northern origin. Some examples are: the existence of a large quantity of Baltic amber in the most ancient Mycenaean tombs in Greece (which is not to be ascribed to trade, because the amber is very scarce in the coeval Minoan tombs in Crete as well as in later graves on the continent); the typically Northern features of their architecture (the Mycenaean megaron is identical to the hall of the ancient Scandinavian Kings); the similarity of two stone slabs found in a tomb in Dendra with the menhirs known from the Bronze Age of Central Europe; the Northern‑type skulls found in the necropolis of Kalkani, etc.
Moreover, Aegean art and� Scandinavian remains dating back to the Bronze Age present a remarkable affinity; for example, the figures engraved on Kivik�s tomb in Sweden‑ so much so that a 19th century scholar suggested the monument was built by the Phoenicians.
Another sign of the Achaean presence in the Northern world in a very distant past is a Mycenaean graffito found in the megalithic complex of Stonehenge in Southern England. Other remains revealing the Mycenaean influence were found in the same area (�Wessex culture�), which date back to a period preceding the Mycenaean civilization in Greece.
A trace of contact is found in the Odyssey, which mentions a market for bronze placed overseas, in a foreign country, named �Temese,� never found in the Mediterranean area. Since bronze is an alloy of copper and tin, which in the North is only found in Cornwall, it is very likely that the mysterious Temese corresponds to the Thames, named �Tamesis� or �Tamensim� in ancient times. So, following Homer, we learn that, during the Bronze Age, the ancient Scandinavians used to sail to Temese‑Thames, �placed overseas in a foreign country,� to supply themselves with bronze.
This theory; which has already undergone a positive check by means of inspections carried out on the territories concerned, and meets Popper�s requirement on �falsifiability,� solves many other problems, such as the backwardness of the Homeric civilization compared to the Mycenaeans�; the absence of reference to seafaring and Greek mythology in the Minoan‑Cretan world; the inconsistencies between the morphology of several Homeric cities, such as Mycenae and Calydon, and their Greek namesakes; the absurdities concerning the regions of the Peloponnese, and the distance of the allies of the Trojans from the Dardanelles area, and so on.
We should also note that oxen are of the utmost importance in the Homeric world: this is the yet further evidence that we are not dealing with a Greek setting, undoubtedly more suitable for goats than oxen, but with a Northern one. Moreover, in a Greek environment one would expect a surfeit of pottery, but this is not the case: in both poems tableware is made solely of metal or wood, while pottery is absent. The poet talks of metal vases, usually of gold or silver. For example, in Ulysses�s palace in Ithaca,
�a maid came to pour water from a beautiful
golden jug into a silver basin.� (Od., I, 136‑137)
People poured wine �into gold goblets.� (Od., III, 472)� and �gold glasses.� (Od., I, 142). Lamps (Od., XIX, 34), cruets (Od., VI, 79) and urns, like the one (Il., XXIII, 253) containing Patroclus�s bones, were made of gold. The vessels used for pouring wine were also of metal: when one of them fell to the ground, instead of breaking, it �boomed� (Od., XVIII, 397).
In a word, on the one hand, the Homeric poems do not mention any ceramic pottery, which is typical of the Mediterranean world, but, on the other, they are strikingly congruent with the Northern world, where scholars find a stable and highly advanced bronze founding industry, compared to the pottery one, which was far more modest. As to the poor, they used wooden jugs (Od., IX, 346; XVI, 52), i.e. the cheapest and most natural form of vessel, considering the abundance of this material in the North: Esthonia and Latvia have a very ancient tradition of wooden beer tankards.
Therefore, it was along the Baltic coast that Homer�s events took place, before the Mycenaean migration southwards, in the 16th century B. C. This period is close to the end of an exceptionally hot climate that had lasted several thousands of years, the �post‑glacial climatic optimum.� It corresponds to the Atlantic phase of the Holocene, when temperatures in northern Europe were much higher than today (at that time the broad‑leaved forests reached the Arctic Circle and the tundra disappeared even from the northernmost areas of Europe).
The �climatic optimum� reached its peak around 2500 B. C., and began to drop around 2000 B. C. (�Sub‑Boreal phase�), until it came to an end some centuries later. It is highly likely that this was the cause that obliged the Achaeans to move down to the Mediterranean for this reason.
They probably followed the Dnieper river down to the Black Sea, as the Vikings (whose culture is, in many ways, quite similar) did many centuries later. The Mycenaean civilization, which did not originate in Greece, was thus born and went on to flourish from the 16th century B. C., soon after the change in North European climate.
The migrants took their epos and geography along with them and attributed the same names they had left behind in their lost homeland to the various places where they eventually settled. This heritage was immortalized by the Homeric poems and Greek mythology (the latter lost the memory of the great migration from the North probably after the collapse of the Mycenaean civilization, around the 12th century B. C., but kept a vague memory of its �hyperborean� links).
Moreover, they renamed with Baltic names not only the new countries where they settled, but also other Mediterranean regions, such as Libya, Crete and Egypt, thus creating an enormous �geographical misunderstanding� which has lasted until now.
The above mentioned transpositions of Northern place names were certainly encouraged, if not suggested, by a certain similarity (which the Mycenaeans realized owing to their inclination for seafaring) between Baltic geography and that of the Aegean: we only have to think of the analogy �land‑Euboea or Zealand‑Peloponnese (where they were obliged to force the concept of island in order to maintain the original layout).
The increasing presence of Greek‑speaking populations in the Mediterranean basin, with their cultural and trade supremacy, later consolidated this phenomenon, from the time of Mycenaean civilization to the Hellenistic‑Roman period.
In short, besides the geographic correspondences, in favor of this theory there is the remarkable temporal concurrence between the end of the �climatic optimum� in northern Europe and the settling of the Mycenaeans in the Aegean area.
We should also note that a catastrophic event happened at that time: we refer to the eruption of the volcano of Thera (Santorini), around the year 1630 B. C., which presumably extinguished the Minoan civilization in Crete and certainly had severe climatic consequences worldwide (traces of it were found even in the annual rings of very ancient American trees), giving rise to atmospheric phenomena which must have terrorized the Bronze Age civilizations in Northern Europe. If we consider that the �optimum� had begun to decline some centuries before, this event probably started, or quickened, the final collapse.
This is the same age as the arising of Aryan, Hyksos, Hittite and Cassite settlements in India, Egypt, Anatolia and Mesopotamia respectively. In a word, the end of the �climatic optimum� can explain the cause of the contemporary migrations of other Indo‑European populations (following a recent research carried on by Prof. Jahanshah Derakhshani of Teheran University, the Hyksos very likely belong to the Indo‑European family).
The� original homeland of the Indo‑Europeans was probably located in the furthest north of Europe, when the climate was much warmer than today�s. However, on the one hand G. B. Tilak in The Arctic home of the Vedas claims the Arctic origin of the Aryans, �cousins� of the Achaeans, on the other both Iranian and Norse mythology remember that the original homeland was destroyed by cold and ice.
It is also remarkable that, following Tilak (The Orion), the original Aryan civilization flourished in the �Orionic� period,� when the constellation of Orion marked the spring equinox. It happened in the period from 4000 up to 2500 B. C., corresponding to the peak of the �climatic optimum.�
We also note the presence of a population known as the Tocharians in the Tarim Basin (northwest China) from the beginning of the 2nd millennium B. C. They spoke an Indo‑European language and were tall, blond with Caucasian features. This dating provides us with yet another confirmation of the close relationship between the decline of the �climatic optimum� and the Indo‑European diaspora from Scandinavia and other Northern regions.
In this picture, it is amazing that the Bronze Age starts in China just between the 18th and the 16th centuries B. C.� (Shang dynasty). We should note that the Chinese pictograph indicating the king is called �wang,� which is very similar to the Homeric term �anax,� i.e. �the king� (corresponding to �wanax� in� Mycenaean Linear B tablets).
On the other hand, the terms �Yin� and �Yang� (which express two complementary principles of Chinese philosophy: Yin is feminine, Yang masculine) could be compared with the Greek roots �gyn‑� and �andr‑� respectively, which also refer to the �woman� and the �man� (�an�r ed� gyn�,��man and woman.� Od., VI, 184).
Moreover, it is no accident that in this period the Steppe peoples; the Scythians, as the Greeks used to call them, who were blond or red‑haired, flourished in the area where the Volga and the Dnieper run, the rivers that played such an important role as trade and transit routes between north and south. A passage from Herodotus about the origin of the Scythians corroborates this picture:
�They say that 1000 years elapsed from their origin and their first king Targitaos to Darius�s expedition against them.� (History, IV, 7)
As this expedition dates back to 514 B. C., their origin would thus date back to the 16th century B. C., i.e. the epoch of the Mycenaean migration. One could venture to include in this picture the Olmecs also.
They seem to have reached the southern Gulf Coast of Mexico in about the same period; thus, one could infer that they were a population who had formerly lived in the extreme north of the Americas (being connected to the Indo‑European civilization through the Arctic Ocean, which was not frozen at that time), and then moved to the South when the climate collapsed (this, of course, could help to explain certain similarities with the Old World, apart from other possible contacts).
Returning to Homer, this reconstruction not only explains the extraordinary consistency between the Baltic‑Scandinavian context and Homer�s world (compared to all the contradictions, over which the ancient Greek scholars racked their brains in vain, arising when one tries to place the Homeric geography in the Mediterranean), but also clarifies why the latter was decidedly more archaic than the Mycenaean civilization.
Evidently, the contact with the refined Mediterranean and Eastern cultures favored its rapid evolution, also considering their marked inclination for trade and seafaring which pervades not only the Homeric poems, but also all Greek mythology. Furthermore, this thesis fits in very well with the strong seafaring characterization of the Mycenaeans.
As a matter of fact, archaeologists confirm that the latter had been intensely practicing seafaring from their settling in Greece (their trade stations are found in many Mediterranean shores).
Therefore, they had inherited a tradition dating back to a long time before, which implies that their original land lay near the sea. Further, the northern features of their architecture and their own physical traits fit in perfectly with the parallels between Homeric and Norse myths, which not only possess extremely archaic features, but also are of an undeniably seafaring nature.
This is hard to explain with the current hypotheses about the continental origin of the Indo‑Europeans, whereas the remains found in England fit in very well with the idea of a previous coastal homeland (by associating this with the typically northern features of their architecture we remove any doubt as to their place of origin).
Many signs prove the antiquity of the two poems and their temporal incongruity with Greek culture (this also explains why any reliable information regarding the author, or authors, of the poems had been lost before classical times), showing that they in fact belong to a �barbaric� European civilization, very far from the Aegean, as has been noticed by authoritative scholars, such as Prof. Stuart Piggott in his Ancient Europe.
Moreover, Radiocarbon dating, corrected with dendrochronology (i.e. tree‑ring calibration) has recently questioned the dogma of the Eastern origin of European civilization. Prof. Colin Renfrew describes the consequences for traditional chronology:
�These changes bring with them a whole series of alarming reversals in chronological relationships. The megalithic tombs of western Europe now become older than the Pyramids or the round tombs of Crete, their supposed predecessors.
The early metal‑using cultures of the Balkans antedate Troy and the early bronze age Aegean, from which they were supposedly derived. And in Britain, the final structure of Stonehenge, once thought to be the inspiration of Mycenaean architectural expertise, was complete well before the Mycenaean civilization began.� (Before civilization, the radiocarbon revolution and prehistoric Europe, chap. 4, �The Tree‑ring Calibration of Radiocarbon�).
Consequently, Prof. Renfrew goes so far as to say:
�The whole carefully constructed edifice comes crashing down, and the story‑line of the standard textbooks must be discarded.� (Before civilization, chap. 5, �The Collapse of the Traditional Framework�).
To conclude, this key could allow us to easily open many doors that have been shut tight until now, as well as to consider the age‑old question of the Indo‑European diaspora from a new perspective.
Those who study the scriptures, already know that Adam was not the first man. He was only the first man of the present White Race. Adam and Eve found this land to which they had come already populated by an Asiatic people, among whom they had to live. Through the following generations, the inevitable happened. Whenever there is integration, intermarriages and mongrelization of the races follows.
There are recent finds in this area of China which proves that there were White Men and Women there many centuries ago; apparently the descendants of Adam and Eve.
If Yahweh had no purposes in mind which could not be properly served by the Asiatic and Negro races, there would have been no reason for Him to �form� Adam. Neither could the purposes which Adam and his descendants were intended to serve be fulfilled by a mongrelized race.
The consequences of this mongrelization are described in Genesis 6:5;
�And Yahweh saw that the wickedness of man was great in the earth and that every imagination of the thoughts of his heart was only evil continually.�
We find the word there mistranslated earth is the Hebrew word eh-rats, which only means the land, that particular land. There is a reason for using this Hebrew word. This was the place where integration and mongrelization had taken place, with its degenerative effects as compared to the qualitites possessed by each race separately.
We find confirmation of this in the reason why Yahweh spared Noah. In Genesis 6:9; the King James bible tells us Noah was perfect in his generations, a meaningless phrase. When anything in the King James bible fails to make good sense, it is a sign that you should go behind the mistranslation and see what the words were in the original Hebrew of Greek. The word here translated generations was the Hebrew word to-lad-aw, which means ancestry. Noah was perfect in his ancestry, a pure bred, not a mongrel.
Noah and his family were the last remaining pure blooded Adamites in the world, or so it seems. Therefore, Yahweh needed to save them to carry out the purposes He had planned for the Adamic people. The mongrelized people among whom Noah and his family lived must be removed, or they would be a trap which would eventually lead to the complete end of the pure blooded Adamites.
Have we had any other evidence to support our view that this was the region where Adam and Eve and their descendants settled? Yes! We have already shown some but now we will go further. Remember that Adam and Eve were driven out of Eden to the eastward. Later, when Cain murdered Abel, and as a punishment was banished form the land where Adam and Eve lived. Genesis 4:16 tells us;
�Cain went out from the presence of Yahweh and dwelt in the land of Nod, on the east of Eden.�
The Hebrew word �nod� means �wandering.� In the upper Tigris and Euphrates valleys, north of Eden, these rivers were running swiftly downhill from their mountains sources.
Therefore, they cut deep channels in the ground. Even today we can find the traces the ancient diversion dams, built by the ancients, to raise the water level up close to the surface of the ground. Then they would not have to pump it so high to get it into their irrigation canals.
Farther to the south, in the lower Tigris and Euphrates valleys where the slope was no longer steep, the accumulation of silt picked up by the rivers where they ran swiftly, was now settling to the bottom of the river beds, constantly raising the level. Every high water season, the rivers overflowed their banks and flooded the valleys.
This is exactly the same as we have in our own Mississippi valley. These annual floods washed away the people�s houses and sent them fleeing to higher ground. Therefore it was correctly called the land of Nod, the land of wandering.
Here Cain settled, and taught the people how to build high dikes along the river banks, just as we have done along the banks of the Mississippi river. This enabled the to stop the annual floods, so they could now build permanent cities of good houses, in the lower Tigris and Euphrates valleys, the land then called by its own inhabitants Sumer, and later called Chaldea.
In a very few places the Bible calls it the Plain of Shinar. Cain went back westward from where Adam and Eve lived. It was thus that Cain started his great empire. Yes, Cain is a well known historical character, found not only in the Bible.
However, he is know in history under another name. Cain established an empire which extended from the Persian Gulf to the Mediterranean Sea and even took in some of the larger islands in the Mediterranean Sea.
Another bit of evidence is found in Genesis 11:2; which tells us that after the flood, Noah�s descendants journeyed FROM THE EAST, until they came to the land of Shinar. Therefore, they must have come from some place east of the Tigris and Euphrates valleys. The only place where such a flood as the Bible describes could have occurred, eastward from the tigris and Euphrates valleys, is this mountain basin in Sinkiang which we have been talking about.
More evidence is found in the high water mark found in many places along the mountains which rim this basin, showing at one time this basin was a lake, extending to this well marked shoreline.
The mountains which rim this valley were not fully covered, for many of them range from 16,000 to 25,000 feet in height and one even ruses over 28,000 feet. But, within this basin are several smaller mountains which could be fully covered by a flood held within the higher rim of the valley. This basin, through which flows the Tarim River and which is sometimes known as the Tarim Basin in southern Sinkiang, is identified as the site of Noah�s flood.
In the King James Bible Genesis 7:11-12 reads:
�In the six hundredth year of Noah�s life, in the second month, the seventeenth day of the month, the same day were all the fountains of the great deep broken up and the windows of heaven were opened. The rain was upon the earth forty days and forty nights.�
A more careful translation makes it clear what really happened. In Moffatt�s Modern English translation we read,
�THE FOUNTAINS OF THE GREAT ABYSS BURST, and the sluices of heaven were opened.�
Smith and Goodspeed�s American translation says,
�THE FOUNTAINS OF THE GREAT ABYSS WERE ALL BROKEN OPEN, and the windows of the heavens were opened.�
A great earthquake broke up this waterproof layer of rock over the immense, water filled abyss or cavern beneath this Tarim Basin, causing the floor of the valley to settle and allowed the enormous underground reservoir to overflow and submerge the valley floor.
The great earthquake in the Himalaya mountains several years ago, produced similar effect in some places. Of course, the 40 days of torrential rains added to the flood. This filled the valley high enough to submerge the mountains which were inside the valley, exactly as Genesis 7:19-20 says. Don�t be misled by the mistranslation, �All the high hills that were under the hole heaven were covered.� The word mistranslated heaven is the Hebrew word �shaw-meh,� meaning the sky.
Since this Tarim Basin is somewhat more than 350 miles wide by more than 650 miles long, all the sky visible from anywhere near the center of this valley would cover only this valley and therefore only those lower mountains which were within the valley itself. What about Genesis 8:4 reading, �And the ark rested in the seventh month, on the seventeenth day of the month, upon the mountains of Ararat?�
Sometimes FAILURE TO TRANSLATE can be as misleading as mistranslation. Most people understand this to mean Mount Ararat in Armenia, some 1,600 miles west of the Tarim Basin. This is NOT what the Bible says. First of all, note it reads mountains of Ararat, mountains being in the plural, while Mount Ararat in Armenia is only a single peak.
However, Mount Ararat in Armenia was known until comparatively recent times as Mount Massis. Nobody had ever heard of it being called Mount Ararat in Bible Times. Furthermore, the Hebrew word �arat,� means only the tops of the hills. Therefore, correctly translated, Genesis 8:4 only says the ark came to rest upon the top of the high hills, some of the lower mountains which were in the valley.
When we carefully examine the while affair, and correct the mistranslations, we find that there is no conflict between what the Bible REALLY SAYS and either science or history. In fact, there never is any such conflict, it is on THE JUDEO-CHRISTIAN PREACHERS who find themselves contradicted by either science or history.
This is because they either won�t take the trouble to find out what the Bible really says, or they have made the mistranslation a supposedly sacred church doctrine and now they are stuck with it. Don�t let any Judeo-Christian church shake your faith in the Bible. The Bible is always right, even if the JUDEO-CHRISTIAN PREACHERS are wrong.
Remember another thing, the Chinese historical records; the Shu-King records that during the reign of King Yao, at a time beginning about the date of Noah�s flood, the Hwang Ho river carried excessive floods for three generations. Drainage out of the Tarim Basin to the eastward would have been carried off in the Hwant Ho river and would account for this.
Now we come to another false doctrine taught in many churches. Since nobody survived in all the earth except Noah and his family, everybody now living is a descendant of Noah and related by blood, no matter what race they belong to. We have already learned the flood did not cover the whole earth, but only one valley about 350 by 650 miles in size.
Chinese history was not interrupted by the flood although they do report purely local floods in the Hwang Ho valley where the waters were draining off. We have seen that Egyptian history is not interrupted by the flood, so the continent of Africa was not touched by it and the Negro race continued unaffected by it.
It would be absurd to think Noah and his wife, both of them being white, could have one white child, one Negro child, and one Chinese child. Remember in Genesis 1:11-25, when Yahweh created the world and its inhabitants and made the laws governing their reproduction, He did not make it absurd chaos, with whales giving birth to cattle and fish hatching out of birds� eggs. His law, several times repeated for emphasis, is always that each creature must bring forth strictly after its own kind.
The Judeo-Christian churches that teach this false doctrine of everybody being descended from Noah, never got it from the Bible, that is in any true translation of the Bible. As Moses wrote it in the Hebrew language, under divine inspiration, the Bible correctly tells that Noah�s descendants went out into a world already populated by people who had lived right through the time of the flood and were still going strong.
Ferrar Fenton�s Modern English Translation gives this correctly. In Genesis 10:1-5 we read about the descendants of Noah�s son Japheth;
�From these they spread themselves over the sea coasts of the countries of the nations, each with their language amongst the Gentile tribes.�
Genesis 10:20 tells of the descendants of Noah�s son Ham,
�These were the sons of Ham, in their tribes and languages, in the regions of the heathen.�
Genesis 10:31 completes it:
�These are the sons of Shem, by their tribes and by their languages, in their countries among the heathen.�
After The Flood: Genesis 11:1:
�And the whole earth was of one language, and of one speech.�
Now that�s what it says. It says that �the whole earth was of one language and one speech.� Trying to interpret this in the same manner as the previous verses to mean a world wide flood.
We would have to assume that it meant that every person on the earth spoke one language. Because that is what it says.
�And it came to pass, as they journeyed from the east, that they found a plain in the land of Shinar; and they dwelt there.�
Now they must be the people of all the earth. So if we follow the same line of interpretation we would have to assume all of the living people on the face of the earth spoke one language and they all came and dwelt in the land of Shinar.
Archaeologists and sciences can provide no record of all the people of the earth living in the land of Shinar, about 2400 years before the birth of Christ. But let�s go on and read some more.
This is the story of the angel bringing Lot out before the destruction of the cities of Sodom and Gomorrah:
�The sun was risen upon the earth when Lot entered into Zoar. Then the Lord rained upon Sodom and upon Gomorrah brimstone and fire from the Lord out of heaven; And he overthrew those cities, and all the plain, and all the inhabitants of the cities, and that which grew upon the ground. But his wife looked back from behind him, and she became a pillar of salt.� (Genesis 19:23)
We know from the story that those who were inside these cities on the plain were wicked. God destroyed those two cities, Lot and his two daughters and his wife went out and his wife died and was turned into a pillar of salt. And as some translations say, turned into a pillar of ashes. Leaving Lot and his two daughters alive.
When we read verses 30 and 31 listen to what is said:
�And Lot went up out of Zoar, and dwelt in the mountain, and his two daughters with him...And the firstborn said unto the younger, Our father is old, and THERE IS NOT A MAN IN THE EARTH to come in unto us after the manner of all the earth.�
There is not a man in the earth. When one interprets this in the same manor as he might interpret the others. You would have to assume, with the limited knowledge that we have hear, that what she means is that all the rest of humanity has died.
That there are no other men alive.� Because she said �THERE IS NOT A MAN IN THE EARTH� to come into us in like manner. And of course you know the rest of the story. That the girls went ahead and got pregnant by their father, because they �thought� all the rest of the men on earth had died. Yet in verse 30 we know there �were� others alive because Lot �feared to dwell in Zoar.�
If there were no others alive but him and his two daughters what did he have to fear. Of course those who don�t want to accept what is being presented will cry out: �He was afraid of the animals.�
But the scriptures don�t say that. And if one believes in a universal flood, then they have to believe that if there were animals that frightened Lot, the scriptures would say so. At any rate, here, the universal flood advocates will be forced to admit, all mankind was once again destroyed except Lot and his two daughters.
As we continue on to Genesis 41 we find that Joseph is in Egypt, and we are coming up to the time of the famine.
�And the seven years of plenteous-ness, that was in the land of Egypt, were ended. And the seven years of dearth began to come, according as Joseph had said: and THE DEARTH WAS IN ALL LANDS; but in all the land of Egypt there was bread.�
Following the same line of reasoning that has been followed before. That would mean that all the rest of the world was suffering from a famine or a dearth or drought, whatever turns you on; except for the land of Egypt. Verses 55-57:
�And when all the land of Egypt was famished, the people cried to Pharaoh for bread: and Pharaoh said unto all the Egyptians, God unto Joseph; what he saith to you, do. And THE FAMINE WAS OVER ALL THE FACE OF THE EARTH: And Joseph opened all the storehouses, and sold unto the Egyptians; and the famine waxes sore in the land of Egypt. And ALL COUNTRIES CAME INTO EGYPT to Joseph for to buy corn; BECAUSE THAT THE FAMINE WAS SO SORE IN ALL LANDS.�
We are arriving at a time when secular history is very specific, and we can study the ancient writings and get a pretty good idea of what was happening in those days. Of course, prior to the flood, we recognize that there are few actual written records available and thus are limited in our knowledge of that time in history.
But, if we follow the same reasoning as on the previous verses, the plain teaching of these scriptures, and if we interpret them in the same manner as the advocates of a universal flood do, this very definitely means that ALL OF THE REST OF THE WORLD WAS HAVING A FAMINE. Right?
This would mean that the Americas, England, Australia, China, New Zealand and etc., were suffering from a famine or dearth. And that they all came to Egypt to purchase food. Which would have been impossible because the Scriptures does not even recognize China or the rest of the world at this point in time.
From the knowledge that we have gained from history and archeology in the last thousand years of this time, after the flood, does not indicate that we have any knowledge of people from Asia, the Americas, the Eskimos, or anybody else from the opposite side of the earth going to Egypt to buy food. In fact, if one will study closely they will see that the only people involved in this famine was Egypt and the lands immediately surrounding Egypt.
If you will obtain a map of that portion of the earth, you will clearly see, that everything we have talked about so far, has been a relatively small geographic area in the Middle East.
But, yet many still teach that the flood was over all the earth. Now we have read that the famine at the time of Joseph was over all of the earth. Yet there is no record of it in our secular history, of people coming into Egypt from the other parts of the earth to buy food.
So far, to briefly relate what has transpired:
1). We have a flood which has covered all the earth;
2). We have a fire which the survivors have stated
specifically, that there were no other men left on the earth;
3). We also have a famine which was, a famine over ALL THE FACE OF THE EARTH.
Do we, have, in truth, three things which has either destroyed all of the populations of the earth or most of them. In fact, the last one leaves us to believe that all of the people on earth, who did not go to Egypt died.
Therefore, everyone on earth died of the famine except for those in Egypt and the few fortunate enough to be able to get to Egypt to get food.�
Now turn to the Tenth Chapter of Exodus where we will look at the plagues of Egypt, a story most know quite well. Exodus 10:14-15:
�And the locusts went up over all the land of Egypt, and rested in all the coasts of Egypt: very grievous were they; before them there were no such locusts as they, neither after them shall be such. For THEY COVERED THE FACE OF THE WHOLE EARTH...�
Here, we have yet another plague which covered the face of the whole earth.
�...so that the land was darkened; and they did eat every herb of the land, and all the fruit of the trees which the hail had left: and there remained not any green thing in the trees, or in the herbs of the field, {where?} through all the land of Egypt.�
Yet the phraseology or terminolo�gy is identical to what we have read before. They covered all the face of the whole earth.
In Ezekiel 39 all of the Israelites were killed. Did you know that all of the Israelites were dead in Ezekiel�s day? Well Ezekiel the prophet said so. Talking about this end of the age battle, he said:
�And the heathen shall know that the house of Israel went into captivity for their iniquity: because they trespassed against me, therefore hid I my face from them, and gave them into the hand of their enemies: SO FELL THEY ALL BY THE SWORD.�
Thus Ezekiel is telling us that all of the Israelites had fallen by the sword.
As we said earlier, we am not trying to be frivolous about this thing. I am simply trying to show you that when the Bible talks about something happening over all of an area or all of something or over all of the earth; that it does not necessarily mean that every single solitary person on every inch of the entire planet was involved. Because if it did we have already had more than four total destructions or almost total destructions.�����
Turn to Ezra we will show you, after we state the point, we will show you THE LOCATION OF THE FLOOD ACCORDING TO THE BIBLE!
�Now in the first year of Cyrus king of Persia, that the word of the Lord by the mouth of Jeremiah might be fulfilled, the Lord stirred up the spirit of Cyrus king of Persia, that he made a proclamation throughout all his kingdom, and put it also in writing, saying, Thus saith Cyrus king of Persia, The Lord God of heaven HATH GIVEN ME ALL THE KINGDOMS OF THE EARTH...�
Now we are arriving down to a point in history where we can easily verify the things that have happened in the scriptures according to secular written history.
There is no way for us to know what Cyrus was thinking or what God Almighty was thinking when He put it in His Word. But we know from secular history that Cyrus�s kingdom never extended more than a thousand miles from his capital city.
He had a tremendous kingdom; But the Bible says that God had given him �all the kingdoms of the earth.� Yet we know, and no minister tries to prove to us, that Cyrus ruled over China or North America or South America, or even over Africa.
They know better. They know just how foolish such teaching would be. Because it would not take long for their flock to realize that he was teaching a falsehood.
Turn to Daniel. You know that Daniel was a high official in the Babylonian Kingdom, and after he and the others has shown their protection and favor of God. Daniel 6:24:
�And the king commanded, and they brought those men which had accused Daniel, and they cast them into the den of lions, them, their children, and their wives; and the lions had the mastery of them, and brake all their bones in pieces or ever they came at the bottom of the den.�
Darius was so pleased with the actions of God and His apparent protection of Daniel that this was what he did. Then, in verse 25:�
�Then king Darius wrote unto all people, nations, and languages, that DWELL IN ALL THE EARTH...�
That is what is says. God�s Word says;
�Darius wrote unto all people, nations, and languages, THAT DWELL IN ALL THE EARTH; Peace be multiplied unto you. I make a decree, That in every dominion of my kingdom men tremble and fear before the God of Daniel.�
What was he talking about? Of course, when Darius wrote to all the people on the earth, he was writing to all the people IN HIS KINGDOM! And his kingdom, we know from secular history and from God�s Word was rather limited compared to the entire planet.
It covered an area contained in that small geographical area, where all of the Bible talks about. It did not exceed beyond it. Not a single bit of the previous history has gone outside that small geographical area of the Middle East.
Now turn to the New Testament to the book of Luke, where we read the reason that Joseph and Mary came to Bethlehem. Luke 2:1-3:
�And it came to pass in those days, that there went out a decree from Caesar Augustus, that ALL THE WORLD SHOULD BE TAXED. (And this taxing was first made when Cyrenius was governor of Syria.) And ALL went to be taxed, EVERY ONE INTO HIS OWN CITY.�
You see what happens if one interprets the scriptures the same way all the way through the Bible. Now we have Caesar Augustus ruling over ALL OF THE WORLD. Which is absolutely not true.
He never ruled over Germany. He never ruled over all of the British Isles. He never ruled over the Americas. He never ruled over Japan.
He never ruled over Asia, nor any of the other countries of the world. Do you not see how silly those who would have us believe that the flood was universal?
Because according to the way they interpret the scriptures they would have all the Indians in North and South America going into their cities to be taxed. They would have all the Chinese going into their cities to be taxed. They would have all the Japanese going into their cities.
Countries that never knew Rome existed for hundreds or thousands of years later. They would have you believe that. Because right here in the scriptures it says �ALL WENT TO BE TAXED, EVERYONE TO HIS OWN CITY.� It is clear that this scripture is not talking about the entire planet earth, it is talking, once again, about a certain geographical location in the Middle East.
For another point turn to the book of Acts. Did you know that if all of the people did not die in the famine in Egypt, that they are going to die in another famine, which is related in Acts.
�And in these days came prophets from Jerusalem unto Antioch. And there stood up one of them named Agabus, and signified by the spirit that there should be great dearth THROUGHOUT ALL THE WORLD: WHICH CAME TO PASS IN THE DAYS OF CLAUDIUS CAESAR.� (Acts 11:27-28)
Now we are down to about 1900 years ago, where we have excellent written secular history, and no one; not even the most ardent universal flood advocates would dare to declare that all the world had a great dearth or famine. Yet if one interprets these scriptures in the same way, then there must have been a famine over all the world, the entire planet 1900 years ago. And secular history failed to mention such a catastrophe.
To not park your brains at the door when you enter church. To think for yourselves and not to believe everything that someone tells you.
Search out the scriptures, think and reason, not just pat your self on the back and think what wonderful knowledge you have. That you have all the truth, and no one else has any. That is false. NO ONE, NOT ME, NOT YOU; NO ONE HAS ALL THE TRUTH EXCEPT ALMIGHTY GOD.
We are laying a foundation, so that you will fully understand what we are presenting, that it the interpretation is not true, that when the Bible says all the earth, it is talking about the entire planet.
THE ENTIRE BIBLE ONLY ENCOMPASSES ONE SMALL GEOGRAPHICAL AREA OF THE SCRIPTURES WHEN IT IS SPEAKING HISTORICALLY. It is only when it is speaking prophetically that it is speaking about other parts of the world, and then it is only concerned with the Children of Israel. And we don�t mean the Jews when we say that for they are no part of Israel. They are mostly of Japheth, Esau, and Khazars.
Turn to the Second Book of Peter. For we will now look at verses which are quite often referred to when the universal flood advocates talk of the flood again. And remember as we read these verses also, that so far, that the history written down in the Word of God still has not moved outside of the area of one small geographical portion of the Middle East.
All the way from the Book of Genesis to 2 Peter we have been talking about one geographical location. Peter is referring to the flood:
�For if God spared not the angels that sinned, but cast them down to hell, and delivered them into chains of darkness, to be reserved unto judgment; And spared not the old world, but saved Noah the eighth person, a preacher of righteousness, bringing in the flood upon the world of the ungodly; And turning the cities of Sodom and Gomorrah into ashes condemned them with an overthrow, making them an ensample unto those that after should live ungodly.� (2 Peter 2:4-6)
God brought in the flood upon the world of the ungodly. And we would state that this doesn�t necessarily mean all the world, the entire planet. First of all you must remember and understand the principle that God operates upon. Which is, that sin is the transgression of the Law. And where there is no Law there is no transgression.
God does not destroy even peoples unless they have the Law and violate it. And you can read this far in the Holy Scriptures and you will not find definite and conclusive evidence that God�s Law was ever preached beyond the confines of that small geographical area of the world.
God�s Law, as far as the scriptures relates had not gone out to the other parts of the planet. So the flood was brought in upon the ungodly.
Again this does not necessarily mean all the world - the entire planet. As we have already shown quite clearly, we believe. Of course there will be skeptics, such as one of the thieves which was crucified next to Christ. Who railed and mocked Him as they died.
�For this they willingly are ignorant of, that by the word of God the heavens were of old {notice he was talking about people being destroyed who were �WILLINGLY� ignorant, and definitely disobeying the Word of the Lord}, and THE EARTH standing out of the water and in the water: Whereby the world that then was, being overflowed with water, perished.� (2 Peter 3:5-6)
But this does not necessarily prove a world or planet wide flood. Now make no misunderstanding, we know these can not be used to preach or teach a limited flood, but the universal flood advocates almost always use them and so we must recognize they are there.
Turn to Joshua, who we believe will show you the bounds of Noah�s flood. You must understand that this was happening to Joshua approx. 500 years AFTER Shem.
So we are talking about a period of time which was 500 years after one of Noah�s sons who was actually in the Ark during the flood. We are not talking about Joshua doing something a 1000 or 2000 years after the flood. But only about 500 years after it. He has called all the people of Israel together. He�s old and knows he is going to die.
�Joshua gathered all the tribes of Israel to Shechem {a city between the Mediterranean and the Jordan River - this is where this event took place}, and called for the elders of Israel, and for their heads, and for their judges, and for their officers; and they presented themselves before God. And Joshua said unto all the people, Thus saith the Lord God of Israel, YOUR FATHERS DWELT ON THE OTHER SIDE OF THE FLOOD in old time, even Terah the father of Abraham, and the father of Nachor: and they served other gods.� (Joshua 24:1-2)
Now we have read, in part, the Bible through several times and never realized what is being presented here. Every time I read it I always thought in terms of time. Your fathers dwelt BEFORE the flood. But that is not what it is saying, is it? It says �Your fathers dwelt on the OTHER SIDE OF THE FLOOD.� And then it gives the names of their fathers. �Terah, the father of Abraham.� If you think about it for a minute it will dawn upon you that Terah didn�t live BEFORE the flood. Terah lived just before Abraham, long AFTER the flood.
Yet the scriptures says that Terah lived �on the other side of the flood.� Now if you will read this several times and �think� use your heads you will realize that Joshua is not talking about �time.� HE IS TALKING ABOUT GEOGRAPHY!
He is telling them �WHERE THEY LIVED,� not WHEN they lived! Now listen carefully to what he says: �...and I took your father Abraham FROM THE OTHER SIDE OF THE FLOOD, and led him throughout all the land of Canaan, and multiplied his seed, and gave him Isaac.�
Turn to Genesis 11 and we will show you where Terah, Nachor and Abraham lived. Genesis 11:10: �These are the generations of Shem: Shem was an hundred years old, and begat Arphaxad two years AFTER THE FLOOD.�
Then it goes down and gives all of the descendants of Shem. And two hundred and twelve years AFTER THE FLOOD we read in verse 24:
�And Nahor lived nine and twenty years, and begat Terah.�
Yet in Joshua 24, Joshua says, �your fathers even Terah,� which Genesis 11 said was born two hundred and twelve years AFTER THE FLOOD, �LIVED ON THE OTHER SIDE OF THE FLOOD.� And then it talks about bringing Abraham.
�And Terah took Abram {Abraham} his son, and Lot the son of Haran his son�s son, and Sarai his daughter in law, his son Abram�s wife; and they went forth with them from Ur of the Chaldees, to go into the land of Canaan; and they came unto Haran, and dwelt there. And the days of Terah were two hundred and five years: and Terah died in Haran.� (Genesis 11:31-32)
�� Joshua said in Joshua 24:3:
�And I {Almighty God} took your father Abraham FROM THE OTHER SIDE OF THE FLOOD...�
Now it is very apparent that Abraham did not live BEFORE the flood. So if God brought Abraham FROM THE OTHER SIDE OF THE FLOOD, what is He talking about.
Well he is telling us that he, Joshua, standing at Shechem is on one side of where the flood was; and Abraham living in Ur of the Chaldees was living on the other side of the flood. And there is no doubt that he is talking about the flood of Noah.
So if you wish to know where the Flood of Noah was, then get you a good map of that part of the world in old times and look between Ur of Chaldees and Shechem and you will see the geographical area of the flood.
Now the scriptures tell us to have a second witness. So we will turn to a well known verse for this second witness. I believe that God has laughed at those who espouse a universal flood, and has revealed its location in one of the best known verses in the Bible, as a jest. To see if we would search out the truth for ourselves. Or would we grope in blindness.
�And if it seem evil unto you to serve the Lord, choose you this day whom ye will serve; whether the gods which your fathers served THAT WERE ON THE OTHER SIDE OF THE FLOOD {Not �BEFORE� the flood, but �ON THE OTHER SIDE OF THE FLOOD�}, or the gods of the Amorites, in whose land ye dwell: but as for me and my house, we will serve the Lord.� (Joshua 24:15)
Most ministers will read this and say �Well I don�t know what you people are going to do, but I am going to serve the Lord.�
Yet right here in that very commonly used verse is the double or second witness that Joshua knew he stood on one side of the flood, and that Abraham was born and raised on THE OTHER SIDE OF THE FLOOD. We realize this is a futile effort for most Christians because they do not want to know the truth. Because they would rather believe a lie than the truth. God said this was so:
�A wonderful and horrible thing is committed in the land; The prophets prophesy falsely, and the priests bear rule by their means; AND MY PEOPLE LOVE TO HAVE IT SO...� (Jeremiah 5:31-32)
This is one of the reasons that Hosea declared:
�My people are destroyed for lack of knowledge: {why?}: BECAUSE THOU HAST REJECTED KNOWLEDGE...� (Hosea 6:4)
And if you will read the scriptures carefully and honestly you will see God destroyed the old world because the people were mixing with other races.� �����������