SIM MOUNTAIN
Something in the opening lines of the Yeghrdut entry in the Russian-Armenian encyclopedia on churches and monasteries of the Taron Province then caught my attention. It was the statement regarding the monastery being located on Sim Mountain (Sim ler) or Black Mountain (Sev sar). The latter is a quite common name for hills and mountains in the region, usually under the Turkish word for black, which is kara. However, Sim Mountain needed further investigation, as it seemed somehow familiar. So I checked the history and topography of Taron and found something very interesting indeed.
Movses Khorenatsi, the father of Armenian history, who lived in the fifth century AD, wrote extensively on the region’s mythological past, in particular the life and exploits of Armenian cultural heroes thought to be descended from Noah (Armenians themselves believe they are descended from Noah11). For instance, Hayk, the conqueror of King Bel, or Nimrod, is said to have been the great-great-great grandson of Japheth, the son of Noah. Shem, Noah’s chosen heir, is also connected with Armenia’s legends, and according to Movses, after the ark came to rest, Shem departed with his sons and came upon a mountain, which he afterward named Sim (or Simsar, which means Mount Sim).12
According to Movses, Noah, having departed from the ark, established a dwelling for himself and his family (afterward named Thamanin, the modern Cizre in southeast Turkey), while Shem continued northwestward with his sons, and that
coming to a plain in the high mountains, he stopped by a river and named the mountain Sim after his own name. He gave this region to his youngest son Tarpan [the Armenian word for ark is Tapan]. . . . Tarpan remained with his sons and daughters in the region given to him by his father and called it Taron and later Taruperan after his own name.13
Taron, or Taruperan, was, as we have already seen, the name of an ancient Armenian kingdom embracing the plain of Mush, implying, quite clearly, that Mount Sim overlooked the plain, which, of course, it does. Thus Yeghrdut was founded either on or very close to the spot where Shem and his sons are supposed to have set up camp after leaving the ark. As Movses Khorenatsi’s home village was nearby Chorene, immediately south of Yeghrdut, it seems unlikely that the monks of the monastery would not have been aware of this clearly local tradition featuring Shem, the son of Noah.
Movses Khorenatsi’s geographical positioning of Mount Sim and the wanderings of Noah and his family also make it clear that Mount Ararat is not the Place of Descent, the site where Noah’s ark came to rest after the Flood. Shem is said to have traveled “northwest” to reach Sim Mountain in the kingdom of Taron (see figure 36.2), which fits perfectly with the ancient belief that the ark went aground on Mount al-Judi, the modern Cudi Dağ in southeast Turkey. In other words, the story as preserved in Movses’s fifth-century history of Armenia was written with Mount al-Judi in mind as the Place of Descent, and not Mount Ararat, which lies some distance to the east-northeast of Sim Mountain.
Figure 36.2. Map of eastern Turkey showing the candidates for the Place of Descent in Noahic tradition. Note also the route taken by Noah’s son Shem from the Place of Descent to Sim Mountain, said to overlook the kingdom of Taron, that is, the plain of Mush.
All these Armenian traditions indicate that the plain of Mush and the surrounding mountain ranges were seen as important to the events portrayed in the generations between Adam and Abraham, although what they did not do was give credence to the belief that here also was the terrestrial Paradise. What I needed was better confirmation that Armenia, and in particular the area under discussion, was once believed to have been the site of Eden, something that Movses Khorenatsi worryingly makes no mention of in his history of Armenia.
As we see next, that confirmation is provided by the Reverend Marmaduke Carver, who in his fabulous work A Discourse of the Terrestrial Paradise, published in 1666, did so much to show that the area between Thospites Lake (Lake Van), the Tigris Tunnel in Sophene, and Bingöl Mountain in the Armenian Highlands was the true site of the terrestrial Paradise.
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THE SECRETS OF ADAM
The Reverend Marmaduke Carver wished also to find absolute confirmation that the southern part of Armenia Major, modern eastern Turkey, was the authentic site of the Garden of Eden. Writing in A Discourse of the Terrestrial Paradise, he notes: “Tradition successfully continued in these parts [i.e., after the Flood], that hereabout was the place of Adam’s Paradise,”1 adding:
The Author that affirms this is Methodius. . . . Now this ancient Author (in lib. Revel.) speaking of the death of Seth, and the secession of his posterity from the posterity of Cain, hath among other things this remarkable passage: Mortuo Seth separavit se Cognatio ejus à sobole Caini, redierúntque ad natale solum. Nam & Pater corum vivens prohibuerat nè miscerentur. Et habitavit Cognatio Seth in Cordan monte, Paradiso terrestri proximo.2
The Latin text translates as: “[After the death of Adam] Seth separated from the issue of Cain and returned to his native country, for his father had forbidden their lives to mix. And Seth lived with his kin on Mount Cordan, next to the terrestrial Paradise.”
Having cited Methodius’s words, Carver notes: “If the terrestrial paradise were near the Mount Cordan, and that Mount Cordan or Gordiæus stood in the same place where Ptolemy hath set it; then we may rest secured, that the happy seat of our First Parents Habitation was at or about the very place that we have described.”3
THE REVELATIONS OF METHODIUS
Very pertinent words indeed, so who was Methodius and where was Mount Cordan, or Gordiæus? Methodius of Olympus was a theologian and prolific writer of the early fourth century (he died ca. AD 311). The quotation cited by Carver, or variations of it, is from a work accredited to Methodius entitled the Apocalypse or Revelations (Revelatio). It contains a commentary on the book of Genesis and an account of the coming of the Antichrist and the inevitable end of the world. However, there is a problem, as there is no record of Methodius ever having written such a book. Moreover, it is quite clear from its contents that the Apocalypse was written in response to the Arab invasion of Asia Minor in the second half of the seventh century AD, three hundred years after Methodius’s death. In other words, its author was most likely a Christian writer of the seventh century who wanted to bolster the tract’s value by accrediting it to Methodius.
Exactly who penned this pseudepigraphical, or falsely attributed, work is unclear (the author is now referred to as Pseudo-Methodius), although what is important is that it was written originally in Syriac, the language of Northern Mesopotamia, meaning that it could well have originated from somewhere close to the city of Edessa, modern Şanlıurfa. This seems certain, as just a year or two after its initial circulation, modified versions, known today as the Edessene Apocalypse, were being produced in the area, quite possibly in one of the monasteries locally.4
WHERE IS CORDAN MONTE?
Which version of the Apocalypse the Reverend Marmaduke Carver consulted for his book is not cited. Most likely it was a volume in the York Minster Library, where the churchman did much of his research for A Discourse of the Terrestrial Paradise. Yet if we accept Carver’s translation as authentic (and I have certainly found a Latin version of the Apocalypse with a date of 1593 that contains these exact same lines5), it implies that in the late seventh century an accomplished theological writer, living close to Edessa and the site of Göbekli Tepe, possessed knowledge implying that Seth, his father Adam, his mother Eve, and their extended family group inhabited “Cordan monte,” or Mount Cordan. Even more significant is his conviction that this mountain was situated proximo, or “next,” to the terrestrial Paradise; that is, the Garden of Eden.
Carver assumed that “Cordan monte” was a reference to the Gordiæus Mountains (also written Gordyene or Corduene), which, he says, the Greco-Roman geographer Ptolemy (AD 90–168) located in the district of Armenia Major. Apparently, Ptolemy saw them as at “the same latitude with the springs of the Tigris: Strabo joins them with Mount Taurus.”6 Today, this mountain range is identified wit
h the Kardu Mountains, which are farther south and include Mount al-Judi, the traditional resting place of the ark. Yet the classical writers located the Gordiæus Mountains north of here, in the Eastern Taurus range, which borders the plain of Mush on its southern side.
So this fixed the mythical world of Adam, Eve, Seth, and their extended family firmly within reach not just of the source of the Tigris, but also Sim Mountain, where Shem and his sons settled, and the Yeghrdut monastery was founded in the fourth century AD. Is this where Adam and Eve came to rest after being expelled from the Garden of Righteousness, somewhere in the vicinity of Yeghrdut, where afterward Shem established his own home? Interestingly, it was Shem who Noah sent to retrieve Adam’s skull from its place of burial in order that it might be brought on to the ark,7 even though the bodies of Eve, Seth, and all the other early patriarchs were left in situ. Apparently, the site of Adam’s burial was the “Cave of Treasures,” located on a “Holy Mountain”8 that was said to overlook the site of the original Garden of Eden.9 Did this cave exist somewhere near Yeghrdut, and could it be found today?
Of course, the historical validity of any such material is at best questionable, and yet there is no denying that the power of belief in a fictional mythos can be just as real as if not more real than, a tangible, mundane reality. Moreover, mythical data can encode within it kernels of truth that can manifest in the real world, and so nothing should be ignored or dismissed out of hand without due consideration.
THE SEED OF SETH
So to suddenly find that Adam and Eve’s homeland after their expulsion from the Garden of Eden was somewhere in the vicinity of the Eastern Taurus Mountains was very compelling indeed. Moreover, the introduction of Seth to the story was also highly significant, as it was the “seed of Seth,” or Seth’s descendants, who were to inherit God’s kingdom after the death of Adam. This belief is derived from a passage in Genesis 4:25, which reads:
And Adam again knoweth his wife, and she beareth a son, and calleth his name Seth, “for God hath appointed for me another seed instead of Abel:” for Cain had slain him.
The words “another seed” is interpreted as meaning that through Seth, the third son of Adam, God created a new branch of humanity that some Jews and early Christians believed was the only truly righteous tribe of God. Everybody else was descended of Cain, Seth’s evil brother, and was thus wicked by descent.
Many Gnostic sects that thrived in the first five centuries of the Christian era saw Seth as the first of three manifestations of Christ himself. The others would seem to have been Shem, the son of Noah, and Jesus Christ himself. Indeed, the heavenly Seth was seen to have manifested in this world through the incarnation of Jesus, the two being synonymous with each other.
THE NAG HAMMADI LIBRARY
Gnostic followers of Seth, or Sethites as they were known, flourished among religious sects and secret groups that thrived in regions such as Palestine, Syria, Asia Minor, Egypt, and Armenia. They had their own gospels, or scriptures, many of which were found together inside a cave near Nag Hammadi in Middle Egypt in 1945. What became known as the Nag Hammadi library is the most important collection of Gnostic and Sethite texts ever studied. One theory is that the codices may have belonged to a local Coptic monastery and were buried following Bishop Athanasius’s condemnation of the use of non-canonical holy books, that is, those not officially recognized by the Roman Church, in AD 367.
Among the Sethian titles in the Nag Hammadi collection are the Three Steles of Seth, Zostrianos (some see Zostrianos as a manifestation of Zoroaster, the divine leader of the Zoroastrians), the Second Treatise of the Great Seth, the Paraphrase of Shem (or Seth), Allogenes, the Trimorphic Prottenoia, and Melchizedek. These Gnostic gospels have some very interesting things to say about Seth, who is occasionally confused or identified with Shem,10 the son of Noah. For instance, it is suggested that before his death, Adam transmitted to Seth certain matters concerning everything from the divine or angelic nature of humankind to the movement of the stars and heavenly bodies, and the knowledge of a coming catastrophe involving fire and water. These “secrets of Adam” are said to have been recorded before being hidden away until humanity was ready to receive them. Some of these secrets were to be revealed, periodically, through the appearance of four Phosters, that is, revealers or illuminators, who would incarnate for this express purpose,11 while others would remain hidden until the right time for their discovery.
THE PILLARS OF SETH
What intrigued me most about this tradition is that Seth apparently inscribed the secrets of Adam on pillars or wrote them down on stone tablets, called steles, which were then deposited somewhere in the ancient world, usually either on or within a mountain cave of some description. For instance, the Jewish writer Flavius Josephus (AD 37–100), in his book The Antiquities of the Jews, talks about Seth leaving behind children, who “inhabited the same country without dissensions, and in a happy condition.” They were “the inventors of that peculiar sort of wisdom which is concerned with the heavenly bodies, and their order.” He goes on to write:
And that their inventions might not be lost before they were sufficiently known, upon Adam’s prediction that the world was to be destroyed at one time by the force of fire, and at another time by the violence and quantity of water, they made two pillars, the one of brick, the other of stone: they inscribed their discoveries on them both, that in case the pillar of brick should be destroyed by the flood, the pillar of stone might remain, and exhibit those discoveries to mankind; and also inform them that there was another pillar of brick erected by them. Now this remains in the land of Siriad to this day.12
Here the secrets of Adam are inscribed on pillars, one of brick, the other of stone, which are erected to preserve this knowledge beyond the coming cataclysm involving both a conflagration and deluge. So where exactly is Siriad (also written Seiris or Sirian), the named location of the inscribed pillars?
THE LAND OF SIRIAD
Because of the confusion between Seth, the son of Adam, and Seth, the brother of Osiris in Egyptian mythology, it has long been assumed that Siriad means Egypt. Here the inhabitants venerated the bright star Sirius, a similar sounding name to Siriad, while the pillars of Seth themselves were identified with the Great Pyramid and its neighbor, the Second Pyramid. This was a surmise assumed by the scholarly world following the publication in 1737 of a very popular translation of Josephus’s works by English theologian, historian, and mathematician William Whiston (1667–1752).13 Although Whiston did not believe that the pillars of Seth could have survived the conflagration and Flood, he did identify the land of Siriad as Egypt.14
Yet this connection with Egypt is a misnomer, for even if Seth did somehow become associated with the Great Pyramid, we know that Adam’s son “lived,” as Pseudo-Methodius tells us, somewhere in Armenia, which, following the carving up of the Greek Empire after the death of Alexander the Great in 323 BC, came under the control of the Syrian Seleucid Empire. Even with the dissolution of the empire in 190 BC, two Seleucid satraps, or governors, revolted and assumed control of Armenia Major and Armenia Minor (or Lesser Armenia), located west of the Euphrates River, and proclaimed themselves kings. Hellenic Greek practices and customs continued to thrive in Armenia and Northern Mesopotamia with all its Syrian influences. What is more, Edessa’s kings, who were mostly called Abgar or Manu, kept their links with Syriac culture and tradition, and retained Syrian as the main written language.
There is really nothing to link the pillars of Seth with Egypt, and all the indications are that Siriad is a straightforward reference to Syria. In fact, before William Whiston’s translation of Josephus’s works, earlier translators did not hesitate to link Siriad with Syria. D. Eduardi Bernardi, for instance, in a translation of Josephus published at Oxford in 1687, discusses whether Siriad means Syriac in origin or belonging to Syria.15
Elsewhere there is additional evidence that Seth was depositing the “secrets of Adam” closer to home. For instance, at the end of the
Latin Vita Adae et Evae, the “Life of Adam and Eve,” following Adam’s death Eve instructs their children to write on tablets of stone and clay everything they have learned both from her and their father. During the coming cataclysm, that which is written on stone will survive the Flood, while that which is written on clay will survive the conflagration. The implication is that Seth then conceals the tablets in the same vicinity; in other words, somewhere close to the terrestrial Paradise.16
THE ROCK OF TRUTH
The Apocalypse of Adam, one of the Gnostic texts included in the Nag Hammadi library, contains the revelation that “Adam taught his son Seth in the seven hundredth year.” Here Adam tells Seth to record all of his and Eve’s experiences in the Garden of Paradise (see figure 37.1). This is to include the revelations conveyed to them by three angelic informants regarding the future adventures of the elect, that is, the seed of Seth, along with knowledge of the imminent cataclysm of fire and flood, and details of the coming savior, who is Seth himself. Collectively, this wisdom is described as the “hidden knowledge of Adam.” The reader is told also that a special revelation is to be written “on a high mountain, upon a rock of truth.”17
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