‘Instructed by Wisdom who designed it all’

by Damien F. Mackey Man is the measure of all things. - Protagoras God ought to be to us the measure of all things, and not man, as men commonly say: the words are far more true of Him. - Plato Attempting to push God right into the background It is with the above quotations from the Greek sophist, Protagoras, and from Plato, that philosopher-scientist Dr. Gavin Ardley introduces his classic book, Aquinas and Kant - The Foundations Of The Modern Sciences (1950), that I personally would rate as the best book ever written on the philosophy of science. Ardley then gets to work to demonstrate that there are two orders of being, the real (or ontological) order and the categorial (or artifact) order, and that man can be the measure only of the latter order. This distinction of the two orders was supposedly recognised and acknowledged by Cardinal (now Saint) Robert Bellarmine at the time of Galileo Galilei. The latter, himself a talented experimental scientist, did not make the necessary distinction. Thus John Paul II observed in his address on Galileo (text from L‘Osservatore Romano, 4 Nov 1992): In the first place, like most of his adversaries, Galileo made no distinction between the scientific approach to natural phenomena and a reflection on nature, of the philosophical order, which that approach generally calls for. That is why he rejected the suggestion made to him to present the Copernican system as a hypothesis, inasmuch as it had not been confirmed by irrefutable proof. Such therefore, was an exigency of the experimental method of which he was the inspired founder. …. [End of quote] Still, John Paul II credited Galileo with being “more perceptive” than “most” of the then batch of “Theologians” in regard to “scriptural interpretation”. “If Scripture cannot err”, Galileo had written to Benedetto Castelli, “certain of its interpreters and commentators can and do so in many ways”. But Galileo apparently got completely carried away with his experimental science, and now wanted the Scriptures to be interpreted in the light of the new scientific discoveries. Dr. Ardley’s seemingly weak exhortation, “Above all, no zeal”! is meant to be understood, it seems, in the context of imprudent Galilean zealotry; a fault that Ardley claims did not affect some of the more common sense scientists of a later era, notably Sir Isaac Newton. But it is certainly a common fault amongst many of today’s (third millennium) scientists, notably the confirmed atheistic ones, who, going much further than had Galileo – whom John Paul II accredits as being in fact “a sincere believer” – seek to elevate the inferior order, man’s, over the superior order, God’s – customarily now by completely denying the latter. In an article in The Daily Telegraph (a Sydney newspaper), an ailing Stephen Hawking, wheelchair-bound British physicist – a modern successor to Sir Isaac Newton as Cambridge’s Lucasian professor of mathematics (since 1979) – is quoted as stating as his goal “nothing less than “a complete understanding of the universe”.” On this, see e.g. my article: Hawking and Dawkins - science fiction cosmology (3) Hawking and Dawkins - science fiction cosmology | Damien Mackey - Academia.edu Now, in itself, the quest for total wisdom and knowledge is biblical, Solomonic. The great king of Israel claimed to have “come to the knowledge of everything”. But, not entirely by his own efforts, for in this he claimed to have been “instructed by Wisdom who designed it all” (Wisdom 7:21-22). Most modern sages, on the other hand, seek to acquire the ‘theory of everything’ without any reference at all to the Divine, which to them is an unverifiable hypothesis. That is, they act purely according to their own efforts. Hence they completely discard the Divine map or blueprint that King Solomon had so wisely followed, with such great success; until he, too, finally, and most tragically, succumbed to the folly of self-reliance (I Kings 11:1-11). In “The Folly of Scientism” (2012), Austin L. Hughes writes on this: http://www.thenewatlantis.com/publications/the-folly-of-scientism When I decided on a scientific career, one of the things that appealed to me about science was the modesty of its practitioners. The typical scientist seemed to be a person who knew one small corner of the natural world and knew it very well, better than most other human beings living and better even than most who had ever lived. But outside of their circumscribed areas of expertise, scientists would hesitate to express an authoritative opinion. This attitude was attractive precisely because it stood in sharp contrast to the arrogance of the philosophers of the positivist tradition, who claimed for science and its practitioners a broad authority with which many practicing scientists themselves were uncomfortable. The temptation to overreach, however, seems increasingly indulged today in discussions about science. Both in the work of professional philosophers and in popular writings by natural scientists, it is frequently claimed that natural science does or soon will constitute the entire domain of truth. And this attitude is becoming more widespread among scientists themselves. All too many of my contemporaries in science have accepted without question the hype that suggests that an advanced degree in some area of natural science confers the ability to pontificate wisely on any and all subjects. [End of quote] Since the Fall, mankind has been – with the exception of the few enlightened ones (such as Seth, Enoch and Noah, to name just the pre-Flood sages) – attempting to push God right out of the picture and to re-write the ‘theology’ of the world as purely human mythology. One who has written most interestingly on this is Robert Bowie Johnson, Jr., in “Athena and Eve” (Answers-in-Genesis TJ, 17 (3), 2003, http://creation.com/athena-and-eve), which article - while it may not necessarily give the intended raison d’être behind the Greek mythology - has certainly presented it well as an allegory of philosophical or theological intent: Atlas pushes away the heavens and with them, the God of the heavens The Greek poets placed a figure named Atlas in the ancient Garden of the Hesperides. Hesiod wrote in his Theogony: ‘And Atlas through hard constraint upholds the wide heaven with unwearying head and arms, standing at the borders of the earth before the clear-voiced Hesperides; for this lot wise Zeus assigned him.’10 His presence there clarified the Greeks’ religious viewpoint, for it was his job to put the authority of heaven at a distance from them. In Figure 5 [left], we see part of a plate scene depicting Atlas pushing away the heavens. We can see where the artist has drawn stars. As Atlas pushes away the heavens, he also pushes away the God of the heavens—the very object of his efforts. Victory for the Greek system means that the Creator is kept at bay, pushed out of the picture, and His influence nullified, so that men become free to believe and do what they will. The way of Greek religion, which is nothing less than the way of Kain (Cain) referred to in the Scriptures, is a life lived without God’s interference with mankind’s desires. The Creator must be pushed away and ignored if Zeus-religion is to succeed. Yahweh cursed and condemned the serpent in Genesis 3:14: ‘On your torso shall you go, and soil shall you eat all the days of your lives’. As God is pushed out of humanity’s realm, the curse on the serpent becomes void. He rises up, as on the plate depiction, to take his place as the illuminator and enlightener of the race. [End of quote] John R. Salverda has also entered into this debate. According to him, the Fall of Atlantis was based upon the Genesis story, with Atlas representing Adam: …. Then there was the story of that previous civilization on the Earth, from which our modern culture sprang, which was destroyed, engulfed, in a great aqueous catastrophe. This previous civilization, called, “Atlantis,” was named after Atlas, he was said to be their first king, and the flood which engulfed the place, is still known as the “Atlantic” Ocean. We learn the story of Atlantis from the Greek Plato, who explains why these ancient People were drowned away back then. He says that at first, their race was pure, but they earned their destruction because they had a racial fall, and had degenerated through mortal admixture. And that was that for Plato’s Atlantean civilization. So it was much like the Bible’s antediluvian civilization, where Adam’s daughters, bred with the giants, and this caused racial impurities, (His Spirit could not “strive with men indefinitely,”) precursing the intolerable state which lead to Yahweh’s flood. [End of quote] And for Catholic readers, German mystic Blessed Anne Catherine Emmerich, claiming to have been favoured from childhood with visions of the ancient world, gives this fascinating ‘window’ into the pre-diluvian world of the Giants descended from Cain; people of great technical skills, but, spiritually, completely bankrupt (The Life of Jesus Christ): I saw Cain’s descendants becoming more and more godless and sensual …. Their children were very large. They possessed a quickness, an aptitude for everything, and they gave themselves up entirely to the wicked spirits as their instruments … I have seen many things connected with the race of giants. They could with ease carry enormous stones high up the mountain [where they had congregated], they could accomplish the most stupendous feats …. They could effect the most wonderful things, they could do whatever they wished; but all was pure jugglery and delusion due to the agency of the demon. It is for that reason that I have such a horror of every species of jugglery and fortune-telling. These people could form all kinds of images out of stone and metal; but of the knowledge of God they had no longer a trace. [End of quote] Today’s ‘giants’ of science would of course laugh at the very notion of demons. The fact is, however, that there is a God and there is a devil, and we ourselves must be the slaves of either the One or the other. So how did fallen man now, under demonic influence, come to explain things, without God any longer in the picture? Well, it seems that he simply followed the serpent’s propaganda from the Garden: ‘You will become like God’ (Genesis 3:5). Man now took the place of God. Man became ‘the measure of all things’. This transition is well explained again by Robert Bowie Johnson. He tells how the Book of Genesis was completely re-cast by the pagans in favour of fallen man. Johnson is here specifically discussing Greek mythology, which arose much later than the Fall, but Greek mythology (also Roman) borrowed from the far more ancient mythologies of the ancient Near East, and, presumably, from the original Cain-ism. Here is Johnson’s account (“Athena and Eve”, p. 85): There is no Creator-God in the Greek religious system. The ancient Greek religious system is about getting away from the God of Genesis, and exalting man as the measure of all things. You may think to yourself that the Greeks are exalting gods, not man; but haven’t you ever wondered why the Greek gods looked exactly like humans? The answer is the obvious one: for the most part, the gods represented the Greeks’ (and our) human ancestors. Greek religion was thus a sophisticated form of ancestor worship. You have no doubt heard of the supposedly great philosopher, Sokrates [Socrates]. In Plato’s Euthydemus, he referred to Zeus, Athena, and Apollo as his ‘gods’ and his ‘lords and ancestors’. [End of quote] Johnson continues, explaining how the Greeks appropriated Adam and Eve into their own mythology, as Zeus and Hera (Dione) (ibid., p. 86): We are told in Chapter 2 of Genesis that Eve was created full-grown out of Adam. Before she was known as Hera, the wife of Zeus had the name Dione. The name relates to the creation of Eve out of Adam, for Dione is the feminine form of Dios or Zeus. This suggests that the two were once, like Adam and Eve, a single entity. [End of quote] The Greeks, Johnson goes on to explain, saw the capitulation to the serpent, not as a shameful Fall, but as a veritable enlightenment (ibid.): From the Judeo-Christian standpoint, the taking of the fruit by Eve and Adam at the serpent’s behest was shameful, a transgression of [the Lord’s] commandment. From the Greek standpoint, however, the taking of the fruit was a triumphant and liberating act which brought to mankind the serpent’s enlightenment. To the Greeks, the serpent freed mankind from bondage to an oppressive God, and was therefore a saviour and illuminator of our race. The Greeks worshipped Zeus as both saviour and illuminator; they called him Zeus Phanaios which means one who appears as light and brings light. The light that he brought to the ancient Greeks was the serpent’s light that he received when he ate the fruit from the serpent’s tree. How utterly perverse! [End of quote] This explanation by Johnson I find most intriguing and even plausible since it is – as I intend to argue further on, as I progress from the ancient to the modern – something of a paradigm of how modern man, too, has operated from Galileo through the Enlightenment and Rationalism to the present day. Johnson’s explanation might even change how one may regard this old Sumerian seal (next page), illustrating the Sumerian Adam and Eve and the serpent in the primeval garden. Whereas I had always previously perceived this as being an ancient Mesopotamian recollection of early Genesis (after all, the early inspired texts were always available to these people), see my: Tracing the Hand of Moses in Genesis http://www.academia.edu/8175774/Tracing_the_Hand_of_Moses_in_Genesis I am now more inclined to regard it differently, as Johnson does (see following quotes). By contrast to atheist Joseph Campbell, who, says Johnson, “maintained that myths are ‘cultural manifestations of the universal need of the human psyche to explain, social, cosmological, and spiritual realities’ …”, which Johnson says “is really nothing more than a fancy way of saying that ‘myths are what they are’”, Johnson instead explains (“The serpent worshipers”, TJ, ibid., p. 67): Contrary to Campbell’s disguised tautology, I maintain that myth is essentially history, and that many ancient myths and works of art tell the same story as the book of Genesis, but from the standpoint that the serpent is the enlightener of mankind rather than its deceiver. Campbell was blind to this simple truth as the following example of his errant thinking will show. On page 14 of his The Masks of God: Occidental Mythology, he features an illustration of a Sumerian seal [see above]…. Here we have a man, a woman, a tree, and a serpent. We think immediately of Eden. But Campbell writes that this ‘cannot possibly be, as some scholars have supposed, the representation of a lost Sumerian version of the Fall of Adam and Eve’ …. Why not? Because, he writes, there is no ‘… sign of divine wrath or danger to be found. There is no theme of guilt connected with the garden. The boon of the knowledge of life is there, in the sanctuary of the world, to be culled. And it is yielded willingly to any mortal, male or female, who reaches for it with the proper will and readiness to receive .’ …. But this is exactly why it is Eden. This is the view of the events in the garden taken by … Cain … and those who embraced his way. They defied and ultimately dispensed with the angry God, so He and His wrath are not going to show up here. There is no guilt because there is no sin; there is no sin, or falling short of the ideal, because, according to the line of [Cain], Adam and Eve did the right thing in taking the fruit. In Genesis 3:14, [the Lord] condemned the serpent to crawl on its torso and eat soil. On the Sumerian seal, the serpent rises to a height above the seated humans. …. [End of quote] It is in this context, too, that Johnson explains the myth of Atlas (notice the serpent is behind him), ‘pushing away the heavens’, which Johnson takes as indicating that “[Atlas] pushes away the God of the heavens – the very object of his efforts” (“Athena and Eve”, p. 88). “The Creator must be pushed away and ignored if Zeus-religion is to succeed”. As I say, I accept this as a philosophical point of view, if not necessarily what the myth writers had actually intended. Complete Triumph of the New Adam and the New Eve With the Passion, Death and Resurrection of Jesus Christ some millennia later than the Fall, the power of the serpent was greatly curtailed; his head being firmly crushed by the New Adam and the New Eve (cf. Genesis 3:15). Mary, the Mother of God, was the new Paradise, created by God for himself alone, and for those to whom He would choose to grant admittance. “A garden locked is my sister, my bride, a garden locked, a fountain sealed” (Song of Solomon 4:12). Scott Hahn is typically humorous, yet profound, when discussing Mary’s complex relationship with God (http://www.ewtn.com/libraray/scriptur/maryark.TXT): In Isaiah 62 we read in verse 11 about daughter Zion who is vindicated and glorified by God, “for as a young man marries a virgin, so shall your sons, daughter Zion, marry you”. Think about that. Kind of an odd image, isn’t it? Daughter Zion is God’s daughter. “As a young man marries a virgin, so shall your sons marry you”. I mean, you talk about an Oedipus complex, what is going on here? “Your sons, daughter Zion, marry you”. The Blessed Virgin Mary is Christ’s daughter because he is her creator, but he creates her to be his mother. But then, after he bestows his glory upon her and calls her to himself and makes her the Queen Mother of all, he fashions the New Jerusalem after her as the blueprint. She becomes the bride of Christ. No wonder he calls her “woman”. He can’t decide. “Are you my daughter? Are you my mother or are you my bride?” Praise the Lord! [End of quote] Perhaps ‘Satan of the crushed head’ decided now to continue to diminish man and his place in the world. The ‘Copernican Revolution’ Whilst being quite a legitimate scientific and mathematical experiment, Copernicanism, as a world view, completely destroyed the traditional cosmology, according to which the earth was the hub of the universe (so important from a salvific point of view), replacing it with heliocentrism. This was the new cosmology to which Galileo so ardently adhered, and for whose cause he was so great a propagandist. Gavin Ardley tells of the “violent” transition from the traditional view to the new cosmology as left us by Galileo and the French philosopher, Descartes, and beyond (Berkeley’s Renovation of Philosophy, pp. 124-125): The universe undoubtedly appears to be anthropocentric (man-centred). This is most striking at the simple level of geometry: wherever we stood in the solar system, the heavens would appear to revolve around us. But our belief in centrality is not confined to geometry; in practice, in a thousand ways, we take it for granted that the world is made for us, that we are participants at the focus, not spectators who happen to be present. Of the appearance of anthropocentricity there can be no dispute; the crucial question concerns its reality. That reality was defended by Plato and Aristotle against pre-Socratic detraction; it is implicit in the Judaeo-Christian tradition; it was taken for granted by almost all medieval philosophers. But it was subjected to violent assault in the Seventeenth Century in the name of the new astronomy and the new mathematical science of Nature. The popular metaphysical philosophy, supposedly authenticated by the scientific revolution, passed through two stages with regard to man’s place in the world. In the first stage man was transferred from centrality to the role of spectator: spectator of an autonomous mechanical system quite different in nature from our sensory beliefs; anthropocentricity is a delusion. This was approximately the situation as Galileo and Descartes left it, with mind set over against matter. In the second stage, man was reabsorbed into the system of nature; mind as a separate entity was depreciated; the human constitution in its totality was regarded as part of the one system, differing from other parts of that system only in the greater complexity of articulation and function. The reality of anthropocentrism continues to be denied …. [End of quote] Exalting Man’s Measure Over God’s Measure ------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------ “I thought it was more important for the theologians to listen to me than for me to listen to them”. (Scientist Lawrence Krauss) ------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------ Due to the extraordinary technological success of the scientific revolution, all men must now bow to their lord, Science, an idol of man’s very own creation. God is no longer merely pushed back into the distant universe (the Atlas myth as interpreted by Johnson), but has been “expelled … from the universe” by Charles Darwin (as novelist Samuel Butler wrote in 1901); or he no longer exists (Nietzche’s “God is dead”), or he is now just part of the evolutionary process (Teilhard de Chardin). On this, see e.g. my multi-part series: The Sheer Silliness of Teilhard de Chardin beginning with: (3) The Sheer Silliness of Teilhard de Chardin | Damien Mackey - Academia.edu The philosophers and theologians, many of whom seem to have absorbed the spirit of Teilhard, have not been able, or even willing, to resist the tidal wave of science worship, but have instead themselves bowed to scientism. Thus Ardley wrote, in Aquinas and Kant: Anxious theologians scan the latest scientific theories to see if they do or do not support the existence of God. Grave scientists issue their pontifical pronouncements. Sir James Jeans tells us that God is a great mathematician; Einstein says 'God is slick but not mean'; Laplace, answering Napoleon who taxed him with not mentioning God in his Mecanique Celeste, said: 'I have no need of that hypothesis.' Even good Thomistic philosophers wrack their brains trying to reconcile purely scientific conundrums of ‘indeterminism’ (Heisenberg) and the ‘quantum enigma’ with the principles of the perennial philosophy, without appreciating (what St. Bellarmine already knew) that these two disciplines exist on two entirely different planes of being, one real, one conventional and ultilitarian. [End of quote] Because of the metaphysical malaise, perhaps similar to the inadequate response of ‘most Theologians’ at the time of the Galileo crisis (John Paul II), scientists now wax so bold as to consider themselves able to dictate the terms completely to Theology, when it should in fact be the other way round. Thus Lawrence Krauss, director of the Origins Initiative at Arizona State University in Phoenix, boasts (in “Science the Catholic church can’t ignore ‘New Scientist’,” 7 February 2009, p. 25) of his assault on Theology right within the confines of the Pontifical Academy of Science in the Vatican: IN ONE of those accidental juxtapositions that make life interesting, in the same week I went from co-moderating a seminar on science and religion with a leader of the John Templeton Foundation, which funds research that aims to connect science and religion, to sharing a platform with Richard Dawkins at the annual conference of the American Atheists organisation. These events got me thinking about the “culture wars” I had heard much about from my co-moderator. He used a term I have only heard over the past two to three years: “scientism”. It is often used pejoratively to describe a philosophical position that extends beyond the simple presumption of science that empirically verifiable physical effects have physical causes, to the more expansive claim that the empirical world reflects all of reality. It includes, by inference, the idea that because there is no evidence for either divine purpose or spiritual direction these do not exist. These perceptions cause much of the strong reaction against the scientific community by even those who, like my co-moderator, are not religious fundamentalists. Presuming that all scientists advocate scientism also makes it easier for those who fear that science might undermine their faith to attack the basis of the scientific process. In response, a participant in the seminar used the term “religionism”, which describes the philosophical position that God exists and therefore all progress in science, and everything else for that matter, must be interpreted in light of this reality. Neither position accurately reflects the real relationship between science and religion, which, I believe, is really rather minimal. I once spoke at the Pontifical Academy of Science in the Vatican to a meeting that included theologians, biologists and cosmologists. I was discussing cosmology and I said, partly to be provocative, but also because it was true, that the theologians had to listen to me, but I didn’t have to listen to them. Indeed, for modern theology to make any sense, it must take into account what we have found to be true about the physical universe. But as a cosmologist, theological revelations are irrelevant. …. [End of quote] It is high time that metaphysicians recognise that they, having the superior discipline (meta, ‘beyond’ -physics), must take the upper hand again, and explain to empirical scientists the limitations of their man-made (albeit useful) research.

Fantastic Antikythera mechanism

 

 

Did the Greeks have contact with north America?

Gavin Menzies (in The Lost Empire of Atlantis) claims that the “Minoans” certainly did, travelling, as he tells us, as far as mineral rich Lake Superior.

 

I (Damien Mackey) think that the:

 

So-called "Minoans" were the Philistines

 

https://www.academia.edu/40663043/So-called_Minoans_were_the_Philistines

 

Gavin Menzies also discusses the amazing Antikythera device as evidence that the ancients had sophisticated astronomical and navigational knowledge.

 

Cretan Greek researcher Minas Tsikritsis “maintains that an object from the Minoan Age discovered in 1898 in the Paleokastro site on Crete, was in fact “a cast for building a mechanism that functioned as an analog computer to calculate solar and lunar eclipses”.”:

http://atlantipedia.ie/samples/tag/plimpton-322/

 

Minas Tsikritsis, a native of Crete, is a Professor of Computer Science and noted Researcher of Aegean Scripts. Included in his work is his claim to have deciphered Linear A and the Phaistos Disk, one side of which appears to be a form of sea shanty.

Gavin Menzies quotes^[780.319] Tsikritsis’ belief that the Minoans had mathematical knowledge equal, if not superior, to that of the Babylonians and Egyptians.

However, this claim has been seriously challenged by a recent study of a 3,700-year-old Babylonian tablet known as Plimpton 322. The tablet was discovered around a century ago in what is now southern Iraq. Australian scientists from the University of New South Wales, Sydney have now demonstrated that the tablet is the world’s oldest and most accurate trigonometric table, predating the Greek astronomer Hipparchus by over a millennium^(b). These claims have generated some considerable debate ^(c).

Additionally, based on an analysis of Plutarch’s “On the Apparent Face in the Orb of the Moon,” Tsikritsis believes that the Greeks had contact with North America, at least as far back as 86 AD!^(a) *Some time later he expanded on the idea in a paper published on the Researchgate website^(d).*

^(a) http://canada.greekreporter.com/2012/04/21/researcher-claims-ancient-greeks-made-it-to-america-before-columbus/

^(b) https://www.nytimes.com/2017/08/29/science/trigonometry-babylonian-tablet.html

^(c) https://blogs.scientificamerican.com/roots-of-unity/dont-fall-for-babylonian-trigonometry-hype/

*^(d) https://www.researchgate.net/publication/321319687/download*

 

Antikythera Mechanism

Published May 31, 2010

The Antikythera Mechanism is one of the most remarkable artefacts ever discovered. It was found by sponge divers off the coast of the Aegean island of Antikythera just over a century ago. The device consists of four fragments with a total of 30 bronze gears.

 

Very little intensive investigation was done until the early 1950’s when Derek J. de Solla Price (1922-1983) a professor at Yale University undertook a study of the Mechanism. His conclusions were published in a number of papers including Gears from the Greeks, now available as a pdf file^(r).

 

It was originally dated to the 1^st century BC and had been ascribed by some to the Greek astronomer Hipparchos, but recent research by Professor Alexander Jones of New York’s Institute for the Study of the Ancient World has pushed this back to the 2^nd century BC^(b).

Jones dismissed as ‘desperate’ a suggestion by Dr. Jo Marchant, that the mechanism had been part of a timepiece that possibly controlled the sequential appearance of figures to indicate seasons. Marchant is the author of Decoding the Heavens: Solving the Mystery of the World’s First Computer^[1460].

 

A report⁽ⁿ⁾ published in November 2014 revised further the date of its creation back to 205 BC. This modification includes the suggestion that the mathematics upon which the Mechanism were based were Babylonian rather than Greek. The level of ancient Greek celestial knowledge is also being reappraised in the light of a recent study of a decorated cup of a type known as a skyphos^(o).

 

The superiority of Babylonian mathematics was supported by a recent study of a 3,700-year-old tablet known as Plimpton 322. The tablet was discovered around a century ago in what is now southern Iraq. Australian scientists from the University of New South Wales, Sydney have now demonstrated that the tablet is the world’s oldest and most accurate trigonometric table, predating the Greek astronomer Hipparchos by over a millennium^(z).

The Mechanism is apparently a clockwork device for calculating astronomical events. A number of models have been built^(c), based on the evidence of the fragments discovered and further study is continuing. Even Lego was used by designer Andrew Carol to build a replica of the mechanism^(e)(d). Furthermore, in November 2011 Hublot, the Swiss watch manufacturer, revealed^(h)  that they had designed a wristwatch based on the Antikythera Mechanism.

 

In 2008, it was announced that writing engraved on the housing indicated the locations of athletic games; “The Games dial shows six competitions, four Panhellenic (Olympics, Pythian, Isthmian, and Nemean) plus Naa (Dodona) and very probably Halieia (Rhodes)^(w).”

 

At same time, a possible connection with the renowned Archimedes was being posited by some commentators^(f). An even more remarkable feature was the clever use of two gears, one positioned slightly off-centre in relation to the other, allowing the mechanism to track the apparent speeding up and slowing down of the moon each month, resulting from its elliptical rather than circular orbit^(g).

 

The question that has now arisen is whether “It is possible that the mechanism is based on heliocentric principles, rather than the then-dominant geocentric view espoused by Aristotle and others.”^(ab)

 

Dr. Minas Tsikritsis, a Cretan researcher, maintains that an object from the Minoan Age discovered in 1898 in the Paleokastro site on Crete, was in fact “a cast for building a mechanism that functioned as an analog computer to calculate solar and lunar eclipses.”⁽ⁱ⁾ This was nearly a millennium and a half before the Antikythera Mechanism was manufactured, which would make it Minoan.

.... 

Commentators such as David Hatcher Childress see the Antikythera device as just another piece of evidence of more complex scientific knowledge among early cultures than is usually accepted and that by extension the possibility of a technologically advanced Atlantis^[620].

 

In his 2014 book, The Stonhenge Codes^[977], Professor David P.Gregg, has devoted an appendix to the sophistication of the mechanism, in which he discusses the functions of individual shafts and gears. His objective is to show that its complexity is comparable to that of Stonehenge and that our view of early Greek mathematics and astronomy requires revision. His book can be read online^(j).

 

*A January 2019 article elaborates further on the Mechanism’s function as a predictor of possible eclipses^(ae). It may be worth recalling that in the 1960’s, Gerald Hawkins suggested that the 56 Aubrey Holes at Stonehenge were also eclipse predictors^[1613], an idea endorsed by Fred Hoyle^[1614].^(af)*

 

Opus Gemini, a trilogy of novels by Andreas Möhn, based on the Antikythera Mechanism was published on Kindle format in September 2013 and is also available in other formats. Further information and updates are available on his website^(m).

The following website^(a), will keep you up to date on related developments.

New Scientist announced on June 4th 2014^(k) that plans have been made to dive again to the Antikythera wreck in the hope of finding a second ‘mechanism’, using a ‘wearable submarine’. The Sept/Oct season of 2014 ended with evidence that the ship had been up to 50 metres long, making it thelargest ancient shipwreck ever discovered^(l).

The February 2015 edition of Smithsonian Magazine gives an up-todate review of the scientific studies of the Mechanism^(p). In June 2016 the Smithsonian returned to the subject with an article^(u) devoted to the extensive writing, some less than a millimetre tall, revealed by CT scans on virtually every surface. This recent study indicates that the Mechanism also appears to have an astrological purpose! These investigations also pointed to the Aegean island of Rhodes as its place of manufacture. ….

 

Philosophy of Origins

 

by

Damien F. Mackey

 

God, who lives beyond time, has made everything that is (John 1:1-2):

“In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God. He was with God in the beginning. Through him all things were made; without him nothing was made that has been made”.

 

God created all ex nihilo, “not out of anything”.

 

 

 

God and Creation

 

Jesus Christ has revealed God as a Trinity of Persons, a Communion or Family of Love.

 

According to Pope Francis: Christ “has shown us the face of God, One in substance and Triune in Persons; God is all and only Love, in a subsisting relationship that creates, redeems, and sanctifies all: Father, Son, and Holy Spirit.”

The Son of God showed that God first sought us, and revealed that eternal life is precisely “the immeasurable and gratuitous love of the Father that Jesus gave on the Cross, offering his life for our salvation.”

“And this love, by the action of the Holy Spirit, has irradiated a new light upon the earth and in every human heart that welcomes it.”

“May the Virgin Mary help us to enter ever more, with our whole selves, into the trinitarian Communion, to live and bear witness to the love that gives sense to our existence”.

 

The Holy Family, Jesus (in his humanity), Mary and Joseph, is an icon of the Holy Trinity, Joseph reflecting the Father and Mary (the Immaculate Conception) reflecting the Holy Spirit (the uncreated Immaculate Conception).

 

God, who lives beyond time, has made everything that is (John 1:1-2): “In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God. He was with God in the beginning. Through him all things were made; without him nothing was made that has been made”.

God created all ex nihilo, “not out of anything”.

Psalm 33:9: “He spoke, and it was.” That is, its existence depended on his Word; the universe sprang into being at his command; he had only to speak, and it arose in all its grandeur where before there was nothing.

 

I personally do not favour the concept of a Big Bang explosion, but I might be wrong.

Can anything constructive, let alone our glorious cosmos, emerge from an explosion?

 

Proverbs 8:30 describes Wisdom at play, as beautifully explained here:

 

This song describes the dynamic of authentic play. Play is not wasting time, but

entering into time with fullness of heart. This reflects rejoicing in the birth of each new day, delighting in how we as God’s children co-create with God, bringing forth a world of beauty.

 

“Day after day, God’s wisdom at play in the universe,

delighting to be with us, the children of earth”.

Wondrous Wisdom, rejoicing in earth’s birth and rebirth:

majestic mountains, rolling hills, roaring waters, flowing streams.

Playful Wisdom, setting out a table of fine food;

with whole grain bread, full-bodied wine, bountiful banquet blessing with joy.

Creative Wisdom, dancing on the edge of chaos;

divine desire dwells deep within, risking passion, daring us to dream.

Gentle Wisdom, calling out with dawns’ first light;

graceful instruction, creative counsel, whispers of wisdom speak softly to our heart.

Radiant Wisdom, sparkling starlight, flame of love,

resplendent as sunlight at mid-day, fields of wildflowers bright and alive.

“Gentle Wisdom” – hard to reconcile this with a Big Bang!

 

We need to learn again how, like Wisdom, to make ‘work’, playful, and not a soul-destroying drudge. God’s universe is intimately known to Him, for He “telleth the number of the stars: and calleth them all by their names” (Psalm 146:4, Douay). He rolled out those mighty luminaries like a child playing with marbles, but all done with a sublime teleological purpose (Genesis 1:14), to “serve as signs to mark sacred times, and days and years”.

Nowhere is this fact better exemplified than in Lieutenant-Colonel G. Mackinlay,’s The Magi: How They Recognised Christ's Star (Hodder and Stoughton, 1908), in which the author demonstrates that the heavenly cycles when properly co-ordinated with the life of Jesus Christ reveal a stupendous witness of sun, moon and stars as appropriately marking sacred times.

 

Those billions of years posited by astronomers and physicists seem to me to be ridiculous and eccentric. Who can reasonably think in terms of such massive numbers?

The solar system is, in my opinion, geocentric.

Anyway, no one can prove this statement to be un-scientific or wrong.

 

Some qualified scientists, at least, have cast serious doubt upon the supposed ‘vast cosmic ocean of dark energy (matter)’.

According to: http://www.whatreallyhappened.com/WRHARTICLES/bang.php#axzz4k

“Religious circles embraced the idea of an expanding universe because for the universe to be expanding, then at some point in the past it had to originate from a single point, called the “Big Bang”. Indeed, the concept of the Big Bang did not originate with Edwin Hubble himself but was proposed by a Catholic Monk, Georges Lemaître in 1927, two years before Hubble published his observations of the Red Shift.

The “Big Bang” coincided nicely with religious doctrine and just as had been the case with epicycles (and despite the embarrassment thereof) religious institutions sought to encourage this new model of the universe over all others, including the then prevalent “steady state” theory. In 1951 Pope Pius XII declared that Georges Lemaître's work proved the Christian dogma of divine creation of the universe.

Then history repeated itself. Evidence surfaced that the “Big Bang” might not really be a workable theory in the form of General Relativity, and its postulation that super massive objects would have gravity fields so strong that even light could not escape, nor would matter be able to differentiate.

Since the entire universe existing in just one spot would be the most super massive object of all, the universe could not be born”.

The science fiction version of cosmology with which scientists must assail us today - with its great galloping galaxies, cosmic vacuum cleaning Black Holes, microwave cooking radiation and Doppelganger (or is that Doppler?) Effect - seems to be entirely lacking in any sort of cogent Divine plan - the true structure of the universe.

 

It is all yet awaiting, I believe, a wiser interpretation.

 

There may well be, for example, a cosmic compatibility between the structure of the universe, on the one hand, and, on the other, the Garden of Eden; the Temple in Jerusalem (patterned on the Garden of Eden); and the Tent of Meeting. In the Book of Hebrews, St. Paul tells us that the Tabernacle, and all its services, were “patterns of things in the heavens” (Hebrews 9:23). The physical objects associated with the earthly sanctuary were “figures of the true” (Hebrews 9:24) — the “shadow of heavenly things” (Hebrews 8:5).

 

The Garden of Eden was, like the Temple afterwards, a micro-cosmos.

 

Dr. Ernest L. Martin’s “The Temple Symbolism in Genesis” is well worth reading in this regard. “Each physical item had its spiritual counterpart in Heaven”.

 

Early Genesis and Toledôt

 

The Triune God is not affected by time.

Genesis 1 has nothing to do with the time taken by God to create the universe – a ridiculous suggestion! So, Creationists and Evolutionists are free to debate the actual age of the earth.

As some have divined, Genesis 1 is (at least in part) a revelation to man of God’s work of creation. Man - and not God, who never tires nor ceases (Isaiah 40:28) - needs to retire in the evening and then to resume again in the morning.

 

The Six Days (Hexaëmeron) were real, 24-hour days.

 

Key to the structure of the Book of Genesis are the eleven colophon divisions, “These are the generations of …”.

Here is an arrangement of it:

Tablet	Starting Verse	Ending Verse	Owner or  Writer
1	Genesis 1:1	Genesis 2:4a	God Himself (?)
2	Genesis 2:4b	Genesis 5:1a	Adam
3	Genesis 5:1b	Genesis 6:9a	Noah
4	Genesis 6:9b	Genesis 10:1a	Shem, Ham & Japheth
5	Genesis 10:1b	Genesis 11:10a	Shem
6	Genesis 11:10b	Genesis 11:27a	Terah
7	Genesis 11:27b	Genesis 25:19a	Isaac
8	Genesis 25:12	Genesis 25:18	Ishmael, through Isaac
9	Genesis 25:19b	Genesis 37:2a	Jacob
10	Genesis 36:1	Genesis 36:43	Esau, through Jacob
11	Genesis 37:2b	Exodus 1:6	Jacob’s 12 sons

 

These “generations” (Hebrew: toledôt) constitute the family histories of the various biblical patriarchs leading up to Moses. These (and not the fragmentary and confusing JEDP sources) are the documents upon which Moses drew to compile what we now call the Book of Genesis, of which he was the editor, but not the author.

The first of these toledôt, concluding Genesis 1, indicates this primary part of Genesis to be a “book” (2:4):

αυτήThis 3588ηis the 976βίβλοςbook 1078γενέσεωςof the origin 3772ουρανούof heaven 2532καιand 1093γηςearth

 

Moses substantially wrote the remainder of the Pentateuch, as according to tradition.

The Pentateuch would receive further editing, probably by the likes of Samuel, Solomon, Ezra.

Location of Paradise and Eden

 

Helpful geographical additions provided by editor Moses (Genesis 2:11-14), to elucidate for his contemporaries what had originally been a very simple account of the hydrography presented in Genesis 2 (Adam’s toledôt), enable us to identify the four rivers apparently originating from a single river in Eden. Clearly, the Tigris and Euphrates are the rivers still known today in Mesopotamia, and the Gihon is the circuitous Blue Nile of Ethiopia.

The Pishon, far more disputed, is presumably also towards the west, for reasons of symmetry. Some would place the Pishon in the region of Saudi Arabia.

These four rivers were still flowing many centuries later, in the days of Sirach, who now also included the Nile and the Jordan (Sirach 24:25-27). {Naturally, with the passing of time, and due to catastrophism and severe tectonic activity - for example, the Noachic Flood and the emergence of the Great Rift Valley - the source, courses and capacities of these primeval rivers would have altered significantly}. 

Throughout this ancient riverine system stretched the well-irrigated Paradise.

The Garden of Eden, where ancient Jerusalem would later be situated, was central to Paradise.

That is why Jerusalem is said in the Scriptures to be at “the centre of the earth” (e.g. Ezekiel 38:12). It also explains why Jesus Christ could pin upon the inhabitants of Jerusalem the murder of Abel, by Cain (cf. Genesis 4:8; Luke 11:51), ‘… from the blood of Abel to the blood of Zechariah, who was killed between the altar and the sanctuary’.  

  

The Creation of Man

 

Since “… our God is in heaven: He hath done all things whatsoever He would” (Psalm 113:11, Douay), the Triune God could have, had he so wished, created humankind by using an evolutionary process, just as he could have formed the universe through the agency of a Bang.

Pope Pius XII (Humani Generis, 1950) did not entirely discount the possibility of man’s having evolved from a lower form, but with an important qualification:

 

36. For these reasons the Teaching Authority of the Church does not forbid that, in conformity with the present state of human sciences and sacred theology, research and discussions, on the part of men experienced in both fields, take place with regard to the doctrine of evolution, in as far as it inquires into the origin of the human body as coming from pre-existent and living matter - for the Catholic faith obliges us to hold that souls are immediately created by God. However, this must be done in such a way that the reasons for both opinions, that is, those favorable and those unfavorable to evolution, be weighed and judged with the necessary seriousness, moderation and measure, and provided that all are prepared to submit to the judgment of the Church, to whom Christ has given the mission of interpreting authentically the Sacred Scriptures and of defending the dogmas of faith.

 

I personally find the theory of evolution to be un-scientific and against common sense.

The most pertinent comment about it, I believe, came from the witty pen of G. K. Chesterton: “The evolutionists seem to know everything about the missing link except the fact that it is missing”. And again: “Anthropologists … have to narrow their minds to the materialistic things that are not notably anthropic. They have to hunt through history and pre-history something which emphatically is not Homo Sapiens, but is always in fact regarded as Simius Insipiens”.

The “Cambrian Explosion”, that sudden appearance in the fossil record of complex animals with mineralized skeletal remains, is one sort of ‘explosion’ that I would accept. And it appears to be disastrous for the theory of evolution, which really likes things to happen very slowly.

Whilst, according to Genesis 1:27, “God created man in his own image, in the image of God created he him; male and female created he them”, the evolutionists promote a bestial origin for humanity. And they pitch back the origins of man with the increasing additions of a zero. Mungo Man (Australia), a relative youngster in the anthropological scheme of things, went from a 60,000 years old estimate to a 40,000 years old estimate in the space of a week.

No one batted an eyelid.

 

Skeletal remains must be force-fitted into a pre-conceived evolutionary matrix.

Those fine Neanderthals, for instance, have apparently been thus ‘doctored’. Dr. Jack Cuozzo, examining the skull of a ‘teenage Neanderthal’ in Germany, ‘found once again that the replica skull on display was made to look apelike, but a color slide purchased at the museum showed that the lower jaw was dislocated, positioned 30mm out of its socket!  This brought the upper jaw 30mm forward, looking more like a muzzle, and very apelike’.

The Neanderthals, who were physically far superior to us, and who lived much longer than we, were the long-lived antediluvian peoples, some of these also continuing on for a time after the Noachic Flood until this Divine decree was fully realised (Genesis 6:4): “Then the Lord said, ‘My Spirit will not contend with humans forever, for they are mortal; their days will be a hundred and twenty years’.”

A great ‘sin’ of certain scientists today is to imagine that they are fully equipped and entitled to pontificate philosophically and theologically. Most of them are not qualified to do this. Whilst science and technology have brought immense material benefits to our modern world, philosophy itself does not benefit at all from science speak.

We need a return to the pursuit of realism and common sense.

 

David Collits has well explained it (“Opening up to being – learning to trust ourselves again”):

 

“An air of unreality pervades current day discourse. Focus on identity rights, same-sex ‘marriage’, unisex bathrooms, safe spaces, the mendaciously called ‘Safe Schools’ and so on bespeaks not only a divorce from tradition and custom, but more fundamentally a divorce from reality itself. Something unreal persists in political agitation for a panoply of rights not rooted in human nature or the cosmos itself, and which in fact denies the existence of human nature as such.

Such campaigning is based upon the liberal conceit constitutive of modernity that meaning and identity flows from an ever-expanding assertion of the will and not who we are as human beings. On this view, there is no human nature: I choose, therefore I am. This disconnection from reality is not confined to political issues but permeates our technology-saturated culture. Restoring contact with the real is vital for our culture to convey authentic meaning, as well as how we form our children, use technology and even how we worship.

… the further we are from an unmediated experience of reality, the further we are from God. It is not possible even to think of God philosophically or theologically if one has not first been exposed to the creation that God has put in front of us.

We come to know Being itself through exposure to created being. “The world is charged with the grandeur of God,” so wrote Gerard Manley Hopkins. God, transcendent but immanent to creation, is revealed in the beauty and order of the natural realm perceived in the senses and apprehended in the mind. …. because we are body-soul beings, truth is known to our minds because it is first known to our senses.

Catholicism is not a gnostic religion or philosophy in which knowledge is mediated directly to the mind apart from ‘evil’ matter. Knowledge of God comes first through sensory perception. It is not for nothing that Christ uses parables and lessons based on everyday contact with the earth: the mustard seed and the big tree it becomes, employment in the vineyard, the lilies of the field, the fig tree, the pearl, the field, and so on. Man’s first home was a Garden. The Prince of the Apostles’ occupation was to fish. The Church’s liturgy and sacraments, especially Baptism and the Eucharist, incorporate and elevate basic human and earthly realities: flowing water, bread and wine, oil. Authentic culture arises from liturgical cult fostered on humus, work with the soil that humbles us and can yet be offered to God. Genuine education grows around liturgical cult and is fostered by immersion in the Western canon, whose own roots are in that liturgical culture.

Centuries of rapid technological development, and decades of material wealth and relative peace in the West have inured generations of people to the vicissitudes and hardships that have been the common lot of humanity. Underappreciated perhaps is the negative effect that this material wealth has on the capacity for us to perceive created being and through that God himself. Especially is this acute in the case of the millennial generation, about which much has been written, from issues of housing affordability to its members’ apparent sense of entitlement and ‘flakiness’. ….

Ours is a technological age predicated … on the Modernist idea that reality itself is to be rejected and replaced with artificial constructions of our own, not simply technological but philosophical and ethical as well. The eclipse of religion, gender ideology, and the deconstruction of marriage and the family in the West are the end result of centuries of philosophical and cultural unrealism”.

 

Metaphysics, which has been replaced by bankrupt modernism and scientism, sorely needs to be revived. But, this time, metaphysics needs to be firmly established upon biblical (Hebrew) foundations, and not as a product of the ancient pagan Greeks.

 

The Father of Philosophy is God the Father, who created the human mind.

“Faith and reason are like two wings on which the human spirit rises to the contemplation of truth; and God has placed in the human heart a desire to know the truth—in a word, to know himself—so that, by knowing and loving God, men and women may also come to the fullness of truth about themselves (cf. Ex 33:18; Ps 27:8-9; 63:2-3; Jn 14:8; 1 Jn 3:2)”, wrote pope John Paul II in his encyclical Fides et Ratio.

The Fall

 

The real existence of Adam and Eve, and of Noah (and his posterity), though almost universally doubted today (including some church leaders, it seems), may find a scientific ally in science. Do not geneticists refer to the maternal ancestor of all living humans as “Eve”?

The mitochondrial Eve, they call her, to whom our species is robustly and genetically linked.  

The ‘crafty serpent’ in Eden (Genesis 3:1), the Devil, Satan the accuser, the “great, fiery red Dragon” of the Apocalypse (12:3), cunningly masterminded the Fall of Adam and Eve.

Whilst this has been catastrophic for humanity, and for the whole created world, nevertheless, “where sin increased, grace abounded all the more” (Roman 5:20). God, as has been famously remarked, is able to take a discordant note (such as the Fall) and write a whole new symphony.

Always a one better than the first.

He may use a ‘rival operation’. Thus the serpent seduced the woman, but now the new Woman, Mary, will crush the serpent’s head.

Saint Louis de Montfort in his Treatise on True Devotion to Mary, wrote of this marvellous cosmic bouleversement:

“God has established only one enmity — but it is an irreconcilable one — which will last and even go on increasing to the end of time. That enmity is between Mary, his worthy Mother, and the devil, between the children and the servants of the Blessed Virgin and the children and followers of Lucifer. Thus the most fearful enemy that God has set up against the devil is Mary, his holy Mother. From the time of the earthly paradise, although she existed then only in his mind, he gave her such a hatred for his accursed enemy, such ingenuity in exposing the wickedness of the ancient serpent and such power to defeat, overthrow and crush this proud rebel, that Satan fears her not only more than angels and men but in a certain sense more than God himself”.

Revelation 12:1-3: “Now a great sign appeared in heaven: a woman clothed with the sun, with the moon under her feet, and on her head a crown of twelve stars. Then being with child, she cried out in labour and in pain to give birth. And another sign appeared in heaven: behold, a great, fiery red dragon having seven heads and ten horns, and seven diadems on his heads”. 

The Triune God, a Family of Love, is the all-seeing Creator.

But, in our age, the Devil is furiously leading a campaign of ‘sin against God’s creation’, particularly against the family. This is the final onslaught.

Such, indeed, was the firm view of Fatima seer, Sister Lucia:

“… the final battle between the Lord and the reign of Satan will be about marriage and the family. Don’t be afraid, she added, because anyone who operates for the sanctity of marriage and the family will always be contended and opposed in every way, because this is the decisive issue”. And then she concluded: “However, Our Lady has already crushed its head”.

Dr. Ernest L. Martin presented a strong case for the Tree of the Knowledge of Good and Evil in the Garden to have been a fig tree – a view supported by tradition. Commenting on Jesus’s somewhat enigmatic and ‘out of season’ cursing of the barren fig tree (Matthew 21:18-22), Martin wrote (Secret of Golgotha, p. 260):

 

“It [the withered and dead fig tree] signified that NO LONGER would that symbolic tree be in the midst of humanity TO ENCOURAGE MANKIND TO SIN IN THE MANNER OF OUR FIRST PARENTS. But there is even more teaching. It meant that when Christ went to that miraculous tree looking for some figs to eat (like Eve did), CHRIST WOULD NOT FIND ANY WHATSOEVER! This signified that there was NOT going to be a REPETITION of what Eve (and later Adam) did in regard to the fig tree that they partook of. One fig tree [in the Garden of Eden] was the instrument to bring 'sin' into the world, BUT THE SON OF GOD COULD NOT FIND ANY FIGS ON HIS FIG TREE (the miraculous tree on the Mount of Olives that was typical of the Tree of the Knowledge of Good and Evil). Christ cursed THAT symbolic tree at the top of Olivet SO THAT NO MAN WOULD EAT OF IT AGAIN. And to COMPLETE his victory over sin, four days later Christ was going to be SACRIFICED FOR THE SINS OF THE WORLD JUST A FEW YARDS AWAY FROM THIS WITHERED AND DEAD TREE”.

That ‘rival operation’ again: Since Satan had used a tree to engineer the Fall, so would God use a Tree to undo Satan’s work. Galatians 4:4-5: “God sent forth his Son, born of woman, born under the law, to redeem those who were under the law, so that we might receive adoption as sons”. And Colossians 2:13-15:

“When you were dead in your sins and in the uncircumcision of your flesh, God made you alive with Christ. He forgave us all our sins, having cancelled the charge of our legal indebtedness, which stood against us and condemned us; he has taken it away, nailing it to the cross. And having disarmed the powers and authorities, he made a public spectacle of them, triumphing over them by the Cross”.

 

Christ’s agonising journey to Calvary and to his immolation upon the Cross was, in fact, a triumphal parade, thereby ending the reign of Satan - a foe forever now with ‘a crushed head’.  

 

Dr. Martin’s interpretation of the fig tree might well explain why Adam and Eve sewed fig leaves together to hide their shame immediately after the fruit-eating incident (Genesis 3:7).

Adam and Eve were no longer permitted to live in the Garden or to have access to the salutary Tree of Life (Genesis 3:24): “After he drove the man out, he placed on the east side of the Garden of Eden cherubim and a flaming sword flashing back and forth to guard the way to the Tree of Life”.

Although Adam and Eve were cast out of the Garden, they still remained in the territory of Eden. It is important to note that the “Garden” and the country of “Eden” were not synonymous.

The Garden was in Eden.

According to some traditions, only Enoch and (later) Melchizedek were ever allowed after that to dwell in the Garden of Eden.