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• Genesis

by Steve Quayle

So, when did history begin? Here is the crux of the problem that our modern minds face. However, looking into Solomon’s correctly interpreted words of “long time past” or “long past” we begin to understand that significant civilizations must have been developed before the Flood. And, as God promised, He wiped it all away with the washing of the Deluge. But did He? Do clues remain as to what life might have been like during those pre-flood days?

Simple clues of what this pre-flood world looked like can be gleaned from the use of language. As Dr. William Shea of the Biblical Research Institute points out in his paper “The Antediluvians”:

[1]“Genesis 3-6 tells of the experiences of some of the earliest members of the human race — those who lived during the interval between creation (as recorded in Genesis 1-2) and the flood (as recorded in Genesis 7-9). From an evolutionary approach to biology, geology, or biblical studies, the "antediluvians" cannot be historical figures. A more direct reading of the biblical text, on the other hand, indicates that the author of these narratives and lists understood them to be historical individuals…“ (Emphasis added)

Throughout this paper, Dr. Shea gives a substantial and justifiable argument that there is an absolute of comparison between early Mesopotamian texts and biblical texts with regard to this period. However, he also cautions that the former tended to infuse mythology into the texts because of cultural and religious biases.

Still today, readers have their own biases. The mindset of the average modern person is to take those things that we do not understand in the Word or in historical documentation and reduce it to allegory, hyperbole, epics or the poetic.

However, if we are to accurately glean information from these sources and come away with a clearer picture of the ancient pre-flood past, we must take what is written at face value. Only after a totality of evidence is gathered will we be able to separate truth from fiction.

To that end, literary archeology can help us pull together the puzzle of the Pre-Flood world.

The Kings List

[2]Sumerian is one of the oldest, if not the oldest, written languages known to man. Reportedly its use spanned from c. 3300 to 3000 BC.

Thriving Sumerian cities spread across the fertile plains of what is now modern-day Iraq, in between the Tigris and Euphrates rivers. This area is virtually a treasure trove of ancient culture.

Perhaps the most ground-shaking of these treasures was a 4,000-year-old Sumerian cuneiform tablet found by the German-American scholar Hermann Hilprecht in 1906. With subsequent findings of other exemplars since then, this amazing record documents the kings of Sumer and adjoining kingdoms and includes the length of reigns and the locations of their kingship.

When the totality of documentation of these fragments are woven together, it is found that the reigns and the lifespans of these kings and their kingdoms did not only cover decades or centuries, but millennia. So mind-boggling are these time spans and superhuman the king’s deeds that scholars who are familiar with the texts (remember the earlier caution) chalk up the accounts to simply myth or religion.

However, what if one were to take the same approach to this list as we have done with Solomon? What if we look at the original language and consider that the writers said exactly what they meant and that the men, or creatures listed within the Kings List, lived as long as they are described and that there is ancient celestial history here that must be uncovered.

When one considers the possibilities, our own mythos and perceived fables are challenged.

Mythos or Fact

The Kings List begins with the very beginning of kingship and lists eight kings before the Deluge’s occurrence. Because of the antiquity of the accounts, they have been reduced to mere myths in many people’s minds. Indeed, the life and reign spans alone when viewed from our modern age, make it difficult for people to understand that such a life could have been possible.

However, this one line out of the Kings List sums up the “how” question:

“After the kingship descended from heaven, the kingship was in Eridug. In Eridug, Alulim became king; he ruled for 28,800 years. Alaljar ruled for 36,000 years. 2 kings; they ruled for 64,800 years.” (Emphasis added)

It is true that ancient biblical texts attribute much longer life spans to humans than we see today. Yet, there is no one in the Bible who lived close to 36,000 years, not even Methuselah. He was 969 years old when he died.

This begs the question: What if they, Alulim, Alaljar and the other six kings… weren’t human?

What if “descended from heaven,” meant exactly that and they were of angelic origin?

Compare this outlandish thought to what we read in Genesis 6:4, “The Nephilim were on the earth in those days, and also afterward, when the sons of God came in to the daughters of man and they bore children to them. These were the mighty men who were of old, the men of renown.”

The Bible gives us straightforward information that angels did, in fact: 1) descend from heaven, 2) come to earth and, 3) interact with mankind.

An average person reading the text would probably assume that all of this happened over a very short time – But what if it didn’t. What if angels came to earth millennia before the flood? What if the Kings List specifically outlines their interactions with a world that God created previously?

Defining Ancient

Looking back at Genesis 6:4, we see clues that a free-reign angelic presence on earth was not only possible – but likely.

The word “old” in the latter part of the verse is from the Hebrew word (מֵעֹולָ֖ם) olam, Strongs #5769, which means long duration or antiquity.

Now wait… We are talking Genesis 6 here, pre-flood. What antiquity could olam be referring to?

If we honestly consider that these Men of Old were ancient even to Noah’s contemporaries, why would we not consider that the Kings List is recording those very men? How much older, the beginning of kings, could there be?

And thus, if we are to consider such a thing, why would we omit the beginning of the list that pointedly says, “…the kingship descended from heaven”?

As such, if these ancient texts are to be taken at face value as suggested earlier, we see evidence presented that Angels came down from heaven to rule on earth.

So the question remains – Where did they rule and do we have physical or textual evidence to support such a hypothesis?

Caution

Mankind will take those things that we encounter and “try” to compartmentalize/pigeon hole our experiences into a perspective that we are familiar with and can grasp. However, oftentimes this exercise leads us to categorize an understanding or experience in an inaccurate place.

As an example, when faced with the potential of super-human beings coming down to earth and exhibiting characteristics foreign to the strictly human condition, i.e. strength, superior intelligence, and non-human abilities, Ancients attributed these traits to the fact that these beings were “gods”. As such, their understanding of “beings that came down from heaven” was jaded by their own earthly prejudices.

It is here that we see the development of mythos, or even religious dogma, to describe those things that the people of the day, and even centuries later, did not understand.

The interpretation solution is to work backwards and dissect these thoughts, opinions, and experiences. Only then will we be able to glean a true understanding of what really occurred at the beginning, and during, the Antediluvian Period.

Working Backwards - Plato

Perhaps the only way to search back to ancient antiquity (delineation purposeful) is to go back in time from “accepted” texts to more obscure evidence.

In 360 B.C., the widely respected Plato, Greek philosopher, student of Socrates and teacher of Aristotle, told of an Egyptian origin of Atlantis as related to him by Solon and the priests at Saïs. Yet, this account is 9,000 years removed from the supposed time that Atlantis existed.

Such a span of time and Plato’s propensity toward metaphysical and epistemological issues leads scholars to reduce his thoughts regarding Atlantis to merely allegory and mythos.

However, what if there was corroborating evidence in other literature that could bolster the argument that Plato was simply relating an ancient story?

Throth

There are various references to Thoth in the earliest writings of the Egyptians, particularly in The Book of the Dead. These entries predate Plato’s accounts by nearly 4,000 years.

[3]It is here that interesting similarities arise between Thoth and the last Antediluvian king on the Kings List – Ubartutu.

• While later Egyptian texts portray him as a god, the earliest of texts depicts him as a king (Perhaps one of the first eight kings on the list?)
• He was born in a distant country to the west across a body of water (Plato’s Metropolis?)
• Creation stories in the Pyramid Texts speak of iu neserer (the “Island of Flame”) as the original land, the mythical place where the gods were born "beyond the limits of the created world" (Faulkner, 1969). (According to the list – the kingship “descended from heaven”)
• Thoth has been accredited for bringing unknown knowledge to his kingdom such as writing, mathematics, astronomy, and civilization in general. (This is an important point when comparing these beings to the Nephilim in Genesis)
• According to Papyrus of Ani, Chap. CLXXV, a great catastrophe, a flood, occurred and Thoth led the “gods” across the sea to settle in an Eastern country, Egypt, where he was made a god.

With evidence of a direct textual connection from antiquity, spanning to the time just prior to the flood and superseding mythos, was Thoth none other than the last Antediluvian king on the Kings List - Ubartutu? If so, was he the last king of Atlantis?

Was the cataclysmic disaster that flooded the earth in ancient Egyptian writings the very same flood found in the Bible?

Genesis 7:11 says that “the fountains of the deep” ruptured, which alludes to vertical movement into the upper atmosphere and then it says it rained.

Could the catastrophe that occurred simply not been a Deluge, but the literal breaking up of the single landmass of the earth thereby redistributing these landmasses in places where they had never been – Like the breaking up of Pangea?

A Proper Perspective

If the previous scrutiny of ancient texts lends more weight to Plato’s recounting of Atlantis, then one must also be willing to look at other significant reference points within the story itself.

Plato clearly mentions the Temple of Eridug, Adzu, in his writings. Archeological evidence appears to point to a city, or settlement, by the same name, which had been, founded ca. 5400 BC.

Although very ancient to be sure, it must be noted that many prominent scholars who believe in the Flood phenomenon, deduce that the Deluge occurred approximately 5000 BC, give or take a few centuries.

As such, if the accounts of the initial development of Eridug are to be believed, the remnants of this city in the area referred to by Plato and close proximity to the mouth of the Persian Gulf near the Euphrates River, cannot be the same city that is listed on the Kings List simply because - Antediluvian means before the Flood.

Rather, it would stand to reason that this Eridug was a shadow of what the original Eridug, built up in the coming centuries to revisit the greatness of a life where the kingdom descended from heaven.

Such a kingdom would have been rife with technology and sociological advancement. Evidence of such endeavors will be discussed later with the introduction of OOPArts and other textual support. For the time being, it is important to understand that the remnants of an ancient civilization built after the flood does not do the account of Eridug in the Kings List justice.

Eridug was in fact, the first and oldest kingdom of the Kings List where the first king, Alulim, ruled. A Pre-Adamic period with thriving civilizations and advanced technology which, in many ways, was probably superior to that which can be found in the twenty-first century. Just as OOPArts belie explanation for the intellectually honest, monolithic structures utilizing systems beyond modern capabilities are testament to beings that existed before the Flood.

Lastly, when one considers that a flood wiped out the landscape, it is entirely reasonable to assume that all, if not most, geographic landscape was reshaped. As such, our understanding of what an Antediluvian Mesopotamia looked like compared to the area where cities such as Ur were established, is greatly hindered. In addition, if one is to believe that the ancient geographical landscape had shifted and a single supercontinent broke apart, it is entirely feasible to assume that even the location of what was once pre-flood Mesopotamia has changed.

Perspective – pre-flood, post-flood, must not be viewed through a modern lens, but from the idea that life in the kingdoms of the Kings was very different than our own.

Nonetheless, we do find some important references as to what kind of kingdom Eridug was and why it is significant.

As we get closure to the truth, where there is ancient smoke – there’s fire.

To be continued…

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Steve Quayle is a world-renown researcher and author who has published over ten books on a wide variety of subjects ranging from ancient giants, to the UFO phenomenon, to the Nazis and Antarctica, to the rise of transhumanism. Steve is the owner/producer of GenSix Productions and is a speaker at True Legends The Conference 2020 in Branson, MO, July 10-12^th.

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[1] ^{William H. Shea, The Antediluvians (Geoscience Research Institute: 1991), http://www.grisda.org/origins/18010.htm}

[2] ^{April Holloway, Sumerian King List Still Puzzles Historians After More Than a Century of Research (Epoch Times: June 24, 2014), http://www.theepochtimes.com/n3/773358-sumerian-king-list-still-puzzles-historians-after-more-than-a-century-of-research/}

[3] ^{“Writings of the Egyptians - Egyptian Vignettes of the story of Atlantis,” http://www.atlantisquest.com/Hiero.html, (June 15, 2012)}