Noah.  The building of the Ark.

God rejected antediluvian mankind, “for they are also flesh” (Gen. 6:3), and chose the righteous Noah to become the father of the new mankind.  The Lord tasked Noah with building an Ark to save his family members and all domestic animals, both pure (fit for food) and impure.  The dimensions of Noah’s Ark are indicated in the Bible quite precisely: 300 cubits in length, 50 cubits in breadth, and 30 cubits in height.  A cubit was equal to approximately a half-meter; consequently, the dimensions of the Ark were 150x25x15 meters.

 Noah began building the Ark.  At that time he apparently was already the king of the pre-Sumerian Adamite kingdom, which means that he was already 600 years old, and he lived, as witnessed by cuneiform records, “in the capital of the antediluvian kings, Eridu.”  On one side Eridu adjoined the gulf and on the other the Euphrates River, upon which the Ark might have been built.  In any case, in the minds of the people of those times, this ship was being designed for long-term sailing along the Gulf of Jordan into unknown parts.

 The last of the forefathers – Noah’s grandfather Methuselah – died two years before the Deluge, while Noah’s father Lamech died 5 years prior to the Deluge.  Noah became the absolute ruler of the kingdom and could freely build a ship that was grandiose for those times.  By that time Noah was in possession of fairly advanced technology, as witnessed by the fact that the neighboring Japhetites were building “cyclopic” temples that were a marvel of technology.  They vertically positioned unpolished columns, and on top of those they placed blocks equal in weight to two locomotives.  The Adamites erected walls around their cities and created monumental buildings.  And yet the construction of the Ark is an absolutely incomparable and genuine marvel of the technology of those times.  The Ark was a capacious ship, unequipped with masts or sails, but for all that it had to be sufficiently strong.

The territory flooded by the Deluge.

        The flooded territory was enormous.  Our task of describing the original Old Testament Church, the sons of blessing, does not include research on the outcast branch of the Cainites, who spread all over Europe and to some extent over Asia and North Africa.  This would be too monumental a task, requiring very scrupulous archaeological and geological analysis.

 In this case we are looking at the habitation of the descendants of Seth, who had become depraved by Noah’s time and were subjected to the same fate as the Cainites.  All mankind perished in the waters of the Deluge, as confirmed by Christ the Saviour: “As it was in the days of Noah: people ate, drank, got married, until the Deluge came and destroyed all,” – all, and not only part of mankind.  Christ our Lord could not have been mistaken – the Deluge was truly universal.  At that time neither America, nor Australia, nor Oceania were inhabited.  Apparently the major part of Asia and Africa was also uninhabited.  The latter became only partially immersed in water, while the entire Middle East, North Africa, and the whole of Europe descended below the level of the ocean.  For the Quaternary period this was a preternatural geological manifestation, when all the European mountains constituted the bottom of the ocean.  But this would have been normal for all preceding geological periods.

 Despite the fact that the sludgy sediments of the diluvium (Deluge) cover the whole of Europe like snow, up to this time they remain an absolutely inexplicable occurrence.  Non-believing scientists are unable to believe in such a sinking of the Eurasian continent in the Ice Age (Quaternary period).  In truth, this can only be perceived as a geological marvel.

 But it has recently been discovered that the Antarctic continent sank hundreds of meters below ocean level under the weight of permanent ice.  Geologists are not surprised that the summits of all the European mountains formed the bottom of the Tetis Ocean during the Tertiary period, nor are they surprised that four times during the Quaternary period Europe rose and sank hundreds of meters.  But geologists simply cannot acknowledge the fact that the fourth time it sank not hundreds but thousands of meters, and they do not wish to believe it, although there is a multitude of reliable proofs.  Without believing in God, believing that God is the Creator of the world, it is impossible to believe in this marvel as well.

Noah’s return to his homeland.  The blessing of Shem and Japeth.

        There can be no doubt that Noah’s family returned to its homeland and to its native city, since (according to archaeological data) all the five Adamite cities were resettled.  All the Adamite cities – Eridu, Ur, Obeid, Uruk, and Lagash – have a 2-4 meter “empty layer” from the Deluge above the Adamite cultural layers, after which once again begin the cultural layers, but this time from the descendants of Shem, the Semites-Sumerians.  It may be supposed that in antiquity the name of this original kingdom of Sumer sounded as Shemer (from Shem).

 Only Noah’s wife did not return to the homeland.  The remains of the second foremother of mankind, Noah’s wife, rest in the valley of the Arax River, not far from the ancient capital of Armenia, Nakhichevan.  Her grave has been reverently venerated from time immemorial.

 Unfortunately Moses did not write anything about the path of Noah’s return and about where Noah lived after the Deluge; however, in the Book of Genesis there are two oblique but significant indications.

 The first: “Shem begat Arphaxad two years after the Flood” (Gen. 11:10).  As Noah entered the Ark, so he left it with only his sons, without any grandsons.  Where was Arphaxad born?  Perhaps right there, in the Arax valley, since the first most ancient capital of Armenia was called just that – Arphaxad.  Shem’s firstborn, Arphaxad, was the first person born after the Deluge.

 Moses records the direct genealogy of the antediluvian forefathers along the line of their firstborn sons, without providing any information whatsoever about other sons: “And he had sons and daughters.”  Cain’s genealogy is recorded by Moses separately.

 After the Deluge, however, Moses gives information on the sons of Shem, Japheth, and Ham with all their descendants.  Moreover, he writes that Ham was the youngest (Gen. 9:24), while when enumerating them Moses writes: “Shem, Ham, and Japheth” (Gen. 9:18), without attaching any significance to the order of their enumeration, as we would have done nowadays.  Why?  We do not know, just as we do not know why Moses did not indicate where Adam lived after his expulsion from Paradise, simply saying “opposite Paradise,” but not naming any specific place known in Moses’s time.  Moses likewise does not indicate Noah’s place of habitation either before or after the Deluge, either considering it to be unimportant or, in accordance with God’s Providence, leaving it up to the last mankind to reveal the mystery, in order to once again provide vast and incontrovertible proof of the genuineness of God’s Revelation before the end of the world.  Therein is embedded the same sense as in the coming to earth during the times of the Antichrist of one of the first people – Enoch, who in his preaching will tell people about his times and will reveal all the unrevealed mysteries of the history of Paradise and the first people.  This great event, described in the Apocalypse, will take place before the end of the world on “the great Euphrates River.”  It is specifically there, in the cradle of mankind, that the greatest apocalyptic events will take place.  “Loose the four angels which are bound at the great river Euphrates.  And the four angels were loosed, for to slay the third part of men” (Rev. 9:14-15).

 “And the sixth angel poured out his vial upon the great river Euphrates, and the water thereof was dried up.  And I saw three unclean spirits like frogs come out of the mouth of the dragon, which go forth unto the kings of the earth, to gather them to the battle of that great day of God Almighty” (Rev. 16:12-14).

 Let us now return to the genealogy of Shem.  In listing his sons, Moses did not indicate Arphaxad first, not keeping order just as he did when enumerating Noah’s sons.  But Moses does indicate that Arphaxad was born from Shem two years after the Deluge.  Consequently, he is the eldest son, which is why his genealogy goes back all the way to Abraham.  Arphaxad is the firstborn; he was due to inherit his father’s house and power.

 If we knew where Arphaxad lived, we could have determined the place of residence of both his father and of his grandfather Noah, since Arphaxad was their successor in all things.

 Moreover, this information could have made known the place of residence of Lamech, Methuselah, and all the forefathers along the eldest line back to Adam.

 But there is no such information, and it only remains to search for the place of residence of the antediluvian forefathers in the five cities of the Obeidian culture: Ur, Eridu, Obeid, Lagash on the gulf shore, and Uruk further upriver along the Euphrates.  The first three cities were actually so near each other, that one could just cross the Euphrates River from the right bank, where Eridu stands, to the left bank, to arrive at Ur and Obeid, standing next to each other.  One could say that the Adamites lived all close together, and only Lagash and Uruk were some distance away, several hours’ travel along the Euphrates to Uruk and along the gulf to Lagash.  The Adamites had no other cities.  The latter two, Uruk and Lagash, were hardly likely to be the place of residence of Shem or Noah, since the capital of the antediluvian kings was still Eridu.  Here was built the first temple in the history of mankind, which was reconstructed 16 times over the course of millennia, but with its original sanctuary left intact.

The Search for Noah’s Ark

It is said in the Bible that the Ark stopped upon the mountains of Ararat. It should naturally be assumed that it was Mount Ararat, since it is not a ridge, but a cone-shaped mountain of volcanic provenance, whose upper part, beginning with 4.5 km above sea level and all the way to the summit, is covered with eternal ice (Ararat’s elevation is 5700 meters).

Where did Noah’s Ark stop? After “the water of the great abyss” had remained for half-a-year, even the tops of mountains were covered with water. The ice should have melted in the water, but if the ship had stopped below the zone of eternal ice, it would have rotted and been destroyed without a trace. However, had it stopped on the very summit, after the Deluge it would have been covered with a strong layer of ice and would have become inaccessible to people. By God’s Providence the Ark stopped in a mountain lake at a height of 5 km, where the glaciers drift down from the summit, and there is considerably less ice cover. In cold years the Ark is covered with ice and snow and cannot be seen, while during the summer in hot years part of it becomes exposed, which, however, happens very rarely.

On July 6, 1955 French mountaineer Fernand Navarra and his 15-year-old son Rafael found Noah’s Ark and shared this discovery with the entire world. The meter-long wooden beam (from the frame of the ship) brought back by Fernand Navarra was subjected to radioactive analyses. The tests showed that the wood (oak) was 5,000 years old. The analyses were performed in two laboratories: in Cairo and in Madrid. All the photographs, the results of the analyses, and certifications were appended by Navarra to a book published in French.

This unique discovery was preceded by two not too successful expeditions, made by the same man in 1952 and 1953. And not surprisingly, since even for the most desperate mountaineers access to the Ark is difficult due to frequent and destructive snowstorms.

Navarra dedicated 17 years to this expedition. He encountered difficulties, because Ararat is located at the junction of three borders: Armenia, Iran, and Turkey, who had concluded an agreement forbidding ascent up Mount Ararat. Navarra conducted all his expeditions in secret, passing through the dangerous zone at night.

At the very last he was fired upon and arrested by the border guards, but afterwards he was let go safely with all his films and the piece of wood. Such are the conditions in which this heroic expedition took place.

The first information about a search for Noah’s Ark comes from the pagan priest Veronus in 475 B.C. He tells of how many people in his times and earlier had achieved the summit of Ararat, had seen Noah’s Ark there, and had brought back bits of it as relics. In Christian times Nicholas Damascene confirms that the frame of the Ark remained in a state of preservation for a long time. Joseph Flavius likewise writes in his opus “Antiquities” that many people brought back bits of the Ark from the Ararat. Theophanus of Antioch confirms the same in A.D. 180. In 1800 the American Claudius Rich published a report by a certain Aga Hussein, who claimed he had reached the summit of Ararat and had seen the remains of the Ark.

In 1829 the expedition of Frederick Parrot, a professor at Derpt University, opened the way for scientific expeditions to Ararat. Two of Parrot’s expeditions did not reach the summit of Ararat, while the third time he and his group of six colleagues did apparently succeed in reaching the site of the Ark, but could not prove it.

In 1840 a magazine in Constantinople reported the discovery of Noah’s Ark. A Turkish expedition, outfitted for researching snow avalanches on Ararat, discovered a gigantic frame made out of nearly black wood, protruding from a glacier. The inhabitants of the closest villages to Ararat reported that they had known of the existence of this structure for 6 years, but dared not approach it, because they saw a fearsome spirit appearing in an upper window there. Such fears did not stop the Turks, a brave people. Despite great difficulties, they continued their research. Their expedition came close to the Ark. It was in good condition, although its sides had become damaged from time. One of the members of the expedition, who spoke French and English, stated that the sides of the Ark were constructed from the wood mentioned in the Scriptures. As everyone knows, this wood does not grow anywhere else except in the Euphrates River valley. Making their way inside the Ark, the members of the expedition ascertained that it was arranged for transporting cattle.

The inner space is divided into sections 15 feet high. The Turks could only get into three sections, because the others were filled with ice. The length of the Ark was 500 kadem (a Turkish measure).

In 1893 Nourri, an archdeacon in a Nestorian church, studied the sources of the Euphrates River, and after ascending Mount Ararat officially declared that he had seen the remnants of the Ark, “whose front and back parts are accessible, while the middle part remains under ice. The Ark is made out of thick brown-colored boards.” After measuring the Ark, Nourri found that its dimensions coincide with those described in the Bible.

On the wave of his enthusiasm Nourri formed a society which was to finance a second expedition, providing it with all necessary materials, but on condition that the Ark, after being lowered from the Ararat, would be delivered to the Chicago Exhibition.

In the end Nourri was forced to give up his brilliant project, because the Turkish government refused to grant permission to have Noah’s Ark taken out of the country, and the shareholders then refused to participate in the affair. After that nothing more was heard of any expeditions until World War I.

But in August 1916 the Russian aviator Vladimir Roskovitsky, who was exploring the Turkish border, found himself over Ararat and saw a frozen lake in the eastern part of the snow-covered summit. At the edge of this lake there was the frame of a gigantic ship. Part of the ship remained covered with ice, while the sides were open and in some parts damaged. Moreover, one of the folds of the door could be seen. When Roskovitsky informed his superiors of his discovery, they wanted to obtain precise confirmation of it. Conducting flights over the mountain they, on their part, also became convinced of the existence of the indicated object and so informed Moscow and St. Petersburg. Tsar Nicholas II ordered a government expedition to be sent to Ararat. A company of 150 soldiers worked for a month to make an ascent up the mountain somewhat possible. Afterwards a scientific mission was sent there, which conducted research by measuring and photographing the Ark and collecting samples of it. The results were sent back to St. Petersburg. Unfortunately, all these priceless documents appear to have been destroyed during the Russian Revolution.

The Roskovitsky affair was due to be echoed during World War II. The head of the Soviet security service, Major Jaspar Mascalin, says that one of his people was curious to fly over Ararat, to see whether there was any truth in what Roskovitsky had reported 25 years earlier. The Soviet pilot did, in fact, notice a structure partially submerged in an icy lake.

However, all of this did not prevent the Soviet expedition from declaring the story of the Ark to be a myth which had nothing to do with science.

Expeditions were also undertaken in postwar times, but they did not succeed due to the obstructions put up by the Turkish government under pressure from the Moslem world, since the Koran indicated another mountain on which Noah’s Ark had supposedly rested.

Ferdinand Navarra was due to take part in an expedition by the missionary Dr. Smith. After several failures, Navarra decided to act independently, even without permission from the Turkish government.

The heroic adventure of the last expedition was described by Navarra in his book. Having reached the ice border at night, at the advice of his Armenian friend he set up camp there, in order to set out in the morning to storm the inaccessible cliffs, all completely covered by ice. A terrible blizzard came on in the night, and there was a strong frost, so that Navarra and his son Rafael barely escaped freezing in their shelter, which became covered by a thick layer of snow under a temperature of 30 degrees below zero.

In the morning, with God’s help, as Navarra writes, he set out for the site he had seen from afar during one of his first expeditions. Despite the fact that everything was covered with ice and accumulations of snow, he succeeded in finding the Ark. With great difficulty and risk Navarra cut out a section of the oak frame from the ice, 1 meter long and 8 inches wide, whose antiquity was later established as being 5,000 years. There was no planking in this place.

Navarra’s book is illustrated with photographs of the cut-out piece of the frame and of the site on which the Ark is located under the ice, as well as photos of laboratory certifications, drawings, maps, etc. This is naturally not the last expedition; the future will presumably provide more detailed information.

The creation of the Babylonian and Egyptian kingdoms according to biblical and archaeological data

What period of time separates Abraham’s reign from the Deluge?  There is a significant difference between the information in the Hebrew text of the Bible and the Translation of the Seventy (Septuagint); therefore, this issue remains open.  And archaeological data is still not complete enough to allow us to fully reconstruct the actual course of events in the history of postdiluvian Semitic mankind.  Archaeology still knows very little of the period which interests us the most – this is the period of time immediately following the Deluge, the so-called Sumerian culture.  It cannot be called a kingdom, because the history of postdiluvian mankind once again began with a single family, and several hundred years were needed for mankind to multiply and spread to the bounds of a kingdom, which began in the city of Ur as the first dynasty of the postdiluvian kings.

Biblical chronology is not Church dogma, but serves only as an approximate guide for following the sequence of events.  The universally accepted date of Adam’s creation is usually considered to be 5500 years B.C.
We will posit 4000 B.C. as the date of the Deluge (it is not to be excluded that the year 5508 for Adam’s creation is indicated correctly).

Modern theology places Abraham’s time at 1800 B.C. and Moses’s time at 1350 B.C.  How can these Biblical dates be correlated with archaeological data?

In the above table drawn up by Gordon Childe, the first mankind in the Ancient East is dated at 5000 B.C.  This coincides fully with the Biblical narrative on the reign of Jared – the sixth after Adam.  In Palestine this culture is called Natufian.

Antediluvian layers in Ur, Eridu, and Obeid have not yet been assigned any definite timelines.  These cultures, commencing with 5000 B.C., as, for example, the Proto-Obeidian culture, may have ended by 4000 B.C.

The layers of the Uruk culture in Sumer are attributed to the postdiluvian period, since they begin from 4000 B.C.  Then a small layer of the brief culture of Jemdet-Nasr was found, after which began the dynasty of the postdiluvian kings of Ur, and their period has been named the early dynastic period of Ur-1 (see table in “Culture of Adam’s descendants”).

At this point the Biblical and the archaeological data coincide almost entirely.

In Egypt the Tasian antediluvian culture begins from 5000 B.C.; contemporary with it are the Natufian culture in Palestine and the Obeidian culture in Sumer.

The beginning of the first Egyptian dynasty is dated at 2850 B.C.  As we can see, all chronological data, both Biblical and archaeological, are in full accord with each other, and some insignificant discrepancies do not disrupt the coherence and sequence of events.  In other words, a significant amount of time must have passed from the Deluge, after which a single family was left, to Abraham, who lived in the time of the powerful and organized kingdom of the era of the famous King Hammurabi.  The following events must have taken place in Mesopotamia between the Deluge and Abraham: Noah’s descendants multiplied and, before dispersing, began erecting a monument – the gigantic tower of Babel, the ruins of which exist to this day.  Mankind divided into three branches, of which the Semitic one was due to create the powerful kingdom of Sumer and Akkadia, which subsequently turned into the Babylonian kingdom.  The majority of people lost their monotheism, developing pagan religions, the only exception being individual islands of monotheism, such as the family of Abraham and the family of Melchisedec, but undoubtedly among the general apostasy there must have been other exceptions as well.

2000 years were a quite sufficient time for these events, if one posited that the Deluge took place 4000 (or somewhat less) years before Christ and that Abraham lived 1600 years before Christ.
In the light of this data, the archaeological table of Gordon Childe (a man of quite liberal views by the way) on the time of the emergence of one or another culture, as well as the beginning of the first Babylonian and Egyptian dynasties (the Egyptian in 2850 B.C.) and also the Mesopotamian dynasties, the northern and the southern, in 3650 B.C., may be quite acceptable.

Moreover, it must be taken into account that the European Neolith (postdiluvian mankind) is being dated unfoundedly and without proof at 5000 years B.C., although it can actually be dated at 4000 years or even less, which means approximately at the date of the Deluge.

The fact that all the kingdoms known in antiquity came from Noah’s first descendants is attested to by Joseph Flavius, a 1st century Hebrew historian, who cites sources that have not reached us.  “Shem had five sons.  Elam left the Elamites after himself.  Assur gave his name to the Assyrians.  Arphaxad named the present Chaldeans (Sumerians) the Arphaxadites.  The progenitor of the present Ludites was Lud.  Aram had four sons: Uz founded Trachonitis and Damascus, Hul founded Armenia, Gether is the progenitor of the Bactrians and the Mesaneans, whose country is called Antioch.”

“Islands” of true knowledge of God that were left in the world before God summoned Abraham

It is not known how long true worship of God was preserved among the entire people in the Sumerian kingdom.  The Bible testifies that knowledge of the True God was preserved in Shem’s genealogy along a straight line to Abraham, which comprises 2000 years.  There is no doubt that the ten generations indicated for this time period have great omissions, which clearly show up in the differences in the genealogical description in the Hebrew text and in the Septuagint.  Archaeological data also confirms that there were considerably more generations during this time period.

Be that as it may, one thing is undeniable, and that is that in Ur, the capital of Sumer, true knowledge of God was preserved until the days of Terah, the father of Abraham, although by that time idolatry was already beginning to also infiltrate the family of Terah, who apparently took up idol-worship for a while, as Joshua mentions in his book.

The initial Old Testament Church existed along a straight ancestral line from Shem to the days of Abraham in Sumer and the days of Melchisedec in Palestine.  This ancestry of the priests of the High God in the order of Melchisedec (when the eldest in the family or the king were at the same time high priests as well) attests to the fact that although the general mass of humanity in the Ancient East had already become pagan, islands of true knowledge of God and worship of the High God continued to exist among Shem’s descendants.  Melchisedec, too, was not alone – the people of whom he was king also worshipped the One God.

Undoubtedly, however, these “islands” – individual principalities (like Salim, for example), individual communities and families, dispersed all over – already constituted an insignificant minority and risked drowning among widespread pagan depravity.  For this reason the election of Abraham, from whom would be generated a people to safeguard the true knowledge of God, was a historical necessity in the action of God’s Providence over the world until the coming to earth of the Redeemer.

Why did Abraham receive a blessing from Melchisedec and not the other way around?  Apostle Paul said in regard to this that “the lesser is blessed by the greater.” So great was then Melchisedec!  He was the last great priest of the High God, and he transmitted the blessing of the entire initial Old Testament Church to the progenitor of the new period of the Old Testament Church, Abraham.  With this Melchisedec concluded the kingdom of the ancient forefathers and patriarchs.  Here began the history of the chosen people, whom God had promised to produce from Abraham. Everything that was great and glorious, both in the Old Testament and in the New Testament Church, was always done with the blessing of the fathers.  Adam blessed Seth to be a high priest (Seth did not venture upon this on his own).  Noah blessed Shem and Japheth, and mankind’s destiny took shape in accordance with this blessing.  The last great priest of this period blessed Abraham, the progenitor of a new era, and when the history of the entire Old Testament was being concluded, its last great person – St. John the Baptist – in compliance with God’s will placed his blessing and baptizing hand upon the head of Christ the Saviour, the Founder of the Holy New Testament Church of Christ.

No hymns and prayers of even Noah’s time have come down to us, although the first Sumerian cuneiform could have written down the verbal tradition that was being preserved (and is still preserved) in the East for many centuries.  However, one single hymn/prayer has been preserved in the Sumerian tablets.  It is distorted by later pagan inserts, which clearly contradict the general monotheistic content of the hymn.  But the hymn itself has such mighty spiritual power that it can even be attributed directly to Noah himself.  Just as we sing the 3,000-year-old hymns and psalms of David, so could the Sumerians, who had lost Noah’s divinely-revealed religion, continue to sing the psalms of their distant ancestor.

We cite this wonderful hymn, leaving off the obvious later pagan inserts at the beginning and the end, which contradict the monotheistic spirit of the hymn itself:

“O Lord, the only great One on heaven and on earth, Master of Ur…

O Merciful Father, Whose hands hold the life of the entire earth.

O Master, Thy Divinity, like the far-away sky, like the wide sea, is
full of splendor.

O Creator of the earth, Who has founded the temple and has given
names to all, Father of all heavenly denizens and people, Who summons to reign, presents the scepter, and determines destinies for many years.  O Mighty Leader (Provider), Whose hidden depth has not been explored by anyone.

O Swift (Lightning-fast) One, Who shiningly passes from the foundations of the heaven to earth, opens the gates of heaven, and sends Light to all people, Father and Reason of all existence.

O Master, Who decides the fates of heaven and earth, Whose orders are unalterable, Who sends cold and heat, and rules over living beings.

Who is like unto Thee?  Who is great in heaven?  Thou Alone!  When Thou utterest a word – food becomes plenty, and Thy word gives rise to truth and justice, and people begin to speak the truth.

Thy Word is like the far-away Sky, inaccessible to contact by sight.  Who can understand this Word of Thine and equal It?  O Master!  Thou hast no equal in sovereignty both in heaven and on earth…” (See Prof. V.A. Turayev.  History of the Ancient East, 1935, p. 137).

Noah was the king of Eridu and Ur, and, as king and high priest according to the rite of Melchisedec, had the right to offer this prayer of a priest of God.

In this majestic hymn to the One God, Creator of heaven and earth, one senses the divinely-revealed knowledge of forefather Noah!

And what extraordinary meaning he puts into the concept of the Word of God, the Pre-eternal Logos, “by Whom all things were made,” as we say.  From where did he have such divinely-revealed knowledge, which seemed to be unknown to anyone before the holy Apostles and Church Fathers, and was especially inaccessible in those most ancient times of the beginning of the new mankind?  No wonder it is said in the hymn that “Thy Word is inaccessible to contact by sight,” meaning that it is impossible to even touch upon this deep mystery with sight or thought, not to mention seeing it clearly or comprehending it.

“Who is like unto Thee?” – exclaims the great divinely-inspired psalmist of antiquity, – “Who is great in heaven?  Thou Alone.”  How can this be matched up with polytheism, with the wild, humanized Babylonian religion?  It is obvious that the pagans did not create, but only preserved this hymn, and spoiled it by adding their own beginning and end.  This hymn could only have been created by someone who spoke with God – Noah, or Shem, or Japheth.

And now let us listen to what is said by Ut-Napishtim (Noah’s Babylonian name, which apparently means “the one who was saved from the Flood”) to his son in the Sumerian epic about the Deluge: “Do not calumniate, but speak amicably.  Do not malign, but spread goodwill.  Whoever calumniates or maligns shall be revenged upon.  Do not open your mouth wide, keep a tight rein on your tongue, do not speak straightaway if you are irritated, otherwise you will have to repent in silence for thoughtless speech; it is better to meekly keep quiet.”

“Make an annual sacrifice to God, pray and cense to Him, and have a pure heart before Him – this is the worthiest offer to Divinity.  Every morning you must offer Him prayer, entreaty, and worship, and He will grant thee abundance.”

“If thou art wise, learn from these words: fear of God is the beginning of prayer, a favorable sacrifice for longevity, since prayer forgives sins.  Do good unto those who have done evil unto thee.”

These instructions have reached us in the Sumerian cuneiforms.  Such was the righteous Noah in reality.  God’s righteous ones in the days of Seth and Enoch, Noah and Abraham, David and John the Baptist expressed the same thoughts and sentiments, often in almost the same words.  This excerpt, if its provenance were unknown, could have been taken for an excerpt from the homilies of the Church Fathers.

It now remains to clear up the last question related to the chapter on the preservation of true knowledge of God.  Who were the three magi, who came from the East to venerate the newly-born Infant Christ?

It has been said that they came from the East; if one draws a direct line from Jerusalem to the East, it turns out that the magi came from Southern Mesopotamia, from Sumer.  Babylon and Assyria are not situated to the east of Jerusalem.  Were the magi perhaps direct descendants of Shem, who had remained in their fathers’ homeland?  Did they perhaps issue from the high provenance of Nahor and Aram, Abraham’s siblings, who had remained in Chaldear Ur?  However, the magi were not pagan, they were worshippers of the True God, and according to Church tradition they attained sanctity.  Who were they?  Could it be that true worship of God had been preserved among them in the course of two thousand years amid general depravity?  Probably not, since Melchisedec was the last guardian of Truth, and the explanation should be sought elsewhere.

400 years before Christ, the Babylonian king Nebuchadnezzar took the residents of Jerusalem into captivity, the entire elite and all the artisans of the Israeli people, and kept them there for 80 years “on the rivers of Babylon.”  Not everyone returned home after the 80-year captivity, when Cyr of Persia, having conquered Babylon, allowed them to go back to Palestine.  Many of them remained on the lands where they were born and grew up, and mixed with the local inhabitants.  Becoming mixed with the descendants of Shem and along another line with the descendants of Nahor and Aram, they preserved their fathers’ belief in the One True God, and they also preserved the promise of the coming to earth of “the Mediator, and the subjection of all people to Him,” as Forefather Jacob prophesied.

The Church preserves the tradition that the magi were not only wise men, but also came from noble families, perhaps of sovereign princes whose principalities were numerous in the East.  Apparently it is they who, moved by the spirit of God, came to worship the Mediator between God and man.

And, of course, there is no need to add a Hindu and a Negro to them, as is done in Western tradition, contrary to common sense and the ways of God’s Providence in the historic destinies of mankind.

The election of Abraham.
Conclusion of the history of the original Old Testament Church

Part 1

During the first half of his life Abraham belonged to the original Old Testament Church.  He entered Palestine – the land promised to him and his descendants – at a fairly advanced age.  Abraham was then 75 years old.

In our understanding of the duration of human life this is already a venerable old age; in those days such an age was regarded as just mid-life.  Abraham’s father died at the age of 205.  In any case, Abraham had already reached the age of a totally adult man, with established views, character, and way of life.  The only issue was that he was childless.

At that time Abraham lived on the blessed and, as we shall see further on, beloved homeland of the fathers, the homeland of Shem and Noah, Enoch and Adam, in his native cities of Ur and Eridu on the great Euphrates River, near the site of the former Paradise.

The land of Canaan not only was not native to Abraham, but was foreign and repellent due to the way of life of its inhabitants.  If Abraham had lived in Ur in peace and tranquility, protected by the wise laws of King Hammurabi, here at every step he encountered famine and lawlessness: his wife was first abducted by the pharaoh to whose country Abraham was forced to move because of the famine in Palestine, and then by the local princeling Tarachius, and only God’s providence twice saved Sarah from being violated.

Abraham was even afraid to call Sarah his wife, but called her his sister, since she was his father’s daughter from another mother.

His whole life Abraham was a stranger (Jew is translated as stranger), he always leased land to live on, and only at the end of his life he bought land from the Philistines, at the oak of Mamre in Hebron.  The inhabitants of the land, the Canaanites, descendants of Ham, behaved wildly and lewdly, which is attested to by the destruction of Sodom and Gomorrah for their monstrous depravity.

So why did the Lord command Abraham to leave his beautiful homeland and go off into the terrible land of the Canaanites?  There were many reasons for this, but the main one was that, notwithstanding everything else, at God’s command Abraham was due to go to the site of Adam’s grave.

Other reasons are as follows:

1. In Sumer the pagans had become aggressive and threatened all who did not wish to serve their gods.  After several generations, when Sumer and Akkad were united under the rule of Babylon, there emerged the wild religion of Baal, with human sacrifices and coercion of everyone without exception to worship Baal.  Let us remember the three youths, who did not bow down before Baal and were consequently thrown into the Babylonian furnace.
2. In Palestine there survived the small godly kingdom of King Melchisedec, who became Abraham’s friend.  Melchisedec’s ancestors had been local Semitic princes under the kings of Ur in the land of Canaan and had later become independent kings.
3. Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob lived in isolation among the Canaanites, and only Jacob’s sons married Palestinian women and, becoming depraved in their midst, were given into Egyptian bondage.  When the Israelis were returning from Egypt, and Joshua conquered the lands of Canaan, then some of the inhabitants perished in the war, some were banished, and some (the descendants of Melchisedec’s subjects – the Jebusees, who lived in Jerusalem) remained in place.  One must not forget that in Palestine at that time there remained the graves of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob, and the descendants of Ishmael and Keav also lived there.
4. In Abraham’s times Palestine was not a single state like Sumer or later Babylon, but a country of small principalities, in which no attention was paid to affiliation with one or another religion.  Babylon, however, demanded obedient fulfillment of all pagan rites and idolatry on a popular level.  In the land of Canaan Abraham remained as Urian as he had been in his father’s house.  Way of life, morality – all was transferred by Abraham from that blessed homeland of his father.  “And He said to him (Abraham): I am the Lord that brought thee out of Ur of the Chaldees” (Gen. 15:7).  Sarah was also just such an Urian, and such were their son Isaac and Rebecca, for whom Abraham had sent, in order to take her from a kindred family of his fathers.  And Abraham adjured his son not to take a wife from the daughters of Canaan.  Isaac, in turn, repeated this behest to his son Jacob, and the latter also fulfilled it.

“And Isaac called Jacob and blessed him, and charged him, and said unto him: thou shalt not take a wife of the daughters of Canaan.  Arise, go to Mesopotamia, to the house of Bethuel thy mother’s father, and take thee a wife from thence,” – which Jacob did do (Gen. 28:1–2).

Only Esau did not fulfill the commandment, taking two Hittite wives from himself (in violation of the law of Ur), which poisoned life for Isaac and Rebecca.  “And Rebecca said to Isaac: I am weary of my life because of the daughters of Heth.  If Jacob take a wife of the daughters of Heth, such as these which are of the daughters of the land, what good shall my life do me?” (Gen. 27:46).

Sorrowful are the words of Rebecca, a native of Ur.  How great, then, was the difference between the people of her homeland and the people of the land of Canaan.  In order to understand this more clearly, let us review the way of life of Abraham, Sarah, Isaac, and Rebecca.

To do this we must become acquainted with the laws of King Hammurabi, who reigned in Ur in Abraham’s time.  They had nothing in common with the later degenerate Babylon.

In Abraham’s time Ur was going through the period of its greatest flowering as a rich merchant coastal city.  Cuneiform tablets attest to the fact that at that time Ur stood on the shores of the sea (gulf).  The gulf retreated from Ur considerably later.  In the time of Roman supremacy, the gulf was already far away from Ur.  In Abraham’s time the official religion was pagan, although one supreme god was worshipped – Anu.

Cuneiform writings of those times spoke of the creation of the world in six periods, of the Paradise and the Fall, of the Flood and the salvation of Noah with his three sons.  Their time was counted in a manner that has been retained to this day: 12 months, 12 hours of the day and night, 60 minutes (because they had a sexagesimal system of measurement), 360 degrees in a circle.  They were well-acquainted with astronomy and knew all the 12 signs of the zodiac.  They were well-versed in geometry.  In general, they had a very high culture.  In comparison with Ur, Palestine was a primitive pastoral country.

As calculated by researchers, King Hammurabi was either Abraham’s contemporary or lived 100-200 years before him.  It should be noted that the level of morality there did not increase, but, on the contrary, regressed continuously: the farther away from Noah’s times, the more immoral became religion and its attendant morality.  The laws of Hammurabi were very strict, but moral.  In the absence of prisons very many crimes were punished by death, which attests to the high level of morals.  For example, punishable by death were not only murder or theft from the king’s palace or temple, but also appropriation of someone else’s valuables, theft of children and slaves, theft during a fire, adultery, and incest.  Battery was punishable by 60 lashes, mutilation by mutilation.  Mob law was forbidden. Lesser crimes were punished by fines.  An unjust judge was forever removed from his position.  A victim of robbery had to be recompensed by the city community, which made everyone on the lookout for thieves.

A woman could have only one husband, while a man could have only one wife; if the wife was childless or sick, she could give her slave or servant to her husband.  Mixed marriages were allowed; moreover, the slave then became free.  Adopted children became legal.  Divorce was allowed only through the courts.  Of great importance in the laws were the issues of labor relations, finances, trade, etc.

At the end of the code of laws it is said: “I, Hammurabi, am the king of truth.  My words are intended to destroy (humiliate) the haughty, humble the proud, exterminate arrogance.”  This constituted the way of life, the morals, and the culture of the Urians, or rather the kingdom of Ur in Abraham’s time.  Abraham and Isaac kept these laws.  They were not bigamists, and even Jacob would not have become a bigamist, had he not been deceived by his father-in-law.  He could never give up his beloved Rachel.

In the land of Canaan bigamy and trigamy were a common occurrence, which is confirmed by the three wives of Esau.  The morals of the Canaanites are well attested to by Sodom and Gomorrah.

The sons of Jacob yielded to the influence of the surrounding environment and, in consequence, found themselves in Egyptian captivity. How touching was Abraham’s concern not only that his son Isaac, out of love for his fiancée but in violation of the Lord’s commandment, not go back to Mesopotamia, to the blessed land of his fathers, but that his son’s wife be as Urian as Abraham and Sarah themselves, and from a family loyal to God, since their own family was descended directly from Seth.

Abraham and Sarah were born and spent half of their life in Ur, during the period of the original Old Testament Church; their son Isaac was a pure-blooded Urian, as was Rebecca. From them we can judge what the worshippers of the true God in Ur, Eridu, Obeid, and the other cities where islands of true knowledge of God were preserved, were like.

The meek, serene, and blessed Abraham, full of boundless faith and obedience to the will of God, beloved of the Lord, glorified by Christ the Saviour, lovingly hymned by the Most-holy Virgin Mary: “As the Lord said to our fathers, Abraham and his seed unto the ages” (the present). Truly the godly generation, the generation of God’s elect, always lived by the legacy and blessing of the fathers.

And Isaac – the pre-image of Christ the Saviour, as he is designated by the Holy Church, the meekest of the sons of God, a lamb prepared for sacrifice, was in all aspects submissive to his father’s will: both when he was lying tied down on the altar and when his father appointed him a bride whom he had never seen, but was so eager to see, knowing that by the will of God everything would turn out well. “It should not be what I want, – Isaac said, – but what God sends me through my father’s will.”

Did not the same apply to the beautiful bride Rebecca herself, who was a true God-elected Urian? Did she not just as obediently fulfill the will of God and the blessing of her father to go she knew not where, to the ends of the earth, to leave her beloved homeland where Adam and Noah had lived, where Paradise had been located, and go to an unknown country, to an unknown man, to undertake a long and hazardous journey with a servant of Abraham whom she did not know, but to go in accordance with God’s command? Was that not truly a spiritual feat?

Was not this trait also characteristic of the other Urians who are well-known to us: Abraham and Sarah? Their entire life until extreme old age, when Isaac was already 180 years old, they lived together, full of love and respect for each other.

When sending his servant Eliezer to the land of the fathers, Abraham said: “Swear to me by the Lord God of heaven and earth that thou willst not take for my son a wife from the daughters of Canaan, among whom I reside. But thou willst go into my land, into my homeland and my kindred, and willst take from there a wife for my son Isaac.” The servant said to him: “Perhaps the woman will not wish to come with me to this land? Should I return thy son to the land from which thou hast come?” Abraham said to him: “Beware, do not return my son there; the Lord God of heaven and earth, Who had taken me from the home of my father and from the land of my nativity, Who spoke with me and Who appeared to me, saying: to thee and thy descendants shall I give this land, – He will send His Angel before thee, and thou willst take a wife for my son (Isaac) from there. If the woman will not wish to go with thee to this land, thou shalt be free from this oath of mine; only do not return my son there.”

Eliezer “got up and went to Mesopotamia, to Nahor’s city.” The Bible does not indicate to which specific city, but from the context of Abraham’s speech it is clear that he was sending his servant to his native city of Ur or to the nearby small homestead of Nahor. From the description of Eliezer’s conversation with Rebecca at the well it may be assumed that this was Nahor’s out-of-town estate, which was called by his name – Nahor. Rebecca said to Eliezer: “We have both straw and provender enough, and room to lodge in” (Gen. 24:25), confirming that this was apparently Nahor’s homestead. In those times the word “city” simply meant a settlement, an enclosed place, but sometimes meant a city in our sense as well.

Half-a-century later, when Isaac sent Jacob to take a wife for himself from the house of Laban, Rebecca’s brother, Laban moved to the upper reaches of the Euphrates, to the city of Harran, where Farrah, the father of Abraham and Nahor and the great-grandfather of Laban, had been buried.

Near the city (village) of Nahor Eliezer stopped his camels behind an enclosure, at a well, in the evening, at a time when the women come out to draw water, and said: “O Lord God of my master Abraham! I pray Thee, send her to meet me today” (Gen. 24:12). “Before he had done speaking in his mind, behold, Rebecca came out, who was born to Behuel, son of Milcah, the wife of Nahor, Abraham’s brother, with her pitcher upon her shoulder. And the damsel was very fair to look upon, a virgin, and neither had any man known her.” And Eliezer asked her who she was. She told him. Then Eliezer bowed down to the Lord and said: Blessed is God, Who has brought me directly to the home of my master’s brother. The damsel ran and told all those in her mother’s house about it. Rebecca had a brother by the name of Laban. Laban ran out to Eliezer, to the well.

All the details speak of the fact that this was a private homestead and not a large town. And when Eliezer told everything to Rebecca’s father, he then asked whether the latter intended to show mercy to his master Abraham.

Her father and brother replied: “This thing is from the Lord. Behold, Rebecca is before thee, let her be thy master’s son’s wife, as the Lord said” (Gen. 24:50-51).

“As the Lord said” – such was the law in the life of the last blessed Urians.

“And they called Rebecca and said unto her: Wilt thou go with this man? And she said: I will go” (Gen. 24:58).

Laban, Rebecca’s brother, also believed in the One God. Afterwards, having moved to Harran, he engaged in the craft of making pagan idols, but in no way does this mean that he himself became a pagan. Laban wrathfully says to Jacob: “Why did you steal my idols?”, but they, as it turned out, had been taken by his daughter Rachel, Jacob’s wife, who hid them under the saddle and sat on them. Such disrespect reveals that for them these were just pieces of jewelry made out of gold, and nothing more, just some merchandise which Rachel intended to sell in the lands of Canaan for “a rainy day.”

Thus when Rebecca and Eliezer neared Abraham’s home, Isaac came out to meet them. Seeing him, Rebecca became shy and covered her face with a veil: four thousand years have passed, yet to this day Christian brides, setting out for church to be wed, continue to cover their faces with a veil (bridal veil), following Rebecca’s example and in honor and memory of her – that beautiful and God-fearing maiden of Ur.

Yes, we can get a live image of the Urians through these wondrous customs.

Many things have come to us from the Sumerians: calculation of time, the principles of astronomy, the sciences and the arts, and to this day we have kept their system of measurements and weights (see Turyayev, “History of the Ancient Orient,” p. 148), and even such customs as the bridal veil.

Having looked at Abraham’s life in Ur, where he spent half of his life, 75 years, and his Urian provenance, and having compared Abraham’s image with other Urians, his relatives and children, as the last members of the original Old Testament Church, let us now consider Abraham as the father of the chosen people, let us look from a spiritual viewpoint upon his majestic image, which towers on the border of the two great periods of the Old Testament Church.

“Abraham was ninety-nine years old when the Lord appeared to him and said: I am the Almighty God; walk before Me, and be thou perfect, and I will make My Covenant between Me and thee, between thy seed after thee in their generations. An everlasting Covenant, to be a God unto thee and to thy seed after thee” (Gen. 17:1-7).

Thrice throughout the ages, from the creation of Adam to the coming down to earth of the Son of God, God made His covenant with mankind. The first time God promised, in comfort to the fallen Adam, that from his descendants would come the One Who “will destroy the head of the serpent” (the devil), that Adam’s Descendant would become the Conqueror of hell and death, the Redeemer of original sin – and then the lost Paradise would be returned to Adam.

The second covenant was with Noah: “And the Lord said to Noah and his sons with him: Behold, I shall make My covenant with thee and thy descendants, that never again shall all flesh be destroyed by the waters of the Deluge,” and this was a covenant to preserve mankind until the end of the world, no matter how sinful it may be.

And, finally, God’s third covenant – with Abraham – that from him will issue a God-chosen people that will preserve faith in the True God, and the Lord will preserve this people and, by sending them His prophets, announce His will to them until the arrival of the “Mediator, and unto Him shall the gathering of the people be,” as was prophesied by Abraham’s grandson Jacob (Gen. 49:10).

Part 2

The Holy Church calls God’s last covenant – with Abraham and all his descendants up to the coming down to earth of the Son of God – the Old Testament in the narrow sense of the word, but the Old Testament with man in the wide sense of the word encompasses the period of time from Adam to Christ’s Nativity.

Abraham’s youth was spent in terrible times. The true worship of God by the sons of Shem and Japheth was beginning to be forgotten by their descendants. Some of Shem’s descendants still continued to worship the true God, but in Abraham’s time this was already a rare exception: only individual families in the kingdom of Ur and in some small princedoms, for example, the princedom of Salem (Jerusalem), headed by the king and high priest Melchisedec, who blessed the progenitor of the God-chosen people, Abraham.

Theology does not know when the true worship of God ceased chronologically in the Eastern and Western branches of Japheth’s descendants. It may be said that Abraham’s epoch (1800 years B.C.) was the epoch of the dying out of true worship of God among the Japhethites in Europe.

And then God chose one of Shem’s direct descendants, who was living in the native land, in the Chaldean city of Ur in Sumer. “And the Lord said unto Abraham: Get thee out of thy country, and from thy kindred, and from thy father’s house, unto a land that I will show thee; and I will make of thee a great nation, and I will bless thee, and make thy name great, and in thee shall all families of the earth be blessed” (Gen. 12:1-3).

The last words indicate that from his root would issue Christ, in Whose name all families of the earth would be blessed. Thus began a new period in Abraham’s life, full of heavy trials, calamities and dishonor, and great suffering on behalf of his beloved and beautiful wife. And then God appeared to the king in a dream and said to him: “I suffered thee not to touch her (Sarah). Now restore the man his wife, for he is a prophet, and he shall pray for thee, and thou shalt live” (Gen. 20:6-7).

Here the Lord called Abraham a word which in Slavonic has been translated as “prophet,” but in the ancient Hebrew language means “divinely-inspired man,” “one through whom God speaks.” All the holy forefathers were divinely-inspired, and thus the word “prophet” has two meanings: the authors of the prophetic books and all the forefathers, beginning with Adam and ending with Symeon the God-receiver, who were all prophets in the true sense of the word.

When Abraham was 100 years old and his wife Sarah was 90, God appeared to Abraham in the form of three Angels. Two of the Angels later visited Lot in Sodom, where they were attacked by the Sodomites. And Sodom and Gomorrah then vanished into an abyss as a result of a tectonic quake, while the gap was filled by the waters of the Dead Sea.

Who was it who appeared to Abraham – God the Father or God the Son? In the words of Christ – and His words are true – no one ever saw God. “Jesus replied to them: and they shall be all taught of God… Not that any man hath seen the Father save He Who is of God: He hath seen the Father” (John 6:45-46). John the Theologian writes: “No man hath seen God at any time; the only-begotten Son, Who is in the bosom of the Father, He hath declared Him.” Apostle Paul writes to Timothy: “The only one Who hath immortality, dwelling in the light which no man can approach unto, Whom no man hath seen, nor can see” (1 Tim. 6:16).

Moses saw only the glory of God the Father, and for that the Church has called him the God-seer.

Christ the Saviour gave a clear explanation of the prophetic words” so says the Lord,” “the Lord appeared to him” (manifested Himself), “was taught by God”… This means that whoever “saw God” may be “taught by God” in different ways – in a dream; by God’s voice from heaven – as God often spoke to Moses, commanding him to stand before the Ark of the Covenant between the wings of two cherubim; through a messenger Angel; through man’s inner voice of conscience; in a heavenly vision (as Jacob saw a ladder stretching from heaven down to earth, and the Lord standing upon it and saying: “I am the Lord God of Abraham”); or with the voice of a meek breath, as God revealed Himself to the prophet Elias. The Lord revealed Himself by appearing in a dream, as when He concluded His covenant with Abraham (Gen. 15:1-12); to Jacob on the way to Harran (Gen. 28:12); to Laban, Rebecca’s brother, in the form of an Angel, who spoke as either a Messenger or as God Himself; to Abraham during the sacrifice of Isaac; also to Hagar, Gideon, and others. Men saw God’s image in God the Son, sitting in all His glory upon a throne, like unto the Son of man, surrounded by seraphim (Ezekiel 1:24-28), for God the Son had this image eternally, and man was created in the image and likeness of God (Gen. 1:26).

This is what the Holy Church Fathers say on the subject. St. Justin the Philosopher writes: “No one, even a slow-thinker, will dare assert that the Creator and Father of all left everything and appeared in a small part of the earth. Neither Abraham, nor Isaac, nor Jacob or anyone else saw the Father and the indescribable Lord in totality, but they saw the One Who, by the will of the Father, is both God His Son and at the same time His Angel in service to Him, Who by His determination must become man from a Virgin, and Who erst appeared even in the fire of a burning bush during his conversation with Moses” (St. Justin. “Conversation with Tryphon the Jew”).

St. Irineus of Lyons: “The Son of God is everywhere in the Biblical narrative: He is either speaking with Abraham, or partaking of food with him, or bringing judgment down upon the Sodomites.”

St. John Chrysostome: “Three were seen in Abraham’s house simultaneously: both the Angels and their Lord. But after the messengers were sent to destroy those cities, the Lord Himself remained and conversed with the righteous one as a friend with His friend about what He wished to do.”

In the ancient Liturgy we read: “Thou hast delivered Abraham from the forefathers’ iniquity, Thou hast made him the inheritor of peace and hast shown him Thy Christ.”

“Thou hast seen Abraham?” – the amazed Jews asked Christ. “Jesus said unto them: verily, verily I say unto you: before Abraham was, I am” (John 8:58).

The pre-eternal Son of God, like unto the Son of man sitting on the throne and surrounded by the seraphim, came down to His chosen one, Abraham, accompanied by two Angels, whom He later sent to destroy Sodom and Gomorrah.

In this vision Abraham was able to see the Son of God, Who later became the Son of man, and to converse with Him face-to-face.

Now let us look at the striking Biblical precursors of the three greatest events: Christ’s Mystical Supper, His sacrifice on Golgotha, and the Divine appearance of the Holy Trinity, for all of them were manifested to the great forefather Abraham.

Abraham with his armed servants and allies defended the king of Salem (Jerusalem) Melchisedec from the Urian warriors who had attacked him. When Abraham returned victorious from Damascus, the king and high priest of God Melchisedec came out to meet him, offering him a repast of bread and wine, and blessing him, said: “Blessed be Abraham of the God on high, possessor of heaven and earth” (Gen. 14:18-19).

Which king, greeting another king, and one who, moreover, had rid him of his enemies, would offer him not a kingly repast, but only bread and wine? But let us note where this happened: in the same city in which two thousand years later the King of Glory offered His disciples a Mystical Supper of bread and wine, His Most-pure Body and Holy Blood. Christ’s Mystical Supper is symbolically prefigured in this repast offered to Abraham by Melchisedec, after whose order the Church has designated Christ: “Thou art a priest forever after the order of Melchisedec.”

In those times the king was also the high priest. And from that time on all of Abraham’s descendants took on the sacred custom of beginning all meals by offering a cup of wine blessed with prayer and bread blessed with the prayer of the head of the household. They also sang laudatory hymns and read prayers. This sacred custom was used most of all during the paschal supper, which is what Christ the Saviour commemorated during the days of the Jewish Passover.

Wondrous is God’s management of mankind, and God’s transformations of everything are inviolable. And Abraham’s glory does not wane through ages and millennia – almost in all the Semitic and Japhethite people – “in thee shall all families of the earth be blessed.”

Where did this event – the mystical prefiguration of the Mystical Supper – the repast of bread and offered by Melchisedec to Abraham, occur? In Melchisedec’s palace in Salem itself, or outside of it, on the road on which Abraham was returning to Damascus from the north with his warriors?

Melchisedec’s palace was found by archaeologists precisely where it should be – in the most ancient, southernmost part of the so-called city of David, outside the current walls of the old city. It was found on a high hill called the city of Ophel, where the stream of Geon flows into the Cedron Valley, where the king’s pond and the king’s garden are situated, and where one of the four sources of water in Jerusalem was located.

But as was customary in those times, the host himself came out from the palace to greet honored guests, which is what presumably occurred in this case, since the approach of the troops of Abraham, who in alliance with other Palestinian princes freed Salem from the Urian alliance of kings, should have been announced to the king of Salem Melchisedec in advance. The road from Damascus passed near Golgotha and Zion, which was located at a distance of 10 minutes’ walk from the palace of Melchisedec.

Thus we see that the most ancient tradition places the meeting of Abraham and Melchisedec upon the hill of Golgotha, prefiguring the Mystical Supper. Perhaps it was so. In any case, it does not have any symbolic meaning, because on Golgotha the Lamb of God was slaughtered for the deliverance of the faithful from their sins. It may rather be supposed that the offering of bread and wine took place closer to the palace of Melchisedec, on the hill of Zion, where subsequently the Zion chamber of the Mystical Supper was located. Let us remember the circumstances under which Christ the Saviour chooses the place for having the Mystical Supper: “And the first day of unleavened bread, when they killed the Passover, His disciples said unto Him: where wilt Thou that we go and prepare that Thou mayest eat the Passover? And He sendeth forth two of His disciples, and saith unto them: go ye into the city, and there shall meet you a man bearing a pitcher of water: follow him. And wheresoever he shall go in, say ye to the goodman of the house: – the Master saith: where is the guest chamber, where I shall eat the Passover with my disciples? And he will show you a large upper room furnished and prepared: there make ready for us” (Mark 14:12-15). The Evangelist Luke says the same thing almost word for word.

The Lord knew this place, but in order for the disciples to understand that this was not simply a “familiar” house and not simply a random place, but that it would be indicated by the Holy Spirit Himself, the Lord foretells the disciples that they would meet a man carrying a pitcher of water, whom they should follow into the house. And the Lord further says that they would be shown a room already prepared. This house presumably stood on the same spot where Melchisedec prefigured the Mysteries of Christ’s Holy Body and Blood. This is why Christ told His disciples that the Lord would show them this house. Therefore, this was not simply a house, but some special, holy, historical site. Was it by chance that that same chamber of Zion became the site of the descent of the Holy Spirit upon the apostles, which signaled the beginning of Christ’s Church?

 Just as majestic was the prefiguration of the Sacrifice on Golgotha, in which the Heavenly Father gave up His beloved Son for the sins of the world – the prefiguration of this was Abraham’s sacrifice of his beloved son Isaac.

How many unbearable torments must Abraham have experienced when the Lord said to him: “Take now thine only son Isaac, whom thou lovest, and get thee into the land of Moriah, and offer him there for a burnt offering upon one of the mountains which I will tell thee of” (Gen. 22:2).

The hill of Golgotha is situated next to Mount Moriah (just 500 meters away). Mount Moriah stands above a precipice in the valley of the stream of Cedron. To this place the Lord commanded Abraham to go, saying to him: “Upon one of the mountains which I will tell thee of.” This means that it did matter upon which one, and specifically upon the one chosen by the Lord, specifically upon Mount Moriah, on which stood the hill of Golgotha as well. This was the site chosen by the Lord for the sacrifice of His Only-begotten Son, which was to become the greatest sacrament of mankind, to which would come the sons of Shem and Japheth from all corners of the earth in fear and spiritual awe, to tearfully venerate this holy site. The Christians of the entire world would create the image of the hill of Golgotha in their churches and would bow before it, venerating the image of the crucified Christ.

How astounding is the Biblical prefiguration of the sacrifice on Golgotha, so closely connected with the name of forefather Abraham!

And finally, let us look at the amazing divine prefiguration of the Theophany, the appearance of the Most-holy and Life-giving Trinity on the site of the Lord’s Baptism. Only this time the appearance of God on earth visiting Abraham at the oak of Mamre and the Divine appearance of the Most-holy Trinity at the waters of Jordan did not coincide territorially, but were located within the confines of the same holy land of Palestine, through which Christ the Saviour walked all over on foot, manifesting His Divine visage to people.

The first time God appeared visibly was to Abraham and Sarah at the oak of Mamre, and the second time – to all sons of Israel.

No one in the Old Testament before Abraham or after him ever saw God on earth in human form so visibly. We stress – on earth, because God’s prophets, the divinely-inspired Jacob, Ezekiel, Isaiah, and perhaps others, saw visions of the Lord in the open heavens. But on earth only Abraham, in whom were blessed all families of the earth, was honored to converse with and see God in human form so visibly.

The God-seer Moses was honored to see God, but not in the human form of the Son of God, but in God’s great might which is inaccessible to man. Moses saw only the back side of God, yet even this made his face shine with an unbearable light, so that afterwards he had to cover his face with a veil.

And in the Theophany at the waters of Jordan was manifested the Holy One-in-Essence Trinity – God the Son stood at the bank of Jordan, God the Holy Spirit descended upon Him in the form of a dove, and the voice of the unseen Heavenly Father was heard saying: “This is My beloved Son, in Whom I am well-pleased.” This is why this feast is called the Theophany, the appearance to men of the Holy Trinity: the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit.

The Destruction of Sodom and Gomorrah

The site of the five cities of the Sodom alliance has still not been determined with sufficient accuracy, but the majority of geographers believe that these cities were located to the north of the Dead Sea, in that part of the Jordan valley which is now submerged by water. This presupposes that the Dead Sea existed even before the catastrophe, since it served as a basin into which drained the rivers of Jordan, but it was undoubtedly smaller in size and distinguished by other features, and was perhaps as clear and buyoant as the Sea of Galilee or the Sea of Gennesaret. The destruction of these cities is one of the most terrifying events in the Bible, and it is referenced most frequently as evidence of God’s awesome wrath for the flouting of all laws of morality.

This event is described as follows: “Then the Lord rained upon Sodom and upon Gomorrah brimstone and fire from the Lord out of heaven. And He overthrew these cities, and all the plain, and all the inhabitants of the cities, and that which grew upon the ground.” When early the next morning Abraham looked towards the destroyed cities, he saw that “lo, the smoke of the country went up as the smoke of a furnace.” Here we also see one of the many proofs of how the Lord uses natural destructive forces to punish people for iniquity. The cities did not perish from internal strife or from the hands of enemies, but from a cataclysm that could not have been foreseen or avoided.

It is not surprising that this event claimed the attention of writers of subsequent times, and we meet references to it among later writers, both Judaic and New Testament ones. Joseph Flavius says the following concerning it: “The region of Sodom was erstwhile a blessed country in its fertility and was adorned by many cities, but now it is completely burned out. It is said that it was destroyed by lightning because of the iniquity of its inhabitants. Even to the present time one can see remnants of the celestial fire and traces of five cities; ashes appear in the fruits themselves; in outward appearance and color they seem like real fruit, but as soon as one presses them with one’s hand, they turn into dust and ashes.”

In his General Epistle the apostle Jude says: “Sodom and Gomorrah, and the cities about them in like manner, giving themselves over to fornication, and going after strange flesh, are set forth for an example, suffering the vengeance of eternal fire” (Jude 1:7). Apostle Peter testifies that “turning the cities of Sodom and Gomorrah into ashes, God condemned them with an overthrow, making them an example unto those that after should live ungodly” (2 Peter 2:6). But even pagan writers confirm this event. The Roman historian Tacitus, having described the Dead Sea and its features in detail, goes on to say: “Its neighboring plain, erstwhile having been fruitful and populated with large cities, was destroyed by lightning, the traces of which may be seen in the burned out land which is now totally barren.” The ancient geographer Strabo, speaking of the Dead Sea, explains its unusual features by the action of underground volcanic forces, although he also adds the evidence of the tradition preserved by local inhabitants, of its having been formed as a result of a catastrophe which destroyed Sodom and its other twelve co-subordinate cities, the majority of which were submerged by the waters of the sea.

All this evidence serves as sufficient confirmation of the historical authenticity of the terrible event, and at the same time partially assists in clarifying the very means of the cities’ destruction. The entire terrain displays an amazing and extraordinary abundance of sulfur. “Streams of sulfur, – says one of the more recent researchers (Canon Tristram), – bubble everywhere here along the shores: the sulfur is also dispersed either in whole layers or in pieces over the entire desolate plain; at the same time tar floats up from the bottom of the sea in great masses, seeps through cracks in the cliffs, is mixed with sand on the stretch of the shore, or even appears with a mixture of that very same sulfur as well, as though in consequence of some extraordinary cataclysm… The ignition of such a mass of combustible substances – from lightning or from some other cause – together with an earthquake throwing out tar or sulfur from the sea, is capable of creating on its own such desolation in the adjoining plain.”

This feature itself makes the means of the cities’ destruction rather clear. There is no need to even suppose the action of subterraneous volcanic forces. Everything points to the ignition of the combustible substances present there is such abundance, and this ignition may have occurred from lightning or another cause, which turned the entire plain with its cities into the “smoking oven” described in the Biblical narrative.

Pliny says that in his time there were the so-called Ephesian Mountains in Lycia, which consisted of such combustible material that it could be ignited even with a charred log; from the fire the sand on the shore of the river became incandescent, while the water itself, due to its sulfuric properties, not only did not extinguish the fire, but actually fanned it This catastrophe naturally produced a profound change in the surrounding terrain, which turned from a luxurious oasis into a desolate desert.

All these causes were secondary of course, serving only to clarify the means of the destruction of the iniquitous cities; but behind them stands the major and primary cause – the will of the Righteous Judge, Who uses natural causes themselves as a tool and means to attain His holy purposes.

Recently conducted underwater research has shown that there are ruins of cities on the bottom of the Dead Sea.