So, in the real non-fiction history of our species: From around 3500–2300 BC, there was Sumer, the first: - City - Writing - Bar Joke - Bureaucracy (these guys always ruin everything) - In Sumer, we humans invented our first cities. - We didn't really know how to make "nations" yet. Then there was Akkad, the first: - Empire - Multilingual administration - Centralized military power Akkad invented scale, but not legitimacy. and Babylon (the first, how do we say, "modern city" that got so "modern" Everyone knows Genesis didn't actually happen right? We all know by now, the first book of the bible couldn't have possibly got it right. The Authors of Genesis couldn't have known the Serious Non-Fiction history of our species when they wrote the old myths 3000 years ago in Proto Canaanite... And even if the Authors knew a bit of Non-Fiction history, it's surely not visible in the stories they decided to write... ... right? Whatever we might know or not know about the past, The one thing we know for sure is that there was never any truth in the whole "Eden" thing. I mean just look at how obviously false this all is: ![[what-is-j-01.jpg]] Tigris and Euphrates? ![[what-is-j-11.jpg]] ![[what-is-j-02.jpg]] The tree of eternal life. ![[what-is-j-03.jpg]] ![[what-is-j-04.jpg]] ![[what-is-j-05.jpg]] Ok but just because the Author(s) of Genesis happen to have taken the oldest story ever written -- still the oldest one we know in human history, after millenia and all that archaeology we've done from their time until today -- I mean surely it doesn't make this Genesis thing somehow "Non-Fiction" just because the Authors put a bunch of references to The Epic of Gilgamesh, which just happens to still be the oldest story we've ever found until today... I'm gonna need something a bit more Non-Fiction than that, if you expect me to believe Genesis (of all things) is actually a Non-Fiction history, albeit a playful one that bends the rules, rather than an entire made up legend like we all know it is today... right? ![[what-is-j-06.jpg]] Babel? Erech? Accad? That sounds like... ![[what-is-j-07.jpg]] No way... A few sentences after this is a strange old story called the Tower of Babel. Immediately after that, we switch from the history of the world to the history of a people, and we meet a guy named Abraham, back before he got the "ha" added to his name. What does it say about Abra(ha)m again? ![[what-is-j-10.jpg]] He's from Ur. ![[what-is-j-09.jpg]] We know Ur. ![[sumer-cities-ur.png]] What the hell is this book? ![[what-is-j-15.jpg]] ![[what-is-j-16.jpg]] ![[what-is-j-08.jpg]]