of the reports suggest that there is something paranormal about them. Are they simply some unknown but perfectly normal and natural anthropoid? If so, why do we never find their bodies? Perhaps they bury their dead. Perhaps they go off to find a lonely and desolate place — maybe a hidden mountain cave — where they can die with dignity, privacy and secrecy when they feel that their end is near. The strangest theory of all is that they enjoy enormous longevity.
In the Hunza valley, high in the Himalayas, the normal human inhabitants enjoy exceptionally good health and extremely long lifespans — possibly attributable to their pollution free air and a diet rich in apricots and apricot oil. If the Sasquatch and Yeti and their cousins around the world’s other mountain ranges also benefit from the pollution free air available at those altitudes, perhaps their life-spans are many times ours.
Some researchers suggest that they may have had an extraterrestrial origin: the jury’s still out on that one.
It seems highly unlikely that the Sasquatch and his close relatives are merely myth, legend, hoax or imagination. There have been so many reports of these enigmatical hairy giants that there simply has to be someone or something up there in the mountains — the great unsolved mystery is what.
PROF OF THE YETI?
Joshua Gates, a television presenter, came across what seemed to be Yeti footprints in Nepal, not far from Mount Everest, in 2007. Each print was well over thirty centimetres long. The prints had five toes and measured about twenty-five centimetres in width. Casts were taken, and when these were examined by university experts in the United States they were thought to be too anatomically accurate to be fakes. Gates’s team also found mysterious hairs on a high-altitude tree. When these were examined, it was concluded that they belonged to a hitherto unknown primate of some kind. In 2008, Japanese researchers led by Yoshiteru Takahashi photographed what looked very much like Yeti prints.
The books of the Bible introduce a host of mysteries to humankind, and man has for centuries attempted to translate and understand the stories told within its spiritual prose. What better place to start than in the beginning.…
The book of Genesis gives an account of the Garden of Eden that suggests a realistic description of an actual historical and geographical location — a real, solid, physical place, rather than the colourful dream landscape of myth or legend. George MacDonald, C.S. Lewis and J.R.R. Tolkien all had the gift of creating imaginary landscapes that possess uncanny realism — as if they had visited the actual locations.
By contrast, the biblical description of Eden seems to possess a sturdy, time-defying realism, a sense of historical and geographical actuality, which makes the quest for it well worth pursuing.
The first biblical clue is that the Garden of Eden spread over the sources of four rivers: the Tigris, the Euphrates, the Gihon, and the Pishon. The first two present no difficulties on a modern map, but it’s helpful to note that the Hebrew Hiddekel is the same river as the Tigris. The River Aras was called the Gihon-Aras until relatively recent times. To find the fourth river, a little inter-lingual manipulation is needed. Within the area of the Tigris, Euphrates, and Gihon-Aras there is another river named the Uizun. An old scholar named Walker made an interesting etymological suggestion about this a few years ago. He argued that in Hebrew pronunciation the u became the labial p instead. The z of Uizun slides into a sibilant sh and the final syllable can interchange a, u, and o without difficulty.
There are other possibilities for the Gihon and the Pishon, of course, and these include the theories of scholar/historians Josephus, Eusebius, and Augustine that the Pishon was the Ganges. Other theologians, Jarchi, Gaon, and Nachman, argued that it was the Nile because the etymological root meant “to fill” or “to overflow.” Other research in Armenia led researchers to the theory that the Pishon is now called the Halys and the Gihon has been renamed the Araxes.
So the geographical problem posed by the identity of the four rivers of Eden may well be solved eventually, but what of the ancient lands which were said to surround it?
After Abel’s murder, his fratricidal brother, Cain, went to the east of Eden to an area known as Nod. Not far to the east of Eden, where Nod was said to lie, is the small contemporary settlement of Noqdi. Could the modern village of Noqdi be all that remains of the ancient, biblical Nod?
The great riddles of Eden, however, are theological and philosophical enigmas rather than geographical and historical ones. If the biblical account of creation is literally true — despite the enormous weight of scientific evidence that suggests that it is not: and, after all, even evolution’s staunchest supporters will readily refer to it as a theory — then the philosopher and theologian are left asking why God chose to create our universe in the way that He did, and then to populate it with intelligent, observant beings.
The Yahweh of the Old Testament is described by many of its writers as a jealous guardian of his own power and glory: dominant, majestic, aloof, frequently awe-inspiring and terrifying. Even many centuries later when Christ portrays him as a benign, loving Father, the threat of judgment and condemnation to the everlasting tortures of hell still seem to be there.
The Graeco-Roman pantheon was comprised of gods with human characteristics, separated from us only by their longevity and superior powers. Human suffering could then be explained easily enough by their capriciousness, jealousy, anger, competitiveness, and frequent quarrels. There was no insoluble paradox for the Graeco-Roman theologian when good people suffered.
The difficulty of trying to reconcile the existence of a totally benign and loving God, who also enjoyed absolute power, with medieval torture and burning, the unspeakable horrors of the Holocaust, the atrocities in Kosovo, or the fiendish terrorists in Sierra Leone hacking off innocent victims’ limbs to impose their reign of terror, could not exist for them. But it is an unavoidable, mind-splitting dilemma that confronts every honest theist who tries to explain the contradiction of God and human suffering.
There is some useful mileage left in the argument that centres on the essential nature of free will. It can readily and universally be accepted that true and spontaneous love is the greatest good and the greatest joy in the whole of human experience. It is equally true that such genuine love cannot exist without real free will. Love cannot be bought. It cannot be compelled. It cannot be commanded. It can only be given and received freely by independent minds, hearts, and spirits. Love is like respect: it can be stimulated, earned, and attracted by kindness, gentleness, mercy, and altruism.
Free will can provide the good, rich, fertile soil in which true love grows. It can also be the toxic waste in which unspeakable evil is spawned. Hitler could have chosen goodness. Freewill allowed him to choose the darkest form of evil instead. If the free will argument is valid, God could not prevent Hitler’s evil without depriving him of his free will.
But what about hindering or preventing the consequences of Hitler’s evil choices? Suppose God had allowed Hitler to think and plan his evil, but had then inspired and empowered heroes to thwart his plans and rescue his victims before that evil could be put into effect. Suppose that this pattern had recurred over and over again since the very beginning, since Eden itself.
But is free will itself diluted or destroyed if the consequences of evil choices are neutralized? What if every evil thought is prevented from expressing itself in evil action? Does evil then become an illusion, a hollow sham? Does the would-be murderer look round at the world and say, “There is no point in my shooting, stabbing, strangling or poisoning my victim because whatever evil I try to do will not have any real effect. God will simply intervene in some marvellous way:
