The God Culture: The Garden of Eden Revealed Book Review
Timothy Jay Schwab who is the God Culture has released a new book titled The Garden of Eden Revealed: The book of Maps. This time around Tim is placing all his nonexistent cartographical skills on view as he examines 75+ maps proving that the Garden of Eden is in the Philippines. The problem is that, according to Tim, the Garden of Eden was submerged beneath the floor of the Sulu Sea during the flood which means NO MAP can ever tell us where the Garden is located nor is the Garden of Eden actually in the Philippines.
Oddly enough Tim has declined to release an e-book PDF version because the maps are high resolution. That is no excuse as there are plenty of high-res maps available on the internet including those he employs. Where do you think he got the maps in this book? Since there are 75+ maps it would be too unwieldy to review every one in detail so I shall concentrate on summarizing the obvious errors and lies which are numerous and leap off every page.
First it should be noted that no map showing paradise was charted in order to give its precise geographical location. According to the author of Mapping Paradise, Alessandro Scafi:
Topological mapping, based as it is on internal reciprocal rather than external relationships between units (temporal events as well as spatial features) can reach a rigour and a rationality of its own. The topological characteristics of medieval mappae mundi (and of many other kinds of map, modern as well as medieval) have to be grasped if they — and, above al, the presence of paradise on them —are to be properly understood. Thus, the first thing to bear in mind when looking at paradise on a medieval mappa mundi is that this kind of map was not created to inform the observer of the precise latitude, longitude and size of the Garden of Eden, but to demonstrate its contiguity to the inhabited earth.
In structuring their maps, then, all medieval map makers (except those responsible for nautical charts) were working to fundamentally different principles from those of their modern counter parts.
Mapping Paradise, pg. 87
The challenge for the Christian compilers of maps was to combine geographical knowledge with the biblical world view. Belief in an earthly Eden urged them to render visible in their world maps a place that was geographically inaccessible (yet linked to the inhabited earth by the four rivers) and remote in time (yet still relevant as the scene of an essential episode of salvation history). A process of Christianisation of classical geography had been taking place since the early centuries of the Christian era. Traditional geographical ideas about the dimensions of the globe, its division into parts and the listing of the peoples and provinces of the inhabited world were adopted and refined to accommodate Christian themes, a process in which the Garden of Eden featured prominently.
For the scribes and artists responsible for the maps, the history of salvation brought about a corresponding geography of salvation. Most of the biblical places – specific points on earth where, according to the Bible, God’s intervention had taken place – were locatable in well known regions. Although very different from our modern representations of the earth, however, medieval maps were not devotional, pastoral or theological documents. Nor were they tools of religious propaganda or sermons in visual form. Rather, they were representations of the world according to a particular conception, one that took into account the scriptural text and the teachings of the Christian faith. Assessed on their own terms, the medieval maps of the world were in fact no less scientific than any other type of map.
Maps of Paradise, pg, 46
This would explain why Jerusalem is the center of the earth on these maps. That is where Jesus Christ died, resurrected, and ascended into heaven. The death and resurrection of Christ is the center of our salvation and the Garden of Eden is the beginning of mankind from which all proceeds. Keeping these things in mind, that maps locating the Garden of Eden in the east are symbolical and not precise geography, let us see what Tim has to say about the maps in his book.
In chapter one Tim writes:
Can the Garden of Eden be located? We have heard this question often but it is the wrong query. We should be asking: Did the ancients know at least roughly the region which house this earthly Paradise? If so, who were their markers associated and how do we accurately transpose those onto our modern maps?
Garden of Eden Revealed, pg. 10
Thus Tim is going to be interpreting all the maps he uses showing the Garden of Eden in the East and on the Earth as being literal. The main marker for finding the Garden is gold. That means the location of Garden is below a land full of gold and other treasures. If one finds the land of gold one finds the Garden of Eden.
If the ancients knew that the Garden was locked up and no longer accessible, why were they obsessed with its location? Why search for it at all? Again, it is covered within the Earth under the land of gold, pearl, and onyx stone which Ophir and brothers returned to this land after the Flood.
pg. 24-25
This literalism leads Tim to declare the removal of Eden from modern maps during the Renaissance is part of a conspiracy to hide the Garden of Eden.
The Hebrew language was certainly equating this, but we kept noticing map after map that identified the area of the Philippines Southeast of China, which is a huge marker, and one that does not really move in the transition to a new map format in the so-called Renaissance. It is incredible how much knowledge was lost in this shift which in this arena, was a continuation and even deepening of the Dark Ages.
pg. 5
As ever with Tim the British are the main culprits behind the changing of the maps and the removal of The Garden of Eden.
Of course, the illiterate British paradigm which walks back history a thousand years, knows very little of these concepts because they choose so. Their feigned unfamiliarity spouted by one historian after another is not a debate point. We do not give credence to childish debate from those who cannot even read because they concede as a group to ignore the very references that claim to disseminate in propaganda. That's a worthless colonial view steeped in the worst racism in history. Oops!
pg. 39
Why are medieval maps so different from modern maps? Why did they place the Garden of Eden in the Far East? Because they were working from the perspective of Noah and Enoch.
However, in creating these ancient maps, they were really applying this same perspective, knowingly or not. Enoch is the origin and accurately so.
pg. 32
Noah understood the world from his grandfather Enoch and together, they represent the entire origin of this perspective continued through the ages until fairly recently when they lost the Garden of Eden and land of gold.
pg. 39
To claim that these medieval map makers were working from the perspective of Noah and Enoch is total balderdash and is to rip them from their context and put them in Tim's context. According to Tim in Noah and Enoch's perspective the earth is flat, the North Pole is the center of the world, and there are antipodes, i.e. North and South America and Australia. We see none of that on these medieval mappae mundai. Aside from that the Books of Enoch and Jubilees were never a part of the canon and never in use until recently. To interpret these maps literally via Enoch and Jubilees is to not understand them. Remember according to Alessandro Scafi, a real scholar who has actually analyzed medieval maps showing the Garden of Eden:
the history of salvation brought about a corresponding geography of salvation.
Thus these maps are symbolic.
The rest of this book is the same old junk Timothy Jay Schwab spews in all his videos. He spends a great deal of time going over the locations of Chryse and Argyre, the Aurea Chersonese, Ophir, and Tarshish. One could say this book is a bait and switch because rather than revealing the location of the Garden of Eden by analyzing medieval maps alone Tim merely uses those maps as a prop to regurgitate the same old information he has already produced in his videos about the Philippines being the ancient land of gold to which all nations flocked for riches. And all of it is wrong.
There are the same errors about the location of Cattigara, the provenance of Martin Behaim's map, and the identification of the Lequios. For instance Tim has drawn a map allegedly showing that the Spanish mapped the route to Ophir which ended in the Philippines.
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| pg. 104-105 |
But as I have proven many times in this blog the Lequios are NOT the same as the Lucoes. The Lequios are situated farther north near Japan and are what we know today as the Ryukyu Islands. Tim shows a map with this very identification and calls it propaganda.
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| pg. 106 |
Portion of Maris Pacific by Abraham Ortelius. This map was published in 1589 in his Theatrum Orbis Terrarum. It was not only the first printed map of the Pacific, but it also showed the Americas for the first time. Luzon was Lequios before Taiwan was given the Philippines name just as Japan was given such. It is propaganda.
Does Tim not see there are the Lequios grande and Lequios pequenno? That is NOT Taiwan. Those are the Ryukyu Islands! Ferdinand Pinto was shipwrecked on those islands and placed them at 29 degrees north.
In this manner we departed from Pungor the capital City of the Island of Lequios, of which I will here make a brief relation, to the end that if it shall one day please God to inspire the Portugal Nation, principally for the exaltation and increase of the Catholick faith, and next for the great benefit that may redound thereof, to undertake the Conquest of this Island, they may know where first to begin, as also the commodities of it, and the easiness of this Conquest. We must understand then that this Island of Lequios, scituated in nine and twenty degrees, is two hundred leagues in circuit, threescore in length, and thirty in bredth.
How can Tim be trusted to correctly interpret the maps in this book when any map which contradicts him is brushed off as propaganda and he ignores what Fernando Pinto actually wrote? How can he be trusted to interpret the linguistics of these maps when he still confuses and conflates Lucoes and Lequios being unaware that they do not refer to the same peoples? They are not even pronounced the same as the "c" in Lucoes is soft and not hard. The answer is he cannot and should not be trusted with the task.
There are many more of the same errors in this book but it is not worth the time to go through all of them.
The bottom line is Timothy Jay Schwab's book The Garden of Eden Revealed is wholly worthless as he is not interested in understanding the maps locating paradise within their proper milieu. Instead Tim wrenches these maps out of all context bescumbering them with his erroneous interpretations as propaganda for the Philippines all the while rudely excoriating those who do not share his views and demand proof for his claims by calling them retards incapable of thinking.
We realize the academic scoffer would then demand archaeology of this house or they will never believe it. Who cares? They have no position as who is dumb enough to leave gold sitting there as a museum for those to discover after the land was devoured for gold in the Spanish and American eras. How ridiculous! These are uncapable of thinking. They set up false narratives and then, demand that everyone operate in the same obtuse manner they employ. That is retarded.
pg. 128
"Uncapable" is not even a proper word. Tim is in desperate need of an editor.
Tim does not care to understand these maps as they were written but abuses them for what "proof" they can furnish for the Philippines being the Garden of Eden. For Tim it's a simple formula: The Garden of Eden is in the East, the Philippines is in the East, therefore all maps with The Garden of Eden in the East must mean the Philippines is being described.
But as Tim teaches the Philippines is not the Garden of Eden anyway because it is submerged beneath the floor of the Sulu Sea and is inaccessible except to its lone inhabitants Enoch and Elijah. Once again Timothy Jay Schwab who is The God Culture has given the world a book that is stunning in its ignorance and is fit only for wastepaper. But at least it looks good.
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