The God Culture: Cosmas Indicopleustes Mapped The Garden of Eden in the Philippines
In his book Garden of Eden Revealed Timothy Jay Schwab who is The God Culture introduces a new source for his historic revisionism of the Philippines. According to Tim 6th century monk and traveller Cosmas Indicopleustes located The Garden of Eden in the Philippines. This assertion is flat out wrong and in this article we shall take a look at all the errors Tim makes concerning this text.
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| Garden of Eden Revealed, pg. 58 |
First of all Tim notes correctly the text of Cosmas' book Christian Topogrpahy is to be found in the Codex Sinaiticus graecus 1186. Where he goes wrong is claiming this codex is a Bible.
The Bible once included an accurate map to the Garden of Eden in the Philippines! Cosmas' map on the earth once appeared in the Codex Sinaiticus Graecus 1186, Fol. 66v now at St. Katherine's Monastery, Sinai.
This is wrong. Codex Sinaiticus graecus 1186 is not a Bible. It only contains the text of Christian Topography.
Since several differences between the codices, in which the Christian Topography is extant, have been mentioned, a few words should be written about the nature of these manuscripts. The oldest of them is the Vaticanus graecus 699. It was written in uncial characters in the ninth century at Constantinople; it is currently kept at the Vatican library. It only contains books 1 to 10.
The other two extant codices are both from the eleventh century. The Sinaiticus graecus 1186 was written in Byzantine minuscules, probably in Cappadocia, and is now located in the library of St. Katherine’s monastery on the Sinai Peninsula. Of the three this codex is the best preserved and contains books 1 to 12.
The Laurentianus Plut. IX. 28, also in minuscules, was probably written at Iviron monastery on Mount Athos and is now at the Laurentian library at Florence. Like the Sinaiticus, it contains books 1 to 12.
All three manuscripts provide us with a set of beautiful illustrations. Since these sets of drawings are very similar in all three codices, it is evident that they have been copied from a common source. In many instances the illustrations are alluded to in the text, so it is very probable that even the first edition was embellished with them—whether by Cosmas himself or by somebody at his request cannot be determined and is irrelevant.
https://heiup.uni-heidelberg.de/journals/transcultural/article/view/6127/2962
The entire manuscript can be read at the Library of Congress' website.
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| https://www.loc.gov/resource/amedmonastery.00271076642-ms/?st=gallery |
On page 4 Tim claims this map was "once in the Vatican Bible."
Again, this is not true. It seems he is referring to "Vaticanus graecus 699." However, like Codex Sinaiticus Graecus 1186 this book is not a Bible but a manuscript of Christian Topogprahy. A description of the text is as follows:
Rome: Vaticanus Graecus 699 (V). An uncial manuscript of the 9th century, written in Constantinople. It comprises 123 folios written in two columns, each of 32 lines except where miniatures appear. It contains only books 1-10, and as the index of books at the front is written in the same hand, and lists only 10, clearly it never had more. It omits the introductory prayer, first prologue, and start of the second prologue. Various leaves are missing. The manuscript is the best of them, but corrupt in point of copying accuracy. General production quality is top-class. Accents have been added by a subsequent corrector. The codex is illustrated 'magnificently'.
https://earlychristianwritings.com/fathers/cosmas_00_0_eintro.html
It appears Tim has conflated the Codex Sinaiticus and Codex Vaticanus, which are Greek manuscripts of the Bible, with the two codices referred to above. They are not the same. This confusion is another instance of poor research and more evidence there is no God Culture team. Surely if there were a team someone would have checked Tim's work to see if these codices were actually Bibles.
The second major error is Tim's assertion that Cosmas located the Garden of Eden in the Philippines.
The modern church dismisses the topic largely because it wishes to remain inoffensive yet, the church used to know this and at one time, even created both Catholic and Protestant map in their paradigm to support the ancient view which remains accurate. That never changed just because some occult dunderheads got involved in dumbing down the facts. This included a 600 A.D. map that appeared with the Codex Sinaiticus Graecus (Greek) in 1186 charting the Garden of Eden in the Philippines. Oops! 2 Peter 3 exposes this thinking as "willing ignorance" in the Last Days and nothing defines that mindset more appropriately.
Garden of Eden Revealed, pg. 8
The haughty attitude in this paragraph is hilarious. As Tim calls people willingly ignorant he is spouting a total lie that is easily rectified had he bothered to do any real research. Talk about the pot calling the kettle black! Cosmas' map never appeared in a copy of the Bible nor does he chart the Garden of Eden in the Philippines. In fact he is very clear that the Garden of Eden is not located on the earth but beyond the ocean on another earth.
Regarding the flood he says at one time men lived in a land beyond the ocean to the east and the flood carried the Ark to "our part of the earth."
We have said that the figure of the earth is lengthwise from east to west, and breadthwise from north to south, and that it is divided into two parts : this part which we, the men of the present day, inhabit, and which is all round encircled by the intermedial sea, called the ocean by the Pagans, and that part which encircles the ocean, and has its extremities bound together with those of the heaven, and which men at one time inhabited to eastward, before the flood in the days of Noah occurred, and in which also Paradise is situated. Men, strange to say, having crossed the ocean in the Ark at the time of the Deluge, reached our part of the earth and settled in Persian territory, where also the Ark rested on the mountains of Ararat, having saved alive Noah and his sons, together with their wives, so that there were four pairs, and all the brute animals, three pairs of clean, but of wild only one poor pair.Christian Topography, pgs. 33-34
A note on this passage says:
Montfaucon, in a note upon this passage, says : “ The idea of Cosmas is that this earth which we inhabit is surrounded by the ocean, but that beyond the ocean there is another earth which on every side encompasses the ocean, and which had been formerly the seat of Paradise. It was this earth whose extremities were fastened together with the extremities of heaven.”
Cosmas says paradise does not "exist in this earth of ours."
Yet if Paradise did exist in this earth of ours, many a man among those who are keen to know and enquire into all kinds of subjects, would think he could not be too quick in getting there
Discussing the Rivers of Eden Cosmas says they emanate from Paradise by cleaving a passage across the ocean and springing up "in this earth."
But, to pursue our argument, we again assume that the four rivers which divine scripture says emanate from Paradise cleave a passage through the ocean and spring up in this earth
In a description of the table on which the candlestick sat inside the tabernacle Cosmas says:
The table itself is a type of the earth, and the loaves signify its fruits, and being twelve they are symbolic of the twelve months of the annual cycle. The four corners of the table signify the four tropics of the year, one occurring every three months ; the waved border with which it is wreathed all round signifies the entire sea, or the ocean, as it is called by the pagans ; and the crown which is round it indicates the earth that lies beyond the ocean where Paradise is.
It cannot be any clearer that Cosmas thought the Garden of Eden was not on our earth and thus inaccessible. He absolutely did not chart it in the Philippines.
Taking a look at Tim's citation of Cosmas on page 4 in context we see this is the case.
He then afterwards directed him to construct the Tabernacle according to the pattern which he had seen in the mountain — being a pattern, so to say, of the whole world. He therefore made the Tabernacle, designing that as far as possible it should be a copy of the figure of the world, and thus he gave it a length of thirty cubits and a breadth often. Then, by interposing inside a veil in the middle of the Tabernacle, he divided it into two compartments, of which the first was called the Holy Place, and the second behind the veil the Holy of Holies. Now the outer was a pattern of this visible world which, according to the divine Apostle, extends from the earth to the firmament, and in which at its northern side was a table, on which were twelve loaves, the table thus presenting a symbol of the earth which supplies all manner of fruits, twelve namely, one as it were for each month of the year. The table was all round wreathed with a waved moulding symbolic of the sea which is called the ocean, and all round this again was a border of a palm’s breadth emblematic of the earth beyond the ocean, where lies Paradise away in the East, and where also the extremities of the first heaven, which is like a vaulted chamber, are everywhere supported on the extremities of the earth. Then at the south side he placed the candlestick which shines upon the earth from the south to the north. In this candlestick, symbolic of the week of seven days, he set seven lamps, and these lamps are symbolic of all the luminaries. And the second Tabernacle which is behind the veil and called the Holy of Holies, as well as the Ark of Testimony, and the Mercy-seat, and above it the Cherubim of glory shadowing the Mercy-seat, are, according to the Apostle, a type of the things in heaven from the firmament to the upper heaven, just as the space from the veil to the wall of the inner Taber- nacle constitutes the inner place.
What Tim does is cite Josephus, Lactantius, and Cosmas as writing Paradise is in the East and group them all together. But they don't each mean the same thing. This is merely quote mining with no care for the context of what each author meant. By East, Cosmas does not mean the Philippines or anywhere else on the earth. He means a place beyond the ocean on another earth.
On page 59 Tim writes the following:
In mapping this location of the Garden of Eden in the East, Cosmas also brings this all together in his original map. This land East of Taprobane, which is typically Sumatra in that age, not Sri Lanka, is called "Selediba" or "Swarnadwipa" by the Indians. That is the name of the Indian isles of gold their history always identifies as existing in the Far East, not India. On several later maps, the Philippines is identified as "Sebadibae" and "Sabadibae" which derives from these words as well as Sheba in origin. The Periplus of the Erythraean Sea demonstrates Indians went to the Far East Southeast of China to islands in the South China Sea under the rising sun or "Subsolanus" also labeled on many maps as the Philippines. In this case, he goes beyond the Indian Ocean and places a marker that one steers left in direction from that exit which sailing East would be to the North of the Indian Ocean. He, then, references what can only be the South China Sea to the left or West of this land of Paradise. The directions cross to the islands there East of Taprobane (Sumatra), and East of Indochina. Cosmas is quoting the Book of First Enoch in this mindset as well and Enoch supplies directions to the Garden of Eden in the Philippines exiting the Indian Ocean and heading just Northeast of there. This mirrors Enoch in both.
This also identifies how far North these islands are once entering the South China Sea from the Indian Ocean. They are in "the middle of the Earth" in that area clearly referencing the Tropic of Cancer as a rope connecting Persia, and Roman Empire territories. Ile drew a map and that is not China which has no sea to the West, nor India he passed long before, nor other portions of the Indies which are not Northeast of the exit from the Indian Ocean. This is the Philippines period. Tzinista is similar to the ancient name of China in some languages as "Sina" or "China," but China is not Southeast of China. Though written in Greek he does not say this is a Greek word as he does with others. It is far more likely the Old Persian word, "spənista, " for 'beneficent, holy, sacred'. That is the Garden of Eden that Cosmas illustrates on his original map.
Tim might reply that Cosmas may have gotten it wrong but he was right about Paradise being in the East and it was a gradual progression of learning about these locales that culminated in the voyage of Magellan. But that is wrong because Cosmas' cosmology is intimately tied to his explanation of the Bible, specifically the make-up of the tabernacle and its accoutrements. Paradise is beyond the ocean and not on our earth. To interpret the text otherwise is to misunderstand, misinterpret, and not take seriously what Cosmas has written.
Did did Tim even read this book? It appears he did a word search for Paradise and used whatever he found despite the context.
Christian Topography is not at all a standard work of geography attempting to describe the world and locate places. Aside from Book 11, which is wholly geographical describing Ceylon and it's relationship to China and India, it is a polemical and mystical text designed to refute people, especially Pagans, who taught the earth is a sphere, the heavens move, there are antipodes, and the sun is distant from and larger than the earth. The purpose of the work is to demonstrate a thoroughly Christian description figure of the whole world.
I have written the second book, which proceeds to explain from divine scripture the nature of the Christian theories to describe the figure of the whole world, and to notice that some of the ancient Pagans have been of the same opinion.
The rest of the book is a defense of the second book from various objections.
Cosmas describes a world that is flat, rectangular, and surrounded by an ocean. On the other side of that ocean is another earth wherein lies Paradise. He absolutely does not chart the Garden of Eden being in the Philippines. Timothy Jay Schwab who is The God culture is not taking Cosmas seriously but is misinterpreting the text to fit his own theories.
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