Rob Skiba likes to say "the first shall be last" when defending both his views about Babylon (which I think are partly right) and Nimrod (which I view as totally wrong). Well I've argued before in depth that the original Babel of Genesis 10 and 11 was Eridu.
The modern Iraqi city the ruins of Eridu are nearest to is Basra. Both the Freemason Voltaire in Zadig and the Fabian Socialist H.G. Wells in The Shape of Things to Come predicted Basra to be the international capital of a future Globalist Utopia.
Basra is the second largest city in modern Iraq after Baghdad.
It was founded after the rise of Islam by the Caliph Umar in the 600s AD. He is coincidentally the same Caliph who first conquered Jerusalem for Islam In the 700s it already started to become an intellectual center of not just Mesopotamia but the entire Islamic world.
Like most of South Eastern Iraq it is today a primarily Shiite city. The battles over it during the the current Iraqi turmoil have been between different Shiite factions. The Shiite dominated US backed Government, and The Mahdi Army backed by Iran. ISIS so far has never gotten near it. So it could be important to Imam Mahdi speculations.
Given my speculation that I have alluded to before and will touch on more in the future that Babylon and the Kings of The East in Revelation may be dominated by Lost Tribes descendants rediscovering their Israelite identity, possibly under the leadership of a False Messiah Ben-Joseph who'd be a decoy Antichrist. It's interesting that the area of Basra is also a proposed location for the Garden of Eden, being located between the Persian Gulf and were the Tigris and Euphrates unite. So one could see followers of an Abrahamic faith making a Holy Site out of it.
The Bible does place Eden in Mesopotamia, I've recently flirted with speculation that placed Eden in Israel, (The Beth-El and Ezekiel's Temple posts, the overall points of those posts I still agree with). But The Bible repeatedly uses the name Eden of a location in Mesopotamia, but the Strongs pretends it's a different word giving it a different number. So Eden is undeniably in Mesopotamia.
I want to do a follow up here to my Seven Heads and Daniel 7 study.
Since I'm now suggesting the Eridu/Basra region is the main area who's ruler-ship we need to pay attention to. I'd change only one thing in that study, instead of Parthia as the 6th head of Revelation 17 and 4th head of the Leopard, perhaps we should look at The Kingdom of Characene.
It's capital city Charax was founded by Alexander The Great on an artificial mound very near modern Basra. Originally inhabited mainly by retired Macedonian war veterans, it's speculated Alexander's original ambition for the city was for it to be an important port center for Babylon. It was destroyed by a river inundation and later re-founded by Antiochus III The Great.
Characene's formation as an independent state began when Parthia invaded Mesopotamia in 141 BC. It was officially founded in 127 BC by Hyspaosines a former Satrap appointed by Antiochus Epiphanes. The Kingdom controlled South Eastern Mesopotamia, the same area that is the core of Shiite Iraq today.
According to Josephus, Symacho a princess of this kingdom converted to Judaism around the same time as Izates of Adiabene (around 30/31 AD) and became his wife while he was living in Charax prior to becoming King.
Pliny The Elder wrote of the kingdom.
The embankments extend in length a distance of nearly 4½ kilometers, in breadth a little less. It stood at first at a distance of 1¾ km from the shore, and even had a harbor of its own. But according to Juba, it is 75 kilometer from the sea; and at the present day, the ambassadors from Arabia, and our own merchants who have visited the place, say that it stands at a distance of one 180 kilometers from the sea-shore. Indeed, in no part of the world have alluvial deposits been formed more rapidly by the rivers, and to a greater extent than here; and it is only a matter of surprise that the tides, which run to a considerable distance beyond this city, do not carry them back again. [Pliny the Elder (AD 77). Natural History. Book VI. xxxi. 138-140. Translation by W. H. S. Jones, Loeb Classical Library, London/Cambridge, Mass. (1961).]Who exactly ruled the Kingdom in John's time isn't known for certain, it's speculated the kingdom was briefly ruled directly by the Parthian King (thus not changing the individual King I suggested before) but still as an independent state.
After Trajan captured Babylon from the Parthains in 116 AD he approached Characene with his armies and Attambelos VII surrendered the Kingdom to him. Trajan is said to have visited the port and watched ships leaving for India and lamented that he couldn't go there himself like Alexander.
Not long after Trajan died Hadrian gave all of Mesopotamia and Assyria back to the Parthians. Hence Rome only ruled it very briefly. But Characene's independence was still pretty much done, the Parthains wouldn't give them an independent king again till 131 AD and it then survived less then a century.
No comments:
Post a Comment