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Looking at it from the viewpoint of the deity, "the Adam has become as one of us" except for Immortality. And so the other unnamed colleagues of Yahweh concur in the deci- sion to expel Adam and Eve from the Garden of Eden, plac- ing Cherubim with a "revolving flaming sword" to block the humans' way back if they ever tried. Thus did Man's very Creator decree Man's mortality. But Man, undaunted, has searched for immortality ever since through the medium of Divine Encounters. Is this yearning for Encounters based on a recollection of real happenings, or an illusionary search based on mere myths? How much of the biblical tales is fact, how much fiction? The diverse versions relating the creation of the first hu- mans, and the alternating between a plural Elohim (deities) and a single Yahweh as the creator(s), have been just one of the indications that the editors or redactors of the Hebrew Bible had in front of them some earlier texts dealing with the subject. Indeed, chapter 5 of Genesis begins by stating that its brief record of the generations that followed Adam is based on "the Book of the Generations of Adam" (starting from "the day Elohim had created Adam in the likeness of Elohim"). Verse 14 in Numbers 21 refers to the Book of the Wars of Yahweh. Joshua 10:13 refers the reader for more details of miraculous events to the Book of Jashar, which is also listed as a known source text in II Samuel 1:18. These are but passing references to what must have been a much more extensive trove of earlier texts. The veracity of the Hebrew Bible (Old Testament)—be it its tales of Creation, of the Deluge and Noah's Ark, of the Patriarchs, of the Exodus—has come into doubting criticism in the nineteenth century. Much of that skepticism and disbe- lief has been muted and countered by archaeological discov- eries that increasingly validated me biblical record and data in an ever-receding order—from the near past to the earlier times, carrying the corroboration farther and farther back through historical times to prehistorical ones. From Egypt and Nubia in Africa to the Hittite remains in Anatolia (to- day's Turkey), from the Mediterranean coast and the islands The First Encounters