The Location of Paradise



by

Damien F. Mackey

Introduction

In 1999 there appeared in the colour supplement to The Weekend Australian newspaper an article by David Roth [*] “In Search of Eden”, which was a serious attempt by Roth to locate the original Eden . The article was prefaced by:

Did Eve tempt Adam with the apple? Did God banish them from Paradise ? Regardless of your religious beliefs, evidence suggests the Garden of Eden was based on a real place. Archeologist and author DAVID ROTH followed a trail of clues to western Iran to see if God was still receiving visitors.

* Strangely, whilst there is actually a David Roth who is involved with the UK historical revisionist group Society for Interdisciplinary Studies, this particular newspaper article on Paradise is virtually identical to that presented by another UK revisionist, David Rohl, in his The Lost Testament (Century, 2002), Chapter One.

 

Roth next wrote:

 

Since the time of the Jewish historian Josephus, a near contemporary of Christ, scholars have tried to use Genesis II to locate Eden , but the problem has always been the identification of the rivers. The Bible calls them Perath, Hiddekel, Gihon and Pishon. The first two are easy to decipher: the Perath is simply the Hebrew version of Arabic Firat and Greek Euphrates: similarly the Hiddekel is Hebrew for Sumerian Idiglat from which the Greek Tigris derives. The remaining two rivers, however, have always been a mystery. In order to locate Eden precisely, I needed to find the sources of all four.

 

As will become apparent soon from a consideration of Professor A. Yahuda’s discussion of these same primæval rivers (The Language of the Pentateuch in its Relation to Egyptian, p.3. “The Location of Paradise ” & p. 4.‘The River of Paradise and the Four Rivers ”), Roth is immediately out of step with Genesis 2 in his trying to locate the four rivers actually in Eden ( Paradise ).

 

Roth, following one whom he calls the “amateur historian Reginald Walker”, proceeds to identify the biblical Gihon with “... the river Aras, flowing into the Caspian Sea from the mountains north of Lake Urmia [which river] was once called Gaihun”. The Pishon, he identifies with “... the river Uizhun (the modern Kezel Uzun) ... [which] flows from the mountains of Kurdistan and empties into the southern basin of the Caspian Sea ”. Thus he locates the ancient Eden in eastern Turkey/western Iran, specifically the regional capital of Tabriz .

From this base, Roth believes himself even able to propose a location for:

· the biblical “ land of Nod ” which became Cain’s home. Thus:

Even further to the east of Tabriz and the Adji Chay valley in which it is located ... is the land of Nod into which Cain was exiled after he had murdered his brother Abel. The area today is still called Upper and Lower Noqdi ... (“Belonging to Nod”).

· and ‘explain’ the Cherubim of Genesis 2:

In the same region we find the town of Kheruabad . The name means “settlement of the Kheru people”: and the Kheru were the Kerubim (Cherubs) of Genesis who protected the eastern entrance into Eden . The volcanic peak which guards the eastern gateway back into the Garden of Eden is a good candidate for the “Fiery Flashing Sword” associated with the Kerubim.

I: The Four Rivers According to Professor A. Yahuda

Professor Yahuda, too, had taken seriously the notion of a real Eden and had also accepted as a common denominator that the Tigris and Euphrates of Genesis 2 referred to the two great Mesopotamian rivers. He though, whilst following the same biblical ‘road map’ as Roth, had not untypically located the famous Garden closer to Egypt (though definitely not in Egypt ). He did not miss the fact that in Genesis 13:10 the Garden of God is likened to Egypt . Yahuda’s line of reasoning led him to look for the Pishon and Gihon to the west of the two great Mesopotamian rivers, rather than - as in Roth’s case - to the east. His consistent advice to any would-be locaters of Paradise - advice that is certainly pertinent to Roth - was (pp.162-3):

In all attempts to find a solution to the question: ‘Where lay Paradise?’, the greatest difficulty has always been the assumption that the rivers Pîšôn of Hawîlâ and Gîhôn of Kûš, as well as the Mesopotamian rivers Tigris and Euphrates, flowed through Paradise itself, and in any case belonged to Paradise. This made it impossible to obtain a clear idea of the geographical situation of Paradise, whatever view was taken of the names of the first two rivers and wherever they were localized, because in no case could the confluence of all these four streams in one place be explained. At the outset, it must be pointed out that in Gen. 2:10ff. there is not the slightest support for the assumption that the four rivers flowed through Paradise; nay, it is expressly stated that ‘one river went out from Eden to water the garden’. It was therefore exclusively this one river, having its source in Eden, i.e. in the oasis, that flowed through Paradise, and the four rivers mentioned immediately afterwards have actually nothing to do with Paradise itself.

Thus Roth’s contention that “... the problem [of locating Eden ] has always been the identification of the rivers ...” turns out to be not really the crucial factor. The chief “problem” is actually to identify the “... one river that went out from Eden to water the Garden”. Roth, in his trying to locate all four rivers in Paradise - and, consequently, his being forced to locate the Pishon and Gihon in the region of Armenia, suitably close to the Tigris and Euphrates in Mesopotamia - is in actual fact returning to the viewpoint advanced at the beginning of the C18th by Reland. I take up Yahuda again on this subject (p. 171):

Even the ancients were governed by the idea that the four rivers were world streams, and sought to identify them with the rivers known in their day as the most important. Thus e.g. in Josephus’s time (Antiquities, I, § 38 f.) the Pîšôn was identified with the Ganges or Indus, and the Gîhôn with the Nile . In later times this idea that the Paradise rivers were world-streams, though in itself correct, was rejected because in the absence of a right understanding of Gen. 2:10 it only made the Paradise problem more complicated. To evade this difficulty the Pîšôn and Gîhôn were sought in Mesopotamian rivers, and so long ago as 1706 Reland, De Situ Paradisi, identified the Pîšôn with the Phasis and the Gîhôn with the Araxes in Armenia .... Although Reland, and after him Delitzsch and others, contrived on purely phonetic grounds to interpret Kûš as the land of the Kossaeans, all attempts failed to identify Hawilâ as a Mesopotamian land.

[End of quote].

Genesis 2 Edited

Interestingly, in light of P.J. Wiseman’s thesis that Moses had, for the sake of his contemporaries, added geographical indicators to the family histories of his forefathers (Ancient Records and the Structure of Genesis,Thos. Nelson, 1985), Yahuda was convinced - as are others - that the description of the four rivers is an editorial gloss to an original document. Now that original document would be, according to Wiseman, Adam’s toledôt or “family history”. Verses 8-10 of this particular history describe in most uncomplicated terms God’s planting of a Garden in Eden, and its flora and hydrography, to which Moses would have (as I explained in my “Tracing the Hand of Moses in Genesis”) added the geographical indicators (Verses 11-14):

ADAM’S ORIGINAL ACCOUNT

And the Lord God had planted a paradise of pleasure from the beginning; wherein He placed man whom He had formed. And the Lord God brought forth of the ground all manner of trees, fair to behold, and pleasant to eat of: the tree of life also in the midst of paradise: and the tree of knowledge of good and evil. And a river went out of the place of pleasure [i.e. Eden ] to water paradise [i.e. the Garden], which [river] from thence is divided into four heads.

TO WHICH MOSES ADDS

The name of the one is Phison [Pishon]: that is it which compasseth all the land of Hevilath [Hawila], where gold groweth. And the gold of that land is very good: there is found bdellium, and the onyx stone. And the name of the second river is Gehon [Gihon]: the same is it that compasseth all the land of Ethiopia . And the name of the third river is Tigris : the same passeth along by the Assyrians. And the fourth river is Euphrates .

Similarly Moses (as we also saw in “Tracing the Hand of Moses in Genesis”) had added parenthetically to our Genesis 14 the new names of five places recorded in that ancient history; most notably “Vale of Siddim” to which he appended: “(which is the Salt Sea)” (v.3). This very Jordan valley is indeed likened - before catastrophe had engulfed the region - to the Garden of Eden: “Looking around, Lot saw all the Jordan plain, irrigated everywhere, like the Garden of God ...”.

This makes it perfectly clear that the recorder of Abraham’s history had knowledge of what Eden had actually been like, and that this blissful place had not been some fanciful, imaginary land totally unlike anything that Abraham knew. But, like Paradise, the Jordan plain, would become devastated. For editor Moses goes on to add, as he was wont to do, his explanatory note (here in regard to the fact that the land had previously been well-watered): “…this was before Yahweh had destroyed Sodom and Gomorrah as far as Zoar” (Genesis 13:10).

Similarly again, in the case of Adam’s tôledôt, Moses added the above-mentioned geographical indicators in order that his contemporaries would be able to identify the four world rivers about which the original writer gave hardly any detail. I previously quoted Yahuda’s evidence (op. cit., pp.163-4) that editing had occurred right here. Yahuda proceeded from this to suggest why he thought it was necessary to locate Eden and its Garden to the west, rather than to the east, of Mesopotamia :

... assent could not be given to Mesopotamia being the home of Paradise as the other two rivers flow through lands which are far removed from Mesopotamia, namely Kûš, which in the Bible means exclusively Nubia or Ethiopia, and Hawîlâ, which according to Genesis 10:6,7 lay near Kûš, but according to 10:29 somewhere in Arabia; nor, on the other hand, is it possible to take Egypt, Ethiopia or Arabia as the home of Paradise, because then the two streams of Mesopotamia would not fit in.

Roth had for his part, appropriately to his own geographical reconstruction - but contrary to the more traditional view that the land of Kûš , watered by the river Gihon, pertained to Ethiopia/Cush - identified Kûš with the region of mount Kusheh Dagh in Armenia :

The Ahara Chay is a major tributary of the Gaihun-Aras/Gihon which, according to Genesis II, “winds all through the land of Cush ”. My map confirmed once more that we really were in the primordial landscape of Adam and Eve. Separating the Ahar and Adji valleys, and acting as the northern wall of the Garden of Eden, stretched a high snowcapped ridge named Kusheh Dagh, the Mountain of Cush .

Ingenious though this all is, I think that Yahuda’s account of Kûš (Cush) is by far the better one – and I shall soon explain why. Thus, despite the footnote in The Jerusalem Bible(7, n.2a, emphasis added) that “... the rivers Pishon and Gihon are unknown, and the two ‘lands’ named are probably not the regions designated elsewhere by the same names”, I fully embrace Yahuda’s view that Cush should retain its traditional meaning of Ethiopia . In Genesis 10:7&8, Kûš (Cush) is Ham’s son, who was the father of Nimrod.

[I previously accepted D. Rohl’s identification of Kush and Nimrod with, respectively, Meskiagkasher and Enmerkar, of the heroic Uruk I dynasty. In this regard one may like to read Rohl’s reconstruction of Meskiagkasher’s colonization, by sea, of Kush/Ethiopia].

Indeed, if it is correct to regard Genesis 2:11-14 as an explanatory gloss added by Moses, as I do, then Kûš could only refer to Ethiopia . As I have shown in a series of articles for The Glozel Newsletter [N.Z.], pharaonic Egypt of prince Moses’s day was busy extending its southern border into Ethiopia, or Cush . Moreover, Jewish tradition has it that Moses led successful military expeditions for Pharaoh against Ethiopia , and that he even married an Ethiopian princess (though the last is perhaps a confusion with Moses’s marrying Zipporah, the daughter of a Midianite chieftain).

(i) The Tigris and Euphrates

Though referred to in the Genesis account after the Pishon and the Gihon, I shall deal with the Tigris and Euphrates first because both Roth and Yahuda are in agreement as to their identification. The great Mesopotamian [Iraq] rivers Tigris and Euphrates are well-known even today, and Roth and Yahuda unhesitatingly identify these with the rivers of the same name in Genesis 2. Now, any doubt I think that the antediluvian rivers known to Adam (whose later names Moses added) may be different from the present day rivers is removed by editor Moses’s telling us specifically: “And the name of the third river is Tigris: the same passeth along by the Assyrians” (var. “to the east of Ashur”) (v.14), which is perfectly accurate since the city of Ashur, the religious capital of Assyria, was situated on the west bank of the Tigris (unlike Nineveh, the political capital, on its east bank). We saw in “Tracing the Hand of Moses in Genesis” that Moses had referred to “the Assyrians”, directionally, in his geographical locating of Havilah and Shur. See also below.

The C2nd BC Book of Sirach, or Ecclesiasticus, provides us with a further ancient testimony of these four rivers of Genesis 2, even apparently as then currently active; but now with the inclusion of two new names, the Jordan and the Nile, that may well provide us with a clue to the all-important, but un-named river of Paradise itself (Sirach 24:25-27):

This is what makes wisdom brim like the Pishon,

like the Tigris in the season of fruit,

what makes understanding brim over like the Euphrates ,

like the Jordan at harvest time;

and makes discipline flow like the Nile ,

like the Gihon at the time of vintage.

Some argue that the “Gihon” is here being identified with the Nile ; whilst others prefer, from their interpretation of the parallelism used here, that Sirach had six rivers in mind. Yahuda, as we shall now find, will conclude quite independently from this that there is a connection between Gihon and the Nile, that the Gihon is in fact the Nubian Nile .

(ii) The Pishon and Gihon

Yahuda now turns to the other two rivers (pp.171-2):

Now what rivers were meant by Pîšôn and Gîhôn? Starting from the foregoing standpoint and considering that the Euphrates and Tigris lay in the extreme east of the then known world, one cannot go far wrong in assuming that it was the author’s [sic] aim to set against the Mesopotamian pair of rivers another pair at the opposite end of the world, viz. in the extreme west. This assumption is confirmed first of all by the statement that the Gîhôn flowed through Kûš, which in the Bible invariably denoted Nubia or Ethiopia, and which, according to the geographical conception of those days, actually lay at the extreme western end of the world. If one further considers that the two Mesopotamian rivers flow near to one another, framing, so to speak, the eastern part of the world, one may assume that similarly in the choice of the opposite pair of rivers, Pîšôn and Gîhôn, the idea was dominant that they, too, flowed near to one another and delimited the extreme western part of the world.

Yahuda found the task of identifying the Gihon “... greatly simplified by the mention of Kûš, 2:13, whereby we are left in no doubt as to its course”. There is little disagreement, he said, “that when, in Egypt ... reference was made to Kûš in a general way, the Nile region between the first and the fourth cataract alone was meant”.

And:

It follows that the Gîhôn, described in Genesis 2:13 as ‘going round the whole land of Kûš’, can be no other than the Nubian Nile, i.e. that portion of the Nile which compasses the region that, as we have shown, is identical with Kûš proper. The emphasis on the ‘whole land of Kûš’ indicates the author’s [sic] desire to determine exactly the length of the river covering the entire extent of the Kûš of his time, namely southern and northern Nubia, beginning at the first cataract.

Those interested can read for themselves Yahuda’s explanation as to why he thought Gihon was an appropriate name for the Nubian Nile (p. 184ff).

Now to the Pishon:

Now that the Gîhôn question can be considered as solved, let us turn to the Pîšôn, and on the strength of the description of the region watered by it as a land of gold, bdellium, and šôham (malachite or emerald), attempt to identify the land of Hawîlâ . Of great importance for our investigation is the description of the gold, Gen 2:12 as [zahav tov] ‘good gold’. This is not to be taken as a general characterization of the quality of the gold, but as a literal reproduction of the technical expression in Egyptian, nb nfr ‘good gold’ for ‘fine’ gold as distinct from all other kinds of gold. .... Such precision in the qualification of the gold can only be explained by the author’s [sic] familiarity with the products of the land of Hawîlâ and his knowledge of its river.

After a detailed examination of all relevant gold-yielding places Yahuda, for the Pishon region, opted for:

.... The gold mines of the so-called ‘Arabian desert’ on the Egyptian side, south-east of upper Egypt, between Assuan, Koptos (the present Kuft), and the Red Sea . According to Egyptian monuments this district was one of the richest sources of gold; and from the Redesiyye inscription of Seti I ... we learn that these gold mines were extraordinarily productive. This district was moreover very famous on account of the Wâdî Hamamât quarries....

The boundaries of these mines can be exactly determined: in the north is the ancient caravan route of Kene on the Nile to Qosêr on the Red Sea, and in the south is the line that runs in a south-easterly direction from the district of Gebel el-’Allâqi down to the Red Sea. ... It was in this district that the Egyptians ... had the most important gold mines after Nubia . Of particular significance is the fact that of the principal Egyptian gold fields no less than three, namely Koptos, Edfu, and Ombos, are to be found in this district, and that their names appear as descriptive import-marks for gold, viz.

(1) ‘Gold of Koptos’ (nb n gb.tyw),

(2) ‘Gold of Edfu’ (nb n db3), and

(3) ‘Gold of Ombos’ (nb n nbt).

Moreover, this same region yielded the exact precious stones that the editor had ascribed to the environs of the Pishon:

... this gold land is of still deeper interest as it was very rich both in malachite and in emeralds; so much so that apart from the Sinai Peninsula, which for many centuries supplied Egypt with large quantities of malachite, it was the most productive source of this semi-precious stone. We have thus established the fact that of the three products which in Gen. 2:11 f. are described as proper to Hawîlâ, the most valuable, gold and malachite (or emerald), certainly came from the district of the Arabian desert.

Yahuda therefore concluded re the course of the Pishon:

... it logically follows that Pîšôn can only mean that portion of the Nile which circumscribes the gold-land of upper Egypt, and which, in contradistinction to the Nubian Nile, we would call the Egyptian Nile .... In the Pîšôn and the Gîhôn we have thus the two portions of the Nile which in those days were regarded as two separate rivers; they were then the most important and best known in the western part of the world, just as the two other world rivers, the Tigris and the Euphrates, were in the east.

Again those interested may read through Yahuda as to why he thought the name Pishon was appropriate to this part of the Nile . Yahuda’s conclusion that the Pishon “... can only mean the portion of the Nile which circumscribes the gold-land of Upper Egypt”, would perhaps account for why Sirach named Pishon distinctly from the Nile (which latter flows northwards right down to the Delta of Lower Egypt ).

Moses, as we saw, had added to the statement in Isaac’s document that the Ishmaelites had “settled from Havilah to Shur” (25:18), that this was “opposite Egypt in the direction of Assyria ”. The New English Bible translates it as “east of Egypt on the way to Assyria ”. This would seemingly fit in with Yahuda’s explanation that “Hawîlâ” was in the Arabian desert next to (but east of) Egypt.

The Ancient River System

The antediluvian system of irrigation described in Genesis 2:5, whereby Eden was watered, not by rain but by a river - by one river - has continued to prevail in Egypt as Yahuda explained:

These are conditions which apply in much greater measure to Egypt than to Mesopotamia, where the origin of the Paradise story is sought, especially as Mesopotamia has a quite abundant rainfall so that its irrigation is not exclusively dependent upon its rivers.

... This contrast between Egypt and other lands dependent on rain for their fertilization, was in the mind [sic] of our author in contrasting Eden, exuberantly fertilized by river-water, and the dry and barren ‘red earth’ longing for rain.

(Cf. Job 36:27; Sirach 24:3).

Little wonder, then, that the Garden of Eden is likened in Hebrew literature to Egypt !

Yahuda, after he had given meanings, or related meanings, for the Hebrew word Eden, such as ‘bodily vigour’, ‘youthfulness’, ‘blooming, exuberant woman’, ‘exquisite delicacies’, ‘to be fat and luxurious’, concluded that Eden was a most luxuriant oasis:

All this leads us to discern in [ Eden ] the word for oasis in contrast to [adamah] (p.139). As a matter of fact the expression ‘and God planted a garden in Eden’ (Gen. 2:8) clearly premises that ‘ Eden ’ designates a particular kind of spot with special characteristics in which the garden was planted. Accordingly, [gan beayden] means merely that the garden was planted in an oasis, an ideal spot for a flourishing garden of unusual luxuriance....

From there Yahuda went on to discuss the origin of the four rivers:

As far as [roshim] ‘heads’ is concerned, it has been frequently pointed out that it can hardly denote ‘head streams’ because, on the assumption that they went forth from one river, they ought to be described rather as subsidiary or secondary rivers. Moreover, [roshim] could not mean ‘beginnings’ in the sense of the bifurcation or divagation of the rivers, as in this case also they could not possibly be called ‘heads’.

In reality [rosh] is used here for ‘origin’ or ‘source’ of the rivers. As a matter of fact this meaning has already been suggested, as in Akkadian reš ‘eni, literally ‘head of the spring’, denotes the source and origin of the spring. But taking [yipharayd] erroneously to mean ‘divide’, it is not possible to form a clear idea of how one stream could be divided into four prime sources. For should such a division of a river into others be meant, the latter could only be described as branches, and not original sources. This difficulty, however, disappears on accepting the real meaning of [yipharayd] as ‘separate’. The meaning of [umisham yipharayd] is simply that the one stream on leaving the garden was severed from it, i.e. that it there ceased to continue flowing, so that no visible connexion remained between the garden and the rest of the earth.

(Cf. Song of Songs 4:12: ‘... a garden enclosed, a sealed fountain ...’).

According to Yahuda the Paradise stream went underground:

The narrator who conceived the whole earth, [adamah], with the exception of the oasis, [Edin], as a wilderness, so visualized the disappearance of the stream, that, on reaching the sandy soil beyond the oasis, it gradually vanished, being swallowed up by the earth, but that it continued its course underground. Thereby the conception of the common origin in this one stream of the four rivers, widely separated from one another, was rendered possible: under the earth, far away from the spot where the Paradise river disappeared, its waters flowed in various directions until it reached the sites where the sources lay from which the four rivers emerged and took their course on the surface of the earth.

And it is in this very way that the ancient Egyptians conceived of the Nile ’s origins:

... This interpretation, based on purely philological grounds, is illustrated in the most startling fashion by the conceptions which the Egyptians had of the origin of the Nile in the nether world, and its sources on the earth’s surface. According to these, it had its origin in a river (ìtrw) in heaven or the nether world, where it took its source in the twelfth gate of the beyond (Totb. chap. 146). Thence, in a mysterious way, it reached the earth, and through two spring-holes called kr.ty and tph.t, below the first cataract between Elephantine and the Island of Philae , it came out of the earth to flow through Egypt . .... This idea is iconographically represented in a relief in Bige, an island near Philae: ... the God of the Nile, Hapi (h‘py), is seen protected by a serpent; he is kneeling, and pours water out of two vases in his hands, symbolizing the two sources of the Nile.

It seems to me that this mythological view of the Egyptians must have had its basis in some primeval reality. That Genesis 2 is in very fact a description of an actual pristine river system whose mark is still generally discernible today, whilst being however only a feeble icon of the original as I intend to suggest in a moment in regard to the Nile . Hydrographers would surely be able to ‘reclaim the original model’ to a great extent. Rohl (The Lost Testament) gives an account of a feature of the eastern river system - similar to what we have just seen for Egypt - about the ‘spring hole’ near the Euphrates at the most ancient city of Eridu (pp. 37-38):

The sandy mound upon which Enki’s shrine was built [at Eridu] rose out of a reed swamp bordering on the Persian Gulf . The swamp was fed by the sweet waters of the Euphrates and an underground spring which bubbled up in front of the mound. Yet the salt waters of the sea lay close by. The Sumerians called this swamp the Abzu or ‘abyss’ because they believed that one of the entrances to the underworld ocean was located here. Eridu was also known as the ‘bolt of the sea’ because it kept the dangerous waters of the gulf at bay …. Eridu was the gateway into Mesopotamia from the great southern ocean known to the ancients as the Lower Sea .

The River Corridors

German archaeologists speak of an Ur Nil, or ancient Nile , of far greater dimensions than the present-day river of that name. This is presumably the same as is written about by scientist, C. Peregrino (Return to Sodom and Gomorrah, Bard, 1998) - who has also given a most interesting account of the thin river corridors of the Nile and Euphrates, so essential for sustaining life in the Fertile Crescent (I. “The Fabulous Riverworlds”) - when he writes for example (p.47):

Under the Nile itself are remnants of a deep valley to rival the Grand Canyon . River silts began covering it up as soon as the Gibraltar dam broke open and the Atlantic spilled in, but oil geologists drilling through thousands of feet of mud have located the solid bedrock of the Nile Canyon’s floor. It lies nearly two miles beneath the city of Cairo .

This is simply staggering!

Since the Genesis 2 description of the antediluvian world of probably massive river systems is the only one that precedes the account of the Flood, then it is logical to expect that the ‘breaking up of the fountains of the deep’ as referred to in Genesis 7:11 must be connected, at least in part, to this great hydrographic system that was vastly subterranean. This ‘breaking up of the fountains of the deep’, presumably caused by tectonic activity, plus the torrential and persistent rains (7:12) - perhaps coupled with the above-mentioned ‘breaking open of the Gibraltar dam’ - may have been the very combined mechanisms causing “the world that then was”, in St. Peter’s words, to become “deluged with water” and, thereby, to have “perished” (2 Peter 3:6).

II: Identifying Eden , its Garden and its River

Professor Yahuda, with his interpretation of the four world-rivers of Genesis chapter 2, has provided us with a double frame in the east, and a double frame in the west, between which we can set the stunning picture of Eden . The region in question is basically what is known as the ‘Fertile Crescent’, from Mesopotamia to Egypt at the ‘centre’ of which, according to R. North, lies the Promised Land of Canaan (“Biblical Geography”, The Jerome Biblical Commentary, 73:22. Emphasis added):

Canaan, the promised land, was small and off to the SW corner of the Fertile Crescent . Yet it was in a strategic midposition between the rival merchant states: Arabia to the S, Egypt to the SW, Hittites to the N, Babylon to the E. Hence, if the lines of traffic and population density are set in proper perspective, Canaan may be considered the “hub” of the whole Fertile Crescent . Indeed it was the hub of the whole universe known from Abraham’s day down to Alexander the Great.

Now a consistent picture begins to form. This ‘Promised Land, flowing with milk and honey’, was the site of the original Eden . Its well-known Jordan was therefore the one river that flowed from it to water the Garden - especially since the Jordan is named by Sirach in the context of the other four rivers of Genesis 2. One can now also point to the once fertile “ Valley of Siddim ” as being part of the Garden of God itself, since we saw that Genesis 13:10 likens this luxuriant valley to the celebrated Garden.

Less clear though in this context is why Moses would have failed to name the Jordan River alone amongst the various rivers of the antediluvian world of Genesis 2. For he most certainly did refer to the Jordan by name on various occasions (e.g. Numbers 34:12; 35:11). Just possibly this was because, at the time of Moses’ writing these geographical indicators, Israel was now actually stationed “in the plains of Moab by the Jordan at Jericho” (cf. 33:50 & 35:1), and so the fact of this Jordan ’s significance had by then become fully apparent to them. Perhaps even more likely, though, was because - as I am going to propose in the next section - the Jordan itself had by now become disconnected from its own antediluvian place of origin.

But Moses, for his sin was, like Adam, barred from entering this Promised Land (20:12).

Identifying the Jordan River as the very river of Paradise, once the source of all the four other great rivers (and this is a matter for hydrographers to investigate) would account for the Jordan’s sacredness; for why Elisha had insisted that the leprous Naaman bathe there (2 Kings 5:10), and for why its water was used by John the Baptist for the spiritual regeneration of his people by baptism – and indeed why Jesus himself chose to be baptised there in the waters of the Jordan (Matthew 3:13-17).

Jerusalem the Central Point

Was Paradise (Eden) actually the entire region irrigated by the hydrological system of Genesis 2, that is, ‘the Fertile Crescent’ (Pellegrino, op. cit., prefers to call it, for all its turbulence, “The Crescent of Fire”), and were Jerusalem and its environs, at its approximate centre, the actual Garden?

Whilst to suggest this would still require one to account for the statement in Genesis 2:8 that “God planted a garden in Eden, in the east” (but see next page), there nonetheless do appear to be later biblical indicators associating the site of Jerusalem with the primeval Garden. For example, the prophet Ezekiel would speak in his day - presumably in symbolical language - of a life-giving river that flowed from Jerusalem to water the earth.

And John the Evangelist would take this up in Revelation 22, concerning “the river of the water of life” (v.1).

Were these two holy men of Old and New Testament Israel , respectively, recalling what the site had once been like, ‘in the beginning’, ‘since the foundation of the world’, but now rendering the former reality in symbolical terms? Let us read what Ezekiel has to say about Jerusalem ’s abundant water supply (47:1-12):

[Yahweh] brought me back to the entrance of the Temple, where a stream came out from under the Temple threshold and flowed eastwards, since the Temple faced east. The water flowed from under the right side of the Temple , south of the altar.

Perhaps this is also a clue to the reference to “east” in the context of Eden, that its holy of holies, like the Temple referred to by Ezekiel, actually “faced east”.

Returning to Ezekiel, the waters of this sacred river grew increasingly higher (vv. 3-4), until:

… it was now a river which I could not cross: the stream had swollen and was now deep water, a river impossible to cross. [Yahweh] then said, ‘Do you see, son of man?’ He took me further, then brought me back to the bank of the river. When I got back, there were many trees on each bank of the river. He said, ‘This water flows east down to the Arabah and to the sea; and flowing into the sea it makes its waters wholesome. Wherever the river flows, all living creatures teeming in it will live. Fish will be very plentiful, for wherever the water goes it brings health, and life teems wherever the river flows ….

Along the river, on either bank, will grow every kind of fruit tree with leaves that never wither and fruit that never fails; they will bear new fruit every month, because this water comes from the sanctuary. And their fruit will be good to eat and their leaves medicinal’.

Apparently the river flowing from under Jerusalem itself must have connected with the region that later, with the convulsion of Pentapolis, became a depression, where now flows the Jordan , as evidenced by the phrase “flows east down to the Arabah”.

It is interesting that one of Jerusalem ’s springs is called today (as it was in the past) by the same name as one of the great rivers of Genesis 2: namely, Gihon. It connects with the Pool of Siloam, which is considered to be curative - as is Jerusalem ’s Pool of Bethsaïda. The deep valleys to the W, S and E of Jerusalem - which made the city of old so difficult to besiege - may be evidence that the site was once surrounded by deep flowing waters teeming with life: a luxuriant oasis. The Tyropoæan valley which once cut the City in half, W and E, may be further evidence of its ancient irrigation system. Cf. St. John’s “river … flowing … through the middle of the street of the city” (Revelation 22:1,2).

But that ancient water had ceased to flow, at least according to its former abundance. Interestingly, R. Tournay recalled (in Revue Biblique 70, 43-51) a legend that the stream of water coming out of Eden had been stopped up by Adam’s sin. He goes on to say, rather fancifully, that the water re-appeared during the Exodus, in the desert.

Ezekiel’s ‘Oracle Against Tyre’ (28:11-19) seems to favour the view that Jerusalem was built on the site of the original Eden, and that the Temple of Yahweh overspread (at least in part) the original Garden. Almost all commentators agree that Ezekiel had in mind here Genesis 2-3, regarding Eden and Adam’s eventual expulsion from the Garden:

The word of Yahweh was addressed to me as follows, ‘Son of man, raise a dirge over the king of Tyre . Say to him. “The Lord Yahweh says this: You were once an exemplar of perfection, full of wisdom, perfect in beauty; you were in Eden, in the Garden of God .

A thousand gems formed your mantle. Sard, topaz, diamond, chrysolite, onyx, jasper, sapphire, carbuncle, emerald, the gold of which your flutes and tambourines were made, all were prepared on the day of your creation.

I had provided you with a guardian cherub; you were on the holy mountain of God ; you walked amid red-hot coals.

Your behaviour was exemplary from the day of your creation until the day when evil was first found in you.

... I have thrown you down from the mountain of God .

and the guardian cherub has destroyed you from amid the coals.

Your heart had grown swollen with pride on account of your beauty,

You have corrupted your wisdom owing to your splendour.

I have thrown you to the ground ...’.”

[Comment: Like Adam’s being forced to return to the ‘red earth’].

Tkacik (“Ezekiel”, The Jerome Biblical Commentary, 21:63), however, seems more aware of what he perceives to be, not the similarities, but: “The differences between the two passages [i.e. Genesis 2-3 and Ezekiel 28] [which] ... are so great (e.g., a garden, as opposed to a locale with precious and fiery stones), that we may well question this claim [of dependency]”. These “differences” that Tkacic has rightly picked up are consonant with the kind of differences one would expect between a luxuriant Garden and a Temple “with precious and fiery stones”. Tkacic’s explanation of the Oracle though turns out to be, in part, quite enlightening; especially where he accounts for the Tyrian presence in Jerusalem . Tkacic seems to have grasped that this Oracle, like other sections of Ezekiel (e.g the allegory of ‘Oholah’, Samaria, and ‘Oholibah’, Jerusalem , ch.23), is covering a fair sweep of scriptural history, not just one specific era. It may in fact be harking back at first to the great Tyrian king, Hiram, a close friend of king David and his son, Solomon. Who was in fact instrumental in building the very Temple of Yahweh . Tkacic continues:

This passage is rather an allegory on the historical relationship between Tyre and Israel . Of all Israel’s neighbors only Tyre is not represented by Ezekiel as positing any hostile action; in all Israel’s history, we do not read of any hostility from Tyre.... There do exist vestiges of great friendliness, especially in the early days of the monarchy (I Kgs 5:1,7), and even of a covenant (I Kgs 9:13-14 ...). ....

The mountain of God is Jerusalem (Is 2:2; Mi 4:2; Zeph 3:11). The garden of Eden is the land of Israel (Is 51:3; Lam 2:6; Jl 2:3). ... Stones of fire might even refer to the stones of the altar or to the whole temple area (2 Chr 7:1-3l 3:6). “The anointed cherub drove you out” refers to the high priest Jehoiada [i.e. the prophet Elisha, according to my revision], who cast out [Queen] Athaliah, the daughter of Jezebel (2 Kgs 11:13-16), from the temple, which ended the long and friendly association between Judah and Tyre .

[Comment: Given Athaliah’s being a woman, a Queen, I guess it would be more appropriate to liken her expulsion from the Temple to Eve’s, rather than Adam’s, expulsion from Paradise ].

Since Ezekiel’s Oracle, as explained by Tkacic, definitely touches on a Tyrian presence in Jerusalem – and since the Oracle speaks of Tyrian royalty as having been “in Eden, in the Garden of God” – it could be argued that the city of Jerusalem was built where once lay Eden, and that “the holy mountain of God” referred to in Ezekiel’s Oracle was Mount Zion (or the Mount where Solomon would build the Temple of Yahweh). Genesis 4:4, in saying that Abel “brought” his offering, may mean that he ‘brought’ it to what was a sacred place because God himself had once walked there (Genesis 3:8). Since the Fall, only the worthy such as ‘Abel the Holy’ (Abel the Priest) would be admitted; just as later only the High-priest would be allowed to enter the Holy of Holies in the Temple. “Who shall climb the mountain of the Lord, or who shall stand in His holy place? The man with clean hands and pure heart ...” (Psalm 23:3,4. Cf. Revelation 21:27).

Abel, in bringing his worthy offering to that sacred place, was thereby establishing a tradition that, continuing through Israel, would run right down the ages until the destruction of the Jerusalem Temple by the Romans in 70 AD.

King Solomon again, later, in building the Temple according to his father David’s blueprint - and who knew his land and nation’s history like no one else - may have been creating an icon of the former Garden of Paradise with its Holy of Holies (Heb. Debir), its terraces, its precious stones, palm trees, junipers, olive wood, etc. Even cherubs figure in the Temple ’s Debir (e.g. I Kings 6:23). “The Song of Solomon” (4:12-5:1) tells of Solomon’s magnificent Garden, or “Park”; the latter being a Persian word - pardês, from which we are said to get our Paradise . Solomon, with the help of the Tyrian king Hiram, was apparently trying to re-create the ancient Paradise that had become so ravaged over time. The idyllic life of Solomon and his beloved bride, as portrayed in this magnificent Canticle, might easily transport the reader back to the bliss of Eden .

Queen Sheba (Hatshepsut), after her visit to Solomon’s Jerusalem, conceived the desire likewise to plant a fabulous garden, or Paradise park, beside her fabulous temple, the ‘Splendour of Splendours’ at Deir el-bahri in Egypt. In her case it would be for her chief God, Amon-Ra. “It is big enough for him to walk about in ...”, she had her scribe write down, under Solomonic influence echoing Genesis 3:8.

The Wisdom/Prophetic Literature is replete with paradisiacal references to Mount Zion :

“Mount Zion , true pole of the earth” (47:2).

“The Lord loves the gates of Zion ” (87:2).

“The Lord has chosen Zion ” (132:13).

“Dew on the mountains of Zion ” (133:3).

“Praise to the Lord who dwells in Zion ” (9:11). Etc., etc.

Other passages depict it nostalgically, however, more as a Paradise Lost. E.g :

“Yes, Yahweh has pity on Zion ,

has pity on all her ruins;

turns her desolation into an Eden ,

her wasteland into the Garden of Yahweh .

Joy and gladness shall be found in her,

thanksgiving and the sound of music” (Isaiah 51:3).

“He has wrecked his own domain like a Garden ...

Yahweh has wiped out the memory

of festivals and sabbaths in Zion ...” (Lamentation 2:6).

“ Zion ....The country is like

a Garden of Eden ahead of them [the Assyrian invaders]

and a desert waste behind them” (Joel 2:3).

The picture of Eden that we thus need to insert between Professor Yahuda’s double frames of the two great eastern rivers and two great western rivers is thus a magnificent one of a most luxuriant oasis with its terraced Garden full of trees overladen with delicious fruit, its ground studded with precious stones, its holy of holies facing the east; all of this surrounded by life-giving waters - a far cry of course from what we see in Jerusalem and its environs today. In regard to the centrality of the mountain of Jerusalem , I should like to quote some segments of J. Evola’s account of the Syrian versions of the Grail legends (The Mystery of the Grail, Inner Traditions, 1997, 84-85):

In some Syriac texts, mention is made of a precious stone that is the foundation, or center of the world, hidden in the “primordial depths, near God’s temple”. It is put in relation of the body with the primeval man (Adam) and, interestingly enough, with an inaccessible mountain place, the access to which must not be revealed to other people;

here Melchizedek, “in divine and eternal service”, watches over Adam’s body.

Comment: The juxtaposing here of “God’s temple” and “Melchizedek”, the king-priest of Salem, points directly to Jerusalem (or Salem ). This conclusion is seemingly strengthened by the fact that the “inaccessible mountain place” common to the Grail legends is called “Montsalvatsche” (‘Mount of Salvation’) in the western Grail legends. Jerusalem , an inaccessible mountain surrounded by mountains (Psalm 125:2), was indeed – in a Christian context – the ‘Mount of Salvation’. So it is interesting, in the context of my argument, that the “inaccessible mountain place” of the Syriac texts - which I consider to be Jerusalem – is also associated in these texts with Adam and is “the foundation, or center of the world”.

Another common Grail legend element is the Universal Ruler, who, in the Syriac texts is, according to Evola, this very Melchizedek (op. cit., 85):

In Melchizedek we find again the representation of the supreme function of the Universal Ruler, which is simultaneously regal and priestly; here this representation is associated with some kind of guardian over Adam’s body who originally possessed the Grail and who, after losing it, no longer lives. This is found together with the motifs of a mysterious stone and an inaccessible seat.

The guardianship recalls the fiery guardian cherubim of Genesis 3:24 also spoken of in connection with Adam.

Jerusalem ’s centrality and indeed primacy, as I claim it, was to become appropriated and geographically readjusted by other ancient peoples. Evola again (ibid.):

I have previously pointed out that a “central” meaning is inherent to the symbolism of the heavenly stones that are to be found wherever a given race either embodied or intended to embody a polar function within the cycle of a given civilization. Thus from the Irish regal stone … we go to the lapis niger that was put in ancient Rome at the beginning of the “sacred path”; to the black stone of Kaaba, a traditional center of Islam; to the black stone transmitted (according to a legend) from the Universal Ruler to the Dalai Lama; to the sacred stone that in the Greek hymns is the altar and the house of Zeus and the “throne at the center of the world”; and finally to the omphalos, the sacred stone of Delphi, the traditional center of ancient Hellas, which was conceived also as the first postdiluvian creation of the primordial race, the race of Deucalion.

Comment: This last is most interesting, too, given that Deucalion was the Greek version of Noah, and that Melchizedek of (Jeru-) Salem was, in Jewish legend, Noah’s very son, Shem.

The Grail legends (especially those of Percival) also seem to derive in part from the ancient Genesis account of Jacob (Israel) and the stone that he laid for an altar at Bethel (cf. Genesis 28:18-22 & 35:7). Evola again (ibid., 85-86):

This sacred central stone (omphalos) was also called “betil”, betil being a stone that, like the Grail, represents victory. ….But the name baitÚloj [Baitulos] is identical to the Hebrew beth-el, which means “the house of the Lord”, and suggests the famous story of Jacob, who “defeated an angel”. Jacob named Bethel the region in which a sacred stone indicates the dreadful place where a ladder joins heaven and earth. “How awesome is this place! This is none other than the house of God, and this is the gate of heaven”, says Jacob.

…. Jacob struggles with the angel and forces him to bless him; he manages to see “Elohim face to face” and “to save his life” by fighting against the divine. The angel says to him: “Your name shall no more be called Jacob, but Israel , for you have striven with God and with men, and have prevailed”. Here we can notice a singular analogy between Jacob and Percival, who, despite scorning God, achieves his goal and asserts his election; likewise Jacob, by winning, obtains his blessing. I wish to point out an even more enigmatic correspondence: the king of the Grail, who waits to be healed, either limps or is wounded in the thigh, In Jacob’s story, Jacob is wounded in the thigh by the angel and limps. When the angel “saw that he could not prevail against Jacob, he touched the hollow of his thigh; and Jacob’s thigh was put out of joint as he wrestled with him”. Once again we find further connections that I cannot pursue or develop in this context. Therefore, I wish to make this point: The Grail-betil is connected to the primordial state as a foundation, and in relation to this, like Jacob’s stone, it represents something that unites heaven and earth, essentially under the sign of a supernatural-heroic victory and of a “central” function.

The Testimony of Jesus Christ

An identification of the ancient Eden (and its Garden) with Jerusalem and its environs is implied (for those who are alert to it), I suggest, by Jesus’s accusation against the Jews of that generation (e.g. Luke 11:49-51):

‘Therefore also the Wisdom of God said, ‘I will send them prophets and apostles, some of whom they will kill and persecute’, so that this generation may be charged with the blood of all the prophets shed since the foundation of the world, from the blood of Abel to the blood of Zechariah, who perished between the altar and the sanctuary. Yes, I tell you, it will be charged against this generation’.

Not only were the Jews of that generation true descendants of Cain, as persecutors and murderers of the righteous (most especially Jesus himself), but they also dwelt (or at least worshipped) upon the very same mountain as that to which ‘Abel the Holy’ had brought his worthy offering and was thereby murdered by the jealous Cain. Jerusalem was also where the zealous Zechariah, son of Jehoiada (i.e. the prophet Elisha, according to my reconstructions) was murdered by command of the king of Jerusalem, king Joash (2 Chronicles 24:21), despite the services that the now deceased Jehoiada had rendered to the kingdom of Judah .

And the innocent Jesus himself would likewise be murdered by ungrateful Jews upon that same site.

The other confirmation of this link lies in the parallelism, or symmetry, between the first Adam (Adam) and the second Adam (Jesus Christ): the (actually inverted) symmetry between the Fall and the Redemption. Not only does the Passion of Christ recall the ‘blood, sweat and tears’ of the first Adam, after the Fall (Genesis 3:18-19), but also the ‘thorns’ (Crown of Thorns), the ‘tree’ (of the Cross), the ‘nakedness’ (2:16-17, 25; 3:18).

Is it too much therefore to expect that God the Father also chose the exact same ‘Garden’ (see John 19:41) for the location of the Crucifixion of his beloved Son on the Tree of the Cross - leading to Redemption (the Resurrection) - as had been the Garden location of Adam’s Fall?

31st May 2005.

 

www.theskepticalreview.com/BPParadiseLost1.html

Also, a response to the sceptic:

Damien Mackey’s Comments on Brett Palmer’s The Loss of Paradise

How the Garden of Eden Could Not Have Been a Historical Place

Palmer:

When arguing for the “historical reliability” of the Old Testament, many proponents pick and choose which evidences from the Bible they will use to build their case. On July 21, 1993 an inscription was found in an archaeological dig at the site of Tel Dan, in the Galilee in Israel. [1] That inscription was to excite those around the world interested in the field of biblical archaeology. While some students and scholars of the Bible reject wholesale the claim of historical reliability in the Hebrew scripts, [2] this inscription was another dagger in their arguments, placed happily there by those who would argue for the historical integrity and reliability of the Old Testament documents. The inscription made mention the name of Israel’s celebrated king, David. Dated to have been inscribed on the fragment in the 9th century BCE, this was the first time in the archaeological record that King David’s name had been discovered outside the Bible.

Mackey:

Though David also appears extra-biblically, I have argued, as pharaoh Thutmose I; the famous 18th (Thutmoside) dynasty of Egypt being actually Davidic (see my articles on this on the California Institute for Ancient Studies website:www.specialtyinterests.net/)

Palmer:

Additional fragments (discovered at the same site in June of 1994) seal the date as having come from the reign of Joram (“Jehoram”) of Judah who ruled c. 847-842 BCE. [3] This fragment is used by proponents of the Bible’s historical reliability as evidence that the stories of the Old Testament were not merely literary creations invented in the third and fourth centuries BCE [4], and by biblical inerrantists to show the remarkable accuracy of the “God-breathed” text[5]. It is true that this fragment is supportive of the claim that a king of Israel named David once ruled the nation. It is the first (and only to date) extrabiblical mention of King David. But, does this inscription lend credibility to the biblical claim that David slew a giant named Goliath? Some biblical enthusiasts likely think so.

Simply because a claim in the Bible can be found to have extrabiblical mention in the archaeological data, that does not mean that every claim in the Bible should be given the benefit of the doubt and considered to be true until contrary external evidence is found to disconfirm the claim.

While there certainly are points of agreement between what the Old Testament claims and what archaeological evidence has revealed, what of those internal claims in the biblical text which obviously, with a little attention and investigation, contradict themselves without any assistance from the outside world? What of those claims that do not need to wait on any disconfirming evidence from the archaeological record? What of such portions of the text that proponents of biblical inerrancy ignore while feasting on such inscriptions as found at Tel Dan? Is the Bible a reliable witness to ancient history? If the Bible is ultimately the inspiration and work of a divine entity, an entity with absolute knowledge and power, then shouldn’t all its claims be reliable?

Mackey:

Definitely.

Palmer:

Proponents of biblical inerrancy would seem to think so. [6] However, as noted, most defenders of biblical inerrancy focus only on those intersections between history and the Bible that suit their needs. What of claims made in the Bible that are historically false and demonstrably so?

Mackey:

O.K. Show us what you’ve got!

Palmer:

The Garden of Eden

According to the Old Testament book of Genesis, humankind’s first appearance was in a lush garden in which grew every tree suitable for food and pleasant to the eye (Genesis 2:9). The garden, according to the text, was located in the eastern portion of a larger region known as Eden. The text is quite explicit in detailing the location of the garden and of Eden. Genesis 2:10-14 gives a very good description of Eden’s locale using river and place names as well as hints as to the type of precious stones that can be found readily in the vicinity. The verses read,

A river flows out of Eden to water the garden, and from there it divides and becomes four branches. The name of the first is Pishon; it is the one that flows around the whole land of Havilah, where there is gold; and the gold of that land is good; bdellium and onyx stone are there. The name of the second river is Gihon; it is the one that flows around the whole land of Cush. The name of the third river is Tigris, which flows east of Assyria. And the fourth river is the Euphrates.

Of course, most readers familiar with Near Eastern geography readily recognize two of the rivers named in the text: Tigris and Euphrates[7]. A map of the Near East reveals that the Tigris and the Euphrates run today through the country of Iraq with their headwaters coming from the mountains in Turkey, winding through Syria until meeting just before they empty into the Persian Gulf near Kuwait[8]. The other two river names are unfamiliar to most readers but that does not seem to cause much difficulty in making the location of Eden fairly evident. The biblical writer seems to have the region of modern day Iraq in mind for the location of Eden and its famous garden.

This location should come as no surprise since most scholars of human history place the "cradle of civilization" in the southern region of the so-called Fertile Crescent." It is not at all unlikely that folk stories and legends made their way through the centuries of the region's first great empires that flourished in the oasis of the ancient floodplains of southern modern Iraq. It would not be beyond reason that such stories would place not only the birthplace of civilization in the area but the orgins of humanity as well.

Mackey:

I have rejected this geographical scenario for Eden in my article:

The Location of Paradise

(Genesis 2:10-2:14)

Palmer:

The apparent biblical location for Eden would not create many problems for readers if not for the glaring question such a specific –and well-known—location for the garden raises. If the garden of Eden were located somewhere in Iraq, wouldn’t someone have stumbled upon it by now?! It would be very difficult to miss!

Mackey:

It is in fact one of the world’s most celebrated – certainly most holy – sites.

Palmer:

Such a question is actually answered much later, and subtley, in the biblical text. The garden of Eden was apparently a paradise for the early humans and was spoiled by their disobedience of the Hebrew god’s command of them not to eat the fruit off of “the tree of the knowledge of good an evil” (Genesis 2:17). The humans were then banished from the garden and two guardians were placed at the east of the garden of Eden with flaming swords to protect the tree of life from similar molestation. Such a garden would surely be quite a site to see and certainly would have become a source of great tourism if it indeed still existed!

However, in the story of the great flood that destroyed all of humankind save one family and a handful of animals aboard a large ark, the earth too is said to have been utterly destroyed. In the generations that separated the first pair of humans on the earth and the family who built and survived the great flood, humankind had grown wicked in the eyes of its creator. Genesis 6:5-6 says,

The Lord saw that the wickedness of humankind was great in the earth, and that every inclination of the thoughts of their hearts was only evil continually. And the Lord was sorry that he had made humankind on the earth, and it grieved him to his heart.

Seeing this wickedness, Yahweh decided to destroy not only all living things on the earth –humans, animals, insects and plants—but even the earth itself. Genesis 6:13 clearly states that the earth itself will perish along with all those living upon it: And God said to Noah, “I have determined to make an end of all flesh, for the earth is filled with violence because of them; now I am going to destroy them along with the earth.

The violence that Yahweh unleashes upon the earth to destroy it along with all life would have had to be unlike any natural disaster ever known. In such a disaster, any trace of the once beautiful and bountiful garden of Eden would have been utterly wiped out. This is how most believers in the biblical tales explain why no physical remains of the garden of Eden can be found in the region of modern Iraq. The garden disappeared in the violence of the great flood.

Mackey:

That is your version of the Flood, but obviously Genesis is telling us that the Flood did not entirely remove the original hydrographic contours.

We need to take full notice of the biblical version of the flood, in relation to the geography of early Genesis.

Palmer:

But what of the rivers? What of the Tigris and the Euphrates? Wouldn’t the beds of these rivers have been utterly destroyed in the flood as well? The unimaginable forces that must have wrecked the earth in order to destroy not only all life upon it but to destroy the earth itself must have also destroyed any trace of these rivers, their courses and even the mountains from which they gain their source. And yet, there they are, named in the Hebrew text chronologically centuries before they must have been destroyed in the great flood!

Mackey:

Precisely!

Palmer:

How do apologists[9] explain the absence of the garden of Eden in Iraq due to the flood but not the disappearance of two very prominent rivers in the area? If the rivers survived the flood, why couldn’t the supernatural guardians of the tree of life and even the tree of life itself?

Mackey:

With great difficulty, I suggest.

Palmer:

What’s In a Name?

This obvious problem in the text has been addressed by Christian apologist Mark Looy, member of the internet website Answers in Genesis[10]. While the Old Testament clearly names two of the rivers that flowed out of Eden Euphrates and Tigris, Looy claims that these are not the same Euphrates and Tigris that run through Iraq today. Looy notes, as did I earlier, that the great flood of Genesis 6:5-8:22 would have utterly wiped out any trace of these rivers had they been the same ones flowing through modern Iraq. He then notes, quite without any supporting evidence, that the rivers named in modern Iraq are namesakes for the original Tigris and Euphrates that ran through Eden in the pre-flood world! Looy unabashedly announces, Obviously, the two newer rivers were named after the rivers that were once flowing during pre-Flood times. Such a naming pattern has been frequent in history. It was especially employed by colonizing countries who brought familiar names to their new colonies (e.g., settlers from Britain who went to Australia and America simply applied familiar names to many locations in their ‘new world’).

Mackey:

Looy has to say that to support his preconceived notion of the Flood. But it is ridiculous.

Palmer:

Obviously? Obviously to whom? Looy does not provide any topographical evidence (although, admittedly, this would be impossible!) or any other kind of objective support to strengthen his argument that the post-flood Euphrates and Tigris are obviously named in honor of pre-flood rivers that did not survive Yahweh’s cataclysm.

However, Looy also notes that there are a total of four rivers mentioned in the Hebrew text, Pishon and Gihon along with the Tigris and the Euphrates, but that only the Tigris and the Euphrates run currently through Iraq.

He also notes that the text tells us that Pishon flowed around “the whole land of Havilah.” Havilah, Looy states, is another name for Ethiopia which, today, is “over 1,000 miles from Iraq (and across water: the Red Sea).” This, he claims, proves that the rivers mentioned in Genesis 2:10-14 cannot be those of modern Iraq. Looy concludes his argument by stating:

Contrary to popular belief, then, the Garden of Eden was not in Iraq.

Mackey:

I fully agree with this last statement.

Palmer:

It was destroyed by the global Flood, and so its actual location under piles of sediment can never be known. For that matter, the original Garden could have been on the other side of the world!

For Looy, and many other Christians who visit AiG and agree with his assessment, the Old Testament is historically accurate in its mention of the garden of Eden and skeptical objections to this reliability are put to rest with simple reasoning and an appeal to the inerrancy of the biblical text. However, and of course, the solution is hardly so simple.

The Four Rivers of Eden

In Kenneth Kitchen’s book, On the Reliability of the Old Testament, he argues that the Genesis writer indeed was familiar with Near Eastern geography and in fact, this knowledge dates back to far antiquity. Demonstrating this knowledge, Kitchen calls into question Looy’s assertion above that the rivers Tigris and Euphrates in modern Iraq are simply the namesakes of pre-flood watercourses, long destroyed and buried beneath the sediment of Yahweh’s wrath.

Mackey:

For once I agree with professor Kitchen.

Palmer:

Kitchen notes that the Hebrew text describes the four rivers as having come from one single river with its start in the garden itself. Again, the relevant text reads,

A river flows out of Eden to water the garden, and from there it divides and becomes four branches. Genesis 2:10

Mackey:

Make that twice in agreement with Kitchen.

Palmer:

In other words, as Kitchen states, “This is a “snapshot”-type view, taken…looking out from where the single stream entered the garden, and looking back just upstream to the point where four “head” rivers came together to form the single stream that entered the garden.” [11]

Kitchen then goes on to name the four rivers which have already been discussed above and notes the familiarity of the Tigris and the Euphrates. He states that these two rivers “join up in south Iraq to form the Shatt el-Arab to enter the gulf, but this was not always so in antiquity.” [12] Kitchen is, of course, interested in locating the two lesser known rivers mentioned in the text, Pishon and Gihon. Gihon, he notes, is mentioned in the text before the Tigris and surmises that it may have been east of the Tigris as the Euphrates is west of the river and is mentioned last in the biblical story. He then points out that Genesis 2:13 states that the Gihon “winds through all the land of Kush,” and notes that this could not be in reference to Upper Nubia in East Africa or the Kushu/Kushan in Edom because of the vast distance that separates these places from the seemingly apparent location of Eden in southern Iraq. Kitchen then argues,

…directly east of the Tigris, through the mountains of western Iran, various rivers flow either west or south, ending up in the Tigris, or in the marshes by the Shatt el-Arab, or in the latter, or in the gulf. Best contenders here for the name Gihon would be either the Kerkheh River or (better, perhaps) the Diz plus Karun Rivers. The land of “Kush,” as others have suggested long ago, would be the land of the Kassites (Kashshu), in western Iran, whence these rivers take their rise; Nimrod “son” of Kush reigned in Mesopotamia, in Gen. 10:8-12. (p. 429)

Mesopotamia, of course, being located in modern Iraq [13] making the reference to “C[K]ush” in Genesis 2:13 not to a place in East Africa, Edom or some long lost pre-flood locale “on the other side of the world!” The river was very real and indeed existed in the region of southern Iraq.

Mackey:

Back to my normal disagreeing with Kitchen. Kush (Cush) is Ethiopia, plain and simple. That is the only country editor Moses would have meant by that word.

Moses led a pharaonic campaign/s into Ethiopia/Kush.

Palmer:

Pishon, however, creates a much more difficult problem. Kitchen acknowledges that for years this river presented difficulties for scholars and researchers who tried to place it in the geographic context of the ancient Near East.

Mackey:

It sure does. That is because the Pishon was in the west, in Egypt.

Palmer:

Kitchen builds his case for the historical reliability of the Old Testament and the Genesis author’s familiarity with the geography of ancient Mesopotamia by noting the text’s mention of “Havilah” in verse 11. He locates the river Pishon by noting,

It cannot well lie farther east, beyond the Gihon (Karun or Kerkheh systems), especially as it is linked in Gen. 2:11 with the gold-bearing land of Havila. The latter occurs in Gen. 10:7, 29, in Arabian contexts (with Sheba, Ophir…). It also occurs in a dimension that sets it in the northern half of Arabia, with Ishmael’s area from Havilah (going toward Assyria) toward Shur, on Egypt’s Sinai border, Gen. 25:18, and likewise for Amalek (successors to Midian) in 1Sam. 15:7. Such an area is attested in western Arabia, and gold-bearing land south from modern Medina toward modern Hawlan (itself possibly a reflection of ancient Hawilah). Torrid north Arabia hardly seemed the setting for a river to rival the other three mentioned. But in very far antiquity, just such a river once existed, and its long-dried course has recently been traced from its rise in the west Arabian goldlands (in Havilah) east and east-northeast toward the head of the gulf, via modern Kuwait. This may well have been ancient Pishon. If so, the ancient author’s enumeration runs counterclockwise, from southwest (Pishon) across east to the Gihon, then north and northwest to the Tigirs and Euphrates, in a continuous sweep. (ibid)

Mackey:

This Kitchen’s location of the Pishon actually ties right in with professor Yahuda’s location of that river.

Palmer:

After identifying the river Pishon, Kitchen then goes on to explain how the ancient landscape of Arabia was far different in antiquity than it is today. The landscape experienced alternating periods of “wetter” and “dryer” climates from roughly 70,000 BCE to 1000 CE [sic] while the gulf likely expanded and contracted the area it covered over the centuries.

Kitchen concludes that in the ancient world, Pishon would have flowed c. 7500/6500 BCE [sic] up to at least 2500/2200 BCE [sic] with dry intervals in between. After c. 2200 BCE [sic], Kitchen claims, Pishon dried up and disappeared forever. He then concludes,

…the folk memory of Pishon would have been handed down for some 400 years in south Mesopotamian and north Arabian tradition to Old Babylonian times/period of the patriarchs…Eden would have lain in the area now underwater at the north end of the gulf. Gone forever! (p. 430)

Mackey:

Some of this is rather interesting and may serve as a useful supplement to my Paradise article.

Palmer:

It would seem for Kitchen’s argument on the reliability of the Old Testament, his Eden too has conveniently vanished beneath an impenetrable layer of salty waves.

Mackey:

Kitchen’s ‘Eden’ perhaps, but not mine.

Palmer:

However, he seems to have discovered and documented the Iraqi location of the four rivers out of Eden which is something AiG creationist Mark Looy denied. Looy had opted for rivers that had long since vanished not under the waters of the northern Persian Gulf, but under the piles of sediment left after Noah’s flood. And herein lies an insurmountable problem for proponents of biblical inerrancy.

Mackey:

Perhaps a problem for Looy, but not for biblical inerrancy.

Palmer:

Damned If You Do, Damned If You Don’t In my opinion, Kenneth Kitchen successfully argued for the geographical and historical location of the four rivers of Eden mentioned in the Old Testament book of Genesis. Not only did he locate them on the topography of the region, but he gave a most lucid explanation as to how their presence in history led to their inclusion in the biblical tale.

Kitchen even puts a knife in the argument of those who may lobby for a "mythical" interpretation of the story of the garden of Eden. He writes, ...one must chuckle over the remark that "Eden is not a place on any map, but a state of mind." Maybe so for many moderns. But not for the ancients. The Euphrates and Tigris (Gen. 2:14) are not "a state of mind," but (along with the Nile) the most vital, earthly riverine resources in the entire Near East. Gihon (as the Gurun or the Kerkh) is vital to west-southwest Iran, and Pishon, linked with a very real gold-rich Havilah (Hawlan), has been the object of study by hardened archaeologists of considerable repute (Zarins, Potts). Beware of trying to spiritualize away the ancients' earthly concerns! (p. 469)

Mackey:

I fully agree with this last statement by Kitchen. His “Maybe so for many moderns …” is telling. It is the modern, western, a priori imposition of our ideas on these ancient eastern texts that renders them incomprehensible to us.

Palmer:

Kitchen’s conclusion, of course, is that the Old Testament author is painting a historically accurate geographical portrait of ancient Mesopotamia, a portrait that could not have been invented in the third or fourth centuries BCE by over-exuberant and hyper-patriotic Jews looking to create a national myth from scratch.

Mackey:

Right on.

Palmer:

However, in doing such a fine job, Kitchen has demonstrated just the opposite of historical reliability in the Old Testament stories as read by those who believe the text is ultimately the inspired word of an omniscient deity.

While Kitchen has located the rivers of Eden in their historical and geographical contexts, AiG creationist Mark Looy has demonstrated another aspect of the Old Testament story that ultimately reduces Kitchen’s study into a mere handful of academic, but otherwise irrelevant, details for the biblical inerrantist. Looy correctly noted that the book of Genesis (chapters 6-8) describes such a cataclysmic event as to have wiped out every pre-flood geographic landmark on the planet. Genesis 6:13 itself explicitly states that all life, along with the earth, will be destroyed in the global flood. Articles abound on AiG’s website and in their publications on the destructive and violent forces that must have been unleashed in this re-creation of the earth. There is not a chance, if Genesis 6-8 are reliable accounts of history, that the four rivers Pishon, Gihon, Tigris and Euphrates would still be following their courses in a post-flood world.

Yet, as Kitchen has demonstrated, these rivers indeed exist (or, in one case, existed) in modern Iraq. This means that either the narrative of Genesis 2 is incorrect in locating the garden of Eden in southern Mesopotamia [sic] or that the flood story of Genesis 6-8 is incorrect in its narrative of a devastating worldwide flood. Either way, the Old Testament is shown to be a historically inaccurate document and the case for biblical inerrancy, and divine inspiration, is again revealed to be a tenuous position to defend. [14]

Mackey:

Not so. The Genesis geography is perfectly true. It is Looy’s and colleagues’ interpretation of the Genesis Flood that is out of kilter and needs to be reassessed.

We need to let the Bible tell us what it means, not the other way around.

Palmer:

NOTES

1. See http://www.kchanson.com/ANCDOCS/westsem/teldan.html

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2. People throughout history have believed in the literal truth of the stories told in the Old Testament. Until relatively recently, few challenged the history relayed in those first books of the Bible. However, as noted in Kenneth Kitchen’s new book, On the Reliability of the Old Testament,the authenticity of those stories have come under closer scrutiny in the modern era and some have even concluded that much of the Old Testament is pious fiction, created centuries after the supposed “historical facts” given in the text. Such critics are termed “minimalists” and, as Kitchen describes, maintain that “the constituent writings in the Hebrew Bible [are] exclusively the product of a group of Jewish literary romantics of the fourth-third centuries B.C.; and [are] thus truly a late Perso-Hellenistic product” (p. 449). These critics dismiss “virtually the whole of it [the Old Testament] as pure fiction, as an attempt by the puny Jewish community of Palestine to write themselves an imaginary past large, as a form of national propaganda.” (p. 2) Return to Text

3. See Dever, What Did the Biblical Writers Know and When Did They Know It, p.128 Return to Text

4. See Note 2Return to Text

5. Many believers in the literal interpretation of the Bible rely upon 2 Timothy 3:16 to support this view. This verse reads, All scripture is inspired by God and is useful for teaching, for reproof, for correction, and for training in righteousness. The Greek word for “inspired” from the original language in which this passage was written is theopneustos and means, literally, “God-breathed.” Theos, “God,” pneo, “to breathe.” In this way, the words of Scripture literally were chosen by God to express exactly what the deity intended. As expressed by Richard W. DeHann in the booklet “How To Recognize A Good Church” from the evangelical Christian television program “Day of Discovery” and found on the Internet website, Gospelcom.Net,

Yes, we believe that ‘all Scripture is given by inspiration of God.’ In fact, we hold to verbal plenary inspiration…When we speak of verbal inspiration, we mean that the Holy Spirit led the authors of Scripture so meticulously that even the words they used were controlled by Him. He so guided them that they never made a wrong choice. This assures us that the Bible is true in every minute detail. When we say we believe in the plenary inspiration of the Scriptures, we mean that all 66 Bible books are equally inspired…When we affirm our belief in plenary inspiration, we are declaring that the Bible from Genesis to Revelation is inspired of God.” See http://www.gospelcom.net/rbc/ds/rd951/point1.html

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6. See works by apologists Josh McDowell, Gleason Archer and Ken Ham for examples.Return to Text

7. In certain translations of the Hebrew text, the names “Tigris” and “Euphrates” are not given. For example, in Young’s Literal translation, Genesis 2:14 reads,

and the name of the third river [is] Hiddekel, it [is] that which is going east of Asshur; and the fourth river is Phrat Hiddekel and Phrat in Young’s replaces the Tigris and Euphrates, respectively, found in other versions (e.g. NRSV). Some have claimed that this proves the rivers that flowed through Eden were not those located in modern Iraq and that these rivers, the Hiddekel and the Phrat, are long lost pre-flood waterways. Such a designation can assist in retaining biblical reliability and inerrancy as there is no readily apparent way to uncover long lost rivers that disappeared beneath a global flood!

However, the names “Tigris” and “Euphrates” are Greek in origin, found in the Greek translation of the Hebrew scriptures, otherwise known as the Septuagint. According to one source,

Before 3,000 BC the Sumerians called the Euphrates "Puranum" meaning, "Great water;" sometimes they called it "Pura," that is, "water." The Semitic people, including the Hebrews, called it "Purat." The Persians altered the "p" to "ph" or "f", and added an initial vowel, making it, "Ufratu." To the Greeks this became, "Euphrates." The Arabs today still call it "Furat." For over 5,000 years this important river has kept actually to one name, varying only in pronunciation from language to language.

While not everyone reading English will immediately recognize the name "Hiddekel,'yet scholars are quite in agreement about it. It is the modern "Tigris."

Those ancient Sumerians called the Tigris, "Idikna" or "Idikla." The early Semitic people called it, "Idiklat" (in Hebrew, "Hiddekel,"), later shortened to "Diklat." The Persians pronounced it, "Tigra," from whence the classical Greek name came, "Tigris." Today, in Arabic it is, "Dijla."

Once again, these are but variants of one name retained throughout all history. This identification is upon firm ground. To make the identification doubly sure, the Tigris is definitely the river of Assyria. The Assyrian capital city Nineveh stood upon that river's banks.

See http://nabataea.net/eden2.html

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8. See http://www.encyclopedia.com/html/E/Euphrate.aspand http://www.encyclopedia.com/html/t/tigris.asp

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9. ”Apologetics is the attempt to make a defense for the Christian faith. If you do that in any way, then you are an apologist. In fact, you are commanded to be an apologist by Peter: ‘but sanctify Christ as Lord in your hearts, always being ready to make a defense to everyone who asks you to give an account for the hope that is in you, yet with gentleness and reverence, (1 Pet. 3:15).

If God commands you to make a defense, then He is commanding you to be an apologist. So, you are, whether you like it or not, called to be an apologist. But don't worry. God is not in the habit of sending people to accomplish His will without equipping them.” See http://www.carm.org/apologetics/areyouanapolgist.htm Return to Text

10. See http://www.answersingenesis.org/docs2003/1021eden.asp

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11. On the Reliability of the Old Testament pp.428-429 Return to Text

12. Ibid Return to Text

13. See the British Museum’s educational website, http://www.mesopotamia.co.uk/

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14. To anticipate an obvious objection by adherents to biblical inerrancy, even though all four of the rivers mentioned in Genesis can be found to have corresponding waterways in southern Iraq, that doesn’t necessarily mean that they are not namesakes for four other pre-flood rivers. And if these rivers were the only such corresponding sites, this argument may carry a little bit of weight (even without any substantiating evidence to support it.) However, there are a number of site names in the “post-flood” world of the Bible that correspond with “pre-flood” localities for this to be a mere coincidence. It is odd for such an argument that in the pre-flood world a river known as Pishon flowed around a land known as Havilah where there is gold, bdellium and onyx stone just like there is in the post-flood world. It is oddly coincidental that this same river shared the region with another waterway known as Gihon which, in both the pre-flood and post-flood worlds, flowed around an area known as Cush. It is equally odd that these two rivers in the pre-flood world flowed together into two other rivers named the Tigris and the Euphrates, just as the four rivers of the same name flow together in the post-flood world of southern modern Iraq. Additionally, it seems strange that another Assyria with another Tigris flowing to its east would have existed in the pre-flood world just as one existed in days of Sargon II in the 8th century BCE. What are the odds that all these locales shared names and geographical similarities in a relatively small area in the post-flood world with a pre-flood local that may very well have existed “on the other side of the world”? The more likely explanation (because to posit a pre-flood world would require substantial evidence of its existence as well as supportive evidence that these place names originated from there and a substantial stretch of the imagination) is that these site names existed in far antiquity as identified by Kenneth Kitchen and that no flood occurred at all. The Bible simply is not a historically accurate document in all that it claims. Return to Text

SOURCES

Dever, William G. (2001) What Did the Biblical Writers Know and When Did They Know It? Wm. B. Eerdmans Publishing Co.

Kitchen, Kenneth A. (2003) On the Reliability of the Old Testament Wm. B. Eerdmans Publishing Co.