It was a perfect paradise, but because of the disobedience of man, humanity lost access to
the Garden of Eden forever. But was it a real place, and if so where is it today?
Even those individuals who might not know anything about Christianity or the Bible are typically
aware of the Garden of Eden. A perfect place without evil, death, or pain, who's vast gardens
were full of rich, always ripe fruits and the most beautiful flowers on all the earth. In essence,
the garden of Eden is paradise, and often used symbolically to represent perfect bliss.
But humanity messed things up by... well, being human. You're probably familiar with the story
of the apple, and how Eve- the first woman- was tempted to pluck an apple from the tree
of knowledge at the heart of the garden of Eden and thus disobeyed God. After pressuring Adam
to also eat the apple, both Adam and Eve were cursed to leave the perfect garden of
Eden and wander the earth for the rest of their lives, where they would have to toil with blood,
sweat, and tears to make a living for themselves out of the hard,
unforgiving ground. And that's pretty much been humanity's state for thousands of years.
But could there be more to the story than just myth?
Interestingly, the Bible actually records the garden of Eden as not a spiritual place,
but a very real, physical space that's definitely located somewhere on our planet. In Genesis 2:
8-14, the Bible states: The Lord God planted a garden eastward in Eden. . . . Now a river
went out of Eden to water the garden, and from there it parted and became four riverheads. The
name of the first is Pishon . . . . The name of the second river is Gihon. . . . The name
of the third river is Hiddekel [Tigris]. ;. . . The fourth river is the Euphrates.
The Genesis narrative clearly states that a single river went through the holy garden,
and when it exited it turned into four rivers. Two of those rivers are Pishon and Gihon,
rivers that we don't recognize today. But two of them are well known to us- Hiddekel, better
known as the Tigris, and the Euphrates. Both of these rivers run through ancient Mesopotamia,
and straight through the modern day nation of Iraq. The two rivers even share the same
headwaters in the area around Mt. Ararat- which means that finding the Garden of Eden should
be as simple as finding the other two rivers and seeing where they intersect the two known rivers.
But there's a problem, because the Pishon and Gihon rivers are unknown to us,
and no other rivers flow out of the same headwaters as the Tigris and Euphrates
rivers. Famous French reformer John Calvin made note of the difficulties
in using known geography to locate the garden of Eden, writing the following:
Many think that Pison and Gihon are the Ganges and the Nile; the error, however,
of these men is abundantly refuted by the distance of the positions of these rivers.
Persons are not wanting who fly across even to the Danube; as if indeed the habitation of one
man stretched itself from the most remote part of Asia to the extremity of Europe.
But since many other celebrated rivers flow by the region of which we are speaking, there is
greater probability in the opinion of those who believe that two of these rivers are pointed out,
although their names are now obsolete. Be this as it may, the difficulty is not yet solved.
For Moses divides the one river which flowed by the garden into four heads. Yet it appears,
that the fountains of the Euphrates and the Tigris were far distant from each other.
A popular belief at the time of John Calvin was that the other two rivers
which poured out of the garden of Eden were the mighty Ganges and Nile rivers,
two of the largest and most important rivers in the world then and today. But Calvin notes
the difficulty in this being true, as obviously the rivers are very far apart from each other,
and he notes that one man in the ancient world surely couldn't have
habituated on both the Nile and Ganges- the distance again is simply far too great.
Calvin then supposes what others have- that the names of the rivers have been lost to
us and that the Pishon and Gihon are names for rivers that we know today by different
names. This isn't entirely implausible, as the fertile crescent was known for being a location
of much strife in ancient times- the names of even two important rivers being wiped out from
the cultural record is not impossible. But Calvin makes a final observation,
that even if this were true, and though the Tigris and Euphrates share the same headwaters,
they simply don't flow from the exact same source- a singular, unified river which splits into four.
What we have now is three missing rivers, because don't forget- the
river that flowed through Eden is what split into four to create the other four rivers.
And yet the author of Genesis is insistent that Eden was a real,
geographical place, and not a symbol or mythological location.
Creationists and biblical literalists have an answer for the missing rivers:
they were destroyed by flooding. Rather, by one specific flood: Noah's flood. In the Bible,
the world grows so wicked that God decides to wipe the slate clean. He finds Noah and his
family to be the only faithful people left on the face of the earth- which to be fair at the time
would only have been a few tens of thousand of people. Thus to ensure humanity survives,
he orders Noah to build a massive ark that can hold him and his family along with two of every
land species, male and female of course. The rain starts to pour- which confuses people
because until that point there had been no rain- and eventually everything floods
leaving only Noah and his boat full of animals to survive and repopulate the earth. The bible
is clear that the flood was so bad that it covered even the tops of the mountains up.
There are obviously a whole host of problems with this account- namely that it would be impossible
to house and feed 2 of every land species for over a year in one boat. Also, it would
be impossible to even build that boat without the assistance of modern technology- though Noah did
build for years. The material cost alone though would have made it necessary for Noah to be the
Jeff Bezos of his day, though to be fair the flood account doesn't mention if Noah was rich or not.
Then there's the more scientific problems. Flooding the entire earth so that even the
tops of the mountains would be below sea level is simply impossible. All that water
would have had to go somewhere after the flood, and we're talking about incredible,
mind-boggling amounts of water. At the very least we should see that water locked up in massive
glaciers dozens of miles tall in the poles, but we don't. If Noah's ark had also been coasting
on water above mountain top high he would have had to deal with a thinner atmosphere- though we
suppose its possible the atmosphere would have been compressed by the rising floodwaters to
perhaps mitigate some of the altitude sickness which would be plaguing Noah and his animals.
Perhaps most importantly of all though is the fact
that there's simply zero evidence for a global flood- no matter what Ken Ham
(https://content.swncdn.com/zcast/oneplace/host-images/answers-in-genesis/640x480.jpg) and his
cherry-picked science like to say. But it might surprise you to learn
that evidence for a regional flood is very much present, and one of staggering scale.
The flood of Genesis is repeated across other ancient literature, including famously in the
epic of Gilgamesh, leading to cries of plagiarism from critics. This would be a stretch for sure,
as the two works bear nothing more than superficial similarities- but both could
very well be reporting on a very real event, just not in quite the scale described in either work.
Sediment deposits found across Iraq indicate that the region was prone to some massive flooding in
the past. One sediment deposit in southeastern Iraq is a whopping 3 meters thick, with 2.4
meter deposits to the southeast of Baghdad. Those deposits were dated to about 2900 BC,
nearly 1500 years before Genesis was officially put down on paper. The area however was already
home to the descendants of those early scribes, and they would definitely have witnessed floods
devastating enough to wash away entire villages, and wide enough to cover hundreds of square miles.
Massive floods can indeed rewrite the geography of the earth; we have
ample evidence of large-scale catastrophic flooding erasing river systems from existence
or diverting the flow of ancient rivers. But the problem once more becomes with where the
floods took place. Massive regional flooding in the Mesopotamian valley wouldn't have been
able to reach to the mountains where the headwaters of the Tigris and Euphrates lay-
that would have required truly mythical levels of flooding. Without being able to extend that far,
no amount of flooding could have erased our two missing rivers from existence.
Climate change could have possibly dried up these two ancient rivers, but again modern
geography doesn't show any evidence of major rivers linking up with a shared source in the
area. The Tigris and Euphrates could possibly have shared a source in the past, but even this
is highly unlikely given the terrain and course of the two rivers today. Even then, the original
river which fed the four rivers who broke off “like the spokes of a wheel” is also missing from
both geology and history - no people from the area have ever reported any such river in the terrain.
It could be argued then that the garden of Eden exists 'spiritually',
perhaps just out of phase with the real world and that's why no physical evidence of its
location can actually be found. However, the ancient writers were adamant that this was a
real location- though it might be best not to find it today even if we could,
given that God very famously set a flaming sword and a troupe of angels to guard its entrance.
The most likely answer though is the simplest: it was myth. The Genesis account is not
meant to be taken literally and was simply a mythologized account of the creation of man,
not just an origin story but a way for early man to explore some truths about God himself
and his relationship with us. We see the same in the poetic work of the Book of Job,
itself not a historical account but rather a poetic exploration into
some of the most difficult aspects of life, spirituality, and the nature of good and evil.
What might surprise you is that this is not a new revelation- Christians throughout history
have always believed that Genesis was not history, but enlightened mythology that was
supposed to be studied for its spiritual truths, not its historical accuracy. Famed
Christian philosopher William Lane Craig argues that Genesis should be considered 'mytho-history',
as it contains accurate historical details alongside what are obvious mythological
passages. This view fits perfectly into the way that ancient man understood, and spoke about his
world, combining real history with mythological flourishes woven together into a single narrative.
What's curious- or sad- about Genesis is that its ancient audience understood better what
parts were myth and what parts weren't compared to a modern audience. As Dr. Craig points out,
the ancient Jews lived and died by agriculture, which meant they understood things like the
water cycle extremely well as their lives literally depended on it. Genesis claims
that before the flood the earth was watered by springs from beneath it, as no rain had
ever fallen until the fateful day that God flooded the earth. But an ancient, farming
audience would have understood this to be pure myth due to their knowledge of the water cycle.
Meanwhile, modern creationists like Ken Ham try to twist science into
making something work that even the ancients knew was never meant to be
taken as physical fact. This likely is also true about the Garden of Eden, as man did
not descend from two single individuals but rather evolved from the great apes.
So if you're looking for the Garden of Eden today,
it exists only as a symbol of what man loses every time he disobeys God's commands- your
garden of Eden is the peace you could enjoy if you followed God’s will such as being
kind to those who hate you, or practicing restraint against your passionate impulses.
Now go check out What The Bible Actually Says About the Devil,
or click this other video instead!