The Garden of Eden

[Sister Marie]

This is a interesting thought. Any ideas on it?

Could the garden of Eden ever be found?
The Bible says regarding the location of Eden: ‘And a river went out of Eden to water the garden; and from thence it was parted, and became into four heads’ (Genesis 2:10). Two of these rivers are called Hiddekel (Tigris) and Perath (Euphrates).

This is why many Christians believe that the original garden was located somewhere in the Mesopotamian region (around present day Iraq) where the modern Tigris and Euphrates rivers flow. However, the Bible records a devastating worldwide Flood, many centuries after Adam and Eve were expelled from the Garden. Sedimentary layers, sometimes miles thick, bear mute testimony to this massive watery upheaval which tore apart and buried forever the pre-Flood world.

After the Flood, the survivors moved to the plain of Shinar (Sumeria/Babylonia) which is where we find rivers today called Tigris and Euphrates. These are therefore clearly not the same rivers. They run on top of Flood-deposited layers of rock containing billions of dead things. They were probably named after the original pre-Flood rivers, just as settlers from the British Isles to North America and Australasia applied familiar names to many places in their ‘new world.’

Note also that the Bible speaks of one river breaking into four, only two of which were called Tigris and Euphrates. This is not what is found in the Middle East today.

The Garden’s actual location on the globe can never be established—maybe it was where we now find the middle of the Pacific Ocean!

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With Christian Love,
Sister Marie

[Richard Myers]

Since it is not there any more, does it really make any difference?

It would be good to understand where Noah began. For here would be where the whole human family descended from. Can we know this? Yes, the ark landed in the mountains of Erarat in Turkey. This is where we all came from!   Our grandfather Noah lived somewhere in the region after the flood. And...shortly thereafter the languages were confounded.   So much history. So much ignorance in our schools!  

[JimB]

Could the garden of Eden ever be found?

quote:The Garden of Eden remained upon the earth long after man had become an outcast from its pleasant paths. The fallen race were long permitted to gaze upon the home of innocence, their entrance barred only by the watching angels. At the cherubim-guarded gate of Paradise the divine glory was revealed. Hither came Adam and his sons to worship God. Here they renewed their vows of obedience to that law the transgression of which had banished them from Eden. When the tide of iniquity overspread the world, and the wickedness of men determined their destruction by a flood of waters, the hand that had planted Eden withdrew it from the earth. But in the final restitution, when there shall be "a new heaven and a new earth" (Revelation 21:1), it is to be restored more gloriously adorned than at the beginning.  {Mar 354.1}

[Sister Marie]

Amen brother Jim. I was just surprised at the above information I shared. I had always thought that the Garden of Eden was in Iraq. But they make it sound like it could have been anywhere and that even the rivers could be in different places sense the flood. Where-in it is not a needed thing to know, it is neat to think about. Also different ideas then I had thought or read of before.

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With Christian Love,
Sister Marie