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The Eden Enigma

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The three Abrahamic religions -  Judaism, Christianity and Islam all adhere to the account of mankind's primeval home  given in the Old Testament's Book of Genisis. But where was the Garden located? Genesis says it was bounded by four major rivers: the Tigirs, Eupharates, Pishon and Gihon. The first two of these are the modern rivers of the same name, the location might be somewhere in today's Turkey, Iran or Iraq. The modern day identities and locations of Pishon and Gihon are unknown; the two rivers are subject to intense debate. Some scholars believe the land on which the Garden rested is now submerged; other scholars believe the story is a religious metaphor and does not correspond to a geographic location.

Clip from The Blaze (August 2013):

Has the Bible’s Garden of Eden been found — and restored? This question can’t be answered definitely, but it’s certainly worth exploring, especially in light of the ongoing news surrounding the first Iraqi national park.

The world’s most well-known garden is described in the Old Testament as a place of perfection — one in which God is said to have placed Adam and Eve. For those who believe in its literal existence, Eden has been a focus of debate, particularly surrounding where it was located.

Now, despite ongoing violence in the region, New Scientist is reporting, that the “‘Garden of Eden’ has been saved.” The country’s Council of Ministers recently approved its first national park, restoring Mesopotamian marshes in Iraqi’s southern region.

The name of the new park, according to Nature of Iraq, the group that advocated for its creation, is the Central Marshes of Iraq. NewScientist continues:

This vast wetland of reed beds and waterways, home of the Ma’dan Marsh Arabs, is widely held to be the home of the Biblical story of the Garden of Eden, the paradise where Adam and Eve were created and from which they were subsequently expelled.

After the Gulf war in 1991, Iraq’s president, Saddam Hussain, used dykes, sluices and diversions to cut off the country’s two major rivers, the Tigris and Euphrates. This drained 93 percent of the marshes,  largely obliterating the largest wetland ecosystem in the Middle East

... The New York Times too reported that Bible scholars consider this land to be where the Garden of Eden once stood.

http://www.theblaze.com/stories/2013/08/02/has-the-bibles-garden-of-eden-been-found-and-restored/

There have been a number of claims as to the actual geographic location of the Garden of Eden, though some of these have little or no connection to the text of Genesis. Most put the Garden somewhere in the Middle East, but this list shows a few more locations you might not have considered. Here are ten "entertaining"  possibilities from http://www.toptenz.net/10-possible-locations-for-the-garden-of-eden.php

1.  Members of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints believe the Garden of Eden to have been located inJackson County MIssouri. Founder of the Mormon church, Joseph Smith, discovered a stone slab that he claimed was an altar built by Adam after being expelled from the Garden. The garden itself was located 40 miles south, near present-day city, Independence. As for its location in the western hemisphere, some Latter-day Saints have presumed the continents were not yet separate before the Great Flood and that this approach would be consistent with the configuration of the super-continent Pangaea.

2.  The Sky People, by Brinsley LePoer Trench stated the biblical description of the river watering the garden and then parting into four heads is not consistent with rivers in nature. He wrote that only canals can be made to flow this way. He then points to Mars as a location for the garden since canals have been theorized to have existed on the red planet. Brinsley goes on to say The Garden of Eden was on Mars and created by Space People. Along with Adam and Eve, Noah was also on Mars. Our descendants were eventually forced to come to Earth.

3.  In the nineteenth century, a theory was developed that a continent, Lumeria, occupied what is now the Indian Ocean The wide range of the animals inspired the name Lemuria, which was coined in 1864 by the zoologist Philip Sclater in an article “The Mammals of Madagascar” in The Quarterly Journal of Science. Puzzled by the presence of fossil lemurs in both Madagascar and India, but not in Africa nor the Middle East, Sclater proposed that Madagascar and India had once been part of a larger continent. Other scientists have suggested Lemuria was the cradle of the human race and therefore must have been the site of the garden.

4.  General Charles Gordon supported the theory that Africa and India were part of the same continent. During an expedition he found thePraslin Island in the Seychelles group. He became convinced this was the location of the Garden of Eden, particularly the Valle de Mai. His reasoning was based on the coco-de-mar, a rare tree, which is only found on one other island of the Seychelles. Gordon concluded this was the tree of the knowledge of good and evil.

5.  Another location that has been mentioned is Sundaland in the South China Sea. In this theory, the current Tigris and Euphrates rivers would not be the ones referred to in the scriptures, but rather later rivers named after two earlier ones, just as colonists often name features of their new land after similar features in their homeland. This idea also resolves the apparent problem in the theory that the rivers had a common source, which the current rivers lack.

6.  Some people believe that Garden of Eden was somewhere in Northeast Africa. Evidence given in support of this includes the fact that the oldest human remains have been found in Africa, and that the Gihon is usually thought to be a name for the Nile.

7.  Many believe that the Garden must have been in the Holy Land and the original river that flowed into the garden before it split into four separate rivers must have been the Jordan. The Gihon would be the Nile and the Havilah would be the Arabian Peninsulas. Eden is also tied with Jerusalem by the prophet Ezekiel. In Ezekiel 28:13-14, he recorded, “You were in Eden, the garden of God;” … “You were on the holy mount of God.” In most Jewish and Christian traditions, “the holy mount of God” is Mt. Moriah, the Temple Mount in Jerusalem (see Isaiah 2:2-2:3, Psalm 48:1-2 e.g.).

8.  Another possibility was proposed by archaeologist David Rohl, based on archaeological evidence, putting the Garden of Eden in northern Iran. According to him, the Garden was located in a vast plain referred to in ancient Sumerian texts as Edin east of the Sahand Mountain, near Tabriz. He cites several geological similarities with Biblical descriptions, and multiple linguistic parallels as evidence. The region today is bound by a large mountain range to the North, East and South, and marshlands to the west. The eastern mountain region has a pass leading in and out of the Edin region. This fits with the Biblical geography of Eden containing marshlands to the west, and the Land of Nod to the east, outside the Garden.

9.  Other scholars surmised the Garden of Eden was located in the eastern part of the region known as Eden, and that in Eden, the river divided into four branches: Hiddekel (also known as Tigris), Euphrates, Pishon and Gihon. While the identity of the first two rivers is commonly accepted, the latter two rivers have been the subject of much debate. If the Garden of Eden had been near the sources of the Tigris and the Euphrates, then it might be located in eastern Anatolia, specifically the Armenian Highland in eastern Turkey.

10. Some biblical scholars believe the Garden of Eden was located in Sumer where the Euphrates and Tigris rivers merge. This is now located in present-day Iraq. They presume that the geographical references in Genesis refer to the time of ninth century BC and the Pishon and Gihon were tributaries of the Euphrates and Tigris that have since vanished.

Also: The Urantia Papers (1955) state that three locations were considered for the garden: The first was an island in the Persian Gulf; the second, the river location subsequently occupied as the second garden; the third, a long narrow peninsula - almost an island - projecting westward from the eastern shores of the Mediterranean Sea.

Consider: The geography of the garden of Eden according to the Bible interpreted literally (or critically) under geographic actualism indicates its location was in southern Mesopotamia. Observational data combined with the paradigm known as Flood geology, also founded on Biblical literalism, yields the conclusion that Noah's Flood deposited over 9000 m of sediments in this region. Such deposits obviously would have obliterated the garden geography. Thus Eden's geography and Flood geology, both based on literalism, stand in contradiction. Some weakening of geographic actualism or Flood geology is the logically necessary outcome. Holding to actualism in the garden geography seems the least-forced of the alternatives, but then the negative impact on the Flood geology paradigm is severe.

Further Flood Geology consideration: http://www.epctoronto.org/press/publications_jrhughes/an%20examination%20of%20the%20assumptions%20crsq.pdf

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