The Media Desk looks for the Garden of Eden.

      In this special essay we're going to look for the garden itself, including its appearance in other mythology. And while we're at it, we'll look at how big it was, what was in it, and at the end, what happened to it once Adam and Eve were evicted.
      Let's start with the location as given in the Genesis account.
      Can we locate Eden by the rivers and other natural features listed? Well, we can try.

      First, we need to consider exactly what sort of water flow the Hebrew word is talking about.
      "nahar" essentially means anything and everything from the smallest stream all the way up to "the river of Egypt" and the Euphrates as seen in chapter 15. From the usage throughout the text it may also be used to refer to seasonal or even man made waterways, which makes our task all the more difficult.
      Also somewhat stacking the deck against us is the way it is phrased. In 10 the text states that a river "went out" from Eden, and from there it became four headwaters. Unless you're Yoda from Star Wars, we would say four streams merged in the garden and went out as one larger river. But at least we have something to look for. Well we've got several things to look for, but we'll start with the water, and then dig for the others. (all puns at no extra charge)
      Then it names the rivers. Two of them we are all familiar with, the Tigris and Euphrates. These two are the same two that are on every map of the Middle East ever made. The names are ancient and come down to us from the Sumerian and Akkadian languages. "Tigris" meaning 'swift water' is in sharp contrast to "Euphrates" which is "sweet water" and perhaps was more descriptive of its flow which was more favorable to boat traffic than the Tigris.
      That leaves us two others. The Pishon (Pison) and the Gihon (Gichon). Those aren't on the map. At least, they're not on OUR map.
      Or are they?

      There are currently environmental groups that are not rabid tree kissing wackos that are warning that the Euphrates is "drying up". While even the one linked below leads with "climate change" they do eventually get to a more likely explanation- overuse and abuse of the water in the river. Massive irrigation projects along the river, as well as industrial and municipal draws have reduced the amount of water in the river's main channel to a fraction of what it was in historic times. Dams far upstream have also all but stopped the yearly floods that fertilized the valley, just as has happened along the Nile and even the Jordan.
      This has also happened along the Tigris, but to a lesser extent.
      Look at verse fourteen. The way the writer composed this section, he had the same idea we do: Everybody had heard of the Euphrates, and once he mentioned Assyr (Assyria), they knew which Hiddekel, or Tigris he meant (such as it is used in Daniel 10), just in case there's another Tigris river someplace. There is no other description of those two here.

      What if the other two rivers of Eden suffered the same fate that they are predicting for the Euphrates long ago? Perhaps the water is gone, but there is a good chance that the river valley is still there. And we'll go looking for the Pishon Valley in a minute.
      We are told the Pishon flows in the land of Havilah, who was a son of Cush, who we'll deal with in a second... no, on second thought, we can kill a whole flock of birds with one paragraph.
      The writer of Genesis is using names and places from AFTER the Flood. Cush was most likely the people and place of the son of Ham, who was the son of Noah. And Havilah would be the grandson of Ham. So if we look at where Ham and his kids settled, we might be able to at least get an idea of where these rivers used to be.

"Set course for Genesis 10. Engage...."
      Verse 6 lists some of the children, but then when we get to 10 we see some place names that are recognizable. Accad, Babel, Nineveh.
      These are real places in the archaeological record. And it is the Accadian language, that gave us the names of the two rivers that are still flowing.
      Some 'researchers' (and that word is in quotes here for a reason) get all wrapped up in the idea that ancient Cush was in Africa, perhaps as far south as Sudan and Ethiopia. Well, part of it was. But in the era we're talking about, thousands of years before them, it was also in the area of the Arabian peninsula and, evidently, in the vicinity of what is today Kuwait. Herodotus, for one, specifies an African Cush (most likely Nubia or Ethiopia), see book two and three of his History (link below), and an Asiatic Cush. It is the Asian one mentioned in 2 Chronicles 14 and following.
      This points out that some ancient place names, such as the locations the Israelites visited during their forty year detour in the desert, may or may not be identifiable now. Or, that there were more than one, the most famous example of that is Bethlehem, there was only one that was the hometown of King David, but there were at least two others in the regions with that name on the placard on their bus stop.

      In 1993 a geologist from Boston University announced the discovery of an ancient riverbed that ran for over 500 miles from the Hijaz mountains along the central western coastal region of the Saudi peninsula northeast to the area of Kuwait following a fault line that branches off the main Rift. Of course it was instantly proclaimed to be the Pishon of Eden, although that is pure speculation. But in favor of this river, the old valley does run near the former gold producing region of "Mahd adh-Dhahab". Which is specifically mentioned in Genesis 2 : 11 with a couple of other items...

A Golden Tangent
      We have gone into exquisite detail elsewhere about mankind's total obsession with the yellow metal. With good reason. We are barely one thousand words into the Bible, at least the English version of it (780 or so in chapter one, and give or take a couple of hundred in two) and it is already talking about Gold. Not a special kind of wood, or bronze and silver which would be used on the Ark of the Covenant and later the Temple.
      Gold.
      The writer thought that the presence of gold, with the other two products mentioned would be of enough notability that the later readers would know EXACTLY which river he was talking about. Perhaps even it it wasn't there any more.
      There's a link below to an extensive look into the question "Why Gold?" but we'll give a short answer here, and that is really no answer at all. And that is this: Gold has ALWAYS been precious to humans, and there is no logical explanation for it. World-Wide, every ancient culture worthy the title of "ancient culture" held gold as special. It was always associated with whatever deity they believed in and was often reserved for the temple and the palace of the king. The Jews were no different. And as we checked Daniel 10 earlier, you can go back there and check verse 5.
      But what is unusual here is that a modifier is added to the statement that there is gold there. That the gold found along the river in the land of Havilah "is good". That would imply a high degree of purity, and even perhaps exceptionally large nuggets of the stuff, what we would now call 'jewelry grade'.
      And while we're at it, Bdellium isn't a metal or a gemstone, it is a natural resin akin to Myrrh and is used and harvested like the Frankincense tree resin of song and story. Onyx is onyx, the banded quartzite gemstone of various colors ranging from deep black on through whatever color you want. Today there are different names for the stone depending on color and arrangement of the bands, then, it was all onyx.
      The point being that while today Onyx is a pretty rock that is found from Canada to India and can be purchased at that booth at the county fair to add to your rock collection or make a necklace out of for Mother's Day, and scented incense and oils are available at the convenience store down the street, Gold is still Gold. Again, we beat that shiny rock half to death in the essay below.
      Back to Eden.... all puns at no extra charge.
end tangent

      All that discussion did was to point out that there are remnants of long dry and forgotten rivers in the area. Of which there is one more in the text.

      The other lost river, Gihon, has similar issues. A different problem with this one is that it shares its name with a famous spring near Jerusalem. Which gives 'researchers' who don't like doing homework an excuse to write this whole section, if not all of Genesis, off as fiction. After all, two places CAN'T have the same name. Right?

      Let's pause for a second and look at that spring. It has been proven archaeologically that a tunnel connecting the spring to various water features inside the old walls of Jerusalem was dug sometime in the Bronze Age (prior to about 1200 BC) and then enlarged and improved during the Iron Age period (around 800 to 700 BC) probably under the reign of Hezekiah as described in 2 Kings 20 and the complimentary passage in 2 Chronicles 32. Part of the proof is stone inscriptions from inside the tunnel in ancient Hebrew. There's a link below to a discussion of the stone with photos.

      The first thing wrong with this spring as a source for one of the Rivers of Eden is simple geography. The source of the Gihon spring is on the wrong side of the Rift Valley and the Dead Sea. While water from the spring could easily flow downhill into the Jordan which is below sea level from Galilee (about 700 feet below!) to the Dead Sea (1400 feet below), it would have a hard time flowing back up onto the Jordanian plateau which is 2,300 feet above sea level at its lowest point! The water of the spring may be capable of working miracles, but flowing that far up hill is pushing it.
      So it is reasonable that somewhere in the Middle East there is another Gihon, which may well have been the inspiration for the name of this spring when the Children of Israel settled in the area.
      Others have made the Gihon to be what is now known as the Blue Nile, others point to the River Araxes / Aras which eventually drains into the Caspian Sea, which means it never joins the others.
      As with the Pishon, there are fossil rivers in the region, one running northeast from the area which may be a candidate for the Gihon.

Enough barging along the rivers....

"Tallulah Bankhead barged down the Nile last night as Cleopatra - and sank."
      - John Mason Brown's review in the New York Post of a 1937 Broadway production of "Anthony and Cleopatra" by Shakespeare.

      .... is there any way to tell how big the Garden of Eden was?

      Short answer first: directly from the text? No. But we can draw some inferences from the events besides that it was large enough to need a full time gardener.
      It was large enough to have the rivers running THROUGH it. And given that the two existing rivers are fairly sizable Eden itself had to be larger than your average city park with a fountain and playground. However, while it is possible that Eden could have been the size of a continent, especially given who planted the garden, it is far more likely, since Adam was expected to tend it by himself, or with one helper, it wasn't that big.
      Another factor is the description of GOD walking in the garden in the evening, and that the two special trees mentioned in chapter 2 verse 9 were in the middle of the garden. The text specifies that location as significant. So it was evidently some distance from wherever the main gate was, and, apparently, there was no doubt which tree was which. The two did not look like your standard issue peach and walnut trees. So when Adam was told "don't touch that one", there was no doubt as to which one it was.
      There are those that maintain that The Garden was the entire Fertile Crescent along the Tigris and Euphrates, over 800 miles from the Sea to the Gulf and from several miles across near the confluence to perhaps two hundred wide where the two great rivers are furthest apart. And even more if the Jordan Valley and even the Nile were included. That'd be a lot of garden to tend.
      It is most likely that it was a significant designated area, but wasn't a continent.

      We've already discussed two of the trees that were in the center of the garden the tree of life and the tree of knowledge. According to verse 9 all of the other trees in the garden were either pretty to look at or good to eat. There is no other description of the Garden. If you are one of those who read Genesis and take it literally that means there weren't any flowers or other greenery. And until GOD brought in the procession, there were no animals in the garden.
      Later in the drama we'll meet the most infamous critter in the place, but for now, one more question, then we'll wrap this one up with a look at some other creation myths and their gardens.

      What happened to Eden?

      We can only go by two facts.
      The first is the easiest. The 'snake story' comes in chapter 3. We'll go into what 23 means in the regular study, but that verse says God 'sent' man out of Eden.
      But then the tone changes in the next verse.
      24 "So He (YHWH 'Elohim) "garash" (drove out / cast out (includes the idea of 'dismissed' and 'expelled', so it includes at least the threat of violence)) "ha 'adam" (the man (singular)) - and He "shakan" (settled / abibes / stood / etc) to the "qedem" (east OR 'in front') of the garden cherubim (a type of angelic being that is never described as pleasant) and "lahat" (flame / fire) "hahereb" (sword) "haphak" (turned (includes motion and changes)) to "shamar" (watch / guard) the "derek" (way / road / path) to the tree of life.

      The end of the passage is a foreshadowing of something that Christ said (John 14 : 6), and was one of the terms for the early church, as in Acts 9, and in Acts 19 : 23 'that way'. And before we go any further that way, we're going to take a slight detour, then come back to it.

Section PS:
      Another argument against the Literal reading of Genesis is this: where's Eve in verse 23 and 24?

      And now we come to the section that may be the most controversial in this whole outing:
Other Creation Myths and Their Gardens.

      Every ancient culture, no matter where it was in the world, had some sort of creation myth. Some were more colorful than others, such as the Japanese story that includes the 'snot' from a deity's nose giving birth to a storm god, see link below. Other stories revolve around a central 'hero' god defeating some 'bad guys' to protect / create humanity, pick your favorite Aztec / Mayan myth at your leisure.
      But for now we'll focus on one that begins with the world in total blackness.
      No, it isn't Genesis. Or even Sumeria, or Japan for that matter. They all begin with 'nothing', which should be written in huge shimmering letters, and things go from there. Our current darkness is from the Navajo. The world began in darkness, then (we're really condensing things here), the first humans appeared, all innocent and sweet, and there was perfect corn for them to eat in a small land in the middle of a great sea.
      This myth doesn't call it a "Garden of Eden", but it sounds an awful lot like one.
      And, of course, things go downhill from there when some people who know all about evil show up. There is a link below to a slightly more fleshed out version of the story. Pun intended.

      The Sumerian legend has always been noted for its similarity to the Genesis account. Or perhaps that should be phrased the other way round. Both are unarguably ancient. And as the later accounts of the Genesis narrative take place in the general area of Sumeria, there should be some bleeding of one cultural history into the other.

      Some of the similarities across the majority of the creation stories is all-pervading darkness, and an endless, or nearly so, sea, and an initial creator. After that, you usually have a 'perfect' world for the first people. Then as it moves forward the cast of characters differs somewhat, including the Hopi's ant people (who are described as friends of mankind) of their version of the Native American creation story.
      But it is worth considering that at the bottom layer of many of these stories you have a primordial god presiding over dark, empty, ocean. The humans appear, although there is some variability as to how that happens, which is what we see in the first two chapters of Genesis, and everything and everybody is nice and happy, and then things take a dramatic turn for the worse and the ancestors have to file a change of address form at the post office. Again, just as is seen in Genesis.

      Of course a Genesis literalist will maintain that all of these stories are based on a cultural memory of the "Adam and Eve" story handed down as an oral tradition from the mists of history, or contamination of whatever story the local pagans were telling each other by early missionaries. And, perhaps most likely, a pleasant combination of both.
      That the stories related in Genesis are more fact than fiction must be considered, even if you are approaching the idea from a purely scientific starting point. Which can be simplified and, somewhat, summarized as: First there was Nothing, then Something. Next: The 'something' included a lot of water. Later: Simple life forms, then later in the story: humans appear. And, of course, trouble soon follows.

      The primary difference is that according to the science books, there was never a Garden of Eden. If you read the academic accounts, what passes for Modern Humans first ventured into Europe during an Ice Age after developing from an ape-ish life form between the acidic lakes and active volcanoes in the African Rift Valley.
      While some areas early human fossils are found may have been more or less ideal for our kind, to say any of them, including the Gobekli Tepe mountaintop site in the northern reaches of the Fertile Crescent, which would appear to have been active during the period of the last Ice Age, were as perfect as Eden is a bit of a stretch.

Back to our final question:
      What happened to Eden?
      At least the center of the garden may not even be on this planet any more. Check out Revelation 22. Which could be taken to mean that the blazing sword flashing every which way from Genesis 3 : 24 isn't a lightning storm, lava lake, or anything else we can see. The barrier outside of Eden is Death itself.

      The final moral to the story is that it would seem that living Humans were never meant to be in ...
            .... The Garden of Eden.

Selected resources for this special essay:

The Interlinear: Hebrew - English Genesis 2 includes Garden of Eden introduction. https://biblehub.com/interlinear/genesis/2.htm

What's happening to the Euphrates River https://features.csis.org/the-future-of-the-Euphrates-River/#:~:text=The%20Euphrates%20River%20is%20at,could%20be%20dry%20by%202040.

One scholar tries to explain where one river is in one article:
Is the river Gihon in Ethiopia OR the outskirts of Jerusalem? http://contradictionsinthebible.com/where-is-the-river-gihon/

Siloam Tunnel Inscription from the City of David, Jerusalem https://joyofmuseums.com/museums/middle-east-museums/turkey-museums/istanbul-museums/istanbul-archaeology-museums/siloam-inscription/

Ancient river discovered in Arabian Desert https://www.upi.com/Archives/1993/03/25/Ancient-river-discovered-in-Arabian-Desert/6574733035600/

and then elsewhere:
Ancient river network discovered buried under Saharan sand https://www.theguardian.com/science/2015/nov/10/ancient-river-network-discoverd-buried-under-saharan-sand

Herodotus: The Histories http://www.perseus.tufts.edu/hopper/text?doc=Perseus%3Atext%3A1999.01.0126%3Abook%3D3

The Metropolitan Museum of Art:
Mesopotamian Creation Myths https://www.metmuseum.org/toah/hd/epic/hd_epic.htm

The Shinto creation myth from Japan https://www.britannica.com/topic/Izanagi

The Navajo creation story –
The First World “Nihodilhil” (Black World) https://navajopeople.org/blog/navajo-creation-story-the-first-world-nihodilhil-black-world/

"Gobekli Tepe: The World’s First Temple?" https://www.smithsonianmag.com/history/gobekli-tepe-the-worlds-first-temple-83613665/
-and-
"... to be Restored" https://www.nationalgeographic.com/travel/article/150120-gobekli-tepe-oldest-monument-turkey-archaeology

The First Temple On Earth? 10,000 BC // Ancient History Documentary https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vXJc-Y3Mf5w

the "golden" Media Desk non-fiction essay mentioned:

"There once many a man
Mood-glad, gold bright, of gleams garnished,
Flushed with wine-pride, flashing war-gear,
Gazed on wrought gemstones, on gold, on silver,
On wealth held and hoarded, on light-filled amber."
    -Ruin, Anglo-Saxon poem, approximately 1000 AD - author unknown

Genesis Study Index Page

NOTE: The Bible Study Lesson presented above is posted as a reference document to begin a conversation of the topic. And that's it. Please accept it at such.

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