Location of the Garden of Eden

Some in the world put the location of the Garden of Eden a couple hundred miles south-east of the Black sea because they are looking for a place where the headwaters of four rivers all start at one place. (Not that that marks such a place.) The GB puts a question mark there on the map inside the front cover of the 1984 bible, and on page 5 of “See The Good Land”. I agree that the GB should question the world’s thinking, and here's why:

These are the scriptures from Genesis chapter 2 with the relevant information:

⁸ Further, Jehovah God planted a garden in Eʹden, toward the east,...

¹⁰ Now there was a river flowing out of Eʹden to water the garden, and from there it divided into four rivers.

11 The name of the first is Piʹshon; it is the one encircling the entire land of Havʹi·lah,...

¹³ The name of the second river is Giʹhon; it is the one encircling the entire land of Cush. ¹⁴ The name of the third river is Hidʹdekel; it is the one going to the east of Assyrʹia. And the fourth river is the Euphraʹtes."

Verse 8 tells us that the garden was planted in the eastern area of Eden.

Verse 10 says that a river issued out of E´den and flowed into the garden. Verse 10 also tells us that the river “divided into four rivers." (ftn "four heads")

The original Hebrew word rasim (roshe) here translated as "rivers" has the definition of "Head". The head of a river is the starting source of its water, such as a spring or snow melt from mountain peaks, not some other river. And rivers do not part and become “heads” as you go down stream, they part and become “heads” as you go up stream.

Verse 10 says one river flowed OUT of E´den, and INTO the garden. Since the Garden was placed in the eastern area of E'den (Ge 2:8), that means the river flowed from west to east. If Adam were to have gotten in a row boat on that one river in the garden, he would have had to paddle westward to go upstream into greater E'den where the one river split into four rivers. And if he continued up any one of those four individual rivers, heading away from the garden and further upstream (westward), he would have eventually reached that river's head. So the "there" in verse 10 is not referring to the garden, but is referring to greater Eden.

The location of the Pi´shon river and the land of Hav´ilah are not positively known. Nor are the river Gi´hon or the land of Cush.

The Hid´dekel river is the Tigris river. It runs from its head in a south-easterly direction to where it joins up with the Euphra´tes river.

The Euphra´tes river runs from its head in a south-easterly course until it joins up with the Tigris river.

In the publication “See The Good Land”, the partial remnant of a river is shown in the Arabian desert heading north-east toward the area that the Tigris and the Euphra´tes join up. It makes sense that the deserts of the world would not have existed pre-flood since the waters above the expanse (Ge 1:7) were still in place causing a green-house effect and giving the earth a much more lush environment. So that river remnant, instead of drying up in a desert, would have continued on and joined up with the Tigris and the Euphra´tes.

As for a fourth river, though the large region between that remnant of a river and the Euphra´tes is arid today, it would have needed a river issuing out of it for drainage prior to the flood. And topically it would flow eastward towards the same junction of the other three rivers. You can see this for yourself using Google Earth (http://earth.google.com) or the satellite option in Google Maps. (http://maps.google.com) If you look West-South-West of Karbala Iraq, you will see a great dry river bed winding its way eastward through that entire region heading toward the Euphra´tes and the Tigris rivers.

So that makes four great rivers in one large region flowing in an easterly direction and joining up to form one river in the eastern area of that region. That is an exact match for the description in Genesis, and puts the location of the Garden of Eden in the South-East area of Iraq, or maybe even under the north end of the Persian Gulf (if the waters of the flood never went down as far as they were pre-flood, which seems logical if continental shelves are any indication of what the height of the oceans were at that time).

Since the four rivers (and their tributaries) all flow to one point and form one river before flowing through the Garden of Eden, that puts the garden in the lowest elevation of the entire land of Eden. The world puts the location of the garden up in the mountains, identified by the brown coloring on the map.

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Some have suggested that you cannot look at the rivers as they are today to determine the location of the Garden of Eden because pre-flood topography was vastly different from today, and point to Psalms 104:8 as the basis for that theory. But Psalm 104 is actually describing the appearance of dry land during the earth’s creation, and not the flood of Noah’s day.

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Another theory is that the torrential rain, enough to flood the earth in 40 days, caused severe erosion, which brought about a drastic change in topography. But Genesis 7:17 points out that “the waters kept increasing and began carrying the ark and it was floating high above the earth.” Apparently the ark was not washed away by fast water that could smash it against something, or wash it far out over deep ocean basins. But it remained safely where it was until an ever rising and expanding ocean lifted it up. If the land was scoured by rushing flood waters heading to the sea due to torrential rain, the ark would have been in peril. This was obviously not the case. Remember: all the springs of the vast watery deep, is mentioned before the rain is mentioned. (Ge 7:11) The springs probably provided the vast majority of water it took to flood the earth. And the fact that the ark wound up near a mount's top would indicate incoming rising water from the sea and not outgoing rain caused flooding.

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So there was no erosion? During the initial heavy downpour of rain, streams and rivers may have cut a deeper path into their beds, as happens today. There may also have been erosion of the surface areas, at least until the rising waters covered the land. The low-lands were probably covered by the rising sea within just a few days, leaving the rest of the 40 day deluge to raise the water high enough to cover the mountain tops. So yes, during those first few days there was probably at least some minor altering of the landscape in the form of erosion, and deepening or widening river beds, but I can think of no reason to assume that the earth’s topography was changed in any significant way, in that low-lands were somehow raised and high-lands were somehow lowered. Some point to regions of the earth such as the Grand Canyon in the United States and say that that is definitely a significant change in the topography. But scientists seem to think that such alterations to topography occurred millions of years ago, (possibly when dry land was made to appear on the third creative day) and definitely not a mere 4 thousand years ago when the flood of Noah’s day occurred. And even if it was so, that is not an example of low lands being raised up.

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Another theory proposed is that if you cover the earth with water and then let it quickly run-off back to the sea basins, like pulling the plug in the bath tub, it is going to vastly alter surface topography. But scripture doesn't back that up.

Noah and his family were on the ark for 370 days, and only during the first 40 days did the water increase. It took the other 330 days for the water to slowly and progressively recede/lesson down enough for Noah and his family to leave the ark. It was two and a half months just from the time the ark came to rest on Ararat until the tops of other mountains appeared. (Ge 8:4,5) That shows that it was not a fast and furious destructive run off of water at the end of the flood.

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So what do you think?

:^)
Dave
da.getmyip@gmail.com

Last updated 07-27-2019