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Indonesia: Military Documents Reveal Unlawful Spying In Papua

(New York) – Internal military documents that recently came to light expose the Indonesian military’s surveillance of peaceful activists, politicians, and clergy in the easternmost province of Papua, Human Rights Watch said today. Human Rights Watch urged the Indonesian government to order the military to cease the unlawful monitoring immediately, and to ensure that civilian authorities retain responsibility for basic law enforcement.

The approximately 500 pages of documents, dated 2006 to 2009, include detailed reports of military surveillance of civilians and provide military perspectives on social and political issues in the area. Most are fromIndonesia’s Special Forces (Komando Pasukan Khusus, or Kopassus) and the Cenderawasih military command in Jayapura, the provincial capital. They range from internal briefings, presentations, teaching tools, and intelligence products such as daily and quarterly Kopassus reports, to a paper on the status of Papua under international law. A separate document that came to light recently describes a surveillance operation in 2011, indicating that such surveillance continues.

“The Kopassus documents show the deep military paranoia in Papua that conflates peaceful political expression with criminal activity,” said Elaine Pearson, deputy Asia director at Human Rights Watch. “It’s outrageous in a modern democratic country like Indonesia that activists, clergy, students, and politicians are the targets of military surveillance.”

Access to Papua is tightly controlled. Few foreign journalists and human rights researchers can visit independently without close monitoring of their activities. Officially, Kopassus operates in Papua to monitor and suppress the Papuan separatist movement, the Free Papua Movement (Organisasi Papua Merdeka, OPM), which has been leading an armed struggle against the Indonesian government since the 1960s. Human Rights Watch has long documented serious violations by government security forces in Papua, including killings, enforced disappearances, torture, and arbitrary arrest and detention.

The documents show, however, that the focus of Indonesian military operations in Papua goes far beyond the relatively small group of OPM rebels and includes a broad swathe of Papuan political, traditional, and religious leaders, and civil society groups.

The notion that the Indonesian government and military have more to fear from peaceful “political separatist” activity than from armed separatist groups is explicit in several places in the documents, implicit in many more, and is repeatedly reinforced throughout the military’s analysis, Human Rights Watch said.
A Kopassus quarterly report from Kotaraja dated August 2007 states, “Current political activity in Papua is very dangerous compared to the activities of Papuan armed groups because their access already reaches abroad.… [In Jayapura and other towns] political separatist groups carry out their political activities such as demonstrations, press conferences, and secret meetings.”

“By treating news conferences, demonstrations, and meetings like clandestine criminal activities, the military shows its disregard for fundamental rights in Papua,” Pearson said. “The military should immediately end its harassment and surveillance of civil society.”

The reports indicate that Kopassus believes nongovernmental organizations primarily work to discredit the Indonesian government and the armed forces, including using the “human rights issue” to garner international condemnation of Indonesia’s military presence in Papua and to promote Papuan independence. An April 2007 Kopassus quarterly report from Kotaraja says:

In their efforts to secede from Indonesia, these political separatist groups carry out activities that intentionally push the central government: … spreading the issue of gross human rights violations in Papua – killings, disappearances done by the security apparatus, in order to demand that the government withdraw non-organic police and military from Papua; and making claims so that the United Nations wants to see and hear reports that they [nongovernmental organizations] deliver.

“The military conveniently claims that documenting human rights violations in Papua is a front for separatism,” Pearson said. “Such a mind-set endangers the life of every activist in Papua.”

Several of those named in the documents as subjects of surveillance have faced arrest, detention, harassment, and violent assault. For instance, pro-independence activist Buchtar Tabuni is serving a three-year sentence for “inciting hatred” against the Indonesian government for his role in leading a peaceful demonstration where miniature Morning Star flags, a banned independence symbol, were waved.

The surveillance activities in Papua may become even more entrenched there and in other parts of Indonesia if the draft intelligence law currently before the House of Representatives is enacted, Human Rights Watch said. A December 2010 version of the bill empowers the State Intelligence Agency (Badan Intelijen Negara, BIN) to act on its own “to prevent, deter and overcome” vague notions of threats undermining “national stability,” with little oversight. The law would permit increased surveillance by intelligence and security forces of political dissidents in areas with a history of separatist activity such as Aceh, the Moluccas, and Papua.

The military surveillance activities evident in the internal documents appear linked to violations of basic rights to freedom of expression, assembly, and association. For decades, peaceful political activists who have led or participated in independence demonstrations, raised the Morning Star flag, or taken part in other peaceful activities have faced prosecution and lengthy prison terms on charges of treason (makar) or, previously, for “hatred-sowing” (haatzai artikelen). Those arrested are frequently tortured or otherwise mistreated in detention, as Human Rights Watch has documented.

The International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights, which Indonesia has ratified, protects the rights to freedom of association, expression, and assembly, as well as the right to privacy. Conducting surveillance activities against people exercising their basic rights, without a judicial warrant and in the absence of credible evidence of wrongdoing, violates these rights.

The military reports show that foreigners in Papua are also subjected to surveillance and typically viewed with mistrust. They are perceived as assisting the separatist movement through funding, moral support, and documenting poor living conditions or human rights abuses to discredit Indonesia in the international community. One of the documents lists foreign politicians, government officials, academics, and journalists viewed as supporting Papuan independence and giving credence to the perceived internationalization of the “Papua problem.”

“The military documents suggest that military mistreatment of alleged separatist supporters in Papua is not an offshoot of foot soldiers acting on their own, but reflects broader mistrust of the local population,” Pearson said.

Further details on the documents are immediately below. Human Rights Watch takes no position on Papuan claims to self-determination, but it supports the right of all individuals, including independence supporters, to express their views peacefully without fear of arrest or other forms of reprisal.

The Papua Military Documents

Types of Documents and Authenticity

The approximately 500 pages of internal military documents seen by Human Rights Watch include lists of Kopassus agents; lists of informers working in hotels, media, nongovernmental organizations, churches; military and police stations, political parties, and the Papuan parliament; lists of agents in military and police stations; lists of several tribal chiefs recruited by Kopassus to be “pro-Indonesia,” and lists of Papuan activists.Assertions in the documents should not be taken at face value, given that Kopassus has every incentive to exaggerate both the risk posed by civil society and the scope of its own activities in Papua, Human Rights Watch said. But the documents show that military surveillance of civil society in Papua is widespread.They include, for example, various daily and quarterly reports describing Kopassus’ monitoring of church leaders, student activists, tribal council members, and nongovernmental organization figures. A document by Kopassus Unit 81/Anti-Terror unit describes how a lieutenant participated in traditional ceremonies, church services, and civic actions in several areas in Puncak Jaya. A February 2008 analysis describes the surveillance of foreign tourists. Other documents are tools for intelligence reporting and production, including code words, escape routes, how to identify informants, and intelligence rotation. The documents also include a 97-page document entitled “Anatomy of Papuan Separatists” and a 40-page “Study on the Claim of the Historical Correction of the Act of Free Choice,” a paper on Papua’s status under international law written in 2008 or later.Some of these documents have already been made available online in Indonesian, some published and analyzed by the journalist Allan Nairn in November 2010, and several remaining documents were analyzed by the Sydney Morning Heraldon August 13, 2011.The documents appear to be authentic. People who have studied Indonesian military documents believe them to be genuine, saying that the format, style, and content is consistent with other Indonesian Armed Forces documents. The military did not deny the authenticity of the documents after Nairn published his article in November.

Separately, a leaked letter dated April 30, 2011, from the military commander in Papua, Maj. Gen. Erfi Triassunu, to the provincial governor, Barnabas Suebu, shows that military interference in civil society in the province is ongoing. The letter accuses the Kingmi Gospel Tabernacle Church (Gereja Kemah Injil or Kingmi Church) of trying to build an exclusive organization based on Papuan ethnicity, which Major General Triassunu viewed as a potential separatist movement, and suggests having the military mediate a conflict between the Kingmi Church and the Indonesian Gospel Tabernacle Church (Gereja Kemah Injil Indonesia or GKII). The letter also urges that if deliberations cannot resolve the conflict, “immediate action” should be taken. Since the letter came to light, Major General Triassunu haspublicly apologized for accusing the church of being a separatist organization, claiming a faction of the church had asked for assistance from the military.
Surveillance of Nongovernmental Organizations and Civil Society

The Kopassus documents list civil society “opponents,” conflating nonviolent political activity and human rights work with the armed separatist threat. The documents “Anatomy of Papuan Separatists” and “Kopassus Daily Report – Kotaraja” name more than 100 Papuan civilians who are members of various organizations including the Papuan Customary Council, the Papua Customary Government, the Papua Taskforce, the Guardian of the Papuan Land, the 14 Star Group, and the West Papua National Authority, as well as Papuan intellectuals like the Rev. Benny Giay, the Rev. Herman Awom, Fadhal al Hamid, and Albert Kailele, among others.Several people mentioned in the documents have faced arbitrary arrest, harassment, and violence. As access to Papua is highly restricted, it is difficult to verify many claims of abuses or to investigate incidents. Likewise, there may be misreported or unreported human rights violations.For instance, Buchtar Tabuni, the founder of the pro-independence West Papua National Committee (KNPB) who is serving a three-year sentence for “inciting hatred” against the Indonesian government, is mentioned repeatedly throughout the documents. The documents show that he was under surveillance well before he became politically active in protests and formed the KNPB. He was arrested on December 3, 2008, for leading protests against the shooting of one of his relatives, Opinus Tabuni.

Another person named is the secretary general of the Central Highlands Papuan Student Association, Markus Haluk. He has faced numerous death threats by cell phone text messages, physical assault, and has reported constant surveillance.

Surveillance of Religious Institutions

The Kopassus documents describe surveillance of Christian church leaders and activities, as well as of Muslim groups and hajidormitories in Papua. The military has justified such surveillance, contending that religious figures use their influential positions among indigenous Papuan communities to increase sympathy and support for separatists among the population. At least a half-dozen religious leaders are mentioned by name in the Kopassus documents, with their backgrounds, activities, and possible political leanings noted. These included Rev. Benny Giay, minister of the Kingmi church; Rev. Herman Awom, minister of the GKI Papua church; Rev. Socrates Yoman of the Indonesian Baptist Church in Papua; and Beatrix Koibur, head of the Women’s Christian Association of Indonesia in West Papua.

For instance, Yoman is listed as a “target” in a Kopassus Kotaraja quarterly report. The report describes some of his activities, such as leading a seminar, writing books about Papua, holding news conferences; his international travel; and people he has met. In August 2010 Yoman publicly made some critical remarks about alleged military atrocities in the Puncak Jaya region. The Jayapura police summoned him to answer accusations of defamation and threatened to arrest him when he refused to appear. But after videos surfaced in October confirming his allegations of military abuses, the case was dropped.

Local Politicians and Customary Leaders

Local politicians and customary leaders have also been under military surveillance, the Kopassus documents say. The documents accuse these figures of being, at a minimum, behind-the-scenes separatists, and at worst holding financial and other links to armed separatist groups. The Kopassus-Kotaraja quarterly report dated August 2007 states, “The majority of political separatist groups are already part of government agencies and hold important positions within them. Furthermore, they have also infiltrated customary structures and carry out political activities in the name of custom.”The documents “Anatomy of Papuan Separatists” and “Kopassus Daily Report – Kotaraja” include lists of politicians suspected of what the military refers to as “political separatism” with detailed biographical information and explanations of the activities that have led to their classification as “political separatists.” The “Anatomy of Papuan Separatists” document also shows that the military also suspected Governor Suebu, and his predecessor, Izak Hindom, of “political separatism.”The documents suggest that politicians are under surveillance because they are considered to be part of a clandestine network in support of independence. A Kopassus Kotaraja daily report indicated that Kopassus fears that government activities such as closed meetings in the Papuan People’s Council (MRP) or Provincial Legislature buildings involving local leaders and civil society groups will lead to a national dialogue and referendum. Among its network of informants, Kopassus has recruited civil servants to spy on politicians.For example, Kopassus recruited neighbors of Forkorus Yaboisembut, the chairman of the Papua Customary Council, to monitor Yaboisembut’s activities, his guests, and his movements. In August 2008, Yaboisembut was questioned by the police regarding the raising of the Morning Star flag at a rally protesting the death of an activist. He also received death threats and hate messages on his cell phone. Yaboisembut and his political activities are detailed in the “Anatomy of Papuan Separatists.”An educator-cum-theologian, Agus Alua, is also mentioned in the “Anatomy of Papua Separatists.” Alua was also the chairman of the Papuan People’s Council (Majelis Rakyat Papua, or MRP). He died of natural causes in April, but a few years before his death, he said that he frequently received hate messages and that he was under surveillance in his office.

Surveillance of Foreigners and “Internationalization”

Fear of the “internationalization” of the Papua problem is mentioned in several of the documents to justify surveillance of foreigners in Papua, including tourism activities and foreign priests. Foreigners in Papua are seen as assisting the separatist movement through funding, moral support, and documenting poor living conditions or human rights abuses to discredit Indonesia in the international community. For instance, a Kopassus Kotaraja daily report says, “With the existence of foreigners of various professions in Kotaraja, there is a chance that they have a specific purpose in assisting the separatist movement in Papua.”

The “Anatomy of Papua Separatists” document contains six pages listing foreign politicians, government officials, academics and journalists viewed as supporting Papuan independence and giving credence to the perceived internationalization of the “Papua problem.” The list includes current and former US Senators Edward Kennedy, Russ Feingold, Patrick Leahy, Barbara Boxer, and Dianne Feinstein. It also mentions Bishop Desmond Tutu of South Africa and Bob Brown, Parliamentary Leader of the Australian Greens, and Lord Avebury and Jeremy Corbyn, members of the UK parliament. It also cites the former Papua New Guinea prime minister, Sir Michael Somare, and former-Vanuatu Foreign Minister Sir Borak Sope. In all, it lists 248 politicians, academics, environmentalists, artists, and clergy from Canada, New Zealand, Australia, the UK, Germany, Finland, Ireland, the European Union, PNG, and Vanuatu, calling them “the supporters of Papuan separatists.”

Source of original Document

Source of this post Tue, 6 Sep 2011 @14:37

5 Eden Locations in the World

Ethiopia / Sudan (Cush Race), Sahara Area (Negroid Race), Athena (Kaukasoid Race), Bali / Dewata Island (Mongoloid Race) and Papua / Paradise Island (Melanesoid Race) 

Finally, a private research project that has begun since 1994, can only be completed Mid November 2010. The things that become big question mark in my mind for 16 years, can only complecated after two weeks of back and forth over the lake Paniai, Enarotali. Maybe also because my portrait painted a picture of Eden Park in Moiyent Donatus Catholic Church Enarotali??


Garden of Eden story was written in the Book of Genesis chapters 1 and 2. History is written by the prophet Moses when he led the Israelites wilderness for about 40 years. Moses was a lot of knowledge from an angel sent from God during the journey to the Promised Land (Exodus 33:2).

In summary, after God 'created' the heavens and the earth during the 'six days', God planted a garden in Eden, on the east side. In the Garden of Eden God placed man and grow every tree of the whole earth, interesting and good food; and the tree of life in the midst of the garden, and the tree of knowledge of good and evil (Genesis 2:8-9). But due to violation of the first man, then God cast out / return man to the place where he formed from the dust of the ground. Then God put some of cherubim (angels of God) with the sword of burning and darting for humans do not pick fruit from the tree of life (Genesis 3:23-24).

Garden of Eden was lost and did not know where its existence because the verses prior to Genesis 3:24, the prophet Moses did not write in full where the place of human creation, human beings who actually name it, where on the east side, and where God put a cherubim with a flaming sword flame and darting. While the verses after God expelled man from Eden, the prophet Moses wrote with clear who the man is, the place where they live and so on. Is this a part of God's plan to hide the garden of Eden?

Many people believe that the name of the man who was formed from the dust of the earth in Genesis 2:7 is Adam and including Agus Miradi, author of THE FIRST MAN WHO IS THAT said the first man was named Adam and he formed with clay around the area of Iraq. However, this statement can not be considered properly and still need to be investigated, because in Genesis 2 and 3, the prophet Moses did not mention the name of Adam as a man who was formed by land, but only write the 'man'. While Adam's name emerged only after the Lord God expelled man from the garden of Eden or after the murder of Abel by his brother Cain (Gen. 4:25).

There are doubts about the first human name, so that need further study. Because the Bible as the inspired book of God, the prophet Moses might not put words arbitrarily. Therefore, understanding 'human' is not necessarily equated with 'Adam' as a human being first.

This statement is supported by many experts, including the Sufis from Persia. They argued that Adam was not the first man and still no Adam-Adam else already created long before that, ie including early humans are believed Agus Miradi as above. Call it the Muhyiddin Ibn Arabi, a great Sufi once said that there are words of the Prophet, among others, say 'God has made no less than one hundred thousand Adam' (Futuhat Makkiya, II, p.. 607). Therefore likely that Adam is the Bible and the Qur'an has been the fathers of Israel, written by the prophet Moses. While the actual name of the first man to be placed in the garden of Eden into line with the mysterious disappearance of the garden of Eden.

Besides lack of clarity in the name of the first man who has the spirit, the Bible also does not explain where the location of the Garden of Eden to the east it (Gen 2:8-9). Whether around the Pison river that flows into the entire area around the river Gihon Havilah or surrounding land Kusy, or the river Tigris which flows east of Assyria and fence or dipinggiran Euphrates river - east or other areas of the world?

Investigations of late have proved that the Garden of Eden was located in Babil, Iraq or Assyrian (Enc. Brit. In "Ur"). But the question is, whether around the Iraqi people have said or at least prove that this is the tree of life which was hidden by God and guarded by the cherubim that smolder and darting to keep the road to the Garden of Eden? Or in Persian history, people have proved that it is 'pairidaeza' (fenced garden) of ancient Persia or 'Hadiqah al-Haqiqa' (Walled Garden of Truth) as is referred to the greatest Sufi poet of Persia, Abu al-Majd Ibn Adam Sana'i Majdud in the work of the most famous mystical? The answer, no. The experts - although never studied it, but no definitive answer that is almost equal to the Garden of Eden story in the book of genesis.

I myself have studied the various sources, learn some history books as a source of reference for + 16 years, but there is no historical fact that convinced me to say that's where the Garden of Eden, as written in the book of genesis. Of all the searches, the last led to one question: why the word 'pairidaeza' from the ancient Persian language which later became the English word 'paradise' that contains the meaning of Heaven and of Paradise, where the Bird of Paradise is one of the names of birds found only in Papua . Was the Garden of Eden was located in Papua?

The question is what makes me careful garden of Eden in Papua since 1994. Initially I thoroughly Mapia term which later I found the meaning: Tree of Truth is questionable. Then I found things similar to what Moses wrote in the book of Genesis / Genesis. There exist a number of similarities that I found that is concerning the position of Eden in the East, the first man to be placed, the tree of knowledge and the tree of life, and putting a burning cherubim and darting. All the reviews that I've now outlined in a book entitled: Mapia - Revealing Case of Losing the Garden of Eden.
Other things which I affirmed in the book that is concerning the process of soil creation and placement of the first human Papua. That, it turns out after I compare it with different races of mankind (Khoisan, Negroid, Caucasian, Mongoloid, Melanesoid and Australoid), then the Prophet Adam was told by the prophet Moses, after the expulsion in the garden of Eden that is derived Caucasian. While that is told Moses before the verses of the expulsion, which involves a further derivative of the youngest known to have racial Australoid stationed in Papua. Paradise Island.

That there are five garden of Eden, the garden of Eden the first in the region Ethiopia, Sudan, and Yemen are known to have a race fall Khoisan (Kush / Kusy / Cush). Garden of Eden both made in the vicinity south of the Sahara desert. Derivatives are known to have Negroid race. Then the Lord God is planning to create a garden that really shaped the Bird of Paradise. God originally created in the Greater Athens area of Greece. But the Lord God saw the Bird of Paradise is shaped promontory extending southward tilt so that God's looking for a place in the Eastern region, as told Prophet Moses in Genesis.

Initially the Lord God created a garden paradise in Bali. Human derivatives came to be known to have Mongoloid race or races of East Asia. But then God saw the island of Gods (has 9 god) does not have wings as beautiful as the Bird of Paradise. So in the end the Lord God of Papua as a garden paradise of choice, which is an island that really like the Bird of Paradise. Descendants of human Guinea (Arabic = naked) is then lowered Australoid race.
Why did God choose to send down revelation Kaukasoid Ras-revelation, why do Athens for instance Kaukasoid, why Bali and not in Mongolian? why Mapia and not Asia? Everything I describe in the book Mapia - Revealing Case of Losing the Garden of Eden.

Photo Source: http://www.godandscience.org/apologetics/humans_out_of_africa.html
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Free Translate by Google from Original Article: http://sarera.blogspot.com/2010/11/finding-garden-of-eden-in-papua-mencari.html
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Other Link About Garden of Eden Story:
Daftar link yang perlu anda kunjungi:
1. Some Link About Garden of Eden
Garden of Eden Project Research // Fanding Garden of Eden in Papua
http://www.sarera.blogspot.com

2. Garden of Eden - New World Encyclopedia
The Garden of Eden (from Hebrew Gan Eden) is described by the Book of Genesis as Some scholars locate it in the Persian Gulf; others seek a location in
http://www.newworldencyclopedia.org/entry/Garden_of_Eden

3. The First River of Eden!
Whatever the case, it is quite clear that the Garden of Eden was located around the northern end of the Persian Gulf. Remarkably, this is exactly where
http://www.hope-of-israel.org/riveden.htm

4. East of the Garden of Eden - Mysteries of the Bible - Unexplained
During the 1991 Persian Gulf War, the Iraqi military targeted these oil Indeed, legend records that the Garden of Eden now lies `at the
http://unexplainedmysteries.yuku.com/topic/663

5. Returning to Eden - Ancient Roots
The area thought to be the Garden of Eden, which was flooded when Gulf that the Garden of Eden lies presently under the waters of the Persian Gulf,
http://www.mega.nu/ampp/eden/roots.html

6. Locating The Garden Of Eden: Evolution and History in The Urantia Book
The first clue to the location of the Garden is that it was "a long narrow of Dalmatia exist under the waters of the Persian Gulf, and the first Eden
http://www.truthbook.com/index.cfm?linkID=95

7. Eden: Definition from Answers.com
Eden n. Bible . The garden of God and the first home of Adam and Eve. Havillah is thought to have been the Arabian shore of the Persian Gulf.
http://www.answers.com/topic/eden

8. Out of Africa or Out of Eden: Does Science Contradict the Bible?
15 Feb 2009; Although it is possible that the garden of Eden was in Africa, it would have to Therefore, Mesopotamia or the Persian Gulf matches the
http://www.godandscience.org/apologetics/humans_out_of_africa.html

9. Garden of Eden - Geography
For the concept in cellular automata, see Garden of Eden pattern. genuine Bronze Age entrepot of the island Dilmun (now Bahrain) in the Persian Gulf,
http://www.spiritus-temporis.com/garden-of-eden/geography.html

10. Where Was The Garden Of Eden Located?
The Garden of Eden is the name of the place where Adam and Eve lived before those with the belief that Eden was near ancient Eridu, on the Persian Gulf.
http://m.sooperarticles.com/spirituality-articles/religion-articles/where-garden-eden-located-17519.html

11. The Garden of Eden - The Bible and Interpretation
Most scholars who have written recently about the Garden of Eden, however, usually place it in or around ancient Mesopotamia—anywhere from the Persian Gulf
http://www.bibleinterp.com/articles/eden357918.shtml

12. myLot - Archaeological Proof of The Garden of Eden
Location of the Garden of Eden. It was on the Euphrates and Tigris rivers, In ancient inscriptions the Persian Gulf was called a "river." God Bless.
http://www.mylot.com/w/discussions/824207.aspx

13. IBSS - Biblical Archaeology - Garden of Eden
See Has the Garden of Eden been located at last? for photos and details. Dilum was probably the island Bahrain in the Persian gulf.
http://www.bibleandscience.com/archaeology/eden.htm

14. Paper 73 - The Garden of Eden | Urantia Book
Immediate vicinity of their original home near the headwaters of the Persian Gulf. (825.4) 73:5.7 And so was the Garden of Eden made ready for the
http://www.urantia.org/en/urantia-book-standardized/paper-73-garden-eden

15. JewishEncyclopedia.com - EDEN, GARDEN OF
This is supposed to have been in the Persian Gulf or Nar Marratim ("stream of Though there is no one Babylonian legend of the Garden of Eden with which
http://www.jewishencyclopedia.com/view.jsp?artid=39&letter=E

16. Whatever Happened to The Garden of Eden ?Whatever Happened
Persian Gulf — exactly where Zarins had located the. Garden of Eden." -"How to Find a River — No Divining Rod Needed," Biblical Archaeology Review
http://scienceandthebible.xanga.com/452982048/item/

17. Where is the garden of eden now? who do think lives there? is it a
18 Feb 2010 But the most likely explanation I've heard for the garden of Eden was that it was located at the northwest end of the Persian Gulf until the
http://answers.yahoo.com/question/index?qid=20100218180713AAw5RiF

18. Garden of Eden, Eve
A discussion on the Garden of Eden. A source of information for deeper understanding This is supposed to have been in the Persian Gulf or Nar Marratim
http://mb-soft.com/believe/txh/eden.htm

19. The Garden of Eden
These rivers locate the Garden of Eden as on a modern landscape at the head of the Persian Gulf-- but not the present-day head of the Persian Gulf.
http://www.asa3.org/asa/pscf/2000/pscf3-00hill.html

20. Garden of Eden - Crystalinks
The Garden of Eden described in the Book of Genesis as being the place where for the garden: The first was an island in the Persian Gulf; the second,
http://www.crystalinks.com/gardenofeden.html

21. WHERE IS THE GARDEN OF EDEN?
But where is the Garden of Eden actually located? While some may speculate that it was somewhere in present-day Iraq, near the Persian Gulf, others believe
http://www.propheticrevelation.net/questions/garden_of_eden.htm

22. An American Garden of Eden | Mormonism Research Ministry
An American Garden of Eden. By Bill McKeever. The passage of time has that the one that locates Eden near the head of the Persian Gulf combines the
http://mrm.org/eden

23. Garden of Eden, Dilmun, Bahrain - Finally been located?
5 Mar 2009; The Garden of Eden is a location described in the Book of Genesis as being Dilum was probably the island Bahrain in the Persian gulf.
http://www.travelexplorations.com/garden-of-eden-dilmun-bahrain-finally-been-located.4563785-17545.html

24. Has the Garden of Eden been found?
More recently, some scholars have claimed that the Garden of Eden was situated at the head of the Persian Gulf, where the Tigris and Euphrates Rivers run
http://creation.com/has-the-garden-of-eden-been-found

25. Garden of Eden Location « Lettersfromitia's Blog
14 Mar 2010 To modern science, the Garden of Eden is about 140 meters below the current sea level just beyond the Persian Gulf. The bible says, “Now a
http://lettersfromitia.wordpress.com/2010/03/14/location-of-the-garden-of-eden/

26. The Garden of Eden Persian Gulf Bahrain Iran Jerusalem We've got
"The Garden of Eden" by Lucas Cranach der Ältere , a 16th century German depiction of Eden. I came upon a child of god He was walking along the road And I
http://www.examiner.com/examiner/x-25600-World-History-Examiner~y2009m10d14-The-Garden-of-Eden-Persian-Gulf-Bahrain-Iran-Jerusalem-Weve-got-to-get-back-to-the-garden-YouTube

27. 1st Garden of Eden according to Ezekiel 47
the region of the second garden by The Euphrates and then to the sea of the Persian Gulf. Additional Scriptures including the first Garden of Eden.
http://sevenfoldtruth.com/eden/eden_from_ezekiel.htm

28. Where Was The Garden of Eden? - Jon Christian Ryter's Conservative
Landsberger, like Zarins, believe that seismic events over the ages caused the formation of the Persian Gulf. As the land mass split, the Garden of Eden was
http://www.jonchristianryter.com/2004/070704.html

29. Has the Garden of Eden been located at last?
14 Aug 2007; The area thought to be the Garden of Eden, which was flooded when Garden of Eden lies presently under the waters of the Persian Gulf,
http://ldolphin.org/eden/

30. Iraq's Garden of Eden: Restoring the Paradise that Saddam
30 Jul 2010; come together again near Basra and flow into the Persian Gulf. Turning the Garden of Eden into Hell The military was sent in to excavate canals and build dikes to conduct the water directly into the Gulf.
http://www.spiegel.de/international/world/0,1518,709180,00.html

31. Kids.Net.Au - Encyclopedia > Garden of Eden
Some Biblical scholars have placed the Garden of Eden in what is now the Persian Gulf, see http://www.ldolphin.org/eden/. Others have suggested a location
http://encyclopedia.kids.net.au/page/ga/Garden_of_Eden

32. The Biblical Garden of Eden
The Biblical Garden of Eden had four rivers which spread forth from it. If the Garden was in the Persian Gulf area of southern Iran/Kuwait, then there would
http://www.israel-a-history-of.com/biblical-garden-of-eden.html

34. Garden of Eden - Conservapedia
20 Feb 2010; The Earthly Paradise (Garden of Eden), painted by Hieronymus Bosch Of these the first place it near the head of the Persian Gulf where
http://www.conservapedia.com/Garden_of_Eden

35. The Garden of Eden
Many scholars have tried to locate the Garden of Eden and have failed. and this river empties and pours its waters into the sea Miot (Persian Gulf),
http://www.logoschristian.org/eden.html

36. The Garden of Eden - Unexplained Mysteries Discussion Forums
Dr. Juris Zareins, says that the garden is in the Persian Gulf. As was stated in the post before mine, the Garden of Eden,
http://www.unexplained-mysteries.com/forum/index.php?showtopic=98321

37. Garden of Eden - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
"The Garden of Eden" by Lucas Cranach der Ältere, a 16th century German Havillah is thought to have been the Arabian shore of the Persian Gulf.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Garden_of_Eden

38. In Search of Eden
By D Laing. The other camp places Eden at the head of the Persian gulf and at the other end of [1] Dora Jane Hamblin; "Has the Garden of Eden been located at last?
http://www.biblemysteries.com/library/edens.htm

39. The Garden of Eden
This is the first mention of the garden of Eden in the Book of Genesis. The “land of Havilah” is thought to be situated on the Persian Gulf,
http://library.thinkquest.org/C0125521/_eden.htm 

Return to Eden by Daniel Pouzzner

Ancient Roots

The Eden motif is a mythological counterpart of a cognitive phenomenon intrinsic to humans, and probably intrinsic in many other examples (none yet known to humanity of course) of biologically evolved life at similar stages of development. This phenomenon springs from dysfunction and errors in computational engines of goal pursuit. Such engines are built around internal fitness metrics, and when these metrics become detached from reality, the engine pursues unrealistic goals. In such breakdowns, the metrics are often reified, so that the individual is chasing its own tail (e.g. transcendental meditation). Goal pursuit engines search for minimal effort methods of progressing toward goal satisfaction; when the constituent mechanisms of efficiency and parsimony malfunction, the individual expects to be satisfied through unrealistic shortcuts. In short, the individual expects to be able to cheat. Whole families of human institutions and ideologies, including all religions, have sprung from these phenomena.

The Eden motif itself, and the biblical tale of the flood, are in fact far older than the Bible, dating at least to the civilization of ancient Sumer. In the Sumerian Epic of Gilgamesh (ca. 2000BCE), King Gilgamesh's noble savage rival and companion Enkidu is reduced from idyllic immortality to civilized mortality through hapless sinful union with a fallen woman. In a subsequent quest for immortality, Gilgamesh finds a magical plant in the sea, but is robbed of his prize by a serpent. Many other details of the tale are echoed in the Hebrew Bible.

Edin is the Sumerian word for an uncultivated plain, so that “Eden” (reaching English by way of Akkadian and Hebrew through a chain of lexical borrowing) simply describes lowland geography, like that of present-day southeast Iraq where the Tigris and Euphrates meet (incidentally, in ancient times they reached the gulf separately, but marine regression has exposed a confluence).

Anthropology professor Juris Zarins has developed a thorough and archaeologically grounded theory of the Eden myth's origins. In an article in the May 1987 issue of Smithsonian, Dora Jane Hamblin articulated his theory:

In the past hundred years, since the discovery of ancient civilizations in modern Iraq, scholars have leaned toward the Tigris-Euphrates valley in general, and to the sites of southern Sumer, about 150 miles north of the present head of the Persian Gulf, in particular (map, above).

Source: http://www.mega.nu/ampp/eden/roots.html

To this southern Sumerian theory Dr. Juris Zarins, of Southwest Missouri State University in Springfield, would murmur: “You're getting warmer.” For Dr. Zarins, who has spent seven years working out his own hypothesis, believes that the Garden of Eden lies presently under the waters of the Persian Gulf, and he further believes that the story of Adam and Eve in—and especially out—of the Garden is a highly condensed and evocative account of perhaps the greatest revolution that ever shook mankind: the shift from hunting-gathering to agriculture.

No single scholarly discipline will suffice to cover the long, intricate road Zarins has followed to arrive at his theory. He began, as many another researcher has, with the simple Biblical account, which “I read forward and backward, over and over again.” To this he added the unfolding archaeology of Saudi Arabia (SMITHSONIAN, September 1983), where he spent his field time for more than a decade. Next he consulted the sciences of geology, hydrology and linguistics from a handful of brilliant 20th-century scholars and, finally, Space Age technology in the form of LANDSAT space images.

It is a tale of rich complexity, beginning 30 millennia before the birth of Christ. Of climatic shifts from moist to arid to moist, with consequent migrations eddying back and forth across, and up and down the Middle East. And of myriad peoples. There were hunter-gatherers whom agriculturists displaced. There were prehistoric Ubaidians who built cities, Sumerians who invented writing and the Assyrians who absorbed Sumer's writing as well as its legend of a luxuriantly lovely land, an Eden called Dilmun. Finally there were Kashshites in Mesopotamia, contemporaries of the Israelites then forming the state of Israel.

An endless search for food

There are two crucial if approximate dates in reconstruction. The first is about 30,000 B.C., with the transition from Neanderthal to modern Man. This, some anthropologists believe, took place along the eastern shore of the Mediterranean and Aegean seas and in Iraq. At that time the Great Ice Age still held most of Eurasia in its grip, and it caused the sea levels to fall by 400 feet so that what is now the Persian Gulf was dry land, all the way to the Strait of Hormuz. It was irrigated not only by the still-existing Tigris and Euphrates but also by the Gihon, the Pison and their tributaries from the Arabian peninsula and from Iran. It seems reasonable that technologically primitive but modern Man, in his endless search for food, would have located the considerable natural paradise that presented itself in the area where the Gulf now lies.

But Eden wasn't born then. That came, Zarins believes, about 6000 B.C. In between 30,000 and 6000 B.C., the climate varied. From 15,000 B.C., rainfall diminished drastically. Faced with increasing aridity, the Paleolithic population retreated, some as far as the area known to us as the “Fertile Crescent” (north along the Tigris and Euphrates, westward toward the moist Mediterranean coast, south to the Nile), and also eastward to the Indus River valley. Others, perhaps wearied by the long trek, made do with the more austere conditions of central Arabia and continued foraging as best they could.

Then, at about 6000 to 5000 B.C., following a long arid stretch, came a period called the Neolithic Wet Phase when rains returned to the Gulf region. The reaches of eastern and northeastern Saudi Arabia and southwestern Iran became green and fertile again. Foraging populations came back to where the four rivers now ran full, and there was rainfall on the intervening plains. Animal bones indicate that in this period Arabia had abundant game. Thousands of stone tools suggest intensive, if seasonal, human occupation around now dry lakes and rivers. These tools are found even in the Rub al-Khali or Empty Quarter of Saudi Arabia. And so about 6000 to 5000 B.C. the land was again a paradise on Earth, provided by a bountiful nature—God—and admirably suited to the foraging life.

This time, however, there was a difference: agriculture had been invented. Not overnight—“It was a very gradual process, not an event,” Zarins emphasizes. It grew up along the Mediterranean coast and in today's Iran and Iraq as groups of hunter-gatherers evolved into agriculturists. Foragers from central Arabia, returning to the southern Mesopotamian plain, found it already resettled by these agriculturists. Because the process occurred before writing was invented, there is no record of what upheavals the evolution caused, what tortured questions about traditional values and life-styles, what dislocations of clans or tribes. Zarins posits that it must have been far more dramatic than the infinitely later Industrial Revolution, and an earthquake in comparison with today's computer-age discombobulation of persons, professions and systems.

“What would happen to a forager when his neighbors changed their ways or when he found agriculturists had moved into his territory?” Zarins asks. “These agriculturists were innovative folk who had settled down, planted seeds, domesticated and manipulated animals. They made the food come to them, in effect, instead of chasing it over hill and dale. What would the forager do if he couldn't cope? He could die; he could move on; he could join the agriculturists. But whatever happened, he would resent it.”

Eden, Adam, and the birth of writing

The crunch came, Zarins believes, here in the Tigris and Euphrates valleys and in northern Arabia, where the hunter-gatherers, flooding in from less hospitable regions, were faced with more technically accomplished humans who knew how to breed and raise animals, who made distinctive pottery, who seemed inclined to cluster in settled groups. Who were these people? Zarins believes they were a southern Mesopotamian group and culture now called the Ubaid. They founded the oldest of the southern Mesopotamian cities, Eridu, about 5000 B.C. Though Eridu, and other cities like Ur and Uruk, were discovered a century ago, the Ubaidian presence down along the coast of Kuwait and Saudi Arabia has been known for little more than a decade, when vestiges of their settlements, graves and distinctive pottery turned up.

It was in Saudi Arabia that Zarins encountered the Ubaidians, and there that he began developing his hypothesis about the true meaning of the Biblical Eden. One clue lies in linguistics: the term Eden, or Edin, appears first in Sumer, the Mesopotamian region that produced the world's first written language. This was in the third millennium B.C., more than three thousand years after the rise of the Ubaid culture. In Sumerian the word “Eden” meant simply “fertile plain.” The word “Adam” also existed in cuneiform, meaning something like “settlement on the plain.” Although both words were set down first in Sumerian, along with place names like Ur and Uruk, they are not Sumerian in origin. They are older. A brilliant Assyriologist named Benno Landsberger advanced the theory in 1943 that these names were all linguistic remnants of a pre-Sumerian people who had already named rivers, cities—and even some specific trades like potter and coppersmith—before the Sumerians appeared.

Landsberger called the pre-Sumerian language simply Proto-Euphratian. Other scholars suggest that its speakers were the Ubaidians. However it was, the existing names were incorporated into Sumerian and written down for the first time. And the mythology of the lush and lovely spot called Eden was codified by being written.

“The whole Garden of Eden story, however, when finally written, could be seen to represent the point of view of the hunter gatherers,” Zarins reasons. “It was the result of tension between the two groups, the collision of two ways of life. Adam and Eve were heirs to natural bounty. They had everything they needed. But they sinned and were expelled. How did they sin? By challenging God's very omnipotence. In so doing they represented the agriculturists, the upstarts who insisted on taking matters into their own hands, relying upon their knowledge and their own skills rather than on His bounty. There were no journalists around to record the tension, no historians. But the event did not go unnoticed. It became a part of collective memory and at long last it was written down, highly condensed, in Genesis. It was very brief, but brevity doesn't mean lack of significance.”

How did it happen that an advanced people would perpetuate a myth making their own ancestors the sinners? It may be that the Ubaidians, who are known to have sailed down the east coast of Arabia and colonized there, ran into descendants of foragers displaced from a drowning Eden, from them heard the awful story of the loss of paradise and repeated it until it became their own legend. Or it may be that, responding to the increasing pressures and stresses of a society growing in complexity, they found comfort in a fantasy of the good old days, when life had been sweeter, simpler, more idyllic. However, it was a tale firmly established in Ubaidian mythology, then adopted and recorded by the Sumerians.

The name Eve does not appear in Sumerian but there is a most intriguing link---the account of Eve's having been fashioned from Adam's rib in the Garden story. Why a rib? Well, in a famous Sumerian poem translated and analyzed by scholar Samuel Noah Kramer, there is an account of how Enki the water god angered the Mother Goddess Ninhursag by eating eight magical plants that she had created. The Mother Goddess put the curse of death on Enki and disappeared, presumably so she couldn't change her mind and relent. Later, however, when Enki became very ill and eight of his “organs” failed, Ninhursag was enticed back. She summoned eight healing deities, one for each ailing organ. Now the Sumerian word for “rib” is “ti.,” but the same word also means “to make live.” So the healing deity who worked on Enki's rib was called “Nin-ti” and, in a nice play on words, became both the “lady of the rib” and the “lady who makes live.” This Sumerian pun didn't translate into Hebrew, in which the words for “rib” and “to make live” are quite different. But the rib itself went into the Biblical account and as “Eve” came to symbolize the “mother of all living.”

This and other ties with Sumerian myth are very clear, and Zarins finds it telling that although the Hebrews had close associations with Egypt, their earliest spiritual roots were in Mesopotamia. “Abraham journeyed to Egypt, Joseph journeyed to Egypt, the whole Exodus story is concerned with Egypt, but there is nothing whatever Egyptian about the early chapters of Genesis,” he points out. “All these early accounts are linked to Mesopotamia. Abraham indeed is said to have come from Ur, at the time near the Gulf, and the writers of Genesis wanted to link up with that history. So they drew from the literary sources of the greatest civilization that had existed, and that was in Mesopotamia. In so doing they turned Eden into the Garden, Adam into a man, and a compacted history of things that occurred millennia before was pressed into a few chapters.”

Long before Genesis was written, Zarins believes, the physical Eden had vanished under the waters of the Gulf. Man had lived happily there. But then, about 5000 to 4000 B.C. came a worldwide phenomenon called the Flandrian Transgression, which caused a sudden rise in sea level. The Gulf began to fill with water and actually reached its modern-day level about 4000 B.C., having swallowed Eden and all the settlements along the coastline of the Gulf. But it didn't stop there. It kept right on rising, moving upward into the southern legions of today's Iraq and Iran.
“The Sumerians always claimed that their ancestors came 'out of the sea,' and I believe they literally did,” says Zarins. “They retreated northward into Mesopotamia from the encroaching waters of the Gulf, where they had lived for thousands of years.”

Their original “Eden” was gone but a new one called Dilmun, on higher ground along the eastern coast of Arabia, enters the epics and the poems in the third millennium i.e. The by then ancient mythology of a land of plenty, of eternal life and peace, had lodged firmly in the collective mind and in a specific geographical area.

The scholarly world first heard about Dilmun a little more than a century ago, when scholars were able to decipher cuneiform tablets unearthed by archaeologist Austen Henry Layard in Nineveh. an Assyrian stronghold in today's Iraq. Its earliest mention was in economic texts referring to traffic in people and goods. On later tablets, to their astonishment. scholars began reading, in literature, not only about Eden and Adam and the “lady of the rib” but also about a Great Flood, a Sumerian hero called Gilgamesh and his search for the Tree of Life. There was even a serpent. Gilgamesh had gone “down” from Sumer to the Gulf area where he had been told he would find a plant that would give him eternal life. “What he found may have been coral, which in antiquity was a symbol of eternal life,” Zarins explains. “And after his labors he went to sleep and a serpent came along and stole his eternal life--his coral, maybe. Now it may not have been a serpent as we think of one, but instead one of those beautiful feathery creatures that Assyrians depicted in reliefs. But the descriptions of Dilmun are of an area that fits what I've been saying, where societies could exist at the will and bounty of God, in a beautiful setting.”

"Adamu” is the name in Sumerian mythology for the first man, created by “Enki”, the creator god and inventor of civilization. Adam is Hebrew for “man”, and adamah is a Hebrew word signifying dust and earth, and in Aramaic signifying blood. Havva — Hebrew for “Eve” — in Hebrew signifies life.

In the Sumerian myth, magical food is the source of immortality, not the source of its downfall, and Adamu is tricked to not eat it (the gods tell him it is poisonous), and thereby remains mortal. The Hebrew biblical account also describes such a life-giving magical food — the food of the “tree of life”, distinct from the forbidden “tree of knowledge of good and evil” — and it is chiefly to deprive them of the immortality bestowed by the fruit of the tree of life, that God exiles Adam and Eve from the garden. The tale of Cain and Abel (Genesis 4:1-16) parallels tales in Sumerian mythology of rivalries between farmer and herder gods.

Genesis 11:26-31 and 17:5-8 teach that Abraham himself, vaunted father of nations, is a native of the Sumerian city Ur (southeast Iraq, near the ancient mouths of the Tigris and Euphrates) under Chaldean suzerainty, growing up there some time in the second millenium BCE, and departing for Canaan (Israel and environs). Abraham's father Terah adhered to the Sumerian mythology, and was a maker and seller of idols, but Abraham rejected polytheism and his father's idols, and managed a remarkable escape from the Chaldean king's sentence of death for his heresy. Joshua 24:2 records the break: “And Joshua said unto all the people, Thus saith the LORD God of Israel, Your fathers dwelt on the other side of the flood in old time, even Terah, the father of Abraham, and the father of Nachor: and they served other gods.” In any case, the similarity of the Torah's cosmogony to the Sumerian epic may be evidence that the biblical tales of Abraham are at least partially historical.

Monotheism was first consolidated in the nation of Judah by King Josiah (reigned ca. 641-609 BCE). But soon thereafter, the Chaldeans sacked Jerusalem and forced the Hebrews into exile in Babylon (597-538 BCE), under king Nebuchadrezzar II (605-562 BCE) and his successors. This captivity culminated in the syncretion of proto-Judaism with the Zoroastrianism of their Persian liberator, and the commitment of the Torah to writing. Zoroastrianism, founded ca. 750 BCE, is incidentally but one representative of the descendents of a common prehistoric Indo-European religion; among the other representative mythologies are Hindu, Norse, Greek, and Roman. Zoroastrianism contributes to the Eden myth the very word “paradise”, deriving from the Avestan (Old Persian) pairidaēza. This was the term used in Zoroastrian Persia to refer to the king's enclosed garden parks. The Hebrew in Genesis 2:8 for “garden of Eden” is gan-be'Eden — gan signifies not just a garden, but a walled garden, and Eden is not just a proper name, but a Hebrew term for “delight”. The garden motif even draws direct inspiration from Nebuchadrezzar II, who (according to legend) built “hanging gardens” in Babylon to please his homesick wife Amyitis, daughter of Median king Cyaxares (625-585 BCE). The Medes commanded a vast and verdant pre-Persian, partly Zoroastrian empire east of Chaldea, and the marriage cemented an alliance of the two empires. In fact the Old Persian pairidaēza is believed to have its root in the Mede language, which was in any case quite similar to Old Persian and the other Indo-Iranian languages of the region.

It seems inescapable that, to arrive at the creation mythology articulated by the postexilic authors of Genesis, the Hebrews conflated their ancestral Sumerian cosmogony and cultural inheritance, tales of the Zoroastrian king's idyllic garden in the east, and the Zoroastrian doctrine that the world created by Ahura Mazda was a paradise, spoiled by the evil Ahriman, but to be restored to its paradisiacal condition in the eschaton, as prophesied by Zoroaster. Before this syncretion, neither Satan nor the divine messiah (nor a great many other key doctrines) existed in the Judaic canon — all supernatural acts and promises were attributed directly to the covenant god Yahweh (or, before Josiah's monotheistic edicts, to any number of gods in a heterodox pantheon).

The Hebrews were surely inclined to sympathy with the Zoroastrian worldview, because it was the Zoroastrian king Cyrus the Great (reigned ca. 546 to 529 BCE), imperial uniter of the Medes and Persians, who delivered them from their Chaldean captivity, and instigated construction of the second Temple in Jerusalem. Isaiah 44:28-45:1 records a sympathy so great it smacks of open kinship: “That saith of Cyrus, He is my shepherd, and shall perform all my pleasure: even saying to Jerusalem, Thou shalt be built; and to the temple, Thy foundation shall be laid. Thus saith the LORD to his anointed, to Cyrus, whose right hand I have holden, to subdue nations before him”. In 538 BCE, Cyrus commissioned the Judaic prince Sheshbazzar to lead the return to Jerusalem, and carry back the sacred vessels confiscated by the Chaldean empire at the start of the exile. As told in the first chapter of the Book of Ezra, the universal god of the Israelites and the universal god of Cyrus are the same god: “Thus saith Cyrus king of Persia, The LORD [“Yahweh”] God [“Elohim”] of heaven hath given me all the kingdoms of the earth; and he hath charged me to build him an house at Jerusalem, which is in Judah.” Under the patronage of the ardently Zoroastrian king Darius (reigned 521 to 485 BCE), Zorobabel (also transliterated Zerubbabel, as in the Book of Haggai) in ca. 520 BCE led another company of Babylonian Hebrews back to Jerusalem, assumed governorship of the city under royal dispensation, and completed the second Temple. Zorobabel is mentioned in Matthew 1:12-13 as a 29th generation lineal descendent of Abraham, and a tenth generation lineal ancestor of Joseph (husband of Mary, mother of Jesus of Nazareth), though this account is immediately suspect because it requires fifty year generations between Zorobabel and Joseph. In any case, in the immediate postexilic period, there is no clear boundary, either political or religious, between the Zoroastrian establishment and the tribes of Israel. It was during this period that the Torah was committed to writing. Moreover, the “wise men from the east” of Matthew 2:1, the pilgrims come to Israel to pay homage to the infant Jesus, are in fact emissaries of the Zoroastrian court of Persia (magi), come to honor the child they believe is the Zoroastrian messiah. Regardless of the historicity, this account continues the biblical pattern that considers messianic Judaism and Zoroastrianism to be the same religion. While it might be coincidental, the Star of David, now the centerpiece of the national flag of Israel, was an important symbol in Zoroastrian astrology.

At its mythological root paradise was almost certainly believed to be in the celestial heavens, coming to prehistoric earth only through narrative modification. The words for heaven and for paradise are the same in a great many euroasiatic languages, including the Indo-European languages, Hebrew, and Korean.

As Islamic scholars understand it, the Qur'an places Eden itself in heaven, so that it can only be reached through death (particularly, by martyrdom). Correspondingly, Islamic doctrine holds that the forbidden fruit of Eden was in fact ineffectual, and it was the devil who tempted a mortal Adam to eat it, telling him falsely that it would give him immortality, whereas his betrayal of god simply led god to eject him from paradise.

Thus there are three principal permutations of the myth. In the first, the Sumerian version, a mortal Adam is in an earthly Eden, and a life-giving fruit is not eaten, due to divine trickery. In the Judeo-Christian version, an immortal Adam is in an earthly Eden with two fruit trees, one giving the immortal life of a god, the other a forbidden one giving the vision of a god, eaten at the instigation of a diabolical serpent (divine trickery). In the Islamic version, a mortal Adam is in an ethereal Eden, and a false fruit is eaten at the instigation of the devil. The confusion of earthly and heavenly paradise recurs within and between the extant religious canons (including the Indic canons), facilitating acceptance of the Edenic movement's promise of earthly paradise. For example, in America, some radicalized Muslims are explicit Edenists (this is the Taliyah movement, broached below in the Keeping Eden Green chapter). Though for utopians frank introspection and circumspection is generally alien, they stand to learn a great deal about their movement from an appreciation that in most of the world, for most of history, paradise has been associated with death, and in particular, with the end of life. 

 

di 00.59

Source: Blogger.com 

Some Link About Garden of Eden

Garden of Eden - New World Encyclopedia
The Garden of Eden (from Hebrew Gan Eden) is described by the Book of Genesis as Some scholars locate it in the Persian Gulf; others seek a location in
http://www.newworldencyclopedia.org/entry/Garden_of_Eden

The First River of Eden!
Whatever the case, it is quite clear that the Garden of Eden was located around the northern end of the Persian Gulf. Remarkably, this is exactly where
http://www.hope-of-israel.org/riveden.htm

East of the Garden of Eden - Mysteries of the Bible - Unexplained
During the 1991 Persian Gulf War, the Iraqi military targeted these oil Indeed, legend records that the Garden of Eden now lies `at the
http://unexplainedmysteries.yuku.com/topic/663

Returning to Eden - Ancient Roots
The area thought to be the Garden of Eden, which was flooded when Gulf that the Garden of Eden lies presently under the waters of the Persian Gulf,
http://www.mega.nu/ampp/eden/roots.html

Locating The Garden Of Eden: Evolution and History in The Urantia Book
The first clue to the location of the Garden is that it was "a long narrow of Dalmatia exist under the waters of the Persian Gulf, and the first Eden
http://www.truthbook.com/index.cfm?linkID=95

Eden: Definition from Answers.com
Eden n. Bible . The garden of God and the first home of Adam and Eve. Havillah is thought to have been the Arabian shore of the Persian Gulf.
http://www.answers.com/topic/eden

Out of Africa or Out of Eden: Does Science Contradict the Bible?
15 Feb 2009 Although it is possible that the garden of Eden was in Africa, it would have to Therefore, Mesopotamia or the Persian Gulf matches the
http://www.godandscience.org/apologetics/humans_out_of_africa.html

Garden of Eden - Geography
For the concept in cellular automata, see Garden of Eden pattern. genuine Bronze Age entrepot of the island Dilmun (now Bahrain) in the Persian Gulf,
http://www.spiritus-temporis.com/garden-of-eden/geography.html

Where Was The Garden Of Eden Located?
The Garden of Eden is the name of the place where Adam and Eve lived before those with the belief that Eden was near ancient Eridu, on the Persian Gulf.
http://m.sooperarticles.com/spirituality-articles/religion-articles/where-garden-eden-located-17519.html

The Garden of Eden - The Bible and Interpretation
Most scholars who have written recently about the Garden of Eden, however, usually place it in or around ancient Mesopotamia—anywhere from the Persian Gulf
http://www.bibleinterp.com/articles/eden357918.shtml

myLot - Archaeological Proof of The Garden of Eden
Location of the Garden of Eden. It was on the Euphrates and Tigris rivers, In ancient inscriptions the Persian Gulf was called a "river." God Bless.
http://www.mylot.com/w/discussions/824207.aspx

IBSS - Biblical Archaeology - Garden of Eden
See Has the Garden of Eden been located at last? for photos and details. Dilum was probably the island Bahrain in the Persian gulf.
http://www.bibleandscience.com/archaeology/eden.htm

Paper 73 - The Garden of Eden | Urantia Book
immediate vicinity of their original home near the headwaters of the Persian Gulf. (825.4) 73:5.7 And so was the Garden of Eden made ready for the
http://www.urantia.org/en/urantia-book-standardized/paper-73-garden-eden

JewishEncyclopedia.com - EDEN, GARDEN OF
This is supposed to have been in the Persian Gulf or Nar Marratim ("stream of Though there is no one Babylonian legend of the Garden of Eden with which
http://www.jewishencyclopedia.com/view.jsp?artid=39&letter=E

Whatever Happened to The Garden of Eden ?Whatever Happened
Persian Gulf — exactly where Zarins had located the. Garden of Eden." -"How to Find a River — No Divining Rod Needed," Biblical Archaeology Review
http://scienceandthebible.xanga.com/452982048/item/

Where is the garden of eden now? who do think lives there? is it a
18 Feb 2010 But the most likely explanation I've heard for the garden of Eden was that it was located at the northwest end of the Persian Gulf until the
http://answers.yahoo.com/question/index?qid=20100218180713AAw5RiF

Garden of Eden, Eve
A discussion on the Garden of Eden. A source of information for deeper understanding This is supposed to have been in the Persian Gulf or Nar Marratim
http://mb-soft.com/believe/txh/eden.htm

The Garden of Eden
These rivers locate the Garden of Eden as on a modern landscape at the head of the Persian Gulf-- but not the present-day head of the Persian Gulf.
http://www.asa3.org/asa/pscf/2000/pscf3-00hill.html

Garden of Eden - Crystalinks
The Garden of Eden described in the Book of Genesis as being the place where for the garden: The first was an island in the Persian Gulf; the second,
http://www.crystalinks.com/gardenofeden.html

WHERE IS THE GARDEN OF EDEN?
But where is the Garden of Eden actually located? While some may speculate that it was somewhere in present-day Iraq, near the Persian Gulf, others believe
http://www.propheticrevelation.net/questions/garden_of_eden.htm

An American Garden of Eden | Mormonism Research Ministry
An American Garden of Eden. By Bill McKeever. The passage of time has that the one that locates Eden near the head of the Persian Gulf combines the
http://mrm.org/eden

Garden of Eden, Dilmun, Bahrain - Finally been located?
5 Mar 2009 The Garden of Eden is a location described in the Book of Genesis as being Dilum was probably the island Bahrain in the Persian gulf.
http://www.travelexplorations.com/garden-of-eden-dilmun-bahrain-finally-been-located.4563785-17545.html

Has the Garden of Eden been found?
More recently, some scholars have claimed that the Garden of Eden was situated at the head of the Persian Gulf, where the Tigris and Euphrates Rivers run
http://creation.com/has-the-garden-of-eden-been-found

Garden of Eden Location « Lettersfromitia's Blog
14 Mar 2010 To modern science, the Garden of Eden is about 140 meters below the current sea level just beyond the Persian Gulf. The bible says, “Now a
http://lettersfromitia.wordpress.com/2010/03/14/location-of-the-garden-of-eden/

The Garden of Eden Persian Gulf Bahrain Iran Jerusalem We've got
"The Garden of Eden" by Lucas Cranach der Ältere , a 16th century German depiction of Eden. I came upon a child of god He was walking along the road And I
http://www.examiner.com/examiner/x-25600-World-History-Examiner~y2009m10d14-The-Garden-of-Eden-Persian-Gulf-Bahrain-Iran-Jerusalem-Weve-got-to-get-back-to-the-garden-YouTube

1st Garden of Eden according to Ezekiel 47
the region of the second garden by The Euphrates and then to the sea of the Persian Gulf. Additional Scriptures including the first Garden of Eden.
http://sevenfoldtruth.com/eden/eden_from_ezekiel.htm

Where Was The Garden of Eden? - Jon Christian Ryter's Conservative
Landsberger, like Zarins, believe that seismic events over the ages caused the formation of the Persian Gulf. As the land mass split, the Garden of Eden was
http://www.jonchristianryter.com/2004/070704.html

Has the Garden of Eden been located at last?
14 Aug 2007 The area thought to be the Garden of Eden, which was flooded when Garden of Eden lies presently under the waters of the Persian Gulf,
http://ldolphin.org/eden/

Iraq's Garden of Eden: Restoring the Paradise that Saddam
30 Jul 2010 come together again near Basra and flow into the Persian Gulf. Turning the Garden of Eden into Hell The military was sent in to excavate canals and build dikes to conduct the water directly into the Gulf.
http://www.spiegel.de/international/world/0,1518,709180,00.html

Kids.Net.Au - Encyclopedia > Garden of Eden
Some Biblical scholars have placed the Garden of Eden in what is now the Persian Gulf, see http://www.ldolphin.org/eden/. Others have suggested a location
http://encyclopedia.kids.net.au/page/ga/Garden_of_Eden

The Biblical Garden of Eden
The Biblical Garden of Eden had four rivers which spread forth from it. If the Garden was in the Persian Gulf area of southern Iran/Kuwait, then there would
http://www.israel-a-history-of.com/biblical-garden-of-eden.html

Garden of Eden - Conservapedia
20 Feb 2010 The Earthly Paradise (Garden of Eden), painted by Hieronymus Bosch Of these the first place it near the head of the Persian Gulf where
http://www.conservapedia.com/Garden_of_Eden

The Garden of Eden
Many scholars have tried to locate the Garden of Eden and have failed. and this river empties and pours its waters into the sea Miot (Persian Gulf),
http://www.logoschristian.org/eden.html

The Garden of Eden - Unexplained Mysteries Discussion Forums
Dr. Juris Zareins, says that the garden is in the Persian Gulf. As was stated in the post before mine, the Garden of Eden,
http://www.unexplained-mysteries.com/forum/index.php?showtopic=98321

Garden of Eden - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
"The Garden of Eden" by Lucas Cranach der Ältere, a 16th century German Havillah is thought to have been the Arabian shore of the Persian Gulf.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Garden_of_Eden

In Search of Eden
By D Laing
The other camp places Eden at the head of the Persian gulf and at the other end of [1] Dora Jane Hamblin; "Has the Garden of Eden been located at last?
http://www.biblemysteries.com/library/edens.htm

The Garden of Eden
This is the first mention of the garden of Eden in the Book of Genesis. The “land of Havilah” is thought to be situated on the Persian Gulf,
http://library.thinkquest.org/C0125521/_eden.htm

Source at Blogger.com

Locating The Garden Of Eden

Introduction

The Urantia Book, (UB), gives a number of specific clues to the location of the first Garden of Eden. Most of these clues are contained in subsection 3 ("The Garden Site") of paper 73 entitled "The Garden of Eden", page 823; (Paper 73, Section 3). These clues are specific enough to offer hope for finding the remains of the Garden. The purpose of this paper is to assemble these clues and other relevant information and to form a hypothesis on the location of the First Garden of Eden.

The "other revelant information" used in this paper comes from two sources, a bathymetric chart of the eastern Mediterranean Sea, and a bathymetric/ topographic visualization of the entire Mediterranean Sea. The bathymetric chart contains information gathered up to January, 1971. The visualization contains data up to 1997. The chart supplies actual depth information, while the visualization is easier to interpret than contour lines on a map.

The Clues

The first clue to the location of the Garden is that it was "a long narrow peninsula - almost an island - projecting westward from the Eastern shores of the Mediterranean Sea" (UB823:1; 73:3.1)

Figure 1 is a bathymetric chart of the eastern Mediterranean obtained from the Defense Mapping Agency (chart number 5030, Atalya Körfezi to El- Iskandarîya, DMA Stock No. 54XC054030). This chart shows contours of the depth of the sea bottom as well as elevation contours of the surrounding terrain. In the deep sea, depth contours of 100 fathoms (600 ft) are shown. At depths below 100 fathoms, individual soundings are quoted to two significant digits. Presumably such depths can be read to about 10% accuracy. This low-resolution depth information is sufficient to discern the gross features of the ocean bottom. The original chart is a large 3 x 4 ft document.

Figure 2 is a bathymetric/topographic visualization of the eastern Mediterranean Sea. This visualization is what one would see from a position in space above the Mediterranean Sea if the water were completely transparent. This remarkable visualization was compiled under the direction of Dr. Viacheslav K. Gusiakov of the Institute of Computational Mathematics and Mathematical Geophysics of the Siberian Division of the Russian Academy of Sciences.

An inspection of this chart reveals that the only place in the current eastern Mediterranean which even remotely fits this clue is between the Island of Cyprus and the border of Turkey and Syria. The matching pattern is primarily off the Eastern coast of Cyprus, which has a long peninsula projecting eastward towards the mouth of the Orontes river in Turkey. This peninsula is continued underwater in the same direction for approximately 30 miles. Another feature suggestive of a former connection with the mainland is the 500 fathom contour which also projects along a line parallel with the peninsula towards the mainland. The island of Cyprus lies a little over 62 miles off the current eastern shores of the Mediterranean.

An eastern Mediterranean location is also mentioned in the Urantia Book passage that reads:

"But still older vestiges of the days of Dalmatia exist under the waters of the Persian Gulf, and the first Eden lies submerged under the eastern end of the Mediterranean Sea." (UB875:4; 78:7.7)

Another clue is given as:

"The great river that watered the Garden came down from the higher lands of the peninsula and flowed East through the peninsula neck to the mainland and thence across the lowlands of Mesopotamia to the sea beyond. It was fed by four tributaries which took origin in the coastal hills of the Edenic peninsula, ..." (UB823:4; 73:3.4)

This is a strong clue, since it indicates that river which ran through the peninsula must have been connected with the Euphrates river which runs across the lowlands of Mesopotamia to the Persian Gulf and presently comes to within 150 mi of the Mediterranean. Indeed, the Euphrates river heads directly for the mouth of the Orentes river for 100 miles before turning 90 deg to the North as shown in Figure 2. This figure also shows that the source of a tributary of the Euphrates river is about 8 km * west* of the source of a tributary of the Orontes river (the Nahr Aafrine).

This clue also uses the word "neck" to describe a portion of the peninsula. This implies that the peninsula was wider offshore than at a region closer onshore. It further implies that at least one coast of the peninsula contained hills.

Is it possible that before the uplifting of the land adjoining the eastern Mediterranean there could have been a connection of the Euphrates with what is now the Orontes river, continuing on through a land bridge to Cyprus, connecting with the 4 rivers originating in coastal highlands now emptying into Famagusta Bay? These 4 rivers enter the bay near Koma tou Yialou, Boghaz, between Boghaz and Salamis, and south of Salamis. Another river, the Pedieos, also empties into Famagusta Bay but its origin is in the central highlands of Cyprus (not far from Mount Olympus) rather than in the coastal highlands. If so, it means that the direction of flow of the Orontes river has been reversed by the uplifting of the coastal mountains.

In this same vein, the Bible (Genesis 1:10) states:
"A river fowed out of Eden to water the garden, and there it divided and became four rivers. The name of the first is Pishon; it is the one which flows around the whole land of Havilah, where there is gold; and the gold of that land is good; bdellium and onyx stone are there. The name of the second river is Gihon; it is the one which flows around the whole land of Cush. And the name of the third river is Hiddekel, which flows east of Assyria. And the fourth river is the Euphrates."

Thus the Biblical account of Eden indicates that the river which flowed through Eden was connected to the Euphrates river.

There is yet another strong clue:

"The coast line of this land mass was considerably elevated, and the neck connecting with the mainland was only twenty-seven miles wide at the narrowest point." (UB823:4; (73:3.4)

As shown in Figure 1 a width of 27 miles is consistent with the size of a possible land bridge to Cyprus. The entire eastern Mediterranean covers only about 5 deg of latitude, (from 31° 30" N to 36° 30" N) or approximately 350 miles in extent. Thus there are only 13 independent places in this area at which a feature 27 miles wide could exist. A feature which is 27 miles across at its narrowest point is a large feature relative to the size of the Eastern Mediterranean.

Questions

The period of time when the Garden was occupied is fairly precisely given in:
"This paper depicts the planetary history of the violet race, beginning soon after the default of Adam, about 35,000 B.C., ..." (UB868:2; 78:0.2)

This raises the issue of the time scale required for the eastern Mediterranean land masses to rise. Could this rise occur within a period of time less than 37,000 years? The feature on the bathymetric charts which might be the Edenic land bridge now lies at a depth of approximately 500 fathoms, or 3,000 ft. The peak elevation of the terrain of the Eastern Mediterranean region is approximately 1,500 m, or about 5,000 ft. Assuming the land bridge elevation was originally about 1,000 ft, the submerged First Eden has sunk around 4,000 ft, while the land bordering the eastern Mediterranean has risen around 4,000 ft. The average rate of change of elevation in these regions must therefore have been about 1.2 inches per year. Is this is a geologically possible rate of change of elevation?

Another question of importance to this investigation is the time at which the Mediterranean Sea was formed. I am presently investigating this question.

The most likely remain of the Garden is the great brick wall built to prevent incursions by raiders and/or wild animals. The UB says:
"The first task was the building of the brick wall across the neck of the peninsula." (UB824:1; 73:4.2)

Of course if the brick wall was made of unfired bricks, a long submergence may have dissolved the bricks making their location more difficult, if not impossible.

Another object which might be located is the stone temple of the Universal Father.
"only the stone wall (of the Temple) stood until the Garden was subsequently submerged" (UB826:4; (73:6.7)

This temple was located in the center of the peninsula, just south of a great mound, or hill.

"At the center of the Edenic peninsula was the exquisite stone temple of the Universal Father, the sacred shrine of the Garden." (UB824:5; 73:5.1)

"Soon after their awakening, Adam and Eve were escorted to the formal reception on the great mound to the north of the temple. This natural hill had been enlarged and made ready for the installation of the world's new rulers." (UB 829:7; (74:2.5)

The end of the Garden was described as follows.

"... in connection with the violent activity of the surrounding volcanoes and the submergence of the Sicilian land bridge to Africa, the eastern floor of the Mediterranean Sea sank, carrying down beneath the waters the whole of the Edenic peninsula. Concomitant with this vast submergence the coast line of the eastern editerranean was greatly elevated." (UB826:6; 73:7.1)

This great elevation of the coastline would have the effect of severing the river running out of Eden, as would the submergence of the ocean floor. Thus three distinct rivers would have been formed: 1. The river running out of the highlands to the West of Eden would now run eastward into the sea from the remaining island formed from the highlands. 2. The remains of the river on the western shore of the Mediterranean would run westward to the sea (the Orontes). 3. The portion of the river running through Mesopotamia would no longer have any connection to the Mediterranean (the Euphrates).

The statement that the "whole of the Edenic peninsula" was submerged conflicts with the hypothesis that Cyprus is the remains of the highlands of the western portion of the Edenic peninsula, since Cyprus is not submerged. If the Edenic peninsula were not located between Cyprus and the mainland, then where was it? There are no remains of the western highlands or the peninsula anywhere else in the eastern Mediterranean visible on the charts available to me. Perhaps the statement "whole of the Edenic peninsula" really means the whole of the peninsula containing the First Garden, since the word peninsula is modified by the word "Edenic".

The elevation of the eastern Mediterranean is also mentioned elsewhere in The Urantia Book:

"For thousands of years after the submergence of the first Eden the mountains about the eastern coast of the Mediterranean and those to the northwest and northeast of Mesopotamia continued to rise. This elevation of the highlands was greatly accelerated about 5000 B.C., and this, together with greatly increased snowfall on the northern mountains, caused unprecedented floods each spring throughout the Euphrates valley." (UB874:7; (78:7.2)

The First Garden was apparently of enormous size. "The architectural plans for Eden provided homes and abundant land for one million human beings." (UB824:5; 73:5.1)

Given that the neck of the peninsula was 27 miles across, one might assume that the Garden was approximately 27 x 27 miles in dimension, or larger. This would place the area of the Garden at 2.0 x 10^10 square feet. If one million people were housed within this area, then the population density would be 1 person for every 20,000 square feet. This is a plot of land about 143 ft square.

The book gives the length of roads and paths existing within this area.

"At the time of Adam's arrival, though the Garden was only one-fourth finished, it had thousands of miles of irrigation ditches and more than twelve thousand miles of paved paths and roads." (UB824:6; (73:5.2)

The area of land devoted to these paths and roads may be estimated as 1.27 x 10^8 square feet assuming an average width of the paths and roads to be 2 ft. The ratio of the area of roads and paths to the completed area is thus on the order of 2.5 x 10^-2. Given this ratio, one can estimate the size of the plots of land enclosed by the roads and paths, assuming that the plots are square. One can show that assuming the area ratio is small compared to one, the side of the enclosed square plot is approximately twice the path width divided by the area ratio. Thus the side of the enclosed square land plot would be approximately 160 ft. This is in reasonable agreement with the amount of land allotted to each person.

Hypothesis

Based on the above clues, one can form the following hypothesis. The first Garden of Eden was located at approximately latitude 36 deg N, longitude 35 deg 20 min E, which is now under approximately 500 fathoms of water. This location was once about 1000 ft above sea level. The river which flowed through Eden had its origin in the highlands of what is now the island of Cyprus. This river flowed eastward and connected with the Euphrates. After the Eastern Mediterrean Sea suddenly was created by the breach of the Sicilian land bridge by waters of the Western Mediterranean, the land containing the Garden sunk about 4000 ft and was submerged beneath the Mediterrean due to the weight of the surrounding water. The eastern shore of the Mediterrean rose to maintain isostatic equilibrium and thereby severed the connection to the Euphrates River.

END OF PAPER

If someone could actually mount an expedition to this area and find the archeological remains of the First Garden as described in The Urantia Book, such a discovery would have a big impact world wide.

Fred Beckner


Source: http://www.truthbook.com/index.cfm?linkID=95

The Garden of Eden

The Source

In short, the biblical account is ambiguous and open to interpretation. As a result, both ancient and modern authors have located the Garden of Eden everywhere from Iran and Mongolia to South America and even Jackson County, Missouri.

“Reprinted with permission of the National Geographic Society from the book From Eden to Exile: Unraveling Mysteries of the Bible by Eric H. Cline. Copyright ©2007 Eric H. Cline.”

By Eric H. Cline
Chair, Department of Classical and Semitic Languages and Literatures
The George Washington University
October 2009

====================================
See also:
Politics and Propaganda: The Use and Abuse of Ancient Conflicts in the Modern Battle for Jerusalem
Did David and Solomon Exist?
The Distortion of Archaeology and What We Can Do About It:
====================================

In trying to determine where the Garden of Eden might have been located, we have an immediate problem, because while the biblical description is quite detailed, it is also fairly succinct. We are told only that:

The Lord God planted a garden in Eden, in the east; and there he put the man whom he had formed. . . . A river flows out of Eden to water the garden, and from there it divides and becomes four branches. The name of the first is Pishon; it is the one that flows around the whole land of Havilah, where there is gold; and the gold of that land is good; bdellium and onyx stone are there. The name of the second river is Gihon; it is the one that flows around the whole land of Cush. The name of the third river is Tigris, which flows east of Assyria. And the fourth river is the Euphrates. (Genesis 2:8-14)

We have little to corroborate the biblical account just presented, because there are no other independent sources of textual evidence for the Garden of Eden. Unfortunately, as we noted in the introduction, most ancient historians and archaeologists generally want several separate sources of evidence before they will believe something to be factually substantiated, and that is simply not possible in the case of the Garden of Eden.

This is not the only time we will run into this problem, especially when dealing with topics found in the first 11 chapters of the Book of Genesis. These early chapters—which include accounts of the Creation, the Garden of Eden, Adam and Eve, and the biblical Flood—are very different from those that follow, in large part because of the nature of the evidence surrounding the stories. It is always difficult to determine how much material in the Bible can be taken as true history, in our definition of the term today, and how much material is instead presented to illustrate an ethical or moral point.

Many scholars would agree that it is only when we get into periods marked by the invention of writing (that is, after 3000 b.c.) that we have any hope of corroborating the biblical accounts. This means that the stories presented in the first chapters of Genesis may be more difficult to corroborate than stories that appear later in Genesis and certainly much harder to corroborate than stories that appear in the other books of the Hebrew Bible.

Thus, we must deal with the biblical description of the Garden of Eden on its own, and make of it what we will. Fortunately, two of the four rivers mentioned in the biblical account are well known: the Tigris and Euphrates rivers in Mesopotamia (modern Iraq). We should note that the original biblical text doesn’t actually name the third river as “Tigris”; instead the text says “Hiddekel.” However, we know from elsewhere in the Bible (for example, Daniel 10:4) that this is a reference to the Tigris River, so most modern translations of the Bible simply call it the “Tigris” to reduce potential confusion. Similarly, the Euphrates is referred to in the original biblical text as “Prat,” the Hebrew rendition of the Babylonian and Assyrian words for the river that was located next to the city of Babylon (the Euphrates). Again, most modern translations of the Bible simply say “Euphrates” without further explanation.

The other two rivers are less well known, and herein lies the problem of determining where the Garden of Eden was located. The Bible says that the Gihon River surrounded the land of Cush, while the Pishon River flowed around the land of Havilah. Some researchers identify the land of Havilah as southern Arabia, but this is merely a hypothesis. As for the land of Cush, although we know that it was really in Africa, the Bible seems to connect it with Mesopotamia (Genesis 10:8). However, as Alessandro Scafi notes in Mapping Paradise: A History of Heaven on Earth: “From the time of Augustine [fifth century a.d.] to the Renaissance, the most learned scholars in all Europe, Africa and Asia, agreed that the Gihon and the Pishon were the Nile and the Ganges, an idea put forward by the firstcentury [a.d.] Jewish historian Flavius Josephus.” After the Renaissance, speculation began anew.

In short, the biblical account is ambiguous and open to interpretation. As a result, both ancient and modern authors have located the Garden of Eden everywhere from Iran and Mongolia to South America and even Jackson County, Missouri (according to Joseph Smith, Jr., founder of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, better known today as the Mormon Church).

Most scholars who have written recently about the Garden of Eden, however, usually place it in or around ancient Mesopotamia—anywhere from the Persian Gulf to southern Turkey. This makes some sense from a textual point of view, because not only does the biblical account say that the garden lay “in the east” (meaning to the east of Israel), but it also mentions the Tigris and Euphrates Rivers in connection with the Garden of Eden. In fact, the Greek meaning of the very word “Mesopotamia” is “the land between the [two] rivers,” a reference to the Tigris and Euphrates Rivers.

No earlier tales from ancient Mesopotamia can provide us with an exact parallel for the Garden of Eden story, but the Sumerians who lived in this region during the third millennium b.c. apparently did have the word “Eden” in their language. Scholars have suggested that the Sumerians adopted this word from an even earlier people—the Ubaidians, who lived in the region from approximately 5500 to 3500 b.c.—and many of them think the word should be translated as “fertile plain.” Moreover, there is one Sumerian paradise myth about a land of plenty called “Dilmun,” which scholars today suggest may well be modern- day Bahrain in the Persian Gulf. The myth, known as “Enki and Ninhursag,” describes Dilmun as being turned into a paradise when the Sumerian god Enki gave it the gift of water:

The land Dilmun is pure, the land Dilmun is clean;
The land Dilmun is clean, the land Dilmun is most bright.
. . .
Her well of bitter water, verily it is become a well of sweet water,
Her furrowed fields and farms bore her grain,
Her city, verily it is become the bank-quay house of the land Dilmun. . . .

There are also creation stories from this area that have striking similarities to the story found in Genesis. The most famous of these is the myth called Enuma Elish (When on High), which has long been noted for its biblical parallels. It begins as follows:

When on high the heaven had not been named, Firm ground below had not been called by name, Naught but primordial Apsu, their begetter, [And] Mummu-Tiamat, she who bore them all, Their waters commingling as a single body; No reed hut had been matted, no marsh land had appeared, When no gods whatever had been brought into being, Uncalled by name, their destinies undetermined— Then it was that the gods were formed within them.

This myth is sometimes referred to as the Babylonian Genesis because of the obvious parallels to the account in the Hebrew Bible, and yet it is hundreds of years older than the Bible. Scholars generally agree that the Hebrew Bible as we have it today was compiled from various sources, which were written down as early as the tenth or ninth century b.c. and late as the sixth or fifth century b.c. Even the earliest parts of the Bible, such as the source called J by biblical scholars, do not date earlier than the tenth or ninth century b.c., hundreds of years after Enuma Elish was written.

In fact, surprising as it may seem to some, it is Mesopotamia that had a tremendous impact on later biblical Israel—for this area, during the course of more than 9,000 years, from 10,000 b.c. to 1500 b.c., gave rise to inventions, techniques, ideas, stories, and even laws that were still in use centuries later in Israel and Judah. It is in Mesopotamia, for instance, that we find Hammurabi’s Law Code, which gave us “an eye for an eye, a tooth for a tooth” hundreds of years before the Bible. It is in Mesopotamia that Abraham and the Patriarchs had their origins. And it is in Mesopotamia that we find earlier accounts—Sumerian, Babylonian, and Akkadian—of the Flood and of Noah’s ark. In these accounts, Noah is instead named Ziusudra, Atrahasis, and Utnapishtim, and the Flood is sent not because humankind is evil and has sinned but because humankind is too noisy and is keeping the gods awake.

Enuma Elish in particular is a good example of what I would call a transmitted narrative: a story that was handed down from generation to generation and culture to culture in the ancient Near East. One of the best ways to explain both the similarities and the differences between the details in this myth and the biblical story found in Genesis is to suggest that the original Mesopotamian story (or the concepts contained within it) may have been passed down from the Sumerians in the third millennium b.c. to the Babylonians, Assyrians, and the peoples of Ugarit and Canaan in the second millennium b.c. and then to the Israelites, eventually making its way into the Hebrew Bible in the first millennium b.c. Additional examples of such transmitted narratives include portions of the Epic of Gilgamesh and Hammurabi’s Law Code, both of which, as we shall see, are probably reflected in the Hebrew Bible.

In trying to locate the Garden of Eden by using archaeological evidence, of principal interest to us is the fact that the first plants and animals were domesticated some 10,000 to 12,000 years ago in a wide swath of land stretching across what is now modern Iraq, northern Syria, and southern Turkey. This took place during the so-called neolithic revolution (a reference to the revolutionary ideas that resulted in the origins of agriculture).

This general region—encompassing Mesopotamia and beyond—has been dubbed the Fertile Crescent by archaeologists. It was here that sheep, goats, cattle, and even dogs were first domesticated, and it was here that the idea of actually growing wheat, barley, einkorn, and other grains was first put into practice, as opposed to just picking the wild varieties at random each year.

This area may have also become somewhat of an agricultural paradise for the local residents following the invention of irrigation during the fourth millennium b.c. Archaeologists have long understood that sometime during the period of 4000 to 3000 b.c., the various towns and villages in this region gradually turned to irrigation agriculture. From this, it is thought, first city-states, then kingdoms, and eventually even empires emerged as a result of the need to work together to create such large-scale projects. Whether or not this hypothesis is correct, it is clear that the region was literally made to bloom in the centuries before the Sumerian civilization arose near the end of the fourth millennium b.c.

Since both the invention of agriculture and the invention of irrigation occurred in the region of Mesopotamia, we should not be surprised that some scholars have suggested the original Garden of Eden might have been located in or near this area.

Persian Gulf Region—For instance, based on a variety of environmental, geological, and archaeological data, Juris Zarins, professor of anthropology at Southwest Missouri State University, has suggested that the original location of the Garden of Eden is now underwater, at the head of the Persian Gulf, near Bahrain. It was into this gulf that the Tigris and Euphrates Rivers spilled their water in antiquity. Nearby, the Karun River—which bears a similar name to the Bible’s Gihon River—flows southwest through Iran toward the Persian Gulf. Landsat images suggest that other rivers, now long dried up, flowed through the region as well.

According to Zarins, geological and archaeological evidence suggest that this area was subjected to changes in water level, resulting in the expansion and contraction of the Persian Gulf coastline over time. The southernmost part of Mesopotamia was finally flooded for good sometime between 5000 and 4000 b.c. as part of a worldwide event scientists call the Flandrian Transgression. This transgression caused gulf waters to rise and cover large sections of what had once been dry land in Mesopotamia. It is this region that formed the southeastern portion of the Fertile Crescent, and it is in this region that we find the Sumerians in the fourth and third millennia b.c.

Several decades before Zarins, the esteemed archaeologist and biblical scholar Ephraim A. Speiser, who was a professor and chairman of the Department of Oriental Studies at the University of Pennsylvania, made a similar suggestion. In a brief article entitled “The Rivers of Paradise,” Speiser hypothesizes that the Garden of Eden lay near the head of the Persian Gulf, where the Tigris and Euphrates Rivers came together, although he did not suggest that the garden was presently underwater. After examining the biblical text in detail, as well as additional factors such as the local geography in Mesopotamia, Speiser states that “the biblical text, the traditions of ancient Mesopotamia, the geographic history of the land at the head of the Persian Gulf, and the surviving building practices in that marshy country point jointly to an older garden land, richly watered, and favored by religion and literature alike—the kind of Paradise, in short, that local tradition still locates at the confluence of the Euphrates and the Tigris.”

Arabian Peninsula—A second possibility for the location of the Garden of Eden, which has been suggested on the basis of scientific data, is the nearby Arabian Peninsula. The late James Sauer, a professor at the University of Pennsylvania and Harvard University, wrote, “With the use of remote sensing technology, Boston University geologist Farouk El-Baz has traced a major, partially underground, sand river channel from the mountains of Hijaz to Kuwait, which he has named the Kuwait River.” Sauer cautiously suggests that this river, which dried up sometime between 3500 and 2000 b.c., might be linked with the biblical Pishon River, since the account also mentions bdellium (an aromatic resin) and onyx (a semiprecious stone), both of which are found in Yemen, on the Arabian Peninsula.

For Sauer, however, the key lies in the biblical phrase “the gold of that land is good,” for the only large deposit of gold in the area is found at the site of Mahd edh-Dhahab (“cradle of gold”) near the headwaters of this Kuwait river. He concludes, “No other river would seem to fit the Biblical description” and that “the Kuwait river could well be the Pishon of the Bible.” We should note, however, that it seems to be this same “fossil river” that Zarins also suggests could be the Pishon River, but he uses it to place the Garden of Eden underwater in the Persian Gulf, rather than on the Arabian Peninsula.

Iran—More recently, British archaeologist David Rohl claims to have located the Garden of Eden in Iran, near the modern city of Tabriz. Rohl has a degree in ancient history and Egyptology from University College London, and believes that scholars have wrongly dated portions of ancient history. Although his earlier work was concerned with the second and first millennia b.c., Rohl has moved backward in time and is now working on material connected with Genesis and the books of the Hebrew Bible.

Utilizing the work done by an earlier scholar named Reginald Walker, Rohl suggests that the biblical Gihon and Pishon Rivers are respectively the Aras (or Araxes) River—which reportedly was previously known as the Gaihun River—and the Uizhun River in Iran. Rohl posits that when these rivers are combined with the Tigris and the Euphrates Rivers, the headwaters for all four rivers are in the approximate region of the Garden of Eden. He also identifies “Noqdi,” an area east of his Eden, as the biblical land of Nod, where Cain was exiled after killing his brother, Abel. Rohl first proposed this hypothesis in his 1998 book, Legend: The Genesis of Civilisation, but his suggestions have not caught on with the scholarly establishment. His argument is not helped by the fact that it depends upon speculations regarding the transmission of place-names for both the various rivers and nearby related areas from antiquity to the present. In the end, while Rohl’s suggestion is not out of the question, it seems no more probable than any other hypothesis, and less likely than those suggested by Speiser, Zarins, and Sauer.

Egypt—Two years after Rohl’s hypothesis was first published, Gary Greenberg, a criminal defense attorney based in New York City, suggested in his book 101 Myths of the Bible that the Garden of Eden was located in Egypt. At first, this seems to make some sense, since Egypt lies in Africa, and most physical anthropologists and other scientists believe that humans originated in Africa and migrated outward from there, long before the Sumerians—or their legends—ever existed.

Greenberg believes that the Garden of Eden was actually located at Heliopolis, on the banks of the Nile River in Egypt, where Egyptian tradition places the Tree of Life. He hypothesizes that the Garden of Eden story derives from the Egyptian (Heliopolitan) Creation myths. Eden, he says, was originally the “Isle of Flames”—the first land referred to in these Egyptian Creation myths—which was situated at Heliopolis.

However, Greenberg’s hypothesis depends in large part upon his argument that the four rivers mentioned in the biblical account were all originally tributaries of the Nile and that only later, when the Judeans were carried off to Babylon in the sixth century b.c., were the names of two of the rivers changed from branches of the Nile to the two Mesopotamian rivers (the Tigris and the Euphrates). Greenberg suggests that whoever changed the names of the rivers was “someone familiar with Babylonian traditions but not knowledgeable about African geography” and that the “flames associated with the original isle were transformed into fiery swords wielded by cherubs.”

Like Rohl’s hypothesis, Greenberg’s suggestion cannot be dismissed outright, but it seems a stretch to postulate that ancient authors or editors changed the names of rivers and tributaries and moved these rivers and other details from Egypt to Mesopotamia. As a result, Greenberg’s suggestion has not received wide acceptance from the scholarly establishment. Given the rest of the textual and archaeological evidence, Mesopotamia seems a much more likely location, despite the early origins of humanity in Africa.

Turkey—In 2001, Michael S. Sanders, a self-taught “Biblical Scholar of Archaeology, Egyptology and Assyriology,” announced that he had located the Garden of Eden in Turkey. In January 2001, Sanders was quoted in the Canadian National Post, the Chicago Sun-Times, and the Daily Mail as saying his research indicates that all of the earliest Bible stories occurred in what is now Turkey, and not in the Persian Gulf as previously believed. “The Garden of Eden, the Flood, the Tower of Babel, the story of Abraham—all took place in a relatively small area between the Black Sea in the North and the Ararat Range in the East,” he stated.

Using photographs taken by NASA satellites, Sanders identified the four rivers of Eden as the Murat River, the Tigris, the Euphrates, and the north fork of the Euphrates. “It is just remarkable that there are actually four rivers in this region in Turkey,” he said, adding that this “proves the Bible’s description of the Garden of Eden is completely, and literally, accurate.” As we shall see in the following chapters, since 1998 Sanders also claims to have pinpointed the location of the Ark of the Covenant, the Ten Commandments, Solomon’s Temple, Sodom and Gomorrah, and the Tower of Babel. Such additional claims may or may not affect our appreciation of his assertions regarding the Garden of Eden, as will the observation that Sanders has apparently made his identification based primarily on NASA photographs and an a priori assumption that the Bible is “completely, and literally, accurate.” Even if Sanders were correct, we would need more facts on the ground before we could decide whether he has proven his case.

It is hard to put the Garden of Eden into historical context, for it belongs to the realm of prehistory, if not myth or legend. In fact, much of the material found in the first 11 chapters of Genesis—especially the stories— seem to be more literary than historical. Even biblical scholars refer to Genesis 1-11 as the Primeval History and separate it from chapters 12-50, the Patriarchal Tales. Robert Alter, translator of The Five Books of Moses, observes: “The Primeval History, in contrast to what follows in Genesis, cultivates a kind of narrative that is fablelike or legendary, and sometimes residually mythic.” We should also note the words of renowned scholar Ephraim Speiser, who wrote in his commentary on Genesis that “it should be borne in mind that the Primeval History is but a general preface to a much larger work, a preface about a remote age which comes to life in Mesopotamia and for which that land alone furnishes the necessary historical and cultural records.”

It is conceivable, however, that there is a historical kernel of truth at the base of the Garden of Eden story, because, as Speiser notes, “To the writer of the account in Gen. 2:8 . . . the Garden of Eden was obviously a geographic reality.” If there is some historical truth to the account, it would seem to be the fact that the region of Mesopotamia was home to the Fertile Crescent, which stretched in an arc from the Persian Gulf to southern Turkey and saw the origins of agriculture and the first domestication of animals from approximately 10,000 b.c. onward. It may well be that both the various Mesopotamian myths and the stories in the Hebrew Bible have their origins in the simple fact that it was this region that first saw the flowering of agriculture, both back during the original neolithic revolution around 10,000 b.c. and then again during the introduction of irrigation during the fourth millennium b.c.

So where is, or was, the Garden of Eden? The available evidence is rather thin, and so this may be the least satisfying of our quests. However, there is—or at least there was before the beginning of the second Gulf War in 2003—a battered sign standing at the site of Querna in Iraq, where the Tigris and the Euphrates join near the modern (and ancient) cities of Basra and Ur, welcoming travelers to the “Original Garden of Eden.” Is this merely wishful thinking? Is it merely coincidence that this is the same general region where Speiser suggested that the Garden of Eden would have been?

Bearing in mind that every suggestion that has been made to date is merely a hypothesis, I think that those suggestions that take into account both the textual evidence of earlier Mesopotamian literature and the archaeological data concerning the origins of agriculture and the domestication of animals in the Fertile Crescent, as well as the introduction of irrigation, are most likely to be on the right track. Thus, I would follow Speiser and suggest that the Garden of Eden, if it existed, is most likely to have been located somewhere in the region of Mesopotamia and the Fertile Crescent, perhaps even near the site of Querna, just as the battered sign says.

However, if Zarins is correct that portions of Mesopotamia were flooded at some point, then his proposal that the Garden of Eden lies in this general region but under the headwaters of the Persian Gulf is reasonably plausible. Sauer’s suggestion of the Arabian Peninsula as the location of the Garden of Eden is also conceivable, while Rohl’s suggestion of Iran, Sanders’s suggestion of Turkey, and Greenberg’s suggestion of Egypt follow in descending order of plausibility. Joseph Smith’s suggestion of Jackson County, Missouri, lags far behind, but is kept company by numerous other similarly implausible suggestions that we will not discuss here.

In the end, we are left with a final compelling question: How can anyone really hope to find the Garden of Eden, especially given what has been said about the Primeval History within the Book of Genesis? Even if the garden once was a real place, and even if we know the general location for where it might have been, how would we know its physical parameters, since there were no ancient signs or inscriptions at the entrance to the garden (for writing hadn’t been invented yet)?

So how will we know if we really found it? The answer is that we won’t. As Victor Hurowitz, professor of Bible and ancient Near Eastern studies at Ben-Gurion University, once said: “I doubt we’ll ever find Eden outside the pages of the Bible.”

Source: http://www.bibleinterp.com/articles/eden357918.shtml