Biblical Archaeology: Eden

the Bible begins its story in a land called Eden a place which was said to be an earthly paradise but many believe Eden was nothing more than a fairy tale invented by Jewish writers as part of a fanciful legend was eaten a real place or nothing more than a fantasy [Music] the description of the Land of Eden in Genesis 2 is a peculiar one it mentions a land that would be a lush paradise in an area of the world that today is a vast desert and yet God is able to plant a garden that is even watered by a mist that comes up from the ground so it mentions the lack of need for rain even stranger is the author tells us a river flows out of Eden and splits into four other rivers two of them are known the Tigris and the Euphrates but the other two rivers the pichon and the ji-hun don't seem to be actual rivers that flowed out of the same area the Jihan river is said to flow around the whole land of cush cush was traditionally understood to be present-day ethiopia and we have no evidence of a river which used to flow from Turkey into Ethiopia we also don't really have any evidence the Tigris and the Euphrates were once one river that split into two all of these issues have caused many scholars to refer to Eden as a mythical place that didn't actually exist but was just a fantasy created by the Jewish authors but perhaps the problem might not be with the actual description of Eden but where we have been looking and how the passage has been translated we have to remember the earth is not static and is always changing the planet we live on now was not the same a hundred thousand years ago let alone fifteen thousand years ago in fact about fourteen to fifteen thousand years ago the continents were much larger this was because the polar ice caps contain much more frozen water which allowed more areas of land to exist that are now covered by vast seas and gulfs one area in particular is the Persian Gulf or the Tigris and Euphrates now flow into however this was not the case about fourteen thousand years ago the geography of prehistoric Sumer was quite different according to modern satellite imaging the tigris and euphrates used to connect and form one River that went through a habitable land at the bottom of the Persian Gulf but these were not the only rivers in fact there were many other smaller rivers that floated to this one River as well one larger River that also drained into this area has been called the wadi baton River which used to run through the land of Arabia however in the ancient world this area was called hvala this region also shows evidence of vast gold mines especially in the area called mud at ahem however the river dried up thousands of years ago roughly around the same time climate change transform the region into a desert but long ago this would have been a lush river that drained to the same river as a Tigris and Euphrates surprisingly if we go back in time enough this correlates to the account of the Pichon River flowing into Eden in Genesis 2 quite nicely dr. James hoffmeier says a possible candidate for the now-defunct pichon River was discovered with the aid of shuttle imaging radar technology it evidently flowed east from the mountainous Vizag region of Saudi Arabia dr. Farouk Elbaz the geologist and director of the center for remote sensing at Boston University discovered traces of its course beneath the sand with ground-penetrating radar images from the space shuttle James Sauer immediately saw the geographical connection between this ancient river and the description of the pichon River in Genesis 2 this River appears to have dried up sometime late in the 3rd millennium BC the fact that Genesis 2 knows about this River is remarkable indeed of course what about the alleged gijón River that allegedly went into Ethiopia or perhaps this is based on a mistranslation Kenneth kitchen argues the original Hebrew word without the later additional vowel points can simply be understood to mean the land of the Kazi i'ts or cashew which was in western iran their original homeland appears to have been the Zagros Mountains before they later controlled the area of Babylon after the old Babylonian Empire fell satellite data also reveals a long river that wrapped around the Zagros Mountains that drained into the same river as the other three which also correlates with the account of the Jihan River in Genesis 2 coming from the land of cash instead of cush so in fact thanks to modern satellite imaging we can see at one time four rivers did flow into one however many read the account in Genesis 2 to mean there was one river that split into four this has caused many to look for Eden in modern-day Turkey but with little success of finding a river that split into four and two being the Tigris and Euphrates and another flowing into a place of gold but as we have noted in our previous video the Hebrew can be quite ambiguous the same word is used to refer to the end of something specifically the end of a long pole so as Kenneth kitchen notes the Hebrew in Genesis 2 can be understood to be referring to a place where four rivers met to form one instead of one River splitting to form four as kitchen says this is a snapshot type view taken looking out from where the single stream entered the garden and looking back just upstream to the point where the four head rivers came together to form the single stream that entered the garden so the area beneath the Persian Gulf does correlate nicely with the Genesis account of the land of Eden before this area was flooded four rivers did drain into one as Genesis might indicate but there's even more about this area that modern science has revealed archaeologist Jeffrey Rose refer to this area as the Gulf of Aces because of its pristine conditions and environment in other words the area seems to have been the ideal place for early humans jeffrey rose says given the extent of the exposed land within the gulf basin the abundance of food water lithic raw material and it's conscripted geographic position this sizeable inland depression is thought to have formed one of the most important oases in the ancient world in other words the area would have been a paradise for early humans with abundant food fresh water and warm weather rose also notes that the area received very little rainfall only 40 to 120 millimeters per year however the area was watered by a rich mosaic of freshwater springs making this place unlike any other found on earth today and yet it is interesting how well the land of Eden matches this description John Walton notes the Hebrew language of claiming a miss coming up to water the land might be referring to Springs given a connection to a Sumerian ID it would actually be referring to an area being watered by subterranean Springs which still exists under the Gulf today and we also see four rivers met to form one one comes from Arabia where there is evidence of gold one comes from the original land of the CAHSEE i'ts or cache and the other two being the Tigris and Euphrates all meant to form one River in an oasis unlike any other place on earth that was watered by fresh water Springs and filled with vegetation and abundant sources of food it is no wonder we have found an abundance of evidence for prehistoric settlements around the Gulf which later became the cradle of civilization unfortunately we can't visit this region today because later on the whole region was flooded in any evidence of human activity beneath the Gulf is now lost but what is interesting is how well the description of Eden and genesis correlates with this lost oasis that has only been discovered recently we have no evidence from ancient Sumer Babylon or any other culture from around that region that describes a place like what we find in the Gulf of a psa's about fourteen thousand years ago only Genesis 2 has a similar description of a place that was lost long before other ancient cultures began writing down their own histories and mythologies it seems only the Hebrews preserve the memory of the Gulf Oh asses as a land they called Eden now obviously this doesn't prove the Bible is true or that God visited man in Eden but it does show the description in Genesis too seems reliable and probably describes a place that actually existed at one time which is astonishing because this place was probably flooded some 8,000 the 13,000 years ago in lost to mankind before the advent of writing because of this I would argue the details suggest the account of Eden is much older than the time period of the Babylonian exile where many scholars want to place it the account says the garden was in the east so from the perspective of the author that would place him west of the Garden and that would place him in the area of Canaan or Egypt it refers to the land of Arabia as hvala which appears to be an older name for the area around the time of Solomon the area became associated with the name Arabia but not prior to this it's possibly referring to the land of the CAHSEE i'ts being in the Zagros Mountains which is the most likely place where the Gihon River would have flowed through so would have it written down before the CAHSEE i'ts rolled over the old Babylonian Empire I'll admit this last piece of data is a little speculative but the overall description of the land of Eden does seem to be reliably describing an area no other culture wrote about that actually existed thousands of years ago in a place we have only recently uncovered therefore it seems very unlikely this account of Eden was written or copied from mythology during the Babylonian exile and probably is a reliable oral tradition that was preserved and later written down by the authors of Genesis 2 thus the archaeological record does likely suggest that Eden was actually a place that existed long ago before all was lost to a flood [Music] you

Channel: InspiringPhilosophy

Views: 1,158,045

Keywords: Old testament, bible, god, jesus, jews, Judaism, Christianity, Sumeria, Babylon, Stephen Law, Heaven, Evil, God, Christ, Bible, Apologetics, Atheism, Islam, Jesus, Holy Spirit, Dawkins, Carrier, Afterlife, Near death, experience, Death (Quotation Subject), Soul (Quotation Subject), Near-death Experience (Literature Subject), Note, Light, Near, Anime, Life, Matt, Maximum, R&b, Death (Film Character), Opening, Tribute, Sudden, Science, Character (Award Discipline), Film (Film), Bleach, Note Episode

Id: 76PWWNDaMb4

Length: 12min 5sec (725 seconds)

Published: Mon May 13 2019

Reddit Comments

[u/nomenmeum]

That is very interesting. I like IP, but I think those original rivers must have been obliterated by Noah's flood. The Tigris and Euphrates that we know probably have recycled names.

[u/RobertByers1]

Indeed Eden was pre flood. the whole was changed from a single continent to what it is now. indeed its not turkey but the opposite direction the four rivers came from. remember the author expects the reader to know these rivers are not connected. god knew this. Its not directions but a statemen eden was destroyed. It is desiring of careful thought. However the point is was this area filled with flood sedimentary rock or on original rock? Why is gold brought up? Also rivers today don't splitt into four. the other way around. this rivers power came from the underbround and not a surface watershed.

There is more behind this. Very curious.

[u/luvintheride]

FWIW, There is Catholic traditional knowledge that the Garden of Eden was/is where Jerusalem is. I don't know how large it was, but the Garden of Gethsemane might be the spot where Adam and Eve committed the original sin.

Jesus prayed there with drops of blood because it was such an important spot.

As an aside, Michael Jones and his InspiringPhilosophy channel lost me when he rejected traditional Christian knowledge of Scripture and Creation. His modernistic approach to scripture and christianity has formally (and prophetically) been condemned by Pope Pius X in his encyclical Pascendi.

https://www.vatican.va/content/pius-x/en/encyclicals/documents/hf_p-x_enc_19070908_pascendi-dominici-gregis.html