Location of Eden

Location of Eden

Thomas Allen

8 And Jehovah God planted a garden eastward, in Eden; and there he put the man whom he had formed. . . . 10 And a river went out of Eden to water the garden; and from thence it was parted, and became four heads. 11 The name of the first is Pishon: that is it which compasseth the whole land of Havilah, where there is gold; 12 and the gold of that land is good: there is bdellium and the onyx stone. 13 And the name of the second river is Gihon: the same is it that compasseth the whole land of Cush. 14 And the name of the third river is Hiddekel: that is it which goeth in front of Assyria. And the fourth river is the Euphrates. (Genesis, Chapter 2)

Where is Eden located? Several locations have been suggested. They include Palestine, Syria, Armenia, Mongolia, Kashmir, Australia, Mesopotamia, and the North Pole.

Havilah is noted for its gold and gemstones. Because it is noted for its high-quality gold, Havilah is often associated with India or Arabia. If it is in India, the Pishon is the Indus. If Havilah is Arabia, then the Pishon is the sea around the Arabian peninsula.

Many locate Cush in either Ethiopia or Central Asia. Thus, the Gihon is either the Nile (the Ethiopian location) or the Oxus, the Amu Darya (the Central Asian location).

According to the information given in Genesis 2:10-14, one river came out of Eden and divided into four. Because the Euphrates is mentioned as one of these rivers, most people assume that Eden was in Mesopotamia. Under this theory, the Tigris is the Hiddekel. There is much dispute about the two rivers corresponding to Pishon and Gihon. 

Upper Mesopotamia is perhaps the most popular location of Eden. According to proponents of this location, the Euphrates is the Euphrates of Mesopotamia and the Hiddekel is the Tigris. The identity of the Pishon and Gihon are uncertain. Some identify these two rivers with canals between the Euphrates and Tigris. Also, the Karun and Karkheh rivers have been identified as the other two rivers. Others identify them with various small rivers. 

Another popular location for Eden is the Armenian highlands at the headwaters of the Euphrates and Tigris. According to this theory, the Pishon is either the Phasis (Rioni) of Georgia or the Kura, a large tributary of the Araxes (Aras). The Gihon is identified as the Araxes. (For problems with this location, see Davis.)

Calvin and others have suggested that Eden was in the area where the Euphrates and Tigris empty into the Persian Gulf. Here, the two rivers come together and then divide into several mouths. Thus, the Pallakopas canal becomes the Pishon, and the Gihon corresponds with the Kahana or Guhana canal near Babylon. A problem with this theory is that the rivers come together instead of dividing.

Closely related to Calvin’s proposed location is that Eden is located at the head of the Persian Gulf. According to this theory, the four rivers are the Euphrates, Tigris, Kerkha, and Karun. A problem with this theory is that the rivers flow toward Eden instead of away from it.

At least, the two theories that place Eden near the mouths of the Euphrates and Tigris place Eden east of the writer of Genesis. However, they fail to satisfy the description of Havilah.

According to the Scriptures, the Adamic race originated in Eden. Most people erroneously place Eden in the Middle East. The location of Eden as described in Genesis 2:8, 10-14 places it in Central Asia. 

“And Jehovah God planted a garden eastward in Eden; and there he put man [Adam] whom he had formed.” (Genesis 2:8) The garden in Eden was eastward or “in the east” (Moffatt’s translation) or “to the far east” (Ferrar Fenton’s translation). If Moses were the author of Genesis as the fundamentalists claim, then he, being a highly educated man, would have been knowledgeable of the Mesopotamian region. Would not he have said that Eden was in the land of Shinar or Mesopotamia if that is where it was? In Genesis 10:10, 11:2, 14:1, and 24:10, he calls this region Shinar or Mesopotamia. Moses identified Eden as being in the east because it was east of the area which he knew.

If various people who lived long after Moses wrote Genesis as many modernists and liberal theologians claim, then these authors certainly would have been familiar with the Mesopotamian region and would have referred to it by name rather than by a vague description of where Eden was located.

Also, Sargon's Chronicle identifies Eden as east of Mesopotamia. Thus, the inhabitants of Mesopotamia knew that they did not live where Eden was. Saint Ephraem’s Hymns to the True Paradise and Cosmas Indicopleusters’s Christian Topography placed Eden at the western edge of the world’s highest mountains. Hence, it was in the region of the Himalayan and adjacent mountains—although they may have thought of these mountains as near the North Pole. They certainly did not place it in Mesopotamia.

The geography of Mesopotamia does not fit the description of Eden given in Genesis. Only two major rivers are in Mesopotamia: the Euphrates and Tigris. They merge rather than divide. Eden must be found elsewhere.

“Euphrates” in Hebrew is perath and means “a river of the east” (Strongs O.T. #6578). For centuries the “Pishon” has been identified with the Indus or Ganges Rivers in India. In the ancient records, Havilah was equivalent to India. Because the Gihon was said to “compasseth the whole land of Ethiopia,” some Biblical scholars identify the Gihon with the Nile. The word “cush” originates in northern India. Here the Hindu Cush mountains still bear that name. The Hiddekel is often identified as the Tigris. If the Tigris were also called the Hiddekel, it, like the Euphrates, was named for the original river in Eden. Probably this is why Genesis 2:14 refers to it as the river that flows “toward the east of Assyria.” This modifier would prevent confusing it with the river of the same name that flows within Assyria. Except for the Indus River, the rivers commonly thought of as flowing out of Eden do not fit the Biblical description of these rivers.

One place does resemble the description of Eden given in the Bible. That place is the Pamir Plateau in Central Asia between the Hindu Cush on the south and the Tien Shan mountains on the north. Four great rivers flow from this plateau. These are the Indus, Jaxartes (Syr Darya), Oxus (Amu Darya, also called  Gihon), and Tarim. Corresponding to the Pishon is the Kumar (or Chitral) branch of the Indus. The Jaxartes is the original Euphrates. The Tarim (that is its northern branch, the Kashgar river) flows to the east and is probably the Hiddekel. Most likely, the country of Havilah corresponds to the country of Darada toward Chachmises, which is noted for its riches. Thus, the Pishon is the Kumar-Indus; the Gihon is the Oxus;  the Hiddekel is the Kashgar-Tarim; the Euphrates is the Jaraxrtes.

The Pamir Plateau is different from what it was ten thousand years ago. A catastrophe has altered it. Then the plateau was lower and the climate much milder. Today the Pamir Plateau is uninhabited. It covers an area of about 180 by 180 miles and rises 15,000 feet above sea level. Too inhospitable to be inhabited, it is a blank and mysterious place. It is now the “roof of the world.”

The Pamir Plateau matches the geographical description of Eden given in Genesis. It is the land in the east, and it has four great rivers flowing out of it.

However, if the people who claim that the Noachian Flood was global and nearly all, if not all, of the fossil-bearing sedimentary rock formations resulted from the Flood, then trying to locate a place from before the Flood with today’s geography is futile. Today’s geography would have no resemblance to pre-Flood geography. Consequently, the above discussion about the location of Eden is meaningless. 

References

Allen, Thomas Coley. Adam to Abraham: The Early History of Man. Franklinton, North Carolina: TC Allen Company, 1998.

Davis, John D. The Westminster Dictionary of the Bible. Revised by Henry Snyder Gehman. Philadelphia, Pennsylvania: 1944.

Douglas, J.D. et al., editors. The New Bible Dictionary. Grand Rapids: Michigan: Wm. B. Eerdmans Publishing Co., 1962. 

Haberman, Frederick. Tracing Our White Ancestors (White Roots). Second edition.  Phoenix, Arizona: America's Promise Lord's Covenant Church, 1962, reprinted 1979.

Jacobus, Melanchthon W., Edward E. Norse, and Andrew C. Zenos, editors. A New Standard Bible Dictionary. New York, New York: Funk & Wagnalls Co., 1926.

Weisman, Charles A. The Origin of Race and Civilization as Studied and Verified from Science, History, and the Holy Scriptures. Third edition. Burnsville, Minnesota: Weisman Publications, 1990.

Copyright © 2022 by Thomas Coley Allen.

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