Keith&Co.

Which works, i believe. The writing of The Books describes a world that was flooded, but restored. The author of Genesis seems, to me, to believe that what was there pre-flood was there post-flood. Including the rivers and lands and so on.

Modern interpretation needs the flood to be a lot more violent, to produce the strata and the fossils, so the world appears a lot older than it is. In that model, it would make more sense, would be more credible, if Moses described Eden as being between 'what is now Ethiopia' and 'the place the Tigris now flows.' Genesis doesn't allude to any major reshaping of the Earth during the Flood. Of course, Genesis describes a flat earth anyway, so trying to force modern facts into ancient litany is going to be difficult...

Including his funeral. Love to have been in the tent the day God dictated that to him...

Ibelieve

No problem. I think it depends on what you are doing with the Bible. If you are reading for personal edification and spiritual growth, I think you should use a version that you are comfortable. If you are studying at a deeper level (maybe for apologetics), I think it's wise to use multiple versions. I usually use KJV with Greek and Hebrew interlinked, NASB with Greek and Hebrew interlinked and a more modern version like NIV. That's enough to have parallel at any one given time. Then I use many others, especially when the text is a little more difficult to understand. Software is great these days. I have about 20 versions easily available. I am not an advocate of any one version. Even the paraphrased versions shed some light on some difficult passages.

No, I'm not dodging. I honestly answered I don't know for sure. If you want my educated guess??? I would say it was somewhere around ancient Babylon or modern day Iraq. However, I base that on an understanding of the Bible as a whole, and not just the Genesis record.

Yes! Petrified wood. You guys are becoming predictable. But Ibelieve that takes some water, probably a flood, probably a rapid burial, and maybe some volcanic activity. Do you have any record of that in this area about this time? The biblical flood was around 1700 years later. I think those trees and plants from the garden would have been long decayed by then.
No, quite the contrary. That's why I sarcastically asked for a citation of an excavation of an ancient garden without buildings. Why didn't you respond with one?

Steviepinhead

Ibelieve, re location of Eden:
Hmmm, maybe because--in part for obvious reasons--quite a lot of archaeology and geological field-work has been done in this region of the world, and no such ancient garden without buildings has been uncovered.

One could think of a couple of different reasons for that.

deadman_932

I gave you examples of plant matter that was millions of years old and not mineralized, "ibelieve" Even gave you a citation for it. Here's some other material that's even older:

Remarkable preservation of the 45 million-year-old forests on eastern Axel Heiberg Island allows the use of standard field measurements to determine forest composition, architecture, dynamics, and productivity. The taxonomy and systematics of the middle Eocene flora have been studied for over a decade, but a clear understanding of the basic ecology of these forest awaits further detailed analyses. Stumps, boles, litter, roots, seeds and soils preserved as intact, in situ
http://www.sas.upenn.edu/earth/arctic/preservation.html

And of course, since your "global flood" was only 4500 years ago, there's lots of examples from deserts around the world that are that old and more. And not "petrified" ...try looking at cave sites and rockshelters, for instance. Or open air sites like Monte Verde in Chile. Some even have plant-material shoes in them older than your flood date. http://www.sciencemag.org/cgi/conten...5373/72?ck=nck

Oh, and for gardens...you don't imagine that Eden was actually a composted and weeded garden do you? Either way, there are dozens of examples of such "gardens" in North and South america that exceed your flood date. What kind of gardens do you want to look at ? Terraces? Slash-burn? North American corn-squash-bean?

Steviepinhead

Meanwhile, Ibelieve, back in reality, the site of Babylon is IN present-day Iraq, so your mention of both Iraq and Babylon above doesn't convey any additional information.
See: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Babylon

Babylon is located "In the fertile Mesopotamian plain between the Tigris and Euphrates rivers" (same source; my bold), which would seem to conflict with what you tell us here:
If Babylon is alongside the course of the Euphrates, and the Euphrates is one of the named rives that flow out of the river that waters Eden, and "the rivers you are mentioning ... are not in Eden," as you say above, then why would you postulate that Eden was "somewhere around ancient Babyon"?

Unless by "somewhere around" you are meaning something content-free, like "somewhere in the same hemisphere of the globe as"...?

Additionally, the river Euphrates has its source outside of modern day Iraq:
From here: http://www.britannica.com/eb/article...s-river-system
So there seems to be a certain tension between saying that Eden was "somewhere around" ancient Babylon (inside Iraq and alongside the Euphrates far from its headwaters) and "somewhere around" modern day Iraq (which is not the modern day country in which the Euphrates has its source). Unless "somewhere around" is, again, meaningless nebulation...

Why would you not "say" that Eden was "somewhere around" modern day Turkey, for example?

So I guess your honest answer would not be--
(My bold.)
--but rather, "I don't have the slightest clue, but I'm happy to throw out a couple of wild guesses that don't seem to jibe at all with what the Bible tells us."

Oh, and even though that garden-without-buildings has stayed mysteriously unfound, at least some evidence of another famous garden of Biblical vintage times has not managed to evade the archaeologist's shovel:
From: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hanging_Gardens_of_Babylon

-Jay-

Nice answer, if we were discussing the general merits of different Bible versions, but not really to the point of the question here. (BTW, I had a thread in BC&H a couple of weeks back about that very subject, which I'd welcome your comments in) You told Betenoire back here, with the very clear implication that doing so would clarify the interpretation of Gen 2:10:

There's some responsibility that accrues to you in such a situation to explain what you think clarifies the verse and why.

Saying, effectively, that "The Garden of Eden was in Eden" doesn't really buy you much. This answer is better. Thanks for clarifying. The logical follow-on question would be "Do you have any extra-Biblical evidence for the location of the supposed Garden?"

This is an interesting approach. You're effectively claiming that we should expect no evidence of the Garden, and that we should therefore just take the Bible at its word that the Garden was there (though "there" is ill-defined). By that logic, the fact that we've got no evidence of Smurf Village suggests that we should conclude that it was actually located in the middle of a forest somewhere.

However - you yourself have placed the Garden at the headwaters of four rivers. Your implication that there wouldn't have been floods in the area (irrespective of whether I can produce a citation of evidence of one) rings hollow.

Also, before I (or anyone else) could produce appropriate citations to support claims of flooding in the area of any supposed Garden of Eden, we have to know the location of the Garden, which we can't glean with any certainty from the Biblical text, and we don't have any extra-Biblical clues for.

Your entire chain of reasoning here appears to collapse to an assertion that because we have no evidence of such a garden, we must therefore conclude it existed as described in the Bible. That's just not clicking...

I didn't make the initial claim. Benetoire answered a couple of posts back. I just asked a question.

regards,

NinJay

Ibelieve

Yes reality is a fine thing isn't it. I'm sorry if you misunderstood my comments. The Babylon you refer to is the capital city of Babylonia or the empire of Babylon. The term Babylon is mentioned 294 times in the Bible. It doesn't refer to the city in specific terms. It usually refers to the empire as a whole. Just like people refer to "Rome". They could be referring to the city of Rome or the entire empire of Rome. That's why context is important. My reference to Iraq is that most of the geographical and historical land mass under "Babylon" is in modern day Iraq. I also referred to the fact that my opinion on this has much to do with understanding the Bible as a whole document (especially in regards to Babylon) rather that on just the description given in Genesis.

You are correct about the sources of some of these rivers may have been in Turkey. If you will look at historical maps of the Babylonian empire, you will see that the eastern part of the country where these rivers originate is part of Babylon. So you can argue these apparent contradictions if you want, but I do know this stuff. I just do not have enough information in the book of Genesis to make an accurate guess as to where it was.


Why do you think I specified gardens whitout buildings????? I am quite aware of the hanging gardens in Babylon (the city). How did we find them?? From historical documents. But look at all those plants and petrified trees, and perfectly preserved organic specimens that we have with this excavation. What's that?? There weren't any?? Could it be that those garden plants decayed? No, we've never witnessed that natural phenomenon before. It couldn't have happened! :banghead:

I'm also having trouble seeing your's and deadman's logic here. If we have a historical record that some place existed in the past, but we can't find it. That doesn't mean that it didn't exist. This has been demonstrated over and over again in archeology. It was also demonstrated with the Komodo dragon.

Once I had a cell phone. I used it. I knew it existed. But I lost it. I had a general idea where I lost it , so I retraced my steps carefully. I called for it, so that I could hear it ring. Unfortunately I never found it. Now many things could have happened to it. Or it could still be exactly where I left it. But arguing that the cell phone never existed is just silly.

Malintent

The bible is not a historical record. It is a compilation of assorted works that have been translated, re-translated, reorganized, edited, omitted, and thoroughly revised by man over the centuries.

Ibelieve

Quite to the contrary, most of the entire Bible is a historical record.

That's true. It was witten over 1500 years by 40 different writer form all different walks of life.

Yes, we have to do that, because most people can't read greek and hebrew and aramaic.

Yes, sometimes it was easier for some people to do this, but we still have very old manuscripts to test these re-translations against. I have never seen a perfect translation of anything.

Yes, the Bible has many books. And some have organized it into sequences of books and chapters.

There is some evidence of this, but for 1500 years of writing, and 2000 years of translating it's remarkably accurate to the oldest dating manuscripts.

Yes, I think there was a King James Revised Version.

Malintent

So then is it still the word of god? It is my understanding that it is not.
It it were the word of god then it would need translating, organizing, changing in any way.. or would it? why would it need this? Is it not absolute, but relative truth then?

I disagree with your assertion that it is "mostly historically accurate". You have no evidence of this except from the thing we are scrutinizing in the first place. There are many more texts than that single one that fully disagree with it, historically speaking. It even disagrees with itself in many respects, which have been listed on this site countess times already.

So you have received information clarifying how 'easy' it would be to find the garden of eden if it ever existed. So where do we look and why has it not been found again? Clearly because it was just a literary metaphor - as was every line in those books. I would wager that the original authors would think it funny that so many people today take it seriously... it was written as fiction and still is fiction.