We’ve covered off the first several billion years (or 6000 years, depending on which camp you’re in) of Earth’s history in the previous Guide. Now we’re going into a bit more detail with the Garden of Eden. We’re looking at the mechanics of the Garden of Eden, not the events: that comes next in the next Guide.
When the Lord God made the universe, there were no plants of the earth and no seeds had sprouted, because he had not sent any rain, and there was no-one to cultivate the land; but water would come up from beneath the surface and water the ground.
Again, we have this conjoining of the universe and planet Earth. In the bible, the Earth is the entire universe. We could be even more narrow in our interpretation, and state that the Middle East in the entire universe because, for all intents and purposes, the writers of the bible didn’t travel much so had no idea of what was outside of their sphere of influence.
Also, the idea that rain is the only source of water above ground is nonsense as we know of many plants which collect water from the atmosphere in the form of condensation.
Lastly, plants don’t necessarily need cultivating to survive. Many areas of the world are not cultivated by humans, some not even inhabited by humans. We know, scientifically, that plants existed long before even simple animal forms, therefor cultivation is a redundant idea when talking generally about plants. Cultivation, in fact, is only needed when plants are grown as crops for consumption.
Then the Lord God took some soil from the ground and formed a man out of it; he breathed life-giving breath into his nostrils and the man began to live. Then the Lord God planted a garden in Eden, in the East, and there he put the man he had formed.
Laying aside the physical impossibility of soil turning into flesh, if we agree that the God of the Bible is all powerful (read: magic) then it is within the realms of possibility that this God could fashion a human out of soil. It’s not an uncommon device for gods from various cultures to fashion humans out of soil, clay or rock of some sort.
It’s also entirely possible for that god to create a garden in which the human they’ve just created can live. The God of the Bible is not only all powerful but all knowing, so they knew that man would need somewhere to live and something to eat.
He made all kinds of beautiful trees grow there and produce good fruit. In the middle of the garden stood the tree that gives life and the tree that gives knowledge of what is good and what is bad.
In the midst of this garden are these two trees. Of course, no evidence has been found for the existence of either of these trees but the concept of them is fascinating. If I were creating paradise for the creature I had just created I’d want there to be a tree which gives life to those who eat its fruits. Seems pretty reasonable. Then there’s this other tree: the tree that gives knowledge of what is good and what is bad (hereafter known as the tree of knowledge). You’d think knowledge would be a wonderful thing for this creature, this human, to have, especially as you’ve given them the task of naming everything. But it’s not just any knowledge, which might be useful. It’s knowledge of good and bad. But we’ll come back to this in a moment.
A stream flowed in Eden and watered the garden; beyond Eden it divided into four rivers. The first river is the Pishon; it flows around the country of Havilah (pure gold is found there and also rare perfume and precious stones.) The second river is the Gihon; it flows around the country of Cush. The third river is the Tigris, which flows east of Assyria, and the fourth river is the Euphrates.
There is some debate about the exact location of the Garden of Eden, given than only two of the rivers listed are still called what they are in the Bible: the Tigris and the Euphrates. What became of the Pishon and the Gihon rivers is a mystery, as they are no marked on any modern maps. The Tigris and Euphrates rivers join in modern day Iraq, near Basra.
Flowing south is the Shatt al-Arab River, also known as Arvand Rud, which runs into the Persian Gulf. This could be the original stream that flowed through the Garden of Eden. A possibility of some note for the Pishon Rover is the Karun River which joins the Shatt al-Arab River at Khorramshahr in Iran. The Gihon River is somewhat harder to nail down. There are several canals which could follow the paths of ancient rivers. It is entirely possible that the river simply no longer exists.
Some biblical scholars get around this ambiguity by arguing that the flood of Noah’s time (which we will come to in subsequent Guides) has altered the landscape so much that the terrain of the present bears little resemblance to that of the time of the Garden of Eden. I would argue that, given the Bible was written after Noah’s time, the writers might have been able to at least given a more accurate description, with the modern equivalents named in conjunction, especially as it is supposed to be the unerring word of God.
Still others conjecture that it is impossible to tell where the Garden of Eden really was because, when Noah and his descendants named all the places post flood, they could have simply done as early British colonialists did and named things after what they were familiar with, and so the rivers known as the Tigris and the Euphrates might not be in the same location as they were pre-flood, just like there is Wales in the United Kingdom and New South Wales in Australia. This means that the original rivers could have been anywhere in the world. It’s a convenient loophole, if you ask me.
So, where was Eden? Nobody really knows but, if you take the position of the Tigris and Euphrates rivers as they are now, and take the Karun river to be the modern name of the Pishon River, the Garden of Eden was probably located somewhere in the region of the Khuzestan Province of Iran, possibly stretching as far as the Persian Sea.
Then the Lord God placed the man in the Garden of Eden to cultivate it and guard it. He told him, "You may eat the fruit of any tree in the garden, except the tree that gives knowledge of what is good and what is bad. You must not eat the fruit of that tree; if you do, you will die the same day."
This passage raises two questions. The first being, why didn’t God want the human he has created and placed into the Garden to eat the fruit of the Tree of Knowledge? Surely, with God being all knowing, he could see what was going to happen and wouldn’t put temptation in the way. That’s what I’d do, anyway. As a mother, I wouldn’t put a whole plate of cakes in front of my child and tell them they could eat any of the cakes except the one with blue icing, and then be surprised when they ate the one with the blue icing. The caveat, of having said that they’ll die if they do means very little, because the first human would have no concept of death any more than a very young child does.
The second question I have is with exactly the caveat I just mentioned simply because it’s not true. We’ll come to the whole eating of the apple in the next Guide but I will touch on it now. Adam, being that first human that God created and told not to eat from the Tree of Knowledge, didn’t die the same day as eating the apple. We know this because the bible mentions his expulsion from the garden and his children, etc. We could take dying in a more metaphorical sense. This could lend some plausibility to the die-the-same-day concept. It could be taken in a “you’re dead to me” way, in that God rejected them, much as those loving Christians reject their atheist offspring. It could also mean that on that day, Adam brought the concept of death to himself and that previously he was immortal. Either way, it’s a pretty harsh punishment for eating an apple. But we’ll discuss that more in the next Guide.
Then the Lord God said, "It is not good for the man to live alone. I will make a suitable companion to help him." So, he took some soil from the ground and formed all the animals and all the birds. Then he brought them to the man to see what he would name them; and that is how they all got their names.
Now, I don’t know about you but, if I were God, I wouldn’t leave it to a human to name all of my creations. Humans are notoriously bad at naming things. This is why we have scientific names for things, because people are really, really bad at naming things properly. Take the mantis shrimp, for example. It is neither a mantis, nor a shrimp. It falls directly into the say-what-you-see category of naming things. If I were God, I’d get so cranky at Adam for getting all the names so badly wrong, I’d kick him out of the garden for that.
So, the man named all the birds and all the animals; but not one of them was a suitable companion to help him. Then the Lord God made the man fall into a deep sleep, and while he was sleeping, he took out one of the man's ribs and closed up the flesh. He formed a woman out of the rib and brought her to him. Then the man said, "At last, here is one of my own kind - Bone taken from my bone, and flesh from my flesh. "Woman' is her name because she was taken out of man." That is why a man leaves his father and mother and is united with his wife, and they become one. The man and the woman were both naked, but they were not embarrassed.
And so, we come to the creation of the as yet unnamed Eve. All powerful god couldn’t just make a woman out of soil, like he did Adam. Don’t be silly, that’d just make another man. He had to take a bone from Adam, obviously one that was superfluous to requirements, to do that. Did God not know how DNA works? What he was essentially doing was creating a clone of Adam. Now, I’m not up with the latest cloning techniques but I do know that if you clone a male, you’re going to get a male. So, this whole bone being necessary to avoid God just making another man is completely absurd, because of the laws of cloning and because, well, God is all powerful. It’s also bizarre to me that God didn’t realise earlier on when he was creating all the companion animals for Adam than none of them were going to work.
The last part of this passage is really odd. They were naked but not embarrassed. Well, they’d only just been created, so they didn’t know what embarrassment was, or nakedness for that fact, just like babies. And being embarrassed over nakedness is very much a social construct, not an inherently human one. Again, we’ll deal with this a bit more in the next Guide as we deal with consequences of eating the forbidden fruit. The concept of concealing the human form as a way to hide nakedness is a fairly recent idea. Early man used clothing in a far more practical manner, for protection from the weather. Even today, we see tribal societies who wear little to no clothes and have no concept of embarrassment about the human form, much to the horror of many a Christian missionary.
Next week, we’ll dissect the story of the disobedience of man, where Adam and Eve eat an apple at the behest of a talking snake.
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