Garden of Eden Project Research

2 dan 6 Angka Keramat Gempa Bumi (Sacred Numbers Earthquake)

2011-09-15T21:33:00.000-07:00

Kapan dan dimana gempa bumi akan terjadi? Tidak seorangpun tahu, para ahli pun hingga kini belum menemukan alat pendeteksi kapan dan dimana gempa akan terjadi. Hingga kini yang ada cuma Seismograf. Alat inipun berfungsi untuk mendeteksi dan mengukur waktu, titik pusat, radius, kekuatan dan kerusakan akibat gempa. Kemajuan lain yang dicapai para ahli adalah menciptakan teknologi komunikasi berbasis satelit. Dengan alat ini, akan dipotret kerusakan bumi akibat gempa dan akan menyebarluaskan dalam sekejap mata ke seluruh bumi. Dengan alat ini juga telah berhasil dibuat Peta Geology, yang mana didalamnya digambarkan secara jelas, daerah-daerah mana yang rawan gempa, termasuk sesar-sesar yang berpotensi menghasilkan gempa.
Selama ini, para ahli baru bisa menggambarkan dan menjelaskan gempa setelah bencana itu datang dan pergi meninggalkan kerusakan dan korban manusia. Para ahli belum bisa meramalkan secara persis kapan dan di mana gempa bakal terjadi. Sehingga, setiap ada gempa, tak pernah ada upacara siaga atau evakuasi warga. Goenawan Muhamad dalam catatan pinggirnya (Tempo, 2004) menulis, gempa sama seperti lotre dan kanker: ia tidak bisa diantisipasi, tidak bisa diketahui kapan datang, dan disini berlaku nyanyian Rod Stewart: “Some guys got all the luck, some guys got all the pain”. Sebab itu, bila tidak tahu persis kapan gempa datang, tidak boleh dibuat-buat isu, sebab akan membuat warga panik dan tidak aman secara psikologis.
1. Ramalan Para Ahli Geologi
Beberapa ramalan gempa yang pernah dilakukan para ahli Amerika, Rusia, Cina dan Jepang adalah dengan meneliti frekuensi kejadian gempa besar di masa lalu untuk menemukan pola yang berguna buat membaca kemungkinan gempa di masa depan. Pada saat yang sama, mereka mengkaji kecepatan dan tingkat akumulasi energi pada bebatuan akibat gerakan lempeng bumi. Upaya teoritis dibalik laboratorium ini tidak berhasil dilapangan ketika dipraktekan di daerah-daerah rawan gempa.
Satu-satunya ramalan yang dinilai sukses terjadi pada pada 1975. Saat itu, berdasarkan tanda-tanda pendahuluan, pemerintah Cina berhasil memberikan peringatan kepada warganya. Hasilnya, ketika gempa berkekuatan 7,3 skala richter mengguncang Kota Haicheng di wilayah Yingkouw, jumlah kerugian dan korban bisa ditekan.
Belakangan ramalan itu lebih bersifat kebetulan ketimbang hasil pengamatan yang terencana. Buktinya, setahun kemudian, gempa yang tak kalah dasyat mengguncang Tangshan di Cina bagian utara. Sebelum kejadian, pemerintah Cina dan ahli gempa Cina tak berhasil mendeteksi gejala apa pun. Evakuasi tak sempat dilakukan. Akibatnya, sekitarnya 240 ribu penduduk Tangshan terkubur reruntuhan.
Lembaga Survei Geologi Amerika Serikat (USGS) malah pernah membuat ramalan yang menggelikan. Pada tahun 1983, lembaga itu menyatakan, gempa berkekuatan sedang bakal mengguncang wilayah Parkfield, California. Prediksi itu disusun berdasarkan enam kali gempa berkekuatan 6 skala Richter yang terjadi pada rentang waktu rata-rata 22 tahun di sana. Untuk mengurangi resiko salah ramal, USGS membuat waktu terjadinya gempa sedikit tidak pasti. Gempa, menurut pakar USGS, bakal terjadi diantara tahun 1983 dan 1993. Seperti mau pamer kepada dunia, saat itu Amerika pun mengerahkan banyak ahli untuk meneliti dan memonitor kawasan tersebut. Alat pemantau paling maju serta alat peringatan dini dipasang di seluruh pelosok Parkfield. Namun, sampai tahun 1993, gempa ternyata tak kunjung datang.
Kasus Parkfield sempat mengikis keyakinan para ahli dan penentu kebijakan di Amerika. Dua pakar gempa dari University of California, Los Angeles, David Jackson dan Yan Kagan, seperti mewakili isu keraguan itu. Keduanya menolak ramalan-ramalan lama dengan menyodorkan fakta-fakta baru. Katanya, daerah-daerah di Amerika yang dinyatakan “aman” gempa malah mengalami guncangan lima kali lebih sering ketimbang daerah yang dinyatakan berbahaya. “Tak seperti badai dan letusan gunung api, gempa jauh lebih sulit diduga”, ujar Jackson.
2. Meramal Melalui ‘Bahasa Gempa’
Salah satu metode yang belum pernah dijangkau para ahli adalah dengan menganalisa ‘bahasa gempa’. Metode ‘bahasa gempa’ dapat diketahui dengan cara bertanya kapan dan dimana gempa itu terjadi.
Bila disimak tanggal dan bulan terjadinya gempa, terutama sejak tahun 1981, pada umumnya gempa terjadi pada tanggal dan bulan yang ada angka 2 dan 6. Misalnya, gempa terjadi pada tanggal 26, tanggal 2 dan 6, bulan 2 (Februari) dan bulan 6 (Juni) dan beberapa kali gempa yang terjadi pada bulan Mei dan November.
Beberapa kejadian gempa yang terdata sebagai berikut: 06 - 1981 Di kota Golbaf, 06 - 1990 Di provinsi Gilan dan Zanjan di pesisir selatan laut Kaspia, 05 - 1997 Terjadi di Iran sebelah timur, 02 - 1997 Terjadi di Iran sebelah barat laut Menewaskan 1000 orang, 26 - 01 - 2001 Di Gujarat, 06 - 2002 Terjadi di provinsi Qasvin dan Hamedan Iran Barat, 21 - 05 - 2003 Terjadi di AljazairMenewaskan 2000 orang, 01 - 05 - 2003 Di Turki160 orang tewas, 24 - 02 - 2003 di Provinsi Xinjiang Cina Barat260 orang tewas, 26 - 12 - 2003 Di Bam Iran Selatan, 06 - 02 - 2004 Di Nabire, 26 - 11 - 2004 Di Nabire, 26 - 12 - 2004 Tsunami di Aceh, Thailand, India, Srilangka, Birma dan sekitarnya, 26 - 11 - 2005 Di Xinjiang Cina BaratMenewaskan 14 orang, 16 - 02 - 2010 di Aceh dan sekitarnya, 16 - 06 - 2010 Di Biak dan Serui (Yapen Waropen)Menewaskan 14 orang, 26 - 06 - 2010 Tasikmalaya, 12 - 03 - 2011 Jepang, 8,9 SLMenewaskan ribuan orang.
Dengan demikian, boleh dikatakan, angka 2 dan 6 adalah angka keramat gempa bumi.
2. Mengapa Gempa Terjadi?
Secara geology, gempa terjadi karena lempeng-lempeng dalam kerak bumi bertumbukan. Pergerakan itu dipicu oleh arus air laut dan samudra yang berlangsung selama bertahun-tahun. Tercatat terjadi empat kali lipatan dalam usia bumi yang akhirnya menghasilkan benua, pegunungan dan pulau-pulau.
Oleh masyarakat awam, semua gempa diatas dihubungkan antara manusia dan Tuhan. Di Gujarat misalnya, oleh ‘lashkar-i-Toiba’, adalah hukuman Tuhan karena orang Hindu di Negara bagian itu membunuh dan menganiaya minoritas muslim, Kristen dan Sikh di India. (Tempo, 2004) Sedangkan gempa di Nabire dan Banda Aceh, orang katakan, gempa terjadi karena fanatisme agama berlebihan. Dikatakan, buktinya gempa di Aceh terjadi sehari setelah perayaan Natal dan gempa pertama di Nabire terjadi sehari setelah agama masuk di tanah Papua. Apakah memang benar?
Secara filsafat metafisis, orang menelusuri dengan bertanya, mengapa gerak itu terjadi dan siapa sumber penyebab. Ketika itu warga Yunani bertanya kepada filsuf Sokrates; “Kita semua tahu bahwa semua gerak terjadi karena ada yang menggerakkan. Kalau begitu, siapa yang menggerakkan sehingga bumi dan planet lain bergerak mengelilingi matahari”. Sokrates diam dan hanya menjawab dengan sebuah kalimat termasyur; “ia mengerakkan karena cinta – kinei de hos eromenon”.
Memahami beberapa jawaban diatas, paling tidak kita yakini bahwa bumi ini ada penciptanya, ada penguasanya yaitu Tuhan Allah. Ialah yang mencitpakan jagat raya, termasuk alam yang kita hidupi. Kalau kita bertanya, mengapa lempeng-lempeng itu bergerak bertumbukan sehingga menghasilkan gempa bumi? Jawabannya kalau ikut Sokrates, kita akan katakan, ia bergerak karena Cinta. Kalau memang karena Cinta, mengapa banyak yang korban. Tentu orang akan hubungan antara manusia dan Tuhan. Namun secara geology, gerak itu terjadi karena evolusi bumi, wajar dan pada waktunya. Seandainya “ia” menurut Sokrates itu Tuhan Allah, mengapa para kerub (malaikat/penunggu) yang ditempatkan dimana-mana itu tidak menahan ‘gerak’ itu sehingga tidak ada korban manusia dan kerugian harta benda?

Find Me in Swarapapua.com

2011-08-22T06:06:00.000-07:00

Thank you for visiting my site. I have made new website, http://www.swarapapua.com. Please find me. Unintentionally, I've found a number of verses in the Book of Genesis, especially Genesisi 1:26 to 3:22 on the creation of man and the location of a lost Eden. All that research results can be read in a book Mapia (Revealing Case of Loss of Eden). In summary I have fit on the site www.swarapapua.com.

Genesis 1:26= Creation of Ancient Man.
Genesis 2:7= Lord Formed 5 races of Man By Clay in Iran and to the Melanesian race moved to New Guinea
Genesis 2:8= 5 Location Garden of Eden Creation
Genesis 2:15= First Human Placement or Transfer to Five Garden of Eden
Genesis 1:19-20= Ekaagokunu, Place Names Giving Animals
Genesis 2:21= Gekomapa, The Formation of Bone Rib Women Men
Genesis 3:1-19= First Man Falling Into Sin in Egaidimi
Genesis 3:20= Lord Giving Names For First Man
Genesis 3:21 = God Clothes Making First (Koteka Moge)
Genesis 3:22 = What is the Tree of Life?
Genesis 3:1-19 = The Gradual Making Fence. Last boundary of the Wallace Line that supirated variety of animals that live in the area of the eastern and western Indonesia.

More read in the Book Mapia (www.swarapapua.com)

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

2011-02-23T06:00:00.000-08:00

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

Mencari Taman Eden di Tanah Papua

2010-11-13T03:14:00.000-08:00

Akhirnya, proyek penelitian pribadi yang telah kumulai sejak tahun 1994, baru bisa selesai Medio November 2010. Hal-hal yang menjadi tanda tanya besar dalam pikiran saya selama 16 tahun tersebut, baru bisa terampung setelah dua minggu bolak-balik di atas danau Paniai, Enarotali. Mungkin juga karena saya potret gambar Taman Eden yang dilukis Donatus Moiyent di dalam gereja Katolik Enarotali????

Kisah Taman Eden ditulis dalam Kitab Kejadian pasal 1 dan 2. Sejarah ini ditulis oleh nabi Musa ketika Ia memimpin bangsa Israel dipadang gurun selama kurang lebih 40 tahun. Musa banyak mendapat pengetahuan dari seorang Malaikat yang diutus Tuhan selama perjalanannya menuju Tanah Perjanjian (Kel 33:2).

Ringkasnya, setelah Allah ‘menciptakan’ langit dan bumi selama ‘enam hari’, Allah membuat taman di Eden, disebelah timur. Didalam taman Eden Allah tempatkan manusia dan menumbuhkan berbagai-bagai pohon dari seluruh bumi, yang menarik dan yang baik dimakan buahnya; dan pohon kehidupan ditengah-tengah taman itu, serta pohon pengetahuan yang baik dan yang jahat (Kej 2:8-9). Tetapi akibat pelanggaran manusia pertama, maka Allah mengusir / mengembalikan manusia itu ketempat dimana ia dibentuk dari debu tanah. Kemudian Allah meletakkan beberapa kerub (malaikat Allah) dengan pedang yang bernyala-nyala dan menyambar-nyambar agar manusia tidak memetik buah dari pohon kehidupan (Kej 3:23-24).

Taman Eden itu hilang dan tidak tahu dimana keberadaannya karena ayat-ayat sebelum Kej 3:24, nabi Musa tidak menulis secara lengkap dimana tempat pembuatan manusia, siapa sebenarnya nama manusia itu, dimana disebelah timur itu dan dimana Allah meletakkan kerub dengan pedang yang menyala-nyala dan menyambar-nyambar. Sedangkan ayat-ayat setelah Allah mengusir manusia dari taman Eden, nabi Musa menulis dengan jelas siapa nama manusia itu, tempat dimana mereka hidup dan seterusnya. Apakah ini merupakan bagian dari rencana Allah untuk menyembunyikan taman Eden?

Banyak orang meyakini bahwa nama manusia yang dibentuk dari debu tanah pada Kej 2:7 adalah Adam dan termasuk Agus Miradi, penulis buku SIAPAKAH MANUSIA PERTAMA ITU mengatakan manusia pertama tersebut bernama Adam dan ia dibentuk dengan tanah liat disekitar wilayah Iraq . Akan tetapi pernyataan ini tidak bisa dianggap benar dan masih perlu diteliti, sebab dalam Kej 2 dan 3, nabi Musa tidak menyebut nama Adam sebagai manusia yang dibentuk dengan tanah, tetapi hanya menulis ‘manusia itu’. Sementara nama Adam baru muncul setelah TUHAN Allah mengusir manusia itu dari taman Eden atau setelah peristiwa pembunuhan Habel oleh kakaknya Kain (Kej 4:25).

Ada keraguan tentang nama manusia pertama, sehingga perlu diteliti lebih lanjut. Karena Alkitab sebagai buku yang diilhami Allah, tidak mungkin nabi Musa menempatkan kata secara sembarangan. Oleh karena itu pengertian ‘manusia itu’ tidak harus selalu disamakan dengan ‘Adam’ sebagai manusia pertama.

Pernyataan ini didukung oleh banyak ahli, termasuk kaum Sufi asal Persia. Mereka berpendapat, Adam bukan manusia pertama dan masih ada Adam-Adam lain yang sudah diciptakan jauh sebelum itu, yaitu termasuk diantaranya manusia purba sebagaimana yang diyakini Agus Miradi di atas. Sebut saja Muhyiddin Ibnu Arabi, seorang sufi besar pernah mengatakan bahwa ada sabda Rasulullah yang antara lain mengatakan ‘Allah telah menjadikan tidak kurang dari seratus ribu Adam’ (Futuhat Makkiya, II, hal. 607) . Oleh karena itu kemungkinan besar Adam yang dimaksud Alkitab dan Alquran selama ini adalah moyangnya bangsa Israel yang ditulis oleh Nabi Musa. Sementara nama sebenarnya dari manusia pertama yang ditempatkan dalam taman Eden menjadi misterius sejalan dengan hilangnya taman Eden.

Selain kurang jelasnya nama manusia pertama yang memiliki roh itu, Alkitab juga tidak menjelaskan dimana letak taman Eden disebelah timur itu (Kej 2:8-9). Apakah disekitar sungai Pison yang mengalir ke seluruh daerah Hawila atau disekitar sungai Gihon yang mengelilingi tanah Kusy, atau sungai Tigris yang mengalir kesebelah timur Asyur dan atau dipinggiran sungai Efrat – ataukah didaerah timur lain di dunia?

Penyelidikan akhir-akhir ini telah membuktikan bahwa taman Eden itu terletak di Babil, Iraq atau Assyria (Enc. Brit. Pada “Ur”). Tetapi pertanyaannya adalah, apakah disekitar Iraq orang pernah mengatakan atau paling tidak membuktikan bahwa inilah pohon kehidupan yang disembunyikan oleh Allah dan dijaga oleh kerub yang bernyala-nyala dan menyambar-nyambar untuk menjaga jalan ke Taman Eden? Ataukah dalam sejarah Persia, orang pernah membuktikan bahwa inilah ‘pairidaeza’ (taman berpagar) dari Persia kuno atau ‘Hadiqah al-Haqiqah’ (Taman Kebenaran Berdinding) seperti yang dimaksud pujangga sufi terbesar Persia, Abu Al-Majd Majdud Ibn Adam Sana’i dalam karya mistis yang paling terkenal itu? Jawabannya, tidak ada. Para ahli – walaupun pernah meneliti akan hal itu, namun tidak ada jawaban pasti yang hampir sama dengan kisah Taman Eden dalam kitab genesis.

Saya sendiri sudah meneliti ke berbagai sumber, mempelajari sejumlah buku-buku sejarah sebagai sumber referensi selama + 16 tahun, tetapi tidak ada fakta sejarah yang meyakinkan saya untuk mengatakan disanalah taman Eden sebagaimana ditulis kitab genesis. Dari semua pencarian itu, terakhir mengarah kepada satu pertanyaan: mengapa kata ‘pairidaeza’ dari bahasa Persia kuno yang kemudian dalam kata Inggris menjadi ‘paradise’ itu mengandung arti Surga dan Cenderawasih, dimana burung Cenderawasih adalah salah satu nama burung yang hanya terdapat di tanah Papua. Apakah Taman Eden itu terdapat di tanah Papua?

Pertanyaan inilah yang membuat saya teliti taman Eden di Papua sejak tahun 1994. Awalnya saya teliti istilah MAPIA yang kemudian saya menemukan arti: Pohon Kebenaran yang dipertanyakan. Kemudian saya menemukan hal-hal yang mirip dengan apa yang ditulis nabi Musa di kitab Kejadian/Genesis. Disana ada sejumlah kesamaan yang saya temukan yaitu menyangkut posisi Eden di Timur, manusia pertama yang ditempatkan, pohon pengetahuan dan pohon kehidupan, serta penempatan kerub yang bernyala-nyala dan menyambar-nyambar. Semua ulasan itu sekarang saya sudah rangkum dalam sebuah buku yang berjudul: MAPIA – Mengungkap Kasus Hilangnya Taman Eden.
Hal-hal lain yang saya pertegas dalam buku tersebut yaitu menyangkut proses penciptaan tanah Papua dan penempatan manusia pertama. Bahwa, ternyata setelah saya bandingkan dengan perbedaan ras umat manusia (Khoisan, Negroid, Kaukasian, Mongoloid dan Australoid), maka ternyata Nabi Adam yang diceritakan Nabi Musa setelah pengusiran dalam taman Eden yaitu turunan Kaukasian. Sedangkan yang diceritakan Nabi Musa sebelum ayat-ayat pengusiran, yaitu menyangkut turunan anak bungsu yang selanjutnya dikenal memiliki ras Australoid yang ditempatkan di tanah Papua. Paradise Island.

Bahwa ternyata ada lima taman Eden; taman Eden pertama di wilayah Ethiopia, Sudan, dan Yaman yang turunnya dikenal memiliki ras Khoisan (Kush/Kusy/Cush). Taman Eden kedua di buat di sekitar selatan gurun Sahara. Turunannya dikenal memiliki ras Negroid. Kemudian Tuhan Allah berencana untuk membuat sebuah taman yang betul-betul berbentuk burung Cenderawasih. Awalnya Tuhan Allah buat di Athena wilayah Yunani Raya. Namun Tuhan Allah melihat tanjung berbentuk burung Cenderawasih tersebut membentang miring ke selatan sehingga Allah mencari tempat di wilayah Timur, seperti diceritakan Nabi Musa dalam Genesis.

Awalnya Tuhan Allah buat taman Firdaus di Bali. Manusia turunannya kemudian dikenal memiliki ras Mongoloid atau ras Asia Timur. Tetapi kemudian Allah melihat pulau Dewata (memiliki 9 dewa) tersebut tidak memiliki sayap seindah burung Cenderawasih. Maka pada akhirnya Tuhan Allah bentuk tanah Papua sebagai taman Firdaus pilihan, yaitu sebuah pulau yang betul-betul mirip dengan burung Cenderawasih. Keturunan dari manusia Irian (Arab=telanjang) inilah yang kemudian menurunkan ras Australoid.
Mengapa Tuhan Allah pilih Ras Kaukasoid untuk turunkan wahyu-wahyunya, kenapa Athena untuk turunan Kaukasoid, kenapa Bali dan bukan di Mongol? kenapa Mapia dan bukan Asia? Semuanya saya uraikan dalam buku MAPIA – Mengungkap Kasus Hilangnya Taman Firdaus.

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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

Some Link About Garden of Eden

2010-09-10T01:53:00.000-07:00

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

The Garden of Eden

2010-09-10T01:45:00.000-07:00

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

Locating The Garden Of Eden

2010-09-10T01:39:00.000-07:00

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 in Georgia

2010-09-10T01:35:00.000-07:00

Son of man, set thy face toward the South, and drop thy word toward the South, and prophesy against the Forest of the South field;

And say to the Forest of the South, Hear the word of the Lord; Thus saith the Lord God; Behold, I will kindle a fire in thee, and it shall devour every green tree in thee, and every dry tree: the flaming flame shall not be quenched, and all faces from the South to the North shall be burned therein.

And all flesh shall see that I the Lord have kindled it: it shall not be quenched.

Then said I, Ah Lord God! they say of me, Doth he not speak parables...(Ezekiel 20:46-49).

read more in: http://www.revelation2seven.org/WebPages/SideLinks/EdenInGeorgia.htm

Return to Eden

2010-09-10T00:59:00.000-07:00

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.

Where Was The Eden Garden

2010-09-10T00:52:00.000-07:00

The Garden of Eden was the place where Adam and Eve lived before their sin, which seems to have been the early name for a large land area, including Mesopotamia and also possibly the entire Fertile Crescent. The garden God planted was in the eastern part of this area (Gen. 2:8). The two most likely locations lie in the mountains of Armenia and at the head of the Persian Gulf. However, it needs to be understood, that no theory or belief of where the garden is actually located is without problems.
What are some of these theories or beliefs of a possible location of the Garden of Eden? One opinion is that the Garden of Eden in which the Bible locates the spot where the temptation and the fall took place was somewhere in the Tigris-Euphrates Valley, apparently in the eastern most third of the Fertile Crescent. Other scholars have placed the location of Eden just north of Babylon where the Euphrates and Tigris closely approach each other. Furthermore, there are those with the belief that Eden was near ancient Eridu, on the Persian Gulf. However, such locations are at this time impossible to prove or identify.
Other suggestions as to the possible place of where the Garden of Eden actually was include not only Babylonia (in Mesopotamia), Armenia (north of Mesopotamia), but also, an island in the Indian Ocean. The Bible in Genesis 2:10 states that four "riverheads" divided from the river that flowed out of the Garden of Eden (Gen. 2:10-14), which supports a place somewhere in Mesopotamia. There are those who believe that Pishon and Gihon two of the four rivers said to "flow out of Eden to water the garden" (Gen.2:10-14), are presently the rivers Indus and the Nile. So, what is being suggested is that Eden included the whole of the Fertile Crescent from India to Egypt.
Now, the location of the Garden of Eden is in part to be determined from the description already given in the Bible. As for an example, the Garden of Eden is said to be "eastward, in Eden" found in Genesis 2:8; where the vegetation was very luxurious (2:9) and the fig tree indigenous (3:7), and it was watered by irrigation. The garden was a place of all kinds of animals that were created by God, including cattle, beasts of the field and birds. (Gen. 2:19-20). Also, the climate was such that clothing was not needed to keep warm. It is of no surprise, that the plural of the word means "delights," and that Eden has been thought to mean the land of delights, and that the word became a synonym for Paradise. Therefore, the location of the Garden of Eden can be determined from the actual description already given in the Bible.
Eden must be where there is a climate adapted to the production of fruit trees and of animals capable of domestication, and in general to the existence of man in his primitive condition. In particular, its location is supposed to be determined by the statements about the rivers running through it and surrounding it. Columbus as he passed the mouth of the Orinoco believed that its waters came down from the Garden of Eden. It is fair to believe, that Columbus thought that he was at the east coast of Asia. The traditions of the Garden of Eden's location to be somewhere in Central Asia have been believed by many. Naturalists have, along with Quatrefages, believe that the portion of Central Asia stretching east from Pamir, often thought of as the top of the world, and from which flow four great rivers, the Indus, the Tarim, the Sur Daria (Jaxartes), and the Amu Daria (Oxus), is actually the original cradle of mankind. This conclusion has been arrived at from the fact that at the present time the three fundamental types of the races of the world are located around this particular area.
A man named Dr. William F. Warren has with prodigious studying tried to prove that the original Eden was actually at the North Pole. This theory is supported by the fact that in preglacial times a warm climate surrounded the North Pole in all the lands which have been explored. But as the latest discoveries have shown that there is no land or area within several hundred miles of the North Pole, this theory of Dr. Warren, if it is to even be considered as possibly true, will have to be modified so as to place Eden at a considerable distance from the actual pole.
The question has been asked amongst Bible scholars, has the Garden of Eden been located at last? Different individuals and late classical writers believed that the Garden of Eden could possibly be located in Mongolia, India, or Ethiopia. They based their theories upon the known antiquity of those areas, and on the idea that the mysterious Pison and Gihon were to be connected with those other two great rivers of the ancient world, which is the Nile and the Ganges rivers. Another popular area for the Garden of Eden had been in Turkey, because both the Tigris and the Euphrates rise in the mountains there, and because Mount Ararat is the place of where Noah's Ark came to rest at this location. In the past hundred years, since the discovery of ancient civilization in modern Iraq, scholars have leaned toward the Tigris-Euphrates Valley, and to the sites of southern Sumer, which is about 150 miles north of the present head of the Persian Gulf, in particular.
So, in conclusion, this has been a very interesting topic to research, in which I found various opinions on this subject, as to where was the Garden of Eden really located. However, the exact location of where the garden was placed by God, in my opinion has not been found, and never will be. However, looking to the Word of God, based on the description in Genesis 2:10-14, we can have a good idea of the possible location of the Garden of Eden. "And a river went out of Eden to water the garden; and from thence it was parted, and became into four heads." And the fourth head or river is the great Euphrates which flows from East Central Turkey through Syria and Iraq, joining the Tigris to form the Shatt al Arab. Therefore, I conclude that the Garden of Eden must of been somewhere in the Middle East, perhaps surrounded by such countries as Turkey, Iraq, and Iran or somewhere in the Persian Gulf region.

About Author
I have a Doctorate in Theology and a Ph.D. Religious Education. I enjoy writing about Biblical Research. Personal Website: http://www.millerdoctorofphilosophy.com

Out of Africa or Out of Eden: Does Science Contradict the Bible?

2010-09-10T00:49:00.001-07:00

Scientists have known for a number of years that the most genetically diverse human beings come from Africa. It is assumed that this higher degree of diversity is due to more time for genetic mutations to accumulate in this founder population. However, it is also possible that humans arose outside of Africa and first migrated there, where populations were relatively undisturbed by subsequent human migrations. If the original founding population were replaced through later migration events, Africa would appear to be the home of humanity's origin, even if it were not.

By Rich Deem

Introduction
Numerous genetic studies over the last few decades have shown that human genetic diversity is greatest within African populations, leading scientists to proclaim that modern human populations originated in Africa. However, the Bible says that humans were created in Eden, which is described as being in or near Mesopotamia. Can we stretch the biblical creation narrative to place Eden in Africa or is it possible that the science is wrong? Alternatively, is the Bible just wrong about where humans originated?

Eden in Africa?
Some Christians have suggested that the Bible is not specific enough to conclude that Eden is in Mesopotamia. Let's look at the biblical description of Eden to see if it could be stretched to include eastern Africa.
The LORD God planted a garden toward the east, in Eden; and there He placed the man whom He had formed. Out of the ground the LORD God caused to grow every tree that is pleasing to the sight and good for food; the tree of life also in the midst of the garden, and the tree of the knowledge of good and evil. Now a river flowed out of Eden to water the garden; and from there it divided and became four rivers. The name of the first is Pishon; it flows around the whole land of Havilah, where there is gold. The gold of that land is good; the bdellium and the onyx stone are there. The name of the second river is Gihon; it flows around the whole land of Cush. The name of the third river is Tigris; it flows east of Assyria. And the fourth river is the Euphrates. (Genesis 2:8-14)

Garden of Eden?
The location of Eden has always been somewhat uncertain. However, the Bible describes four rivers, two of which (the Tigris and Euphrates) are in Mesopotamia. The other two rivers are unknown. However, the Bible describes the river Gihon as being associated with Cush, which is described as being near Egypt, and is usually associated with the land of Ethiopia. The other river (Pishon) is said to be in the land of Havila, which is described as being east of Egypt, toward Assyria,1 probably being on the Arabian peninsula. A tentative map of the area is shown to the right. If modern humans originated during the last ice age2 then the Persian Gulf would have been dry (due to sea levels at least 400 feet lower than present).3 So, it is entirely possible that the location of the Eden is currently under water.
Although it is possible that the garden of Eden was in Africa, it would have to be at the very boundary of potential locations. In addition, such a location would contradict the Genesis 2 narrative that says that God planted the garden "toward the east" (presumably east of Israel). Ethiopia is to the southwest. Therefore, Mesopotamia or the Persian Gulf matches the description of the biblical narrative the best.

Out of Africa?
Numerous scientific studies have proposed to have shown that a small group of individuals migrated out of eastern Africa and eventually expanded into most of today's populations.4 In reality, what the studies have shown is that African populations exhibit the most genetic diversity among all people groups. The theory is that once a population has been founded, the amount of genetic diversity increases over time. The theory is generally good, but does make some assumptions. One of the assumptions is that the populations have undergone little or no interbreeding with other populations. For Africa, the assumption is generally good, since Africa is geographically isolated from the rest of the world. The only route to get into Africa is through Suez. Likewise, for Native Americans, there was only one route - over the Aleutians near the end of an ice age, when sea levels were low and temperatures were beginning to moderate. However, for people groups in Mesopotamia and the Middle East, there was no geographic isolation. Being at the intersection of three continents, the Middle East has seen numerous people groups migrate through and back. So, it would be very unlikely that peoples of the Middle East would have the greatest genetic diversity of modern humans, even if humans originated there.
Two new studies, the result of the human genome project, examined the genetic diversity of over 1,000 individuals from 51 population groups all over the world.5, 6 As in previous studies, peoples of Africa were the most genetically diverse. However, these studies also determined that those from the Middle East were the second most genetically diverse. The authors of one study admitted that Middle Eastern population genetics was not just simple gene flow, saying, "The Middle Eastern populations may have experienced both continuous gene flow and shared ancestry with the rest of Eurasia."6 The authors of either study did not consider the possibility that humans originated in Mesopotamia, as the Bible says, since the out of Africa hypothesis is the current reigning paradigm. However, given the evidence of admixture in Middle Eastern populations and the fact that those populations are still the second most genetically diverse, it is entirely possible that modern humans originated in the Middle East, but lost much of their genetic diversity through subsequent migrations and replacement.

Conclusion
New genetic analysis of human population groups shows that peoples of the Middle East represent the second most genetically diverse group among world-wide populations. A hypothesis is proposed that modern humans originated in the garden of Eden, in or near Mesopotamia, through the direct creation of God, and subsequently migrated world-wide, first into Africa, then Asia and Europe, and eventually the Americas and Polynesia. Subsequent back migrations diluted the genetic diversity of this founder population, making them appear to be less ancient than the Africans. The hypothesis can potentially be tested by carefully examining more Middle Eastern populations in more detail to attempt to reconstruct the original founder population.

Source: http://www.godandscience.org/apologetics/humans_out_of_africa.html

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Related Pages
• Descent of Man Theory: Disproved by Molecular Biology
• New DNA Evidence Supports Multiregional Evolutionary Model?
• Origin of Mankind and the Races
• A Scientific and Biblical Response to "Up from the Apes. Remarkable New Evidence Is Filling in the Story of How We Became Human"
• Book Review: Who Was Adam?: A Creation Model Approach to the Origin of Man
• Whites Genetically Weaker Than Blacks, Study Finds
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Other Resources
Are humans just advanced apes or have they been specially created in the image of God? Publications by scientists almost never ask the question, whereas publications by theists seldom examine the scientific data that relates to the question. However, two scientists raised in non-Christian homes, Fuz Rana (Ph.D. in chemistry) and Hugh Ross (Ph.D. in astronomy), have written a new book (Who Was Adam?: A Creation Model Approach to the Origin of Man) that examines the question of human origins by comparing biblical and evolutionary models.
Reasons To Believe's third in a series of books proposing a testable creation model takes on the origin and design of the universe. Previous books, Origins of Life: Biblical and Evolutionary Models Face Off and Who Was Adam?: A Creation Model Approach to the Origin of Man, examined the origin of life on earth and the origin of mankind, respectively. Creation As Science develops a biblical creation model and compares the predictions of this model compared to a naturalistic model, young earth creationism, and theistic evolution. This biblical creation model is divided into four main areas, the origin of the universe, the origin of the Solar System, the history of life on earth, and the origin and history of mankind.

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References
1. They settled from Havilah to Shur which is east of Egypt as one goes toward Assyria; he settled in defiance of all his relatives. (Genesis 25:18)
2. The Bible itself states that the covenant and laws of God have been proclaimed to a "thousand generations," requiring a minimum of ~40,000 years:
"Know therefore that the LORD your God, He is God, the faithful God, who keeps His covenant and His lovingkindness to a thousandth generation with those who love Him and keep His commandments;" (Deuteronomy 7:9)
Remember His covenant forever, The word which He commanded to a thousand generations, (1 Chronicles 16:15)
He has remembered His covenant forever, The word which He commanded to a thousand generations, (Psalm 105:8)
See Descent of Mankind Theory: Disproved by Molecular Biology for information on the scientific data about the probable dates for the origin of modern humanity.
3. Rising Sea Levels from the University of Michigan.
4. Rosenberg, N. A. et al. 2002. Genetic Structure of Human Populations. Science 298: 2381-2385.
A. M. Bowcock et al. 1994. High resolution of human evolutionary trees with polymorphic microsatellites. Nature 368: 455-457.
S. Ramachandran et al. 2005. Support from the relationship of genetic and geographic distance in human populations for a serial founder effect originating in Africa. Proc. Natl. Acad. Sci. U.S.A. 102: 15942-15947.
Rosenberg, N. A. et al. 2005. Clines, Clusters, and the Effect of Study Design on the Inference of Human Population Structure. PLoS Genet. 1, e70.
5. Li, J. Z. et al. 2008. Worldwide Human Relationships Inferred from Genome-Wide Patterns of Variation. Science 319: 1100-1104.
6. Jakobsson, M. et al. 2008. Genotype, haplotype and copy-number variation in worldwide human populations. Nature 451: 998-1003.
file:///H:/TENTANG%20TAMAN%20EDEN/humans_out_of_africa.htmlhttp://www.godandscience.org/apologetics/humans_out_of_africa.html
Last updated February 15, 2009

The First River of Eden!

2010-09-08T09:33:00.000-07:00

While most people worry little about pebbles unless they're in their shoes, to geologists pebbles provide important, easily attained clues to an area's geologic composition and history. The pebbles of Kuwait offered Boston University scientist Farouk El-Baz his first humble clue to detecting a mighty river that once flowed across the now-desiccated Arabian Peninsula. Examining photos of the region taken by earth-orbiting satellites, El-Baz came to the startling conclusion that he had discovered one of the rivers of Eden -- the fabled Pishon River of Genesis 2 -- long thought to have been lost to mankind as a result of the destructive action of Noah's flood and the eroding winds of a vastly altered weather system. This article relates the fascinating details!

By John D. Keyser

In Genesis 2:10-14 we read: "Now a river went out of Eden to water the garden, and from there it parted and became FOUR RIVERHEADS. The name of the first is PISHON; it is the one which encompasses the whole land of HAVILAH, where there is gold. And the gold of that land is good. Bdellium and the onyx stone are there. The name of the second river is GIHON; it is the one which encompasses the whole land of Cush. The name of the third river is HIDDEKEL [TIGRIS]; it is the one which goes toward the east of Assyria. The fourth river is the EUPHRATES."

While two of the four rivers mentioned in this passage are recognizable today and flow in the same general location as they did before the Flood, the other two have apparently disappeared from the face of the earth.

Great changes occurred in the topography of the earth during the Noachian flood and also at other times in the earth's history since; so it is not that remarkable that some of the pre-Flood geographical features changed or disappeared altogether. As an example of this, scientists have found evidence of floods in Mesopotamia, deep lakes in Africa, grasslands and lakes in Arabia and heavy forest cover along the eastern Mediterranean coast. This provides testimony that a lengthy wet period once enveloped the ancient Near East.

Some researchers, such as Ernest L. Martin, claim that the Karun River (which flows into the Euphrates/Tigris river system) is the Pison, while the Karkheh, which also flows into the Euphrates/Tigris river system, is the Gihon. However, these two rivers are minor in nature and do not fulfill the requirements of the Book of Genesis.

In an attempt to correctly locate and identify the Pishon and the Gihon rivers, we need to closely evaluate Genesis chapter 2.

Garden in Armenia?
Since the Tigris and the Euphrates have their sources in the mountainous region of Armenia, it is usually assumed by theologians today that the Garden of Eden was located in that same area. Therefore, they claim, the Gihon could be the Araxes which flows into the Caspian Sea and the Pison could be the Cyrus which joins with the Araxes. Smith's Bible Dictionary states: "...most probably, Eden was situated in Armenia, near the origin of the rivers Tigris and Euphrates, and in which same region rise the Araxes (Pison of Genesis) and the Oxus (Gihon)" (page 155). Insight On the Scriptures (Watchtower Bible and Tract Society of New York, 1988, page 676) maintains that "the traditional location for the garden of Eden has long been suggested to have been a mountainous area some 225 Km (140 mi) SW of Mount Ararat and a few kilometers S of Lake Van, in the eastern part of modern Turkey." Also: "The Hebrew text points rather, to a location in the mountainous region N of the Mesopotamian plains, the area where the Euphrates and Tigris rivers have their present sources."

Now, is this feasible -- is this really so?

While all of this may appear quite reasonable to the average person, the geography is very confusing when this interpretation is applied -- and is actually unintelligible to our modern understanding of the topographical features in the region of Armenia. Notes Ernest L. Martin: "From what place and what manner did the one major river that supposedly fed the four other rivers have its source? Also, how can one river flowing downstream in a single riverbed (and in a mountainous area) logically be explained as branching off into four main rivers? Only in a delta region near the mouth of a river can one river become four (or more), but the sources of the Euphrates and Tigris today are in the mountains (separated by a mountain ridge) and so most commentators dismiss the idea of most biblical traditionalists as impossible in a geographical sense" (Solving the Riddle of Noah's Flood, pages 7-8).

Martin goes on to say: "In truth, the river system of Moses has such mysterious factors associated with it that most interpreters today throw up their hands and say: 'Only God knows what Moses meant because it doesn't make any sense to us.'"
Do these passages in Genesis have to be so baffling? Can we make sense of these apparent anomalies in the geography of Moses?

The River System of Eden

The main reason the account of the rivers of Eden is so difficult to understand is because the interpreters of the Bible have completely missed the point of what Moses was saying. Explains Ernest Martin, "In actual fact, they have been reading Moses COMPLETELY BACKWARDS from what he intended. If one looks closely at the matter, Moses was NOT speaking about a major river flowing downstream from some unknown source in the Land of Eden and then dividing into the rivers Euphrates, Tigris, Pison and the Gihon when it reached the region of the Garden. IN NO WAY! The geographical intention of Moses was directly OPPOSITE from what most people have thought. And this is where the problem has emerged. Moses actually commenced his geographical account of the river system STARTING AT THE PERSIAN GULF and proceeding northward. His direction of interest was UPSTREAM, not downstream!" (Ibid., page 8).

Martin goes on to explain that when the Bible talks about the Land of Eden, it is not referring to a small plot of land. It is, in fact, referring to a HUGE region comparable to Old Testament countries such as Assyria, Cush (Ethiopia), Egypt or Canaan! And it was inside this vast territory called Eden that YEHOVAH God planted the Garden -- which in itself was quite large. Martin notes that the Garden itself had to be spacious because four rivers could be traced from the Garden into adjacent geographical areas. These regions were NOT small insignificant parcels of land as most people imagine today.

Now let us take note of what Moses said in the Book of Genesis about the river system associated with the Land of Eden and the Garden. "He said that 'a river went out of Eden to water the Garden, and from there [from the garden] it divided and became into four heads' (Gen. 2:10). The use of the word 'heads' (Hebrew: rosh) in relation to the four rivers gives the impression to us in the western world that Moses is talking about the HEADstreams or HEADwaters of the four rivers -- their sources!"

However, this is NOT what Moses meant! In M'Clintock and Strong's Cyclopaedia (Vol. III, p. 53) we read: "In no instance is rosh (literally, 'head') applied as the SOURCE of a river." It is very important to understand this point because it is precisely THIS misconception that has given Bible interpreters the most difficulty in trying to comprehend the pre-flood river system as penned by Moses.
We must realize that in the first ages of the world in Middle Eastern society, THE HEAD OF A RIVER WAS AT ITS MOUTH -- NOT ITS SOURCE! Let Ernest Martin explain: "Where rivers came together, or a river intersected with a larger river, this juncture was called the HEAD of the river that joined the other. The word 'HEAD' did not describe the source (the beginning) of a river, but it signified a place where it intersected with another river or flowed into the ocean. And so it was with Moses. In his description of this river system, he was simply giving a geographical description of the HEAD (that is, the central 'hub') where the four rivers branched out from one another" (Solving the Riddle of Noah's Flood, pp. 10-11). In other words, MOSES' DIRECTION OF THINKING WAS UPSTREAM -- NOT DOWNSTREAM!

A number of scholars, including Professor R. K. Harrison, have understood this. He noted that "probably the most suitable answer concerning the actual location of the Garden of Eden is to think of the river that watered the garden and thereafter became four 'branches' as actually comprising the beginning or juncture GOING UPSTREAM from a point in southern Mesopotamia" (ISBE, new edition, vol. II, p. 17 -- emphasis mine).

The bottom line is that Moses understood the four rivers of Eden as coming together to form one river at the Garden -- NOT that one river separated to become four rivers! When we understand this concept clearly, then Moses' account becomes sensible. Moses is showing that the Land of Eden had its southern border at the HEAD OF THE PERSIAN GULF and that the Garden itself was located a few miles UPRIVER at the place where the four rivers came together. Explains Ernest Martin: "The actual river that 'went out of Eden' was the one that left the Garden (where the four rivers became the SOURCE of one major river) and then that one large river ENTERED THE PERSIAN GULF....This shows that Moses was describing his river system going UPSTREAM and the HEAD of the four rivers was where they separated from the one river to provide a vast watershed system that reached to their sources. What we of modern times call the MOUTH of a river, Moses called its HEAD" (Solving the Riddle of Noah's Flood, p.11).

The Ancient Records

When we get these geographical indications of Moses firmly in mind, it becomes quite easy to identify the location of the Land of Eden and the Garden. "Since we are told that the Euphrates and the Tigris were two of the four rivers that came together to form the SOURCE of the one large river that debouched into the Persian Gulf" reminds Ernest Martin, "then the Land of Eden had to have (as its southern boundary) the coastal region of the Persian Gulf" (ibid., p. 12).

The first extra-biblical evidence of the Garden of Eden was discovered by English archaeologist George Smith. When deciphering some Assyrian cuneiform tablets which contained, along with the usual lists of kings and their conquests (and digests of legal codes) several texts of purely literary character included descriptions of the Assyrian version of the Genesis garden. As Smith continued translating the hoard of clay tablets he had unearthed in the library of Assurbanipal at Nineveh, he soon realized that the Assyrian texts were based on an earlier non-biblical literary model; and that the idea of the Garden of Eden, even the word "eden" itself was originally Sumerian.

Funk & Wagnalls New Encyclopedia backs this up by stating that "the name Eden is probably connected with EDINN (the Sumerian name for THE PLAIN OF BABYLON), and the author of Genesis may have had in mind the verdant landscape of Mesopotamia" (vol. 8, pp. 311-312).

The Sumerian paradise was actually called TILMUN or DILMUN -- a happy land that was "pure, bright, and fair, where the lion does not make his kill nor the wolf carry off the sheep." The New Bible Dictionary (article, Eden) says that the tablets uncovered by Smith showed this area to be a pleasant place in which neither sickness nor death were known. Ernest Martin discloses that "it was called 'the land of the living' and the home of the immortals. THIS AREA WAS LOCATED NEAR THE HEAD OF THE PERSIAN GULF."

Researchers Calvin and Delitzsch have argued in favor of Eden's location somewhere NEAR THE HEAD of the Persian Gulf in Lower Mesopotamia (modern Iraq) -- approximately at the place where the Tigris and the Euphrates draw near together. One recent expedition has proposed the site of Hor, in Iraq, where the waters of the Tigris and the Euphrates meet in the marshy delta of the Shatt-al-Arab. This region is about four thousand square miles in area, which makes it about twice the size of the state of Delaware.

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 Moses in the book of Genesis said his four rivers came together to form the source of the one river that flowed into the Persian Gulf. Reiterates Ernest Martin: "All of this is easily determined if one realizes that Moses was giving directions about his river system GOING UPSTREAM, not DOWNSTREAM!"

An Amazing Discovery!

Boston University scientist Farouk El-Baz had long wondered about the pebbles of granite and basalt that are abundant throughout Kuwait. The problem was that these pebbles are not indigenous to the area. The nearest source for these rocks lies in the Hijaz Mountains -- 650 miles to the west in Saudi Arabia! How did the pebbles reach Kuwait? Intrigued by this puzzle El-Baz examined photos of the region taken by satellites orbiting the earth, and to his amazement easily detected a dried riverbed (known today as Wadi Al-Batin) cutting through the limestone of north-central Saudi Arabia. He noticed that the riverbed petered out as it reached the sand dunes of central Saudi Arabia.

The Biblical Archaeology Review (July/August 1996) relates that "when he extended the line of the river across the sand dunes...El-Baz noticed that the patterns of the desert's sand dunes changed precisely when they crossed this line. To the right (southeast), the dunes appear pockmarked, to the left (northeast) they are striated. Sand patterns like these are created by the circulation of the air in the desert, which in turn is influenced by the topography. Thus, El-Baz realized that something beneath the sand was the source of the variations in the sand. He determined that the river ran underground here, along a fault line" (p. 55).

For a long period of time after the recreation of Genesis 1, the river (in places 3 miles wide) dragged granite and basalt from the Hijaz mountains and dumped the pebbles along its fan-shaped delta, which covered two-thirds of modern Kuwait and part of southern Iraq. In memory of the pebble-strewn region that led him to the river-bed, El-Baz christened his discovery the Kuwait River.

Now the interesting thing is that this ancient river (which gradually dried up sometime after 3,500-2000 B.C.E.) fulfills all the requirements for one of the rivers of Eden! Notice what Genesis 2:11-12 says: "The name of the first [river] is Pishon; it is the one which ENCOMPASSES THE WHOLE LAND OF HAVILAH, WHERE THERE IS GOLD. And the gold of that land is good. BDELLIUM [FRAGRANT RESINS] and the onyx stone are there" (NKJV).

The Land of Havilah

An important key to determine WHERE the river Pishon ran is the phrase "the gold of that land is good." There is only one place in the area that has such a deposit -- the famous site of Mahd edh-Dhahab, the famous "Cradle of Gold." Located about 125 miles south of Medina in Saudi Arabia, huge fissures on the hillside are the remnants of ancient mining that took place as early as 1000 B.C. Adds the Biblical Archaeology Review, "Rediscovered in 1932 by American mining engineer Karl Twitchell, the mine currently produces more than 5 tons of gold a year" (July/August 1996, p. 57).

Another clue in Genesis 2:11-12 is the phrase "Bdellium and the onyx stone are there." The Arabian peninsula is RICH with bdellium and precious stones. In the Bible dictionary Insight On the Scriptures we find the following: "It [Bdellium gum] is obtained from a tree (commiphora africana) found in NW Africa and ARABIA..." (page 264).

Summing all this up the dictionary goes on to say: "The description of its [Havilah's] resources is considered by some to be TYPICALLY ARABIAN, and it is associated by some WITH A REGION IN ARABIA. On the basis of the Biblical reference to 'the entire land of Havilah,' J. Simons suggests that the term 'Havilah' may take in THE ENTIRE ARABIAN PENINSULA ..."

Further evidence that Havilah was a good portion of the Arabian peninsula is found in Genesis 25:18 and Exodus 15:22: "They dwelt from Havilah as far as SHUR, which is EAST OF EGYPT as you go toward Assyria," and "So Moses brought Israel from the Red Sea; then they went out into the WILDERNESS OF SHUR." In our articles Is Jebel Musa the Correct Mt. Sinai? and The Mountain of Moses, we show that the Israelites crossed the Gulf of Aqaba -- not the Gulf of Suez -- and that Mt. Sinai is located in the NW corner of modern-day Saudi Arabia (ancient Midian) -- not the Sinai peninsula. The text of Genesis 25:8 therefore shows that the nomadic Ishmaelites ranged from the land of Midian clear across northern Arabia and into Mesopotamia.
Notes the Insight On the Scriptures (page 1045): Similarly, when King Saul struck down the Amalekites 'from HAVILAH as far as Shur, which is in front of Egypt' (I Sam.15:7), it would appear that the expression 'from Havilah' points to a portion...of the Arabian Peninsula as representing one limit of the territory in which the Amalekites were centered, while the Wilderness of Shur [on the western coast of NW Arabia]...represented the other limit....Thus it would appear that it [Havilah] embraced AT LEAST the NW portion of the Arabian Peninsula and PERHAPS A MUCH LARGER AREA."

With the location of Havilah clearly delineated by the scriptural references and extra Biblical sources, there can be no doubt that the ancient river bed discovered by Farouk El-Baz from the satellite photographs is none other than that once used by the waters of the River Pishon that flowed through the Garden of Eden to the Persian Gulf.

At this time the Gihon river has not been satisfactorily identified and awaits the probing eye of another orbiting satellite.

Source: http://www.hope-of-israel.org/riveden.htm

Mencari Taman Eden di Tanah Papua

2007-08-13T21:43:00.000-07:00

Kisah Taman Eden ditulis dalam Kitab Kejadian pasal 1 dan 2. Sejarah ini ditulis oleh nabi Musa ketika Ia memimpin bangsa Israel dipadang gurun selama kurang lebih 40 tahun. Musa banyak mendapat pengetahuan dari seorang Malaikat yang diutus Tuhan selama perjalanannya menuju Tanah Perjanjian (Kel 33:2).

Ringkasnya, setelah Allah ‘menciptakan’[1] langit dan bumi selama ‘enam hari’, Allah membuat taman di Eden, disebelah timur. Didalam taman Eden Allah tempatkan manusia dan menumbuhkan berbagai-bagai pohon dari seluruh bumi, yang menarik dan yang baik dimakan buahnya; dan pohon kehidupan ditengah-tengah taman itu, serta pohon pengetahuan yang baik dan yang jahat (Kej 2:8-9). Tetapi akibat pelanggaran manusia pertama, maka Allah mengusir / mengembalikan manusia itu ketempat dimana ia dibentuk dari debu tanah. Kemudian Allah meletakkan beberapa kerub (malaikat Allah) dengan pedang yang bernyala-nyala dan menyambar-nyambar agar manusia tidak memetik buah dari pohon kehidupan (Kej 3:23-24).

Taman Eden itu hilang dan tidak tahu dimana keberadaannya karena ayat-ayat sebelum Kej 3:24, nabi Musa tidak menulis secara lengkap dimana tempat pembuatan manusia, siapa sebenarnya nama manusia itu, dimana disebelah timur itu dan dimana Allah meletakkan kerub dengan pedang yang menyala-nyala dan menyambar-nyambar. Sedangkan ayat-ayat setelah Allah mengusir manusia dari taman Eden, nabi Musa menulis dengan jelas siapa nama manusia itu, tempat dimana mereka hidup dan seterusnya. Apakah ini merupakan bagian dari rencana Allah untuk menyembunyikan taman Eden?

Banyak orang meyakini bahwa nama manusia yang dibentuk dari debu tanah pada Kej 2:7 adalah Adam dan termasuk Agus Miradi, penulis buku SIAPAKAH MANUSIA PERTAMA ITU mengatakan manusia pertama tersebut bernama Adam dan ia dibentuk dengan tanah liat disekitar wilayah Iraq[2]. Akan tetapi pernyataan ini tidak bisa dianggap benar dan masih perlu diteliti, sebab dalam Kej 2 dan 3, nabi Musa tidak menyebut nama Adam sebagai manusia yang dibentuk dengan tanah, tetapi hanya menulis ‘manusia itu’. Sementara nama Adam baru muncul setelah TUHAN Allah mengusir manusia itu dari taman Eden atau setelah peristiwa pembunuhan Habel oleh kakaknya Kain (Kej 4:25). Ada keraguan tentang nama manusia pertama, sehingga perlu diteliti lebih lanjut. Karena Alkitab sebagai buku yang diilhami Allah, tidak mungkin nabi Musa menempatkan kata secara sembarangan. Oleh karena itu pengertian ‘manusia itu’ tidak harus selalu disamakan dengan ‘Adam’ sebagai manusia pertama.

Pernyataan ini didukung oleh banyak ahli, termasuk kaum Sufi asal Persia. Mereka berpendapat, Adam bukan manusia pertama dan masih ada Adam-Adam lain yang sudah diciptakan jauh sebelum itu, yaitu termasuk diantaranya manusia purba sebagaimana yang diyakini Agus Miradi diatas. Sebut saja Muhyiddin Ibnu Arabi, seorang sufi besar pernah mengatakan bahwa ada sabda Rasulullah yang antara lain mengatakan ‘Allah telah menjadikan tidak kurang dari seratus ribu Adam’ (Futuhat Makkiya, II, hal. 607)[3]. Oleh karena itu kemungkinan besar Adam yang dimaksud Alkitab dan Alquran selama ini adalah moyangnya bangsa Israel yang ditulis oleh Nabi Musa. Sementara nama sebenarnya dari manusia pertama yang ditempatkan dalam taman Eden menjadi misterius sejalan dengan hilangnya taman Eden.

Selain kurang jelasnya nama manusia pertama yang memiliki roh itu, Alkitab juga tidak menjelaskan dimana letak taman Eden disebelah timur itu (Kej 2:8-9). Apakah disekitar sungai Pison yang mengalir ke seluruh daerah Hawila atau disekitar sungai Gihon yang mengelilingi tanah Kusy, atau sungai Tigris yang mengalir kesebelah timur Asyur dan atau dipinggiran sungai Efrat – ataukah didaerah timur lain di dunia?

Penyelidikan akhir-akhir ini telah membuktikan bahwa taman Eden itu terletak di Babil, Iraq atau Assyria (Enc. Brit. Pada “Ur”). Tetapi pertanyaannya adalah, apakah disekitar Iraq orang pernah mengatakan atau paling tidak membuktikan bahwa inilah pohon kehidupan yang disembunyikan oleh Allah dan dijaga oleh kerub yang bernyala-nyala dan menyambar-nyambar untuk menjaga jalan ke Taman Eden? Ataukah dalam sejarah Persia, orang pernah membuktikan bahwa inilah ‘pairidaeza’ (taman berpagar) dari Persia kuno atau ‘Hadiqah al-Haqiqah’ (Taman Kebenaran Berdinding) seperti yang dimaksud pujangga sufi terbesar Persia, Abu Al-Majd Majdud Ibn Adam Sana’i[4] dalam karya mistis yang paling terkenal itu? Jawabannya, tidak ada. Para ahli – walaupun pernah meneliti akan hal itu, namun tidak ada jawaban pasti yang hampir sama dengan kisah Taman Eden dalam Alkitab.

Taman Firdaus yang hilang itu perlu diteliti di Papua, daerah dimana burung Cendrawasih berada. Sebab salah satu pengertian dari ‘pairidaeza’ dari bahasa Persia kuno yang kemudian dalam kata Inggris menjadi ‘paradise’ adalah Cendrawasih.

Catatan Kaki:

[1] Maksud "penciptaan" di sini mengandung arti yaitu dari segala sesuatu yang tidak ada menjadi ada, dari yang hampa menjadi nyata (creatio ex nihilo), yaitu segala sesuatu yang dikerjakan Allah selama enam hari. Sedangkan setalah enam hari penciptaan, Allah tidak menciptakan tetapi "membuat/membentuk" segala sesuatunya dari bahan yang sudah ada.
[2] Agus Miradi, SIAPAKAH MANUSIA PERTAMA ITU, Yayasan Tunas Daud, 2000, hlm.82.
[3] Baca juga pandangan H. Miftahuzjaman Aneka dalam MISTERI, Edisi 05-19 Desember 2001 hlm. 86 dalam judul ‘ADAM BUKAN MANUSIA PERTAMA CIPTAAN ALLAH’.
[4] Lihat Hamid Dabasyi, KONDISI HISTORIS SUFISME PERSIA SELAMA PERIODE SELJUK, hlm. 212-213 dan de Bruijn, CATATAN KOMPARATIF TENTANG SANA’I DAN ATTAR, hlm. 434 dalam BUKU PERTAMA, WARISAN SUFI, penerbit Pustaka Sufi, Juni 2002.

Taman Eden Menurut Kamus Ensiklopedi Alkitab Masa Kini

2007-07-30T06:06:00.000-07:00

PENGERTIAN EDEN

Didalam Ensiklopedi Alkitab Masa Kini[1], Eden adalah lahan yang disediakan Allah bagi Adam untuk tempat tinggalnya. Dari tempat inilah Adam dan Hawa diusir sesudah mereka berbuat dosa.

1. Nama Eden

Naskah Masora mengungkapkan bahwa Allah membuat taman di Eden (gan-be’èden; Kej 2:8), yang mengisyaratkan bahwa taman ini tidaklah melingkupi tanah (daerah) yang sama dengan Eden, tapi harus termasuk dalam lingkungan daerah Eden. Para pengulas LXX dan Vulgata dan pengulas yang kemudian memberi catatan bahwa bagi seorang yang berbahasa Ibrani, nama ‘èden mengacu kearah arti dasar yang sama bunyinya ‘kesenangan hati’ atau ‘menyenangkan hati’. Tetapi banyak ahli sekarang berpendapat bahwa Eden bukanlah nama diri, melainkan kata benda biasa yang berasal dari kata Sumer edin, artinya ‘dataran’ ‘padang tandus’, yang dipinjam, atau langsung dari bahasa Sumer, atau melalui bahasa Akad (edinu); jadi taman itu terletak di suatu dataran. Dari letaknya taman itu di Eden, maka namanya disebut Taman Eden (gan-‘èden); juga ‘Taman Allah’ (gan-elohim; Yeh 28:13,31;9) dan ‘Taman Tuhan’ (gan-YHWH; Yes 51;3). Dalam Kej 2:8 dab dipakai kata gan, artinya ‘taman’, dan dalam Yes 51:3 ‘èden sendiri, dan LXX menerjemahkan paradeisos, dan kata ini nampaknya pinjaman dari bahasa Persia kuno (bh Avesta) pairidaeza, artinya ‘yg berpagar’, yang kemudian mendapat arti ‘taman, halaman kesukaan’, dan dari pemakaian inilah berasal kata Inggris, ‘paradise’ untuk Taman Eden.

2. Sungai-sungai

Suatu sungai mengalir dari Eden, atau dari dataran itu dan mengairi taman itu. Di sana sungai itu terbagi menjadi empat cabang (ra’syim, Kej 2:10; jamak dari ro’sy). Kata ro’sy artinya ‘kepala, puncak, permulaan’. Berbagai tafsiran atas kata itu diberikan oleh para ahli dengan pengertian, baik berupa permulaan dari suatu cabang, seperti peta delta, mengikuti arah hilir, atau permulaan maupun titik pergabungan sebuah sungai dengan anak sungainya menuju arah hulu. Tiap penafsiran itu mungkin saja, tapi yang terakhirlah nampaknya yang paling mungkin. Nama keempat sungai itu, yang jelas berada diluar Taman Eden, ialah pisyon (Kej 2:11), gikhon (2:13), khiddeqel (2:14) dan perat (2:14). Kedua sungai yang terakhir disepakati sebagai Tigris dan Efrat. Tapi tentang yang mana sungai Pison dan Gihon, banyak sungai yang sudah dikemukakan, diantaranya sungai Nil dan Indus, juga anak-anak sungai Tigris di Mesopotamia. Data yang tersedia tidak memadai untuk memungkinkan penjabaran mana sungai yang pasti bagi kedua sungai itu.
Kej 2:6 mengatakan bahwa ‘ada kabut (‘èv) naik ke atas dari bumi, dan membasahi seluruh permukaan bumi itu’. Adalah kemungkinan bahwa ‘èv adalah sama dengan kata akad edu, kata pinjaman dari kata Sumer id, artinya ‘sungai’, yang merujuk kepada sebuah sungai yang mengalir atau menggenangi tanah itu dan menyediakan pengairan alam. Agaknya dapat diterima akal untuk memahaminya terkait dengan bagian dalam dari Taman Eden.

3. Isi taman itu

Tentu ucapan dalam Kej 2:5-6 dapat diterima sebagai mengacu kepada apa yang kemudian terjadi di dalam taman itu. Maka dapatlah dipradalilkan bahwa tersedia suatu lahan berupa tanah yang baik untuk ditanami (sadeh, ‘padang’) oleh Adam. Di tanah ini harus ditanam tanam-tanaman (TBI semak = siakh) dan tumbuh-tumbuhan (‘èsev) barangkali yang dimaksud secara berurutan ialah semak-semak dan padi-padian. Ada juga pepohonan dari segala macam, baik yang indah-indah maupun aneka macam pohon buah-buahan (Kej 2:9) dan ditengah-tengah taman itu ada dua pohon istimewa yaitu pohon kehidupan – jika buah pohon ini dimakan, maka manusia itu hidup untuk selamanya (Kej 3:22) dan pohon pengetahuan tentang yang baik dan yang jahat – buah pohon ini secara khusus dilarang dimakan (Kej 2:17, 3:3).
Sudah banyak pandangan yang dikemukakan mengenai arti ‘pengetahuan tentang yang baik dan yang jahat’ ini. Satu dari pandangan yang paling umum mengartikannya sebagai pengetahuan tentang yang benar dan yang salah. Tapi sukar untuk membayangkan Adam belum mempunyai kualitas untuk itu, dan jika belum mempunyainya, mengapa dia dilarang untuk memperolehnya? Orang lain menghubungkan dengan pengetahuan duniawi, yang didapati manusia pada usia akil balik, yang dapat dipakai ke arah yang baik dan arah yang jahat. Pandangan lain menerima ungkapan ‘yang baik dan yang jahat sebagai contoh dari bahasa kiasan, dimana sepasang kata mengartikan keseluruhan, justru berarti ‘setiap hal’ dan dalam kait naskah ini berarti segala pengetahuan. Yang menentang ini ialah kenyataan bahwa Adam sesudah memakan buah dari pohon itu, tidak memperoleh segala pengetahuan. Suatu pandangan lain melihat ini melulu pohon biasa, yang dikhususkan Allah untuk menjadi kajian, yang dikhususkan Allah untuk menjadi ujian susila bagi manusia, yang dikhususkan Allah untuk menjadi ujian susila bagi manusia, yang ‘akan memperoleh pengetahuan tentang yang baik dan yang jahat melalui pengalaman yang selaras dengan hal, apakah dia tetap taat, atau jatuh dalam kemurtadan’ (TAMK 1, hlm 85 dst). Ada juga binatang-binatang dalam taman itu, ternak (behema), dan binatang-binatang hutan (Kej 2:19,20); barangkali yang dimaksud mungkin adalah binatang-binatang jinak. Burung-burung juga ada di sana.

4. Daerah sekitar taman

Ada tiga daerah disebut terkait dengan keempat sungai itu. Tigris dikatakan mengalir disebelah timur Asyur’ (qidmat asysyur, harfiah ‘di hadapan asysyur’; Kej 2:14), yaitu suatu ungkapan yang bisa berarti ‘di antara asysyur dengan si pengamat’. Nama ‘asysyur dapat menunjuk kepada Negara Asyur, yang pertama kalinya timbul pada awal milenium 2 sM, atau kota Asyur, yaitu Qal’at Syarqat modern di tepi barat Sungai Tigris, ibu kota pertama dari Asyur, yang sedang berkembang pada awal milenium 3 sM. Kendati skala luas kota yang sekecil-kecilpun, kota Asyur mungkin sekali terletak pada kedua tepi Sungai Tigris maka mungkin kota itulah yang dimaksud dan bahwa ungkapan sungai Tigris ada di sebelah timur Asyur adalah tepat.
Kedua, sungai Gihon dikatakan mengalir mengelilingi savav, ‘seluruh tanah Kusy’ (kusy, Kej 2:13). Kusy dalam alkitab biasanya mengartikan Etiopia dan umumnya diterima dalam bagian ini mempunyai makna itu. Tapi ada suatu daerah di sebelah Tigris, yang menjadi daerah asal orang Kas pada milenium 2, yang mempunyai nama itu juga, dan inilah arti yang mungkin berlaku dalam bagian ini.
Ketiga, sungai Pison dikatakan (lihat diatas) mengalir mengelilingi seluruh tanah Hawila (Kej 2:11). Ada disebut beberapa hasil dari tempat ini, yaitu: emas, damar bedolah dan batu krisopras (Kej 2:11-12); yang terakhir ini artinya kurang pasti. Karena damar bedolah biasanya dianggap mengartikan semacam damar yang harum baunya, suatu hasil khas dari tanah Arab, dan pemakaian dua kali lagi nama Hawila dalam Alkitab menunjuk kepada bagian-bagian tanah Arab juga, maka paling kerab damar bedolah itu diterima dalam kait naskah ini juga menunjuk kepada sebagian jazirah Arab.

5. Letak taman Eden

Teori-teori mengenai letak taman Eden sudah banyak dikemukakan. Pandangan yang paling umum dipegang, oleh Calvin umpamanya, dan pada masa-masa terakhir ini oleh Friedrich Delitzsch dan yang lain-lain, ialah pandangan bahwa taman itu terletak di suatu tempat di Mesopotamia selatan. Maka Pison dan Gihon merupakan, atau, sungai galian yang menghubungkan Tigris dan Efrat, yang merupakan anak-anak sungai yang menghubungkan keduanya, atau dalam teori lain, Pison merupakan badan sungai dari Teluk Persia ke Laut Merah, yang mengelilingi jazirah Arab. Teori-teori ini mempradalilkan bahwa keempat ‘rosy’ dalam Kej 2:10 adalah anak-anak sungai yang bersatu dalam satu aliran utama, yang kemudian bermuara di Teluk Persia. Tapi kelompok teori lain mengambil ‘rosy’ menunjuk kepada anak-anak sungai yang bercabang dari suatu sumber umum asli yang mempradalilkan dan berusaha menentukan tempat taman itu di daerah Armenia, yang dari situ bersumber kedua sungai Tigris dan Efrat. Lalu kedua sungai Pison dan Gihon dijabarkan dengan beberapa sungai kecil di Armenia dan Trans-Kaukasia, dan dalam beberapa teori dengan pengertian yang diperluas, sambil mempradalilkan bahwa penulis Kej tidak tahu tempat taman itu yang pasti secara geografis, dijabarkan dengan sungai-sungai lain seperti Indus dan bahkan Gangga.
Ungkapan ‘di Eden, di sebelah timur’ (Kej 2:8), harfiah ‘di Eden, dihadapan muka’, artinya bisa, atau, taman itu ada di bagian timur Taman Eden, atau Taman Eden ialah di sebelah timur dari titik pandang si pencerita, dan ada pengulas yang membaca bagian ini begini, ‘di Eden pada jaman purba’, tapi entah yang mana pun yang tepat, karena alpanya kepastian arti dari petunjuk-petunjuk lain mengenai tempat itu, keterangan yang diberikan ini tak dapat mengurangi kegelapan pengertian ini.
Jika memang air bah meliputi seluruh dunia seperti diisyaratkan oleh berita Alkitab, maka ciri-ciri geografis yang akan membantu dalam penjabaran tempat letak Eden harus sudah berubah. Maka mengingat adanya kemungkinan itu, tempat letaknya Eden tetap tidak diketahui.

6. Dilmun

Di antara naskah-naskah sastra Sumer yang ditemukan 50 tahun yang lalu di Nippur di selatan Babel, ada sebuah naskah yang memberi keterangan tentang Dilmum, sebuah tempat yang menyenangkan; di sana tidak dikenal penyakit ataupun maut. Mula-mula di sana tidak ada air jernih, tapi Engki, dewa air, memerintahkan kepada dewa matahari supaya menangani hal ini, dan sesudah itu dilakukan, terjadilah berbagai peristiwa, dan didalam perkembangan ini nama dewi Ninti ada disebut. Di kemudian hari orang Babel menyerap nama itu dan gagasan Dilmun, dan menyebut tempat ini ‘negeri orang hidup’, di kampung halaman dari orang yang tak dapat mati. Ada kelihatan beberapa persamaan pikiran Sumer tetang Firdaus dengan Taman Eden yang ada dalam Alkitab, sehingga beberapa ahli menyimpulkan bahwa berita Firdaus yang ada di Sumer. Tapi keterangan yang sama-sama mungkin ialah, kedua berita itu mengacu kepada suatu tempat yang nyata, dan naskah Sumer telah mengutip mitos guna melengkapinya dalam perkembangan selanjutnya.

PENGERTIAN FIRDAUS

Ensiklopedi Alkitab Masa Kini menulis, Firdaus adalah kata pinjaman dari bahasa Persia kuno (pairidaeza-) yang berarti taman yang dikelilingi tembok. Kata Yunani paradeisos pertama sekali dipakai oleh Xenofon untuk taman dari raja-raja Persia. LXX menerjemahkan gan ‘eden yang dalam Kej 2:8 dengan paradeisos.

1. Dalam Perjanjian Lama

Kata Ibrani Pardes diterjemahkan ‘taman’ atau ‘kebun’ dalam tiga ayat Alkitab (Neh 2:8; Pkh 2:5; Kid 4:13), jadi tidak pernah dipakai dimanapun dalam PL dalam pengertian eskatologi, seperti yang lambat laun berkembang dalam dunia Yahudi di kemudian hari. Pikiran-pikiran berikut dapat dilihat. Kata Firdaus (Aram pardesa’) dipakai untuk mengungkapkan pengertian jaman purba (bh Jerman Urzeit), lalu diperluas untuk mengandung khayalan yang tinggi-tinggi mengenai kemuliaan dan berkat dari jaman itu. Hal ini dihubungkan dengan pengharapan akan jaman Mesias di masa datang. Keadaan jaman kemuliaan yang akan datang ini akan sama dengan keadaan taman Eden pada permulaan jaman. Orang Yahudi percaya juga bahwa Firdaus ada pada jaman mereka. Firdaus yang tersembunyi inilah tempat ke mana dibawa jiwa Bapak-bapak leluhur, orang-orang pilihan dan orang-orang benar. Firdaus kuno, firdaus yang akan datang dan firdaus sekarang dipandang sebagai satu.

2. Dalam Perjanjian Baru

Kata Yunani paradeisos terdapat hanya tiga kali dalam Perjanjian Baru (Luk 23:43; 2 Kor 12:4; Why 2:7). Ayat-ayat sekitarnya menunjukan bahwa pengertiannya adalah mengenai perkembangan yang terakhir. Dalam Lukas 23:43 Yesus menggunakan kata ‘firdaus’ untuk menunjukan tempat jiwa segera sesudah seseorang mati; bnd firdaus yang tersembunyi dalam pikiran terakhir masyarakat Yahudi. Pikiran yang sama terdapat juga dalam perumpamaan tentang orang kaya dan Lazarus (Luk 16:19-31).
Dalam 2 Kor 12:2-4 Paulus menulis tentang pengalamannya yang diangkat ke Firdaus; disitu didengarnya kata-kata yang tak dapat diucapkan manusia (Yunani arrhêta rhêmata). Dalam hal ini Firdaus sama dengan sorga dengan kemuliannya, mungkin sama seperti dalam Lukas 23. Tempat yang satu-satunya membicarakan Firdaus dalam pengertian eskatologis ialah Why 2:7. Di sini Yesus menjanjikan akan memberikan Firdaus sebagai karunia kepada siapa yang menang. Firdaus yang sekarang akan nyata dalam kemuliannya yang sepenuhnya dengan penggenapan yang terakhir. Pikiran mengenai adanya taman Allah di dunia yang akan datang mendapat tekanan yang kuat dalam pasal-pasal terakhir Why. Lambang dari pohon kehidupan, air kehidupan dan buah yang datang 12 kali setahun merupakan kesaksian tentang kemuliaan Firdaus yang akan datang (Why 22).

3. Dalam Kamus lain

Kamus Alkitab terbitan Lembaga Alkitab Indonesia[2] menulis, firdaus adalah keadaan semula dimana Allah langsung hadir pada manusia (Kej 2-3). Dalam perjanjian baru, firdaus dipakai sebagai nama lain (bahasa Persia) untuk Surga, tempat kemuliaan orang-orang yang telah meninggal (Luk 23:43, II Kor 12:14, Why 2:7). Sedangkan kamus bahasa Inggris Indonesia – Indonesia Inggris[3], Firdaus diartikan paradise (dalam bahasa Inggris), sebaliknya Paradise diartikan Sorga dan Cendrawasih. Sorga adalah tempat kemuliaan orang-orang beriman dan burung Cendrawasih adalah salah satu jenis burung yang hanya terdapat di Papua.
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Pertanyaannya adalah mengapa kata pairidaeza dari bahasa Persia kuno itu diartikan taman berpagar atau taman yang dikelilingi tembok dan mengapa dari pemakaian ini berasal kata Inggris ‘paradise’ untuk Sorga dan Cendrawasih? Mengapa para ahli tidak pernah meneliti mengapa disebut ‘taman bertembok’ (pairidaeza) dari Persia Kuno dan dimanakah taman bertembok itu?
Apakah firdaus bertembok atau berpagar itu terjadi di pulau yang berbentuk burung Cendrawasih atau daerah dimana burung Cendrawasih berada? Tidak ada ulasan genealogis antara cerita Taman Eden di Alkitab, pairidaeza dari Persia, Paradise dari Inggris dengan burung Cendrawasih yang ada di Papua.

Tanah Papua berbentuk burung Cendrawasih.

Apakah tanah Papua adalah Taman Eden yang hilang?

Catatan Kaki:

[1] Ensiklopedi Alkitab Masa Kini Jilid 1 A – L hlm 264-266, dengan sumber pustaka, S. R Driver, The Book of Genesis, 1911, hlm 57-60; J Skinner, Genesis2, ICC, 1930, hlm 62-66; W.F Albright, ‘The Location of the Garden of Eden’, AJLS, 39.1922, hlm 15-31; E.A Speiser, ‘The Rivers of Paradise’. Festschrift Johannes Friedrich, 1959, hlm 473-485; M.G Kline, Because It Had Not Rained’, WTJ, 20, 1957-1958, hlm 146 dab, unutk VI, S.N Kramer, History Begins at Sumer, 1956, hlm 193-199; N.M Sarna, Understanding Genesis, 1966, hlm 23-28.
[2] Kamus Alkitab terbitan Lembaga Alkitab Indonesia, Jakarta 1995 halaman 342.
[3] Kamus Inggris Indonesia-Indonesia Inggris, (Surabaya : ARKOLA, 1996).

Mencari Dunia Yang Hilang

2007-06-29T06:26:00.000-07:00

Tahukah anda sebuah novel yang berjudul "The Lost World" atau Dunia Yang Hilang, cerita ekspedisi karangan penulis detektif Sir Arthur Conan Doyle Inggris. Novel itu menceritakan sebuah regu penjelajah dengan tidak disangka memasuki suatu dunia yang tingkat evolusinya masih berada pada masa ratusan juta tahun silam. Belum lama berselang, suatu tim survei yang terdiri dari penjelajah Amerika, Indonesia dan Australia mengadakan peninjauan di sebagian daerah pegunungan Foja Propinsi Papua Indonesia. Di sana mereka menemukan suatu tempat ajaib yang mereka namakan "dunia yang hilang",dan "Taman Firdaus di bumi", dengan menyaksikan puluhan jenis burung, kupu-kupu, katak dan tumbuhan yang belum pernah tercatat dalam sejarah.

Lebih lengkap, dapat di baca di:

http://indonesian.cri.cn/1/2006/06/14/1@44751.htm

Taman Eden Menurut Wikipedia Indonesia

2007-06-29T05:32:00.000-07:00

Hingga detik ini, para ahli belum menemukan di mana keberadaan Taman Eden, tempat di mana Tuhan Allah pertama kali menempatkan manusia, Adam dan Hawa. Tempat itu menjadi misterius, entah di mana. Oleh kaum Sufi dari Persia, taman itu disebut Hadiqah al-Haqiqah – Taman Kebenaran Berdinding. Taman itu sudah dicari sampai ke pelosok bumi, tetapi hingga kini, tidak ada yang berani mengungkap taman yang ditulis Nabi Musa tersebut.

Data yang saya kumpulkan, Taman Eden, dari bahasa Ibrani Gan Eden, adalah sebuah tempat yang diceritakan dalam Kejadian 2 dan 3; bagian dari agama Abrahamik. Cerita Taman Eden mengisahkan tentang bagaimana Tuhan menciptakan Adam dan Hawa, memerintahkan mereka untuk tidak memakan buah dari Pohon Pengetahuan tentang Yang Baik dan Yang Jahat, dan bagaimana mereka dikeluarkan dari taman tersebut setelah melanggar perintah-Nya, karena tergoda oleh ular, dan memakan buah dari pohon Pengetahuan tersebut. Sebagai bagian dari pengusiran tersebut, kerubim (malaikat-malaikat kecil) dan sebuah pedang berapi dipasang di depan taman tersebut, untuk mencegah manusia kembali dan memakan dari Pohon Kehidupan.

Orang Kristen biasanya menghubungkan ular dengan Iblis, meskipun hal tersebut tidak dinyatakan secara eksplisit. Namun, sebuah sekte Kristen gnostik, dikenal sebagai Ofit, menyembah ular tersebut sebagai pahlawan yang mencoba untuk "impart" gnosis, dan mengatakan Tuhan adalah jahat mencoba untuk mengurung mereka di dalam penciptaan demi-urge.

Dalam cerita taman tersebut terletak di Eden, dan oleh karena itu "Eden" menandakan sebuah wilayah yang lebih besar yang merupakan tempat dari taman itu dan bukan nama taman tersebut. Dan oleh karena itu taman tersebut terletak di Eden.

Untuk penghubungan antara Taman Eden dengan firdaus (taman sorgawi dalam agama Timur-Tengah), lihat bawah.

Eden seperti digambarkand alam The Garden of Earthly Delights mencakup banyak binatang Afrika yang eksotis.

Kitab Kejadian tidak memuat banyak informasi tentang taman itu sendiri. Di taman ini terdapat Pohon Kehidupan dan Pohon Pengetahuan tentang Yang Baik dan Yang Jahat, serta berlimpah tanaman lainnya yang dapat menjadi sumber makanan bagi Adam dan Hawa.

"Sebuah sungai mengalir keluar dari Eden untuk mengairi taman itu, dan di situ sungai itu bercabang menjadi empat sungai".

Teks ini menegaskan bahwa di dalam Taman itu sungai itu terbagi menjadi empat cabang: Tigris, Eufrat, Pison dan Gihon. Identitas kedua sungai yang terakhir telah menjadi bahan argumen yang tidak ada habisnya, tetapi bila Taman Eden memang benar-benar dekat sumber-sumber sungai Tigris dan Eufrat, maka pencerita asli di Tanah Kanaan mestinya telah mengidentifikasikan lokasinya di sekitar Pegunungan Taurus.

Dalam buku karya Isaac Asimov, Asimov's Guide to the Bible, ia membuat catatan bahwa kita harus "Memperhatikan bahwa bukan taman itu sendiri yang disebut Eden. Orang tidak dapat berbicara tentang 'Eden' seolah-olah kata itu sinonim dengan Taman tersebut, seperti halnya orang tidak dapat berbicara tentang 'California' seolah-olah kata itu sinonim dengan Taman Yosemite."

Lokasi alternatif
Bila lokasi dari para pencerita asli kisah ini diabaikan, maka telah ada sejumlah klaim tentang lokasi geografis sesungguhnya dari Taman Eden, meskipun tak satupun di antaranya ada hubungannya dengan Timur Tengah dekat Mesopotamia. Lokasi yang jauh hingga di Ethiopia, Jawa, Seychelles, Brabant, dan Bristol, Florida - semuanya telah diusulkan sebagai lokasi Taman ini. Banyak teolog Kristen percaya bahwa Taman ini tidak pernah ada di muka bumi, melainkan berada di dekat surga sehingga ia diidentikkan dengan Firdaus (lihat bawah).

Yang lainnya menunjuk bahwa dunia di masa Eden telah dihancurkan dalam banjir besar di masa Nuh dan karena itu tidak mungkin untuk melokalisir Taman itu di manapun juga dalam geografi pasca-banjir. Ada pula usaha untuk menghubungkannya dengan tanah mistis yang tenggelam di Atlantis. Sebuah lokasi favorit adalah Sundaland yang kini menjadi Laut Tiongkok Selatan. Dalam kasus ini, sungai Tigris dan Eufrat bukanlah sungai yang dirujuk dalam kisah ini, melainkan sungai-sungai yang di kemudian hari yang diberi nama sesuai dengan sungai-sungai yang telah ada sebelumnya, sama seperti di masa modern ketika para kolonis menamai daerah baru mereka sesuai dengan ciri-ciri yang serupa di tanah asal mereka. Gagasan ini ini juga memecahkan masalah yang ada bahwa Alkitab menggambarkan sungai-sungai itu mempunyai sumber yang sama, sementara sungai-sungai Tigris dan Eufrat yang sekarang tidak memilikinya.

Sebuah klaim mutakhir oleh arkeolog David Rohl menempatkan taman ini di timur laut Iran. Menurutnya, Taman ini adalah sebuah lembah sungai di sebelah timur Gunung Sahand, dekat Tabriz. Ia mengutip sejumlah kesamaan geologis dengan deskripsi Alkitab dan berbagai paralel linguistik sebagai buktinya.

Dilmun
Beberapa sejarahwan yang bekerja di dalam lingkup cakrawala budaya Sumeria paling selatan, di mana terdapat sumber paling awal yang masih ada tentang legenda ini, menunjuk kepada sebuah pusat perdagangan dari Zaman Perunggu di pulau Dilmun (kini Bahrain) di Teluk Persia, menggambarkannya sebagai 'tempat terbitnya matahari' dan 'Negeri Orang-orang yang Hidup'. Setting mitos penciptaan Sumeria, Enûma Elish, jelas mempunyai kesejajaran dengan kisah-kisan Kejadian. Setelah kemerosotannya, dimulai paa sekitar 1500 SM, Dilmun mengembangkan reputasinya sebagai sebuah taman kesempurnaan eksotis yang telah lama lenyap, dan hal ini tampaknya telah mempengaruhi cerita Taman Eden. Dalam proses kebalikannya, para penafsir yang berpikiran harafiah kadang-kadang telah berusaha menciptakan sebuah taman yang mirip Eden di pusat perdagangan di Dilmun.

Orang-orang Sumeria pertama hidup di dataran yang kini dikenal sebagai Irak selatan. Kata bahasa Sumeria untuk dataran adalah "edin", dan kemungkinan sekali nama "Eden" berasal dari kata ini.

Eden sebagai Firdaus
Kata firdaus yang dijadikan sinonim oleh orang Kristen dengan Taman Eden adalah sebuah kata Persia, yang menjelaskan sebuah taman buah-buahan yang bertembok atau sebuah taman berburu tertutup. Kata ini muncul tiga kali dalam Perjanjian Lama, jelas tidak dalam hubungan dengan Eden: dalam Kidung Agung 4:13; Kitab Pengkhotbah 3:5; Nehemia 2:8.

Dalam Islam Taman Eden disebut Surga 'Adnin atau Jannatul 'Adnin. Istilah "Eden" dalam bahasa Ibrani kemungkinan berasal dari kata bahasa Akkadia edinu yang diambil dari kata bahasa Sumeria E.DIN.
Dimana kah Taman Eden itu? Apakah di sekitar Samudra Pasifik? Masih misterius. Taman itu akan terungkap bila waktunya tiba.