Was the real Jewish Garden of Eden located in Jerusalem?

[Greatest I am]

Not sure. I never thought it was.

Did you find those links compelling?

I understand if you did not view them.

Regards
DL

 

[Greatest I am]

I would think not.

Personally, I believe that there never was a literal Eden. The whole story is a parable, an allegory. Not meant to be taken literally.

But if it were based on a real place, I doubt it would be Jerusalem, since two of the rivers that are described as bounding Eden are the Euphrates and the Tigris, neither of which is anywhere near Jerusalem, or Israel at all.

This last is true but you forget the Gihon that pops up in Jerusalem.

I agree that the biblical Eden was not a real place. As those clips show, Eden would have been a Garden of Delight within a palace complex and for Jews, their palace was in Jerusalem.

I think that most of the city states competed against each other for the best garden as it showed power and wealth.

If you can see it that way it becomes a more persuasive possibility.

Regards
DL

 

[Greatest I am]

This is what I'm looking at: Genesis 2:10...

"And a river went out of Eden to water the garden; and from thence it was parted, and became into four heads."

Then it goes on about Pison, Gihon, Hiddekel, and Euphrates.

What do those names mean? Is it possible the rivers in the middle east are named after the legend of Eden?

A chicken and egg question that I do not think we can answer this far up the time line.

Dr. Francesca Stavrakopoulou thinks the Gihon popping up in Jerusalem is the clincher for the location.

Knowing that the kings of the city states likely competed for the best Gardens of Delight indicate that something should have been in Jerusalem.

Regards
DL

 

[Greatest I am]

That was very interesting - thanks.

I was happy to hear someone else say the Holy Mountain Eden in Eze28 was an actual place, not the mythic Eden.

I was also happy to see them show that the Jewish Temple comes from a Goddess Temple design, - as the Hebrew originally had a Goddess, - and I have posted the verses where they say they were better of when they worshiped the Goddess.

*

Interesting.

Could you give that information here too please?

I have heard of Asherah but never of actual Goddess worship.

Regards
DL

 

[Greatest I am]

What does "real Garden of Eden" mean? It's a mythical place. It's also geographically impossible if taken literally, as all the major rivers known to the ancient Hebrews flow out of it.

One might as well ask where the "real Asgard" is or the "real island of the Cyclopes."

What I meant by that, because of the Gardens of Delight we know of from other city states, within Royal complexes, that the myth was a take off on a real Garden of Eden motif within a Jerusalem Palace or temple complex.

Regards
DL

 

[Greatest I am]

The area where the Garden in the region called Eden likely resided in is an earthquake belt that accounts for about 17% of the world's largest quakes.
Change is the rule for these areas rather than the exception. That fact that we can still identify 2 of the rivers does give us at least an approximation.

And with the Gihon in Jerusalem, are you finding favor with the notion that Eden was within a palace complex?

Regards
DL

 

[Greatest I am]

I was just reading about this today, in one of the notes to Smith's The Origins of Biblical Monotheism. The root for the word "Eden" makes its first appearance in the Baal Cycle, describing what Baal-Hadad, a storm god, does to the earth when he makes it rain: Namely, fertilizes it. Another reference describes Baal/Hadad as the god who makes the earth fertile (m'dn). Still, no strong indication that the priestly redactors who compiled the Genesis account believed Eden was located anywhere in Syria, despite the etymology. They just borrowed and spliced from preexisting narratives to create their own myth.

A good possibility. They were cutting and pasting from a number of sources. Especially when they put the N.T. together.

Regards
DL

 

[Greatest I am]

No, I didn't present a false dichotomy. I said, I think that it is a narrative, literal, with some allegory. It is meant to be read literally, not as metaphor.

So we are to literally believe in a talking serpent. Or was it just a serpent as described, quite normal but subtle, under supernatural Satanic control?

Regards
DL

 

[Greatest I am]

Hi brother, I'm going to view them, have not checked them out yet.

Sweet. Let us know what you think.

Regards
DL

 

[Levite]

This last is true but you forget the Gihon that pops up in Jerusalem.

I agree that the biblical Eden was not a real place. As those clips show, Eden would have been a Garden of Delight within a palace complex and for Jews, their palace was in Jerusalem.

I think that most of the city states competed against each other for the best garden as it showed power and wealth.

If you can see it that way it becomes a more persuasive possibility.

Regards
DL

First of all, the Gichon near Jerusalem still seems very far away and extremely small to be part of a land bounded in part by the Tigris and Euphrates. Second of all, the Gichon near Jerusalem is not a nahar ("river") like Prat and Chidekel (Euphrates and Tigris) but is a nachal ("wadi," "arroyo," "wash:" that is, a river which is only really a river during the rainy season, and during the dry season is either a trickle or wholly dried up).

I think the attempt to portray Eden as a pleasure garden is an idea trying to build off retrojecting a much later conflation of Eden with Paradise (pardes, the original word for Paradise, actually being a loan word from ancient Persian, meaning an orchard or cultivated garden of trees). I see no reason to suppose that if ancient Jerusalem did have a pleasure garden of that sort it would be Eden.

 

[Kolibri]

And with the Gihon in Jerusalem, are you finding favor with the notion that Eden was within a palace complex?

Regards
DL

No, for similar reasons @Levite mentioned.

- Eden — Watchtower ONLINE LIBRARY
Location of Eden. The original site of the garden of Eden is conjectural. The principal means of identifying its geographic location is the Bible’s description of the river “issuing out of Eden,” which thereafter divided into four “heads,” producing the rivers named as the Euphrates, Hiddekel, Pishon, and Gihon. (Ge 2:10-14) The Euphrates (Heb., Perathʹ) is well known, and “Hiddekel” is the name used for the Tigris in ancient inscriptions. (Compare also Da 10:4.) The other two rivers, the Pishon and the Gihon, however, are unidentified.—See CUSH No. 2; HAVILAH No. 1.

Some, such as Calvin and Delitzsch, have argued in favor of Eden’s situation somewhere near the head of the Persian Gulf in Lower Mesopotamia, approximately at the place where the Tigris and the Euphrates draw near together. They associated the Pishon and Gihon with canals between these streams. However, this would make these rivers tributaries, rather than branches dividing off from an original source. 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. Thus The Anchor Bible (1964), in its notes on Genesis 2:10, states: “In Heb[rew] the mouth of the river is called ‘end’ (Josh xv 5, xviii 19); hence the plural of roʼs ‘head’ must refer here to the upper course. . . . This latter usage is well attested for the Akk[adian] cognate resu.” The fact that the Euphrates and Tigris rivers do not now proceed from a single source, as well as the impossibility of definitely determining the identification of the Pishon and Gihon rivers, is possibly explained by the effects of the Noachian Flood, which undoubtedly altered considerably the topographical features of the earth, filling in the courses of some rivers and creating others.

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. That Eden may have been surrounded by some natural barrier, such as mountains, could be suggested by the fact that cherubs are stated to have been stationed only at the E of the garden, from which point Adam and Eve made their exit.—Ge 3:24.

After Adam’s banishment from the paradisaic garden, with no one to “cultivate it and to take care of it,” it may be assumed that it merely grew up in natural profusion with only the animals to inhabit its confines until it was obliterated by the surging waters of the Flood, its location lost to man except for the divine record of its existence.—Ge 2:15.

 

[Ingledsva]

Interesting.

Could you give that information here too please?

I have heard of Asherah but never of actual Goddess worship.

Regards
DL

Sure -

Jer 7:17 Seest thou not what they do in the cities of Judah and in the streets of Jerusalem?

Jer 7:18 The children gather wood, and the fathers kindle the fire, and the women knead their dough, to make cakes to the Queen of Heaven, and to pour out drink offerings unto other gods, that they may provoke me to anger.


Jer 44:17 But we will certainly do whatsoever thing goeth forth out of our own mouth, to burn incense unto the Queen of Heaven, and to pour out drink offerings unto her, as we have done, we, and our fathers, our kings, and our princes, in the cities of Judah, and in the streets of Jerusalem: for then had we plenty of victuals, and were well, and saw no evil.

Jer 44:18 But since we left off to burn incense to the Queen of Heaven, and to pour out drink offerings unto her, we have wanted all things, and have been consumed by the sword and by the famine.

The Bible even tells us that the whole world (their known world obviously) worshipped the Goddess Artemis/Diana.

Act 19:27 So that not only this our craft is in danger to be set at nought; but also that the temple of the great Goddess Artemis/Diana should be despised, and her magnificence should be destroyed, whom all Asia and the world worshippeth.

"Queen of Heaven was a title given to a number of ancient sky goddesses in the ancient Mediterranean and Near East, in particular Anat, Isis, Innana, Astarte, Hera and possibly Asherah (by the prophet Jeremiah).

The goddess, the Queen of Heaven, whose worship Jeremiah so vehemently opposed, may have been possibly Astarte. Astarte is the name of a goddess as known from Northwestern Semitic regions, cognate in name, origin and functions with the goddess Ishtar in Mesopotamian texts. Another transliteration is ‘Ashtart; other names for the goddess include Hebrew עשתרת (transliterated Ashtoreth), Ugaritic ‘ṯtrt (also ‘Aṯtart or ‘Athtart, transliterated Atirat), Akkadian DAs-tar-tú (also Astartu) and Etruscan Uni-Astre (Pyrgi Tablets).

According to scholar Mark S. Smith, Astarte may be the Iron Age (after 1200 BC) incarnation of the Bronze Age (to 1200 BC) Asherah." - Queen of heaven (antiquity) - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

*

 

[Ingledsva]

First of all, the Gichon near Jerusalem still seems very far away and extremely small to be part of a land bounded in part by the Tigris and Euphrates. Second of all, the Gichon near Jerusalem is not a nahar ("river") like Prat and Chidekel (Euphrates and Tigris) but is a nachal ("wadi," "arroyo," "wash:" that is, a river which is only really a river during the rainy season, and during the dry season is either a trickle or wholly dried up).

I think the attempt to portray Eden as a pleasure garden is an idea trying to build off retrojecting a much later conflation of Eden with Paradise (pardes, the original word for Paradise, actually being a loan word from ancient Persian, meaning an orchard or cultivated garden of trees). I see no reason to suppose that if ancient Jerusalem did have a pleasure garden of that sort it would be Eden.

I think from reading it - that they believed there was a real Garden of Eden - probably a memory of the rich river valley now covered by the Red Sea, and later, per the norm in the whole area - built Temple and Castle Gardens representing it. Like the famed Hanging Gardens of Babylon.

Some of the texts make it plain they are walking in actual gardens on a sacred mountain.

*

 

[outhouse]

Was the real Jewish Garden of Eden located in Jerusalem?

No.

IMHO it is 100% mythology that originates from Mesopotamian sources. Not only that before 1200 BC there were no Jews or Judaism, the people were for the most part displaced Canaanites at that time.

Much of the OT mythology was influenced while in and after exile in Babylon. Which leave the possibility of paralleling the gardens there.

 

[outhouse]

Myth is neither fiction nor literal fact.

Yet can possess both. So myth can be fictional and contain literal facts

 

[metis]

I tend to think it more likely that the Garden of Eden, along with both the Creation and Fall narratives (and let me add the Flood narrative), are likely allegorical. It's the messages found within (the "meaning behind the words") that are most important.

 

[outhouse]

I tend to think it more likely that the Garden of Eden, along with both the Creation and Fall narratives (and let me add the Flood narrative), are likely allegorical. It's the messages found within (the "meaning behind the words") that are most important.

While that is true.


Example
We know the flood mythology has a historical core from a Mesopotamian flood on the Euphrates in 2900 BC.

Eden probably is allegorical mythology, containing metaphors and parallels, to teach the important morals and lessons to the people after exile.

We do know all these stories evolved into their current state.

 

[psychoslice]

I have always seen the garden of Eden as a myth.

 

[Greatest I am]

First of all, the Gichon near Jerusalem still seems very far away and extremely small to be part of a land bounded in part by the Tigris and Euphrates. Second of all, the Gichon near Jerusalem is not a nahar ("river") like Prat and Chidekel (Euphrates and Tigris) but is a nachal ("wadi," "arroyo," "wash:" that is, a river which is only really a river during the rainy season, and during the dry season is either a trickle or wholly dried up).

I think the attempt to portray Eden as a pleasure garden is an idea trying to build off retrojecting a much later conflation of Eden with Paradise (pardes, the original word for Paradise, actually being a loan word from ancient Persian, meaning an orchard or cultivated garden of trees). I see no reason to suppose that if ancient Jerusalem did have a pleasure garden of that sort it would be Eden.

As I understand it the Gihon is an underground spring. I don't know if it dries up as you say but for my purposes it does not really matter as I do not see it as watering a real Eden. The Jewish Eden I think the myth points to would have been inside a Jewish palace complex more or less as shown in Sumerian reliefs of their Gardens of Delight as shown in that first link.

The Jewish Garden of Delight, or Eden, would have been of of many such places as I think most kings and city states would have had some kind of icon to show to and entertain visiting dignitaries.

It is that or go with this researcher who puts Eden as a plain that was flooded after the last ice age. Dilman.
Where there were many Gardens od Eden.

Regards
DL

 

[Greatest I am]

No, for similar reasons @Levite mentioned.

- Eden — Watchtower ONLINE LIBRARY
Location of Eden. The original site of the garden of Eden is conjectural. The principal means of identifying its geographic location is the Bible’s description of the river “issuing out of Eden,” which thereafter divided into four “heads,” producing the rivers named as the Euphrates, Hiddekel, Pishon, and Gihon. (Ge 2:10-14) The Euphrates (Heb., Perathʹ) is well known, and “Hiddekel” is the name used for the Tigris in ancient inscriptions. (Compare also Da 10:4.) The other two rivers, the Pishon and the Gihon, however, are unidentified.—See CUSH No. 2; HAVILAH No. 1.

Some, such as Calvin and Delitzsch, have argued in favor of Eden’s situation somewhere near the head of the Persian Gulf in Lower Mesopotamia, approximately at the place where the Tigris and the Euphrates draw near together. They associated the Pishon and Gihon with canals between these streams. However, this would make these rivers tributaries, rather than branches dividing off from an original source. 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. Thus The Anchor Bible (1964), in its notes on Genesis 2:10, states: “In Heb[rew] the mouth of the river is called ‘end’ (Josh xv 5, xviii 19); hence the plural of roʼs ‘head’ must refer here to the upper course. . . . This latter usage is well attested for the Akk[adian] cognate resu.” The fact that the Euphrates and Tigris rivers do not now proceed from a single source, as well as the impossibility of definitely determining the identification of the Pishon and Gihon rivers, is possibly explained by the effects of the Noachian Flood, which undoubtedly altered considerably the topographical features of the earth, filling in the courses of some rivers and creating others.

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. That Eden may have been surrounded by some natural barrier, such as mountains, could be suggested by the fact that cherubs are stated to have been stationed only at the E of the garden, from which point Adam and Eve made their exit.—Ge 3:24.

After Adam’s banishment from the paradisaic garden, with no one to “cultivate it and to take care of it,” it may be assumed that it merely grew up in natural profusion with only the animals to inhabit its confines until it was obliterated by the surging waters of the Flood, its location lost to man except for the divine record of its existence.—Ge 2:15.

Nothing id divine that has not been named so by a man. There is no divine record.

Seems that you are looking way to far north. Please have a look at the link I put just above and see what you think of the theory provided.

It points to Dilman as the place where the Sumerian myth was born, that was later plagiarized by Jews for their own myth. There is is some confusion as to what directions the waters flows though.

I have more research to do.

Regards
DL