The Cracked Acorn: The Eternal Garden

“And the Lord God planted a garden eastward in Eden, and there He put the man whom He had formed.” Genesis 2:8

The grandchildren wanted to know why Grandma was always reading her Bible. They decided it must be like school; she was studying for her finals.

The SECRETS OF THE BIBLE – will test your knowledge of the Bible. As a child, I have always wondered if they would ever find the spot of the Garden of Eden; the Sunday morning children’s dream of the docile animals and the fruit would keep one young forever.

With refinements of aerial photography, GPS, and global tectonic studies, several theories point to the great possibility that there was such a place. Writing started about 3000 B.C.; two of the four rivers mentioned in the Bible are still here today- the Tigris (Daniel 10:4)and the “Prat,” known from ancient texts and translated today as the well-known Euphrates.

The idea of an Eden would have been known to the race of Sumerians in that area -the fertile crescent- and passed down to the Babylonians, the Assyrians, and finally to the Israelites, and then made its way into the Hebrew Bible. Another conjecture is that if the Garden of Eden were any place on earth, it would have been near the previously mentioned rivers.

A professor at Southwest Missouri University has suggested that the underwater area where the Tigris and the Euphrates Rivers spill into the present Persian Gulf would have been the likely place in ancient times.

A relatively unknown idea is that “the Garden of Eden, the Flood, the Tower of Babel, the story of Abraham – all took place in a small area between the Black Sea in the Ararat range in Turkey.” One scientist claims to have identified four of the rivers of Eden from NASA satellite photography. Further, this same person claims to know the location of the Ark of the Covenant, the Ten Commandments, Solomon’s Temple, Sodom and Gomorrah, and the Tower of Babel.

If all these places are found and certified, will it change how we think of the Bible? I doubt it! Biblical studies conclude that “man may never find Eden outside the pages of God’s WORD.”

Meanwhile, Grandma can keep on reading her Bible and believing every word as God gave it.

There’s a garden where Jesus is waiting.
There’s a place that is wondrously fair
For it glows with the light of His presence
‘Tis the beautiful garden of prayer
O, the beautiful garden, the garden of prayer!
There, my Savior awaits, and He opens the gates.
To the beautiful garden of prayer

(Eleanor Schroll, 1878-1966)