The Cracked Acorn: Secrets of the Bible

“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 that it must be like school; she was studying for her finals.

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

With the 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, and the Assyrians and finally to the Israelites and then making its way into the Hebrew Bible. Another conjecture is that if the Garden of Eden was to be 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 rather 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” and one scientist claims to have identified four of the rivers of Eden from NASA satellite photography and 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 the way we think of the Bible; I doubt it! Biblical studies point to the conclusion 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)