Stories, even ones in the Bible, have an evolution all of their own. Having been written in a certain time and place, the context of stories may change as they are adapted and moved between one culture and another. The Garden of Eden is a classic example of this. Although it appears in the oldest story of the Old Testament, it is important to look deeper into the story as an entity to understand it, rather than just look at what it contains. You would be forgiven for thinking that as this tale appears in the earliest book of the Bible it is in fact the oldest. This is not the case as the Bible has undergone much revision and evolution in the thousands of years of its existence. Much of the book of Genesis, up until the point that Moses enters the tale is essentially a creation myth. The story of the first humans, world wide flood, the travels of the first Patriarchs such as Abraham are all common themes in all cultures and understanding where they were written geographically helps us to understand and pinpoint the landscape that they use.

When Babylon invaded Israel and Judah and carried all of societies leaders into Exile, a time of crisis was at hand and it was decided to write down all of the teachings from their faith so that they would not be lost. This was done away from their homelands and understandable over the period of Exile, the writes were affected by and adopted more and more Babylonian themes and ideas. The story of Noah, for example, parallels themes found in the Babylonian tales of Gilgamesh and similarly the core ideas of the Garden of Eden were introduced into what was becoming the Old Testament at this time. Knowing that these stories were written in a Babylonian location before moving back to their Hebrew homeland, helps us understand the geography used and hence where to look.

Much has been made of the rivers listed in Genesis as being those that flowed out of Eden. Assumptions have been made in the past about the Nile and the Jordan being two of them as well as the Euphrates and the Tigris, but lets look at the known facts. Two of the rivers are easy to establish. The Perath is the river known to the Greeks as the Euphrates and similarly we know that the Hiddekel is the Hebrew name for the Tigris. With two rivers easy to establish and known to be flowing out of Eden we must need to look near their source, which do happen to be close together. To pin point it further we need to explore the other rivers further.

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