Biblical Hebrew Forum

["Walter Mattfeld" <mattfeld AT mail.pjsnet.com>]

 Available is an article titled "In Search of the Garden of Eden and the
Rivers of Paradise," if interested please click on the following url
http://www.bibleorigins.net/Edenslocation.html

There are a wide variety of proposals for Eden's location, made by
professional Bible scholars as well as enthusiastic amateurs. We will look
at some of the problems which must be surmounted in identifying Eden's
location and explain how and why  these problems have stymied attempts to
locate Eden. There is today no scholarly consensus on Eden's location. Some
claim it is a myth, others that it is, or was, a real place.

Everyone brings presuppositions and biases to their research and I am no
different. It is my understanding that Eden is a myth, but that the writers
of the Bible believed it really existed and that it could be located. The
pinpointing of Eden's location has to be based on the geographical
information provided in the Bible.

An Important  Note about Methodologies-

A commonly committed error by many modern scholars -in my opinion-  both
professional and amateur, is that they "insist" that "modern geographical
knowledge" of the Earth's features must be used  in determining Eden's
location. They therefore either seek flowing rivers or the beds of ancient
dried-up rivers, called wadis in Arabic, to locate Eden. They fail to take
into account ancient man's imperfect geographical knowledge, and the realm
of myth and error which existed in ancient geographical understanding. No
success can be had  in identifying Eden if one does not first study how
ancient man understood his world, a world  full of impossible geographical
features by today's geographical standards.

Before attempting to identify Eden and its rivers we will first take a
glimpse into the archaic notions man had about his world and its
geography...

Archaic Notions about the World's Rivers and their Sources
(3rd millenium BCE through 1st century CE)

All the best, Walter

Walter Reinhold Warttig Mattfeld
Walldorf by Heidelberg
Baden-Wurttemburg, Germany
www.bibleorigins.net