So
where was the Garden of Eden? Probably nowhere, since it was home
not only to the sources of the Tigris, Euphrates and Araxes – the
latter on the eastern borders of Turkey and Iran – but also was
home to the source of the Blue Nile, or at least a river in Ethiopia.
But maybe such things were possible in the time before the Flood!
Well,
I think there was a place which lay between the Tigris and the
Araxes, which is the best candidate, and the archaeologist David M.
Rohl also holds this view, though not uncontroversially. This is
Lake Oremiyeh. And the fourth river would not be the Blue Nile, but
the variously named Uizhun or Serid Rud, just south of Lake Oremiyeh.
As far as I am concerned, this is quite a neat solution for a
biblical puzzle.
But
Lake Oremiyeh is in fact a self-contained Lake, and has no outlets to
the sea. Consequently, like the Dead Sea, it is a salt lake. It is
nevertheless fertile, but clearly such a self-contained system cannot
be over-exploited.
Well,
with the arrival of an apple which can be cultivated to have an
edible taste, that is indeed knowledge, and leaves open the way for
over-exploitation. In early days, if a community had no problems of
poverty, it doubled, so in the end, a community that suffers from
over-population cannot remain in a self-contained Utopia.
So
a Utopia requires knowledge, but knowledge precludes Utopia. :,[
THE
BIG APPLE?
So
what does it mean to say one is trying to locate the Garden of Eden?
Does it make any difference if you are a believer, atheist or
agnostic?Probably a lot.
Speaking
as an agnostic, I would say that I wouldn’t know until I have found
it.
If
it is something real, like the Flood, recounted in Australian
Aboriginal tales, or Troy, recounted in Homer. You can make these
symbolic, even if they do exist. Maybe Oremiye is not the Garden of
Eden, but one can still make it symbolic: look at the way it is being
horribly polluted in modern Iran.
But
if such places are purely symbolic, you will never know, will you?
Martin
Prior
