Where is Eden...

[Catholig]

Okay the title might be a bit misleading because I’m not actually asking where Eden is located. It’s just that I always pictured it seperate from earth. Kind of like heaven is seperate from earth. Is this right or is Eden actually on the earth?

Catholig

 

[Jerry-Jet]

Could Eden be ON the Earth and yet INVISIBLE?

The Body and Blood of Jesus are REAL even though we can’t see them–could not Eden actually be in Iraq and also be INVISIBLE?

 

[Ridgerunner]

Now, this is going to sound extremely strange; perhaps its unbiblical, and I’m not saying I believe it, but it’s kind of interesting to think about:

I have sometimes wondered whether there really was any physical difference between Eden and the world we live in. I have wondered whether the conditions of life were greatly different, though perhaps more primitive than now. Discontent, something we all now share, is in the mind. Is it possible that the state of innocence was simply that; a state of innocence; a state in which our first parents had a complete faith in providence; fully accepting God’s will in every way. Maybe they were cold sometimes, and hungry, but accepted that, trusting that God would provide as He felt best for them. Adam walked and talked with God. Can we not? Can we not hear Him if we listen and accept what He says? If we fully and totally accepted the will of God, would we not be happy even if suffering came our way?

But the Bible says man was not destined to die in the state of innocence. Well, that’s true now. Perhaps Adam and Eve knew perfectly well that they would leave their bodies but would live.

And what was the forbidden “fruit”; the knowledge of good and evil. The “knowledge”. The word means many things. It means intellectual apprehension of facts or believed facts. It means participating in them. It means making distinctions between good and evil. Was this simply a decision that, no, we would no longer simply accept what God sent our way; we would decide what we believed (rightly or wrongly) was good and what was evil. We would insist on deciding for ourselves. We would insist on knowledge in the sense of experiencing both good and evil. And, insisting on experiencing them, and experiencing them, we became disconnected from God. We became discontented. We became unaccepting.

Animals do not know good and evil. They recoil from perils, but do not understand death or try to avoid it per se. Was there perhaps a time when human beings, though being fully human, shared this innocence; this lack of “knowledge of good and evil”? I can’t help but wonder. And I can’t help but wonder if that story isn’t an analogue for the entire experience of a human being. We are capable of innocence. We are capable of accepting providence. We are capable of talking to and hearing God. We are capable of having no fear of death. But we have the spirit of rebellion in us, and do rebel.

Some scholar will probably show why this can’t be, and that’s fine. But I can’t help but wonder.

 

[puzzleannie]

the best imaginative description of a possible “Eden” I have ever read is Perelandra, the second book of C S Lewis’ space trilogy. It is actually the planet Venus, with its own King and Lady (Adam and Eve) during the time Satan is tempting her to accept the Big Lie.

 

[Evan]

I believe Mark Twain expressed the opinion that Eden was in Upstate New York.

 

[NotWorthy]

I got this from the Agape Bible Study. It is a wonderfully in-depth series of Bible Studies for Catholics.

**: **Eden is on a mountain or a mountain plateau. The Tigris and Euphrates are two rivers of Eden that are still great rivers today. They flow from Turkey, through Syria and Iraq to the Persian Gulf. The Pishon no longer exists but satellite imagery has detected the huge dry riverbed of an ancient river that flowed through the Arabian Peninsula. It has been speculated that this ancient river watered this area from c. 10,000BC until it gradually dried up sometime after 3500BC. [see “The River Runs Dry”, *Biblical Archaeology Review,

July/August, 1996]. Genesis 2:10-12 relates that the river Pishon flowed “around the whole land of Havilah, where there is gold…” The ancient river bed discovered by the satellites is located near Mahd edh-Dhahab, one of the richest gold mines in Saudi Arabia or Afric a and which may have been worked as early as 1000BC. The fourth river, the Gihon bears the same name as the stream that is the only water source for Jerusalem in ancient times as well as today.

In this imagery “water” becomes an important often-repeated symbol in sacred Scripture for the blessings of salvation. Just as the river that flows out from Eden feeds the rivers that bring life to the earth, so too will the “waters of salvation” nourish the Church from which “rivers of living water” [for Catholics the most Holy Eucharist] will flow out from the Church to bless the whole earth [see Ezekiel 47:1-12; Zechariah 14:8; Isaiah 27:6; Revelation 22:1 *“Then the angel showed me the river of life, rising from the throne of God and of the Lamb and flowing crystal-clear…”]. The Fathers of the Church saw the rivers flowing out of Eden, home of the Tree of Life, as symbolic of the four Gospels flowing out from the Cross, the true Tree of Life.

“Blessings flowing out of Eden” is what the Jews would have been thinking of on the Feast of Tabernacles in Jerusalem in the last year of Jesus’ ministry when He interrupted the liturgical ceremony by crying out: 'Let anyone who is thirsty come to me! Let anyone who believes in me come and drink! As scripture says, 'From his heart shall flow streams of living water." [John 7:37-39] It was on that day of the great Feast of Tabernacles that water from the Gihon stream of Jerusalem had been poured out on God’s holy sacrificial altar. Gihon is the name of one of the 4 rivers whose source was the river from Eden, the Holy Mountain of God. [For more references to the “mountain of God” see Ezekiel 28:13-14; Isaiah 2:2-4; 11:9; 25:6-9; 56:3-8; 65:25; Daniel 2:34-35, 44-45; Micah 4:1-4; Matthew 5:14]