The Garden of Eden

The Garden of Eden stands at the apex of the creation account in Genesis, as the location of the defining events of human history. It is here that the Bible introduces us to a God who relates personally to people and provides marriage, work and leisure, food and beauty, as expressions of his love for mankind and for the enjoyment of his creatures, all in the context of an ideal habitation, a garden of 'delight' (Heb. eden). This article aims to explore some of the possible architectural implications of this garden, as a prototype of the Tabernacle and Temple.

Enclosure

No clue is given to the size or shape of the Garden of Eden but it clearly does not fill the whole earth; rather, it is a special enclosed place, the word used for 'garden' (Heb. gan) being derived from the verb to enclose or defend. The idea of a special secure enclosure is reflected in the use of the same word of the beloved in the Song of Solomon (eg. 4.12) and found in the traditional description of the garden as a 'paradise', a word derived from Avestan pairi, 'around', daeza, 'shape' or form, originally meaning an enclosed Persian pleasure garden or park.

The enclosure of the garden was conceived by Medieval biblical commentators as a palisade fence or hedge, assumed as necessary to prevent wild animals outside entering and trampling it (the animals within the garden were thought to be tame). The enclosure was also illustrated more architecturally, for example as a stone wall in the Bedford Book of Hours (1423) and the very similar Limbourg brothers' Duc de Berry's Tres Riches Heures (c.1413), which has a circular golden wall; the architectural treatment was further developed by Ramon Mur (1412) and the Nuremburg Chronicle (1493), where the wall around the garden became an elaborate defensive feature complete with battlements and towers. In medieval architecture, the precinct walls of monasteries provided a physical expression of these ideas.

Whatever the nature of the enclosure of the Garden of Eden, it both defines and protects the special environment of the garden, giving it sacred significance as the place of meeting God, a kind of proto-temple, as well as the first human home. It provides an architectural expression of the special relationships between God and Adam, and between Adam and Eve, in which their intimacy with the Creator and each other inside the limits of the garden is balanced by the implied possibility of expulsion and 'death' outside its boundary. When this possibility becomes a tragic reality at the Fall, the enclosure is transformed into an insurmountable barrier preventing access to the fruit of everlasting life, a poignant memorial to the lost relationship with God and the ideal environment of the garden.

In the garden we see how an enclosed form can express relationships and be the basis of architectural expression. Such reasoning led Juan Caramuel de Lobkowitz (1678) to suggest that the wall of the garden was the first architecture (Rykwert p.137). Others have gone further in proposing the enclosure of the Garden of Eden as the beginning of human civilisation, the origin both of city walls and civic order.

Order

If the garden has a definite enclosed form, it also seems to have an orderly internal layout, reflecting the creation theme of order and division.

While vegetation is created on the third day out of the ground, the garden by contrast is specially ‘planted’ by God, with the two most important trees, the tree of life and the tree of the knowledge of good and evil, specially placed at the centre, forming a kind of ‘holy of holies’ and perhaps suggesting some kind of symmetry. Just as the enclosure of the garden provides an architectural expression, so too the spatial hierarchy of the garden's layout underlines its central moral purpose, enabling it to be easily 'read' by Adam and Eve, and ensuring that the two most important trees cannot be confused with any others. Other spaces adapted to a range of different uses are implied, for example where God 'walks' with Adam and Eve in the cool of the day (Gen.3.8); where God brings the animals to be named by Adam (Gen.2.19); where God causes him to sleep while making Eve (Gen.2.21); and as in all gardens, utilitarian spaces for Adam's work as its custodian and gardener, a role that anticipates conservation and also provides a template for the wider task of mankind to ‘increase in number, fill and subdue…’ the natural world, spreading the order of the garden throughout the world.

Medieval illustrators usually marked the centre of the garden with an architectural feature such as a fountain, gazebo, or a monument like a medieval market cross, to celebrate the special importance of this space. In the eighteenth century, the commentator Matthew Henry (1706) imagined the garden as a sequence of spaces or outside rooms: with 'heaven as the roof and earth the floor, and tree-shaded bedrooms, dining rooms and lodging rooms’.

Interestingly, all the early botanic gardens in Europe, including Inigo Jones' Oxford Physic Garden (1621), seem to have been designed with symmetrical rectangular layouts intended to evoke the order of the Garden of Eden; the botanic garden at Upsala went as far as including exotic animals in its recreation of paradise. Contemporary maps likewise showed the garden as a walled rectangle with a four-square layout, underlined by the four rivers flowing from the centre. Not surprisingly such order and symmetry, even rectilinearity, found their way into Renaissance architecture and town planning, Piranesi (1761) for example, believing that the foundations of architecture lay in ‘a sense of order and reason’.

Entrance

There is only one entrance to the garden, on the eastern side. Until the Fall, it is the 'exit' to an as yet-untamed, un-'filled' world outside the garden, making it an architectural symbol of the command to multiply and fill the earth, an invitation to exploration. After the expulsion it becomes instead an 'entrance' pointing the 'way to the tree of life', (perhaps suggesting a ceremonial way or avenue), now inaccessible and guarded by angelic messengers (Heb. cherubim) to prevent people returning, yet neverthless holding the promise of redemption and return to Utopia one day. Meanwhile the guards bar the way with a ‘flaming sword flashing back and forth’ - a sort of pendulum, rotating blade or repeated lightning bolts, in place of gates.

The entrance to the garden therefore plays a highly significant role in the garden as the place of change, signifying the crossing of the boundary between the security and order of the garden and the disorder and insecurity of the surrounding world; the transition from a perfect to a fallen state. The drama of the entrance is powerfully evident in many historic depictions of the expulsion.

A similar transition between profane and holy places is illustrated in the (significantly eastern) entrances of the biblical tabernacle and temple; and may also be reflected in the blood-marked doors of the houses at the first passover before the departure of the Israelites from Egypt and their entry into the Promised Land; and the rainbow after the Flood, which both reassures Noah and forms a welcoming gateway into the post-flood world. The entrance of the garden may also be referred to in the name of the city of Babel (Heb. 'gate of god'), mankind's first, abortive, attempt to create a world order around a holy city.

Medieval illustrations of the garden such those in Roman mosaics, the frescos in Padua Baptistry (1376-8) and Masaccio's Expulsion (1426-7) treated the entrance of the garden as architecture, whether Classical or Gothic in style, reflecting the architectural treatment of the centre of the garden. After the Rennaissance a more naturalistic treatment seems to have become popular; however Hieronymus Bosch's rock cut arch in the sixteenth century and the jagged cleft, rock pinnacle and rock bridge of Thomas Cole in nineteenth century still betray their architectural origins.

The celebration of entrances and the act of entering is an enduring theme in architecture, exemplified in domestic front doors as much as in triumphal arches, city gates, monastic gatehouses and Classical porticos. The portals of Gothic churches and cathedrals even sometimes face a cloister garth known as the paradise or ‘parvis’.

Trees

This enclosed garden, planted by God, with an orderly layout and a single entrance, is primarily an arboretum, of ‘all kinds of trees'. In addition to the two central trees, the prophet Ezekiel mentions cedars, pines and planes (Ez. 31.8-9).

The characteristics of the trees in the garden are summarised as '…pleasing to the eye and good for food', ie. they embody a wide range of aesthetic values and practical uses. This suggests that in addition to trees supplying a variety of fruits for eating, with different tastes, textures, forms and colours, there are also architectural trees which form special landmark features; overshadowing trees forming shaded glades, pergolas and arbours may also be imagined. After the Fall, the leaves of the Fig, the only tree mentioned in Genesis that is still known today, are used by Adam and Eve to make clothes, underlining another practical use of the trees.

But it is the visual pleasure of the trees and the beauty of their fruits that seems to come first, a quality perversely echoed in Eve's perception of the fruit of the forbidden tree, as both 'good for food and pleasing to the eye, as well as desirable for gaining wisdom…'. In this way, the garden seems to underline the quality of beauty, as the intellectual and emotional stimulation derived from the contemplation of form, colour, texture, pattern and decoration, as perhaps even more important than functionality. While some historic illustrators of the garden have concentrated on the practical aspects of the trees, for example as shelters, artists such as Cranach (1516) emphasised the seductive beauty of the orange globes of the forbidden fruit, contrasted with the rich greenery of the tree in the temptation of Adam and Eve. Others, such as Thomas Cole (1828) illustrated the scenic beauty of the giant trees with contrasting foliage, dwarfing the first humans and framing panoramic views of a natural world that speaks of the power and greatness of God more than the fallibility of man.

Trees exhibit some key architectural qualities: The pre-eminent vegetation, these great plants have verticality, strength, balance, proportion, both Fibonacci and fractal; they possess rhythm, unity and coherence, variety, contrast and individual character. Some might even be described as whimsical and decorative. Translated into columns, they become the architectural icons of the Garden of Eden, their foliage symbolised by Aeolic or Corinthian capitals.

In the ancient world, trees such as the great trees of Mamre at Hebron, the palm of Deborah and the great tree in Zaanannim (Gen.13.18, 18.1, Judges 4.4,11) were important geographic and political landmarks. The menorah or seven branched lampstand of the Tabernacle was modelled on an almond tree, while palm trees and open flowers decorated the walls and doors of Solomons' temple. The perfection and permanence of creation was symbolised by Solomon as a house with seven pillars (Prov. 9.1), the king also constructing a tellingly-named ‘Hall of the Forest of Lebanon ’ with 60 cedar pillars (1 Kings 7) as part of his palace. Columns were regarded not only as functional elements but also as decorative and symbolic from earliest times (eg. Ps.144.12, Song 5.15). In the book of Exodus, God himself appeared in the form of a pillar (of smoke and fire); two rows of acacia columns screened the holy of holies in the biblical Tabernacle, while in front of Solomon’s Temple were two free-standing bronze columns, their bell-shaped capitals hung with a decorative network embellished with bronze pomegranates.

John Ruskin wrote that ‘the cylindrical pillar is always beautiful, for God so moulded the stem of every tree…’ and suggested that fluting expressed bark and arches were derived from the shape of leaves. Philibert de l’Orme (1567) symbolised Classical architecture as a Palm tree and the tree-origin of architecture was also expressed by Germain Boffrand (1745) and Marc-Antoine Laugier (1753), while Francesco Milizia (1781) pointed to Scandinavian forests as the possible origin of buttresses. Sir James Hall in 1792 even recreated an experimental ‘Gothic hut’ constructed from poles with intervowen willow wands by the blacksmith of Cockburnspath, to recreate flamboyant tracery (Rykwert, p.85).

Such experiments underlined the idea of nature as the source of architectural design and innovation, a theme echoed by Hoffstadt (1840-5) and central to John Ruskin’s analysis, in which he derived scale, verticality and proportion, balance and symmetry, vitality and variety from a wide range of natural forms, both vegetable and mineral. The vegetable kingdom continues to inspire designers, from the Coca-Cola bottle (based on the cocoa bean) to Dior (in which the model is conceived as a flower).

As well as providing inspiration for art and design, trees are also essential practically and ecologically, wood being our most important sustainable building material. The trunk of an oak tree inspired the structural form of John Smeaton's Eddystone lighthouse in 1756, the model for lighthouses ever since, and trees have been the source of many other technical innovations.

Columns in the past were often applied decoratively to buildings as references to Classical antiquity and the Renaissance, a tradition that has survived even in the decoration-decrying Modern movement in the form of the steel 'I' sections decoratively applied to facades by the likes of Mies van de Rohe; the structural 'grid' could similarly be regarded as a modern version of the hall-forest. Post-modernists similarly use applied timber brize-soliel to provide rhythm and scale to glass facades. There seems no reason why tree-columns could not be even more literally expressed in contemporary architecture to express revived interest in past architectural style, as much as concern for future sustainability, ecology and stewardship.

It should not be forgotten, however, that trees are above all wonders of creation, the exultant pleasure derived from the sight of their branches frozen in slow motion dance one of the chief joys and delights of the natural world, anticipating a day when the curse of the Fall will be reversed and they will ‘clap their hands’(Is.55.12) and 'sing for joy' (1 Chronicles 16.33) in praise to the Creator.

As the main element of the design, the trees of the Garden of Eden both point to the first building, the 'Adamic hut', and anticipate the purpose of architecture as ‘frozen music’ (Goethe), the aim of which should be to‘delight the eye of lovers and provide inspiration for artists’ ( Fischer von Erlach, 1721) and hence ‘contribute to man’s mental health, power and pleasure’ (Ruskin, 1849)

Rivers

The final design component of the Garden of Eden is water.

An unnamed river or spring flows into Eden and becomes the source of no less than four rivers. The text appears to allow either that this is an unnamed river flowing eastward in the land of Eden and dividing at the garden, or alternatively that the unnamed river is a spring or geyser flowing in the garden; the latter interpretation is strengthened by it not having a name, in contrast to the four 'headstreams' which divide from it and flow out of the garden. These are the Pison (Heb.? 'gusher'), apparently a large river as it is described as winding throughout the land of Havilah; the Gihon (Heb.? 'spurter'), which similarly winds throughout Cush ; the Tigris (Heb. Hiddekel) runs along the east side of Asshur, with a more direct path than the two others, while no additional information is given about the fourth river, the Euphrates (Heb. Perat). The order in which the rivers are described is assumed as clockwise, consistent with the relative dispositions of the modern Tigris and Euphrates, though the Pison and Gihon are now unknown (but see Note).

Associated with the key biblical themes of the river of life and the water of life, the spring which feeds the four rivers was usually portrayed in Medieval illustrations like the Hours of Louis d'Orleans (1490), and notably by Hieronymus Bosch, as flowing from an ornamental fountain in the centre of the garden.

Fanning out from the garden, the four rivers connect it with the surrounding world and provide a realistic geographic setting emphasising its centrality and encouraging exploration by Adam's descendants. After the expulsion, the rivers continue to provide a link back to and a reminder of the garden and the events of the Fall, yet apparently not a physical way back, suggesting that they are impassable by people, ie. wide, turbulent, or include great cataracts or waterfalls, perhaps a reminder of the first day of Creation when the waters covered the earth and a hint of the judgement of the universal Flood to come.

In addition to these characteristics the rivers, like the trees, have both functional and aesthetic values; essential for watering the trees of the garden and sustaining life generally, especially as the first rain does not appear to fall until the Flood. They are presumably also draining a world which has recently emerged from the primaeval ocean, and which would otherwise become waterlogged. Also valuable for cleansing and purification, the rivers provide an inexhaustible source of physical pleasure and visual fascination and delight.

Just as the trees tend to imply the whole range of lesser vegetation and green landscape, so the rivers in the garden seem to provide a heading for the whole range of inanimate picturesque landscape features: rocks, caves, pools and geological and hydrological formations, which inspire architects and have stimulated the imaginations of artists in their illustrations of the garden.

After the garden…

In the ideal conditions of the garden, where even clothing is unnecessary, it is assumed that there is little need for the protection which buildings provide, even if the enclosure and entrance, hierarchy and order of the spaces, and the beauty or the trees and rivers, combine to convey a strong architectural character. At the Fall however, the trees are used as shelters when Adam and Eve hide among them, seeking protection from the wrath of God and symbolically cutting themselves off from their maker even before they are expelled from his presence.

After the expulsion, with work transformed into burdensome toil in which Adam must obtain food from the same earth out of which he was made, and childbearing now a painful ordeal for Eve, protected places are required for the rhythms of family life and the storage and processing of corn. The secure enclosure and entrance to the first building must exclude unwanted people and animals (viz. the 'door' to Cain's house, where sin is described as 'crouching' like a ravening beast, Gen.4.7). The focus of the home becomes the central cooking hearth where the sustaining food is prepared and life-giving warmth derived. By recreating these architectural qualities of the garden in microcosm, the dwelling becomes a paradigm of Eden with domesticity and family relationships providing a dim memory of the lost paradise.

The search for the ‘Simplicity of the Ancients’, ie the recreation of a past golden age, generated much interest during the Renaissance, including speculation as to the design of this first building, sometimes called the ‘Adamic hut’. Following the evolutionary development of Colchian and Phrygian huts described by the first century BC Roman architect Vitruvius, architects from Alberti in the fifteenth to Viollet-le Duc in the nineteenth century reasoned that the primordial hut would have been a lean-too bivouac structure of branches leant against a tree or cliff, developing as an A-frame or wigwam of branches tied together at the apex, before it became a round-house.

By a process that was not well explained and seems to have owed more to developing society, town planning and the mass production of building materials than structural reasoning, this finally developed into a small square building with a pitched roof constructed from tree trunks, the megaron or proto-Doric temple, thought to be the origin of Classical architecture. Trees still provided the building materials and the tree trunk-columns are often shown with their foliage still on them anticipating column capitals and other architectural embellishments.

Filarette (1461) made Adam himself the inventor of the virile Doric Order, and though John Shute (1563) derived all three orders from the three decks of Noah’s Ark, the genesis of the Doric hut was repeated in all its essentials by Jean Martin (1547), Blondel (1675), Laugier (1753), Chambers (1759) and many other architectural theorists until the nineteenth century. For Semper (1803-79), the origin of architecture was still domestic, though reduced to the features of hearth, roof and enclosure.

The first city

After the murder of Abel by his elder brother Cain 'in the field', ie. remote from the Adamic farm (shown in Visscher's print of 1650 as the typical Adamic hut complete with kingpost truss roof and thatch), Cain is exiled still further eastward of Eden and builds the first city in the land of Nod (Heb. wandering), naming it Enoch after his own son to underline its humanistic identity.

The city's foundation by an unwilling 'hunter gatherer' rather than by an agricultural community with a surplus is an interesting departure from the evolutionary model of urbanisation, even if the apparent dominance of the city over the Sethite agriculturalists is not reduced, with Enoch becoming the focus for rapid advances in the arts and sciences, including the main technologies required in building and architecture (eg. tent making; metalwork, implying tools, quarrying and furnaces; and, most significantly music, implying the arts generally, especially harmony and rhythm).

The city has an implied entrance, defensive enclosing walls and a city centre, making the polis (Gk. city, the root of the word political) a reflection of the garden as a meeting place, not between God and man, but between men alone, and a focus of humanistic unity as opposed to dependance of God. As such, it soon becomes a breeding ground for violence and murder, establishing urbanisation as a ‘type’ of the wickedness which, in due course, leads to the judgement of the universal Flood (Gen.6-9).

The Garden in the Bible

The Garden of Eden continues to be referred to throughout the Old Testament as an ideal, proverbial for its fine trees (Ez.31.9) and well-watered luxuriant vegetation (Gen.13.10), and as such, as a potent symbol of prosperity, settled domesticity and contentment for Israel (eg. Is.51.3, 12, Ez.36.35, Joel 2.3).

The history of ancient gardens and their connections with the Garden of Eden and other biblical gardens is a large subject outside the scope of this article. However, the creation of gardens and orchards is the royal ambition of the opulent botanist king Solomon (Ecc. 2.5, 11.5) a symbol of luxury and sensuality (Song 5.1 and 6.2) and gardens and sacred groves of trees are also used as places of worship (Is.1.29-30, 65.3, 66.16), both in Israel and surrounding cultures. The account of the garden of Eden is essential as an explanation of the character of original sin, and hence of the need for atonement, the unifying theme which runs like a scarlet thread throughout the Bible.

The Tabernacle and Solomon’s Temple, God’s later-designated places for meeting mankind also have cherubim-sentinels, decorating the coverings and the curtain in front of the holy of holies, and as twin statues guarding the Ark of the Covenant. This central feature, significantly a wooden box, contains the Ten Commandments, a direct parallel to the prohibited tree in the centre of the Garden of Eden. The killing and skinning of animals to make clothes to cover the shame of Adam and Eve after the Fall is similarly reflected in the sacrificial systems of the tabernacle and temple, in which the sacrifice of animals is used to 'cover' the sins of the Israelites and point to the final atonement provided by the Messiah. The tabernacle and temple also share the sense of enclosure and spatial hierarchy, with the 'way to the tree of life' echoed in the progression from a single (eastern) entrance to the special central space, the holy of holies. They also share the emphasis on beauty in their design.

In biblical literature, gates and walls appear in various contexts, for example in love poetry (Song 8.9), while in biblical prophesy the living water theme reappears in Ezekiel’s future 'Third' temple, and the river and the tree of life and its fruits, as well as gates and walls, feature in the New Jerusalem described in the book of Revelation, the finally redeemed city in which God will dwell with men once again.

Jesus and the Garden

Jesus is known to have viewed Adam and Eve as literal people, living 'at the beginning', their relationship for example providing the basis for the institution of marriage (eg. Matt.19, 4, 8). He presumably also regarded the Garden of Eden as a literal place, and perhaps the entrance of the garden was included in his refering to himself as 'the door' and 'the way'.

On the cross, he promised the robber executed with him that he would that day be with him in 'Paradise’, the place of bliss for the righteous regarded as a spiritual restoration of the Garden of Eden. Before his arrest Jesus prayed in a garden (Gethsemane ) and after his death he was buried in another garden near the place of execution, Joseph of Arimathea's rock-cut tomb making it a cemetery-garden. After rising from the dead on the third day, Jesus was at first mistaken for the gardener by Mary Magdalene (John 18.1-26, 19.41, 20.15), an identification highlighted in the apostle John's account possibly because of the connection it makes with Jesus as the 'second Adam' (Ro. 5). The Christian church, as a second Eve, is likened to his bride (Rev.21), who like Eve is fashioned from his wounded side and destined to be one with him, restoring the Edenic relationship between God and mankind and heralding the eventual redemption and restoration of all creation (Ro.8.22)..

The trees also find a place in Jesus' message, ‘the carpenter of Nazareth’ allowing himself to be executed on a ‘tree’, ie. the wooden cross, and hence making himself accursed according to Jewish law, to take on himself the consequences of the Fall. In this way, the cross becomes the new tree of life, reversing the effects of the Fall and the expulsion from the garden. The Edenic theme of flowing water is similarly reflected in Jesus' teaching about the promised gift of the Holy Spirit, who becomes a 'spring of living water...flowing from within' believers (John 4.14, 7.38-9).

In the imagery of the Garden of Eden, belief in Jesus is the 'way’ back, for all humanity, to the fruit of the tree of life and a restored relationship with God, which will enable us to live forever.

Conclusion

According to Guarino Guarini (1686) architectural design is a balance between function and beauty, which should ‘in no way for the sake of reason disappoint the senses’ ie. beauty must come first, a view echoed by the modern architect Philip Johnson, who felt that architects need to take responsibility for the appearance of buildings instead of relying on 'pretended utility, spatial rationalisation or structural efficiency’ (1955).

The Garden of Eden contains the seeds of important principles still very relevant to architectural design. Part of the aim of architecture and town planning must be to provide an ideal environment for the whole range of human activity. As an ideal human home designed by God himself, the garden provides a reminder of the central importance in architecture of order, beauty, aesthetic pleasure and delight.

Note

Many have tried to find the location of the Garden of Eden but the Bible gives little away, merely describing it as located 'eastward in Eden', either in a place called Eden or in the east of the land of Eden. The Hebrew word is perhaps derived from Accadian edinu 'plain' or 'steppe', or Summerian eru, 'field' or 'depression'. The four rivers that flow out of it may suggest an elevated position and a mountain top site has even been proposed (Fesko). The command to fill the earth may similarly imply it was in the centre of the primaeval pre-Flood continent (Pangaea).

Plato's mythical Garden of the Hesperides may hold an ancient memory of the Garden of Eden. It had golden apples and was said to have been located underground or on Atlantis or another disappeared island or peninsular in the south of Spain (Tartessos-Strabo, Cadiz-Hesiod) or North Africa , either between Tangier and Larache or among the Arcadian, or Atlas mountains. Martianus Capella and Adrian of Bremen sugggested that the Garden of Eden was in what are now polar regions, while Moses bar-Cepha and Dante proposed a secret, inaccessible location. Barbarosa suggested Sri Lanka (ie. Adam's Peak ), Talmudists Africa (Tamid 32b), the location apparently favoured by Alexander the Great. While other Jewish authors suggested Arabia, Ibn Ezra, Naimanides and Dante opted for somewhere near the Equator. Strabo put the garden on the Moon and Gunkel suggested the rivers described in Genesis were the Milky Way, while Cabalists thought there were both terrestrial and celestial versions. 'Adn (ie. 'Eden ') is used ten times in the Koran as the name of paradise and the abode of the righteous, and Muslim scholars have located it in the 4th heaven or as one of the 7 or 8 gardens of paradise. The New World has provided several locations: Columbus apparently expected it to be in Panama and Sir Walter Raleigh the West Indies, despite his map showing it in Mespotamia; Mormons have suggested Jackson County, Missouri, or Bristol, Florida. Other locations have included Java, the Seychelles, Bahrain and the South China Seas and as late as 1681 Thomas Burnet thought the garden was still to be found in the South Seas (Prest).

One pointer to its location could be the names of the rivers, but rivers called Pison and Gihon have been found in different locations from the Egypt to the Persian gulf, while the Gihon has also been identified with the Nile, Ganges and Indus. Of the lands mentioned in Genesis, Havilah is unknown today, though Josephus in the first century AD suggested India. The city of Asshur was founded in the second millennium BC on the west bank of the Euphrates, matching the biblical description as far as this but in no other respect. It has been suggested that the names may have in fact been reused by settlers travelling eastwards from the Ark on Mount Ararat after the Flood, just as European names were used by colonists in the New World (Watson). Several possible locations have been suggested for Cush, ranging from Ethiopia to Arabia and Crete, but the land of Nod and the first city of Enoch are completely unknown today, supporting the idea that Noah's godly descendants, rathet than the Cainites, mapped and named places in the post-Flood world. Neverthless, the identification of the Tigris and Euphrates with the present rivers still tends to focus attention on Armenia or the Persian gulf as the location of the garden and many scholars from Josephus on have pointed to Mesopotamia as the site of the garden, a view that remained popular during the Middle Ages, eg. in the writings of Aquinas, Isodore of Seville, Bede, Duns Scotus and John of Damascus.

The idea that the site of the Garden of Eden was destroyed by the Flood and no longer exists was already current in the early church and the church fathers were inclined to spiritualise the garden, Augustine for example making it a metaphor for the Gospel, as did Origen, Philo and Ambrose. The Manichees thought it had covered the whole world before being destroyed by the Flood. Continuing the Medieval Christian tradition, the C16 Reformer John Calvin located it in the Shat al-'Arab, as did Milton, who thought that it had been washed into the Persian Gulf by the Flood. Van Til located it in Armenia or Mesopotamia (Tractatus de situ paradise terrestris, 1691), as did Delitzsch (Wo lag das Paradies? 1881).

Charles Stengel in 1647 suggested that the site of the garden was completely unknown having been lost at the time of the Flood. Matthew Henry in 1706 went further, teaching that the lessons of the Garden of Eden were primarily theological and seeking a location was a speculative distraction. This seems to be the predominant view among modern scholars.

ROBIN KENT

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