Where was the Garden of Eden Located?

The Aish Rabbi Replies

Thank you for raising the fascinating issue. Let me first address the question of where the Garden of Eden existed in Adam’s time. Not surprisingly, the Torah does not provide an exact location, but it gives a very telling clue. Here are the relevant verses (Genesis 2:10-14, translation from ArtScroll Stone Chumash):

A river issues forth from Eden to water the garden, and from there it is divided and becomes four headwaters. The name of the first is Pishon, the one that encircles the whole land of Havilah, where the gold is. The gold of that land is good; the bedolach is there, and the shoham stone. The name of the second river is Gihon, the one that encircles the whole land of Cush. The name of the third river is Hiddekel, the one that flows toward the east of Assyria; and the fourth river is the Euphrates (Perat).

Thus, a single giant river watered the Garden and then divided into four major rivers which the Torah identifies by name – at least some of which are quite familiar. What are those rivers, where are they located, and what do they tell us about a possibly bygone super river in the area between them?

Unfortunately, based on the Torah’s scant information, there is very little conclusive we can say. The final river – Perat – is universally identified as the Euphrates. (Elsewhere, the Torah identifies it as the outer border of the greater Land of Israel – see Genesis 15:18 and Joshua 1:4.) Hidekel is generally understood to be the Tigris – the other major river of Mesopotamia (see Onkelos, Abarbanel). (The Torah describes it as flowing to the east of Ashur – Assyria – an ancient empire centered in northern Mesopotamia, around where modern Turkey, Iraq and Iran meet.) Those two rivers are in close proximity, both originating in eastern Turkey and primarily flowing in a southeasterly direction through Iraq, joining together shortly before they empty into the Persian Gulf.

The identities of the other two rivers and their adjoining lands are far less apparent. Where is the Pishon River, encircling the land of Havilah, a place of “good gold”? One classical approach places both the Pishon and Gihon in eastern Africa. Several commentators, notably Rashi (Genesis 2:11) and Ramban (Gen. 3:22), understand that the Pishon is one of the other major rivers known to ancient man – the Nile. (This immediately raises a few difficulties: We never find Egypt called “Havilah”, and it is hardly known for its gold; indeed, other than South Africa there are no especially gold-rich areas in that part of the world at all. Finally, the Pishon is said to encircle the land of Havilah, but the Nile does not circle Egypt; it bisects it.)

We lastly come to the Gihon River, encircling the land of Cush. Now Cush is generally interpreted as “Ethiopia” – or more broadly, the arid lands to the south of Egypt – modern day Sudan, or possibly Ethiopia to its south. Sudan itself is a desert; its only major river is the Nile. Ethiopia has several rivers, including the (upper) Nile itself. However, most of its major ones are tributaries of the Nile. Thus, no major river system presents itself. (See this past response about Moses’s Cushite wife, regarding the exact location of Cush.)

Nevertheless, following this general approach, the question which follows is where the confluence of these four rivers might have once been. Given that two of them are in Mesopotamia and the other two in northeast Africa, placing the Garden of Eden in between them might mean it was once situated in the heart of the Sahara Desert (in present day Saudi Arabia). This would imply that the Sahara was once a verdant paradise – until it was abandoned and eventually went to the opposite extreme – becoming a near-lifeless wasteland.

Alternatively, the four rivers may have joined in the area in between their northern ends. This interestingly could conceivably place the Garden in the Land of Israel itself. Indeed, many Midrashim state that this was Adam’s first home. This is surely plausible: The Holy Land, promised to the Children of Israel, was in fact once a heavenly paradise. Although today it is not an especially rich land, it will surely return to its beautiful, lush state in the End of Days (and in fact, it has become much more verdant in modern times, as the world approaches the Messianic Age – see Talmud Sanhedrin 98a).

Several other opinions exist as to the location of the Pishon and Gihon rivers. Some (e.g., Targum Yonatan, Abarbanel) associate Havilah with India and identify the Pishon as either the Indus or Ganges River (see R’ Aryeh Kaplan’s The Living Torah for a brief summary of opinions). However, Rabbi Aharon Marcus (a multifaceted 19^th-20^th century German Jew, well-educated in both Torah and many other fields and who also embraced both Chassidus and Zionism; cited by R’ Aryeh Kaplan) posits that both the Pishon and Gihon are minor rivers in the general area of Mesopotamia – possibly, the Karun and Khabur Rivers respectively. This would place all four rivers in the same general area – which would in turn place the Garden of Eden somewhere within the previously (but not currently) fruitful areas of Iraq, perhaps near the Persian Gulf.

In any event, it is clear from the above interpretations – especially ones placing the Garden of Eden in the Land of Israel or the Sahara Desert – that Eden no longer exists today as it once did. Bereft of Adam and Eve, it lost its sanctity and, despite its initial need for celestial guards, it eventually became a much more ordinary land, not discernably different from the rest of the world. The Garden of Eden represented the perfection of the physical world – home to a sublime couple crafted in God’s image. Once Adam and Eve sinned and fell from their pristine level, they could no longer dwell in the Garden and indeed, the Garden itself had no place in imperfect earth. (I should add that the Talmud (Eiruvin 19a) considers a few especially fertile areas in the Middle East as possible "entrances" to the heavenly Garden of Eden. Thus, although they knew that Eden no longer exists on earth as it once did, some especially rich vestiges of it may still be recognizable to us today.)

Nevertheless, the Talmud (Brachot 34b) teaches us that at the end of history, after the Resurrection and man’s Final Judgment, the righteous will indeed return to Paradise – in fact, not just to the Garden of Eden but to Eden itself - a place so lofty and majestic that no one has ever laid eyes on it - not even Adam and Eve who merely lived in its "Garden". As the Talmud elsewhere explains (Sanhedrin 97a), the world will be renewed for a thousand years at the end of world history. The righteous will then return to life in a perfected state in a perfected earth – physical yet entirely spiritual – and live eternally with God in a renewed Paradise. Thus, despite Eden’s seeming disappearance from the world today, it will, at the end of human history, eternally return.