Thursday, September 26, 2024

Ronald Hendel on Genesis 2:11-14 and the Location of the Garden of Eden

  

2:11-14. These verses name the four branches and their locations. They provide a geographical setting for the Garden of Eden that seems real, as if one could follow these clues and rediscover it. However, the directions are impossible, and the locations is eternally elusive (Propp 1990: 193). The ancients may have thought that the Tigris and the Ephrates had a common source, but the Gihon (under any construal of its location) does not, nor does the Pishon (which seems to be purely legendary). In other words, assessing these geographical clues, the Garden of Eden cannot be located. These geographical details describe the garden as a sacred center, a source of the world’s fertility, but at the same time a place that differs from ordinary geography. (Ronald Hendel, Genesis 1-11: A New Translation with Introduction and Commentary [AYB 1A; New Haven: Yale University Press, 2024], 168)

 

 

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