In which country is the Garden of Eden located?

Question

Genesis 2:15(NIV)

The LORD God took the man and put him in the Garden of Eden to work it and take care of it.

I'm curious to know, now, in which which country is the Garden of Eden located? (which is mentioned in Genesis)

Answer 1

Per Genesis 2:

10 A river watering the garden flowed from Eden; from there it was separated into four headwaters. 11 The name of the first is the Pishon; it winds through the entire land of Havilah, where there is gold. 12 (The gold of that land is good; aromatic resin[d] and onyx are also there.) 13 The name of the second river is the Gihon; it winds through the entire land of Cush.[e] 14 The name of the third river is the Tigris; it runs along the east side of Ashur. And the fourth river is the Euphrates.

While Mesopatamia (i.e. Iraq) is where the Tigris & Euphrates are, the remaining two rivers (Gihon is in Israel, and the Pishon is, I believe unknown, though some scholars think it is the Nile) are not.

There are thus two possibilities:

1. The Flood altered where these rivers flowed
2. The location is not meant to be literal

In any event, the Flood probably did wipe out the Garden of Eden, and even if it didn't, there was an angel (in Genesis 3:24) who is guarding the entrance.

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Update: For an interesting excursion into the idea of "mapping" Eden, check out this article showing maps of Eden from 1914. They are highly speculative, but show the diversity of thought around where Eden might be.

Answer 2

Assuming it was a literal garden in the physical world, and not a metaphor, it was most likely somewhere between the Tigris and Euphrates rivers, close to the border between modern day Iraq and Iran, or maybe the Eastern region of modern Turkey.

Just Googling for Tigris, Euphrates and Eden will give you more sources you can probably read in a lifetime :)

Answer 3

John Sailhamer proposes a rather novel idea in his book Genesis Unbound:

The second chapter of Genesis provides a closer look at God's creation of the first human beings. We are told that God created them from the ground and put them in the garden of Eden to worship and obey God (not merely to work the garden and take care of it). The boundaries of that garden are the same as those of the promised land; thus the events of these chapters foreshadow the events of the remainder of the Pentateuch. God creates a people, He puts them into the land He has prepared for them, and He calls on them to worship and obey Him and receive His blessing.

I haven't read the book myself, but thinking about the Torah texts, it does solve a number of problems. But the theory is at least as controversial as every other theory I know of.

Answer 4

well i know that the gihon river is all gone but a little portion of it left is located in ethiopia africa and the gihon river used to flow down the middle of the red sea gowing through the sinai peninsula to the mediterranean sea and down through ethiopia africa. and pison river actually ran kind of east to west across saudia arabia from the red sea to the persian gulf the pison runs smack down the middle of modern day kuwait. and both the hiddekel and the euphrates both run thru modern day iraq but the euphrates also goes through syria but the hiddekel goes through modern day turkey. so the garden of eden is not in iraq like they think it is. there is two possible places where the former location of eden would be located either at the bottom of the persian gulf or the mediterranean sea. and that is where i think it is located.