The Mississippi doesn’t have any one source, either, but if I say that something is near “the headwaters of the Mississippi”, I’d still expect that people would know where I mean.
And for that matter, the Tigris and Euphrates rivers both seem to have very little branching, and when they do, it’s quite clear which one is the main stream. And if I’m reading the map right, both come from somewhere in eastern Turkey, in the general vicinity of Diyabakir. So leaving the two unknown rivers aside, it looks like “near the headwaters of the Tigris and Euphrates” is actually fairly well-defined.
Those are Middle East archaeology. Of course, those areas overlap with places mentioned in the Bible but the emphasis placed on certain areas because they can possibly “prove” the accuracy of the Bible has slanted and stunted archaeology for 200 years. Fortunately, the past few decades have seen a total revolution in the understanding of past cultures.
Biblical scholarship itself has even less overlap with “biblical archaeology” than those finds have with the Bible and has also been almost totally transformed as an academic subject over the past 60 years.
Yes, obviously there have been dozens and dozens. But none that found Eden. Did I really have to write out any recent archaeological discoveries regarding the Garden of Eden, or could that be understood in the context of what is being discussed here?
I don’t know any archaeological discoveries afaik ever about finding the site of Eden. Got any?
Indeed that is the main alternate theory. But scholars in ancient Hebrew, such as the ones who did the Anchor Bible, believe Genesis meant down where they converge, near the Gulf. I am not such a expert, but I trust them .
And look at it this way. The Fabulous Garden of Eden, would it be out in some foothills, or near the Fertile crescent, the Cradle of Civilization?
And if you prefer the alternate theory, that is fine. Still, Genesis does spell out the location, it is near The Tigris and Euphrates rivers.
For Eden specifically? No, but you just said that there can’t be any new research on stuff that happened “4-8000 years ago,” which is obviously wrong. And, of course, archaeology can be useful for tracing the development of myths as much as history, so the lack of a historical Eden site doesn’t preclude learning new things about it from more recent discoveries.
1950 something is pretty recent when we are talking Biblical scholarship. Not in archaeology, sure.
I am always willing to learn- my my classes were in the early 80s, so if anyone has any more recent scholarship studies on the location of the Garden of Eden, I would love to read them. A cursory Google search found nothing but some Creationists.
“The Living Torah” by Rabbi Aryeh Kaplan (1981) contains a map with several possible locations for Eden, as well as other unidentified lands and rivers mentioned in that verse, marked. Three locations marked as possibly being Eden are on a band between the Euphrates river and the southern end of the Caspian Sea, in northern Iran/Iraq/Syria, and a fourth possibility is to the east of the Caspian Sea, in Turkmenistan.
Cutting edge scholarship takes years to filter into coursework so they were probably based on nothing newer than Asimov used.
Modern biblical scholarship long ago stopped considering the questions as articulated by the OP - though those are common layperson questions - meaningful in any way. Most study the culture and context rather than literalisms: why the writers told the stories they did, why they stitched together conflicting stories back to back, and why these stories and not others extant at the time were considered more “official.” Facebook wasn’t the first to think of the world as “meta.”
Reviving this thread due to a new book (partially) on the subject that I have just read.
The Six Days of Creation, by Rabbi Alexander Hool, suggests, based on clues in the Talmud and Midrash, that Eden was located in the bit of Africa (Eritrea/Ethiopia) that is just west of the southernmost tip of Yemen. As for the rivers, he suggests that the Euphrates mentioned in those verses is actually an underground river that flows north from there, through Israel, and then feeds the above-ground Euphrates somewhere north of classic Babylon, that “Gichon” is the Nile, and that “Pishon” is the Wadi el-Arish, and that it used to be a longer and truer river, but that at some point later in history, the Red Sea expanded and swallowed up much of the land that that river had flowed through.
I think I meant that it is translated with all the religious, cultural and political context of the time of each translation.
The Old Testament of the Christian bible doesn’t really contain the Torah. It is a selected set of translations done by Christians, where the Pentateuch is the translated Torah and the rest is derived from a selection of the other texts. I would hesitate therefore to claim they are identical. It is clear that there are elements in every translation that where there is some ambiguity or elements of conflict with the reigning Christian dogma that translations will reflect that dogma, or the dogma accepted by the translator. The nature of Judaism has changed dramatically over its history, and some of the older beliefs don’t sit well with modern Christian dogma. So there is always an element of flexible translation to temper the narrative.
Moreover, the Torah is written in Hebrew. It doesn’t need translation. It is read as is by speakers of the language. In translation it loses a significant amount of its nature. Being a written version of an oral tradition it contains rhythm and rhyme that is either lost or very hard to translate. Such translations are done, but whether they are considered a definitive text is a different matter. Christians consider their translations as definitive despite the clear conflicts and contradictory elements in their history. Some Christians are wont to tell Jews what the Pentateucht actually means. A reply that the Torah is read untranslated by someone who understands Hebrew, and perhaps has a closer connection to the text seems to be ignored.
This is splitting hairs, and far too long a reply, but I think that was why I wrote what I did. It was a while ago.
This may have been true at one time, when the Vulgate or some other translation was considered the official Christian Bible; but I don’t think it’s true or fair to say today that the “Christian Bible” is any particular translation.
I think most knowledgeable Christians today would tell you that the Christian Bible consists of the Old Testament, almost all of which was originally written in Hebrew, and the New Testament, which was originally written in Greek. And the most serious Bible students will learn those languages to be able to read them in the original.