the sources of four rivers: the Tigris, the Euphrates, the Gihon, and the Pishon. The first two present no difficulties on a modern map, but it’s helpful to note that the Hebrew Hiddekel is the same river as the Tigris. The River Aras was called the Gihon-Aras until relatively recent times. To find the fourth river, a little inter-lingual manipulation is needed. Within the area of the Tigris, Euphrates, and Gihon-Aras there is another river named the Uizun. An old scholar named Walker made an interesting etymological suggestion about this a few years ago. He argued that in Hebrew pronunciation the u became the labial p instead. The z of Uizun slides into a sibilant sh and the final syllable can interchange a, u, and o without difficulty.
There are other possibilities for the Gihon and the Pishon, of course, and these include the theories of scholar/historians Josephus, Eusebius, and Augustine that the Pishon was the Ganges. Other theologians, Jarchi, Gaon, and Nachman, argued that it was the Nile because the etymological root meant “to fill” or “to overflow.” Other research in Armenia led researchers to the theory that the Pishon is now called the Halys and the Gihon has been renamed the Araxes.
So the geographical problem posed by the identity of the four rivers of Eden may well be solved eventually, but what of the ancient lands which were said to surround it?
After Abel’s murder, his fratricidal brother, Cain, went to the east of Eden to an area known as Nod. Not far to the east of Eden, where Nod was said to lie, is the small contemporary settlement of Noqdi. Could the modern village of Noqdi be all that remains of the ancient, biblical Nod?
The great riddles of Eden, however, are theological and philosophical enigmas rather than geographical and historical ones. If the biblical account of creation is literally true — despite the enormous weight of scientific evidence that suggests that it is not: and, after all, even evolution’s staunchest supporters will readily refer to it as a theory — then the philosopher and theologian are left asking why God chose to create our universe in the way that He did, and then to populate it with intelligent, observant beings.
The Yahweh of the Old Testament is described by many of its writers as a jealous guardian of his own power and glory: dominant, majestic, aloof, frequently awe-inspiring and terrifying. Even many centuries later when Christ portrays him as a benign, loving Father, the threat of judgment and condemnation to the everlasting tortures of hell still seem to be there.
The Graeco-Roman pantheon was comprised of gods with human characteristics, separated from us only by their longevity and superior powers. Human suffering could then be explained easily enough by their capriciousness, jealousy, anger, competitiveness, and frequent quarrels. There was no insoluble paradox for the Graeco-Roman theologian when good people suffered.
The difficulty of trying to reconcile the existence of a totally benign and loving God, who also enjoyed absolute power, with medieval torture and burning, the unspeakable horrors of the Holocaust, the atrocities in Kosovo, or the fiendish terrorists in Sierra Leone hacking off innocent victims’ limbs to impose their reign of terror, could not exist for them. But it is an unavoidable, mind-splitting dilemma that confronts every honest theist who tries to explain the contradiction of God and human suffering.
There is some useful mileage left in the argument that centres on the essential nature of free will. It can readily and universally be accepted that true and spontaneous love is the greatest good and the greatest joy in the whole of human experience. It is equally true that such genuine love cannot exist without real free will. Love cannot be bought. It cannot be compelled. It cannot be commanded. It can only be given and received freely by independent minds, hearts, and spirits. Love is like respect: it can be stimulated, earned, and attracted by kindness, gentleness, mercy, and altruism.
Free will can provide the good, rich, fertile soil in which true love grows. It can also be the toxic waste in which unspeakable evil is spawned. Hitler could have chosen goodness. Freewill allowed him to choose the darkest form of evil instead. If the free will argument is valid, God could not prevent Hitler’s evil without depriving him of his free will.
But what about hindering or preventing the consequences of Hitler’s evil choices? Suppose God had allowed Hitler to think and plan his evil, but had then inspired and empowered heroes to thwart his plans and rescue his victims before that evil could be put into effect. Suppose that this pattern had recurred over and over again since the very beginning, since Eden itself.
But is free will itself diluted or destroyed if the consequences of evil choices are neutralized? What if every evil thought is prevented from expressing itself in evil action? Does evil then become an illusion, a hollow sham? Does the would-be murderer look round at the world and say, “There is no point in my shooting, stabbing, strangling or poisoning my victim because whatever evil I try to do will not have any real effect. God will simply intervene in some marvellous way: my gun will jam, the shot will miss, my knife will be deflected, my hands will be paralyzed just as they encircle the victim’s throat, or the man will develop a sudden mysterious immunity to the cyanide capsule I’ve just dropped into his whisky glass.”
If good thoughts and good actions can produce good, solid consequences, while evil thoughts and actions are ineffectual, then there is no true freedom of will. The realities of the consequences of good and evil actions must be equal, if the choice between them is to be a genuine choice. If God is totally benign and totally powerful, there can be no room for equivocation or prevarication. The absoluteness of divine goodness must include absolute honesty. A benign God cannot be a cosmic stage illusionist or a celestial confidence trickster.
There is also the argument of stability and consistency. If everything is arbitrary and uncertain, if cause and effect are not parent and child, then learning is impossible and progress nonexistent. If two plus two make three when they feel like it and five when they don’t, if gunpowder explodes one day and not another, if arsenic kills today but not tomorrow, if affectionate embraces and a dagger in the heart come arbitrarily from the same unpredictable person, then life is impossible. So dare philosophers and theologians assume that God has made their universe consistent? Humanity can learn and develop only in a consistent environment. We can discover and eventually master the Laws of the Universe only if those laws remain faithful to themselves and to our powers of observation and objective experiment. If consistency is as important as free will, have we taken the first faltering steps along the road to a partial solution of the problem of suffering and death in a universe ruled by a caring and omnipotent God? Is this the first tentative answer to the Eden problem?
Obsessively puritanical, fanatical, religious sects have almost invariably connected original sin with sex. Phrases like “forbidden fruit” have been understood by them to refer symbolically to sexual activity — often sex in general, sometimes a specific sexual activity or orientation of which cult members disapprove. The curious and irrational belief that total celibacy or, failing that, varying degrees of sexual abstinence or self-denial, are in some inexplicable way pleasing to a loving, joy-giving, and creative God, may also be traced back — at least in part — to this confusion of sex and original sin. It hardly requires the wisdom and courage of Sigmund Freud, or some other pioneering psychoanalyst of his calibre, to suspect with good reason that the most strident advocates of sexual denial and restriction are likely to be those people with the most serious sexual hang-ups and misconceptions. Sex is as good, as natural and as benign as eating, drinking, breathing, and sleeping. It has its safety parameters, of course, just as they have. The wise man or woman does not knowingly eat or drink anything toxic, nor any food infected with salmonella. Neither is it acceptable to steal a neighbour’s food. The sensible man or woman does not breathe contaminated air. But to imagine that God wants people to give up eating, drinking, or breathing, or wants them to feel guilty about those good and natural biological activities seems as far from the truth as the east is from the west.
So if the “forbidden fruit” has no sexual connotations at all, what might the author of Genesis mean by it? What exactly was the “Tree of the Knowledge of Good and Evil” which stood in the Garden of Eden?
Serious students of morality and ethics come up with a number of tantalizingly different answers. The famous Farmingdon Trust, which did outstandingly good