There Really Was a Garden of Eden!

                                                                Genesis 2:18-25
          Here is God the Gardner at work. A garden in other Scriptures is a symbol for “temple”. He made regular trees, special trees, rivers and had a hired hand to keep the garden. Their “work” was worship.

       The Garden of Eden is located “in the east”. This seems to be a puzzle. If the center of the Biblical world is Palestine, east would be toward what we know as Russia and China. We are told that the location east of Eden is in the Tigris-Euphrates area of Mesopotamia. The data in Genesis 2:8–10 indicates that it was in the Shinar Plain area, and that four “heads” were formed from the one river flowing through Eden to water the garden. The heads were the Tigris and Euphrates (both of which are familiar modern rivers), and two rivers which have disappeared—the Pishon and Gihon. The latter were most probably irrigation canals, since in cuneiform there is no separate word for “river” and “irrigation canal.”

Contra Descartes - I Am therefore I Think.

                                          

Genesis 2

I am therefore I think.

                                                                                                       

Descartes said "I think therefore I am." He was wrong. Man existed before he thought. I have that on good authority - God, the Creator.

       An introductory summary is necessary for this portion of Genesis. I have divided it into five rather unequal parts:

·      Before Man

·      Man formed by God

·      The Garden of God and Man

·      The Command of God to Man

·      The Special Provision of God for Man.

          There are, of course, encyclopedias and libraries devoted to the topic of Man. As we have already noted, the Scriptures are sparse at times. However, don’t forget that the whole of the Bible is about God in His relationship to man. This was/is God’s reason for giving us the Bible in the first place. Ross observes “If the story of creation presented the foundation of the theocracy with the purpose of calling allegiance to the sovereign Creator, the story of the creation of the man and the woman explains that humans have the God-given capacity and responsibility to serve the Lord with integrity.” What follows are the details that God thought were important at the beginning of the chronicle.