What happened to the Garden of Eden after Adam and Eve were banished?
The Garden of Eden was more of an environment than an actual location on earth. Yes, there was a real geographic place on the planet called “The Garden of Eden” but what made that place special, what made it the Garden of Eden was its environment and not its physical location. The word ‘Eden’ means: spot, moment, presence, open door, delight. So, the Garden of Eden was the spot for the moment where the presence of God provided an open door to heaven. Its where heaven met earth. Before the Garden of Eden came to earth it was in heaven and after Adam sinned it went back to heaven from whence it came. Remember I’m primarily talking about an environment not necessarily the physical location. In the following scriptures God is refering to Lucifer (Satan before he fell), here’s what He said: “Thou hast been in Eden the garden of God; every precious stone was thy covering… Thou art the anointed cherub that covereth; and I have set thee so: thou wast upon the holy mountain of God; thou hast
The Garden of Eden required tending. (God put the man in the Garden “to dress it and keep it.”) When it was no longer tended, it got overgrown, just as any orchard will be in a generation or so. In a century or less the angel probably retired since the wouldn’t have been recognizeable as such anymore, and today it’s probably under a kilometer of sedimentary rock from the Flood.
If you look at Genesis it gives you clues. It says that there is one river that flows through Eden and than branches off into four rivers: The Tigris, The Euphrates, The Pishon, and The Gihon. The Nile River used to be called the Pishon. Interestingly enough the Nile used to flow in an East to West direction (could the change in direction be influenced by the Great Flood?) The Gihon possibly might be the Ganges River. Assuming we can find the junction of all of these rivers and follow that junction toward the one main river…you could get a good guesstimate of the general area of where the Garden of Eden is.
The Akkadian and Sumerian Myths were discovered in the 19th c. of the CE, and helped thoughtful folks to understand that Mythology occurs in the whole Bible, here specifically in Genesis. They had a Flood story, creation of the human from mud and blood (Genesis mud and breath), two brothers fighting, etc. The physical description of Eden in Genesis is basically today’s Tigris-Euphrates area, which were not wiped out by the Flood obviously, we are bombing the hell out of that area today and the natives to us and each other in Iraq! The theology is what we go for and understand, not that a snake talked, or a fruit was taken from a tree, or that things grew before the Sun was created and that the ‘moon” is a lesser light that shines by day. The Creationist approach to the Bible is in-defensible, and the sooner we move on the better for Science, Religion and the students in Public School. Scientists who deny any Divine involvement in the World’s origin are also stepping out of their field
