Where is the Garden of Eden?

We believe that the original Garden of Eden is in Modern day Turkey.

1. The mention of the river's origins, particularly the Tigris and Euphrates in Genesis Chapter 2 verse 10 - 14 puts the garden in a specific geographic place we can pinpoint. We can get close to this point at Elazig, Turkey. It is located roughly midway between the headwaters of the Tigris and the Euphrates.

2. DNA studies of Einkorn wheat indicate that the first wheat domesticated was in this same area. Did Eve make the first loaf of bread?

3. Linguistic studies have traced all languages originated in this area and flowed out in a similar exodus as the movement of civilization.

4. The oldest "church" has been located within walking distance of Elazig. It is called Göbekli Tepe.

This ancient story is full of allegory. Science tells us that humans were wild and uncivilized until the advent of agriculture. Humans went from nomadic hunter-gatherers to sedentary farmers once agriculture had developed and this change marked an unalterable change to humanity. When Adam tasted the the new hybrid foods that the genius agriculturist Eve gave him, his nature changed  on earth forever. No longer would humans follow the old way, the natural way. From this point on, the battle was not to exist within nature, but to do battle with nature in an attempt to subdue it, to tame it, even bend it the way we want it to bend. Humans went from another created being to creators, themselves. Rather than pick the wild plants God had given for food, Eve found she could grow it herself. She found her hybrids were improved (for her use) versions of what she had always picked.

Rather than depend upon the blessings God granted in the Garden, humans basically said, we are going to do this our way. We are not going to be products of nature, but masters of it. We are not going to follow the path God set us on, but create our own. God's response: "Because thou hast hearkened to the voice of thy wife, and hast eaten from the tree, of which I commanded the saying, "Thou shalt not eat of it.: cursed is the ground for thy sake; in sorrow shalt thou eat of it all the days of thy life; thorns and thistles shall it bring forth to thee; and thou shalt eat the herb of the field; in the sweat of they face shalt thou eat bread, till thou return to the ground, for out of it wast thou taken: for dust thou art.

God considered this new way evil, saying "Behold, the man has become like one of us, to know good and evil" and He threw Adam and Eve from the Garden. He basically said, "Go be farmers now and suffer."

All through the book of Genesis, the farmer is looked upon by God with utter disdain. The first murderer according to Genesis was a farmer. The cities that grew around the agricultural revolution were considered by God to be centers of evil. According to Genesis God sent a deluge after he, "... saw that the wickedness of man was great in the earth, and that every imagination of the thoughts of his heart was only evil continually." God destroyed Sodom and Gomorrah for their wickedness. He caused the tower of Babel to fall, and confounded the people's speech so they could not understand one another. Genesis even explains that this was done, in part, to disperse the people from the city to different parts of the earth. Modern science suggests that, indeed, agriculture and civilization began in the Fertile Crescent and then spread over the earth.