Garden of Eden Found!

by glen on 2001-01-07 19:24:20

The book of Genesis has an interesting entry at chapter 13 verse 10. It says “And Lot lifted up his eyes, and saw that the Jordan valley was well watered everywhere like the garden of the Lord, like the land of Egypt, in the direction of Zoar”. Counting the genealogy of Lot, I see that 1946 years had passed since the creation of Adam to the birth of Lot. Because of the flood, nobody on earth except Noah and his sons would know of Eden. Noah’s knowledge would be a few generations old – fairly fuzzy unless there were written records. And there were 11 generations between Noah and Lot!

My question is, why and how could Lot make such a comparison? In my family, I barely recall legends told to me by my grandfather, and essentially nothing made it to me from his father. If that’s any measure, 3 generations are enough to wipe out trivial legends. This leaves me thinking that Lot must have some source of fresh information about Eden. It could only be written records or personal experience seeing it himself. In the account of Noah, I recall no record of God instructing Noah to bring along records of history. The existence of the book of Genesis and the detailed information in it suggests that either God provided Moses (assumed to be the writer of Genesis) with this detail, or else written records did exist and were used by Moses to write the early sections (historical information) in the book. If God provided all the details to Moses, Lot did not have access to the Genesis account, since Moses was born generations after Lot.

So either Lot was making a comparison of the Jordan valley with an Eden he only knew of from historical documents of his time, or else Lot had actually seen Eden!

Genesis 3:24 concludes the time of Adam and Eve in the garden of Eden by saying “He drove out the man; and at the east of the garden of Eden he placed cherubim, and a flaming sword which turned every way, to guard the way to the tree of life.” There is no mention of God making Eden disappear. Genesis offers no evidence that Eden no longer existed on earth – only that the tree of life is not accessible and that man was driven away from Eden.

Had Lot seen Eden from a distance though?

What do you think?