#garden of eden

Mother Nature’s Son.

Uriel’s Charge to Gabriel / Angels on Guard

Man having been placed in Eden, Gabriel is stationed with a heavenly guard to protect him. Uriel, having seen from afar Satan on his way to earth, comes down to put Gabriel more strictly on his guard. The artist has rendered the surroundings of the scene with striking fidelity.

“Meanwhile, Uriel comes before the Archangel Gabriel, at the gate of Eden, and tells him about the shape-changing spirit that he saw from the hilltop. They both suspect that it might be one of the fallen ones. Gabriel promises that if the spirit is in the garden, they will find it by morning. Around this time, Adam and Eve finish their day’s work. They go to their leafy bower, praising God and each other for their blissful life, and after a short prayer, they lie together—making love without sin, because lust had not yet tainted their natures.

Night falls, and Gabriel sends search parties into the Garden. Two of his angels find Satan, disguised as a toad, whispering into the ear of Eve as she sleeps. They pull him before Gabriel, who recognizes him, and demands to know what he is doing in Paradise. Satan at first feigns innocence, as they have no proof that he means harm. But Gabriel knows him to be a liar, and threatens to drag him back to Hell. Enraged by this threat, Satan prepares to fight him. The two square off for a decisive battle, but a sign from Heaven—the appearance in the sky of a pair of golden scales—stops them. Satan recognizes the sign as meaning he could not win, and flies off.”

Satan in the Garden of Eden, by Gustave Doré from John Milton’s Paradise Lost.

Satan now approaches Eden, which is surrounded by a great thicket wall. He easily leaps over it like a wolf entering a sheep’s pen. Inside he sees an idyllic world, with all varieties of animals and trees. He can see the tallest of the trees, the Tree of Life—and next to it, the forbidden Tree of Knowledge. He perches himself on the Tree of Life, disguised as a cormorant, a large sea bird. Finally, he notices two creatures walking erect among the other animals. They walk naked without shame, and work pleasantly, tending the garden. Satan’s pain and envy intensifies as he sees this new beautiful race, created after he and his legions fell. He could have loved them, but now, his damnation will be revenged through their destruction. He continues to watch them, and the man, Adam, speaks. He tells Eve not to complain of the work they have to do but to be obedient to God, since God has given them so many blessings, and only one constraint: they must not eat the fruit of the Tree of Knowledge. Eve agrees wholeheartedly, and they embrace.

Curious cat

“Eve”,  2002 by Norman Engel

Where was the Garden of Eden? Helpfully, there are directions in Genesis 2:10-14 as they appear in the King James Version: 

And a river went out of Eden to water the garden; and from thence it was parted, and became into four heads.

The name of the first is Pison: that is it which compasseth the whole land of Havilah, where there is gold;

And the gold of that land is good: there is bdellium and the onyx stone.

And the name of the second river is Gihon: the same is it that compasseth the whole land of Ethiopia.

And the name of the third river is Hiddekel: that is it which goeth toward the east of Assyria. And the fourth river is Euphrates.

We don’t know what Pison (or Havilah) or Gihon refer to. Ethiopia in ancient texts often means everything south of Egypt as a general area but the original text says Kush, which could mean anything. The Hiddekel is the Tigris.

Here is a map of Iraq:

If you ignore two of the rivers, the Garden of Eden has to be somewhere around Basra, near Kuwait. Some people don’t like this literal and rather pedestrian interpretation, not least because that part of Iraq is almost entirely desert, the exact opposite of what you might expect from a Garden of Eden.

Some Christians claim that the flood erased everything and the Euphrates and Tigris we all know and love today are completely different. 

While this sounds suspiciously convenient, they might be right. A similar location problem about the kingdom of Ithaca in The Odyssey can only be resolved by assuming Homer was talking about somewhere else. 

Other believers claim that the Garden of Eden was only metaphorically in Iraq, and it was actually in Jerusalem or Egypt or even Missouri. 

Still other believers claim that Garden of Eden was only metaphorically anywhere and refers to a state of mind or an abstract concept. 

None of this is a problem for atheists, who see it as a made-up story performing the function of a foundational myth.

I think it’s transmisogynistic as a cis woman to immediately resort to violent expressions of attraction when it comes to transfems. Would this be said about cis woman? Would you want a cis woman to “destroy” you? Odder still since there is nothing aggressive about Hunter at all. This is just another tiring microaggression.