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Genesis 2:10 Now a river flowed in Eden to water the orchard, and there it divided into four headstreams. 2:11 The name of the first was Pishon; it ran through the entire land of Havilah, where there was gold. 2:12 (The gold of that land was pure; pearls and lapis lazuli were also there). 2:13 The name of the second river is Gihon; it runs through the entire land of Khush. 2:14 The name of the third river is Tigris; it runs to the east in Assyria. The fourth river is the Euphrates.
A lesson in reading comprehension is in order.
Note the writer simply mentions the Euphrates River with no description. That's because he doesn't have to describe the Euphrates River, since his target-audience lives on the banks of the Euphrates River and knows exactly where it is.
For the Tigris River, the writer needs only to mention it is to the east of the Euphrates Rivers, and people know exactly where it is.
The Gihon is the modern Karun River, which runs through the Zagros Mountains in Iran, down to the Persian Gulf. The Khush, also known as the Kassites or Cassites, inhabited the region between Assyria and the Zagros Mountains, until the Gutians over-ran and destroyed them circa 2500 BCE, and the destroyed Sumer & Akkad circa 2100 BCE.
The Pishon is now the Kuwait River, discovered in 1994.
There were two mysteries to be solved. The first mystery was minerals found in the Basra Delta that didn't belong there. The only possible origin of those minerals was the Hijazz Mountains in western Saudi Arabia to the exclusion of all other possible locations.
The second mystery was the bizarre way sand dunes formed on the Arabian Peninsula. North of a demarcation line, the sand dunes always ran in one direction, while south of that line, they ran in another direction.
The mysteries were solved by a space shuttle global mapping expedition using ground-penetrating radar. The ground-penetrating radar revealed the existence of an ancient river bed created by a long dead river originating in the Hijazz Mountains and flowing east to the Basra Delta Region. That was the Pishon River. It carried minerals from the Hijazz Mountains and deposited them in the Basra Delta.
The Arabian Peninsula wasn't always arid desert. It was a lush tropical paradise until the climate changed with the end of the glacial period. The Kuwait/Pishon River died about 7,000 years ago and about 2,000 years before the writer wrote his story.
The story is very ethnocentric, and was written specifically for the Sumerians, who inhabited that area.
This is what the Persian Gulf looked like 14,000 years ago, circa 12,000 BCE:
As you can see, there is no Persian Gulf.
Even today, the average depth of the Persian Gulf is only 150 feet.
It would have looked something like (although I put the Kuwait River a little south of where it actually joined).
All four rivers would have joined and then flowed as one large river over a spectacular cataract of about 150 to 200 feet, and then out into what is now the Arabian Sea. The delta formed can be seen with satellite and sonar imagery.
At about the same time 14,000 years ago, the western Antarctic ice-sheet was totally destroyed, probably as the result of cataclysmic event like a comet or asteroid strike, which gave rise to the deluge myths. The western Antarctic ice-sheet only started to reform about 8,000 years ago.
You know, I appreciate your effort, I really do, but what everyone keeps forgetting is.. your using a Book against the EARTH. Not that I am diminishing the Bible...no not at all, but still when you place all those pictures together, they do form the story of Creation and they do have some compelling Pictures.
I really don't understand why any of you can't understand that? I really don't.
It's right in front of your face and you still choose to ignore it. Is it to much for you to handle?
~I just don't get it. Just how BIG of a Sign do you need?
You know, I appreciate your effort, I really do, but what everyone keeps forgetting is.. your using a Book against the EARTH. Not that I am diminishing the Bible...no not at all, but still when you place all those pictures together, they do form the story of Creation and they do have some compelling Pictures.
I really don't understand why any of you can't understand that? I really don't.
It's right in front of your face and you still choose to ignore it. Is it to much for you to handle?
~I just don't get it. Just how BIG of a Sign do you need?
One that comports with reality would be a decent start.
One that comports with reality would be a decent start.
Prove it wrong.
Prove it faked.
Prove it by showing me a complete story made with the watermark principle and state it was just a coincidence.
I didn't fake it.
I didn't alter it.
I didn't hack Google Earth.
I just outlined what was already there.. a complete story of Creation.
And you say it isn't real? With all those Characters? Lol, sure.
~you should believe your eyes, over your sins. I imagine it must suck on some level to admit its real. Because then you'd have to admit the rest of it..and NO ONE WANTS THAT, DO THEY.
This one looks like a White Elephant, blowing its nose or waiving a white-handkerchief?
Just kidding, it's an inkblot test to determine the artistic (outlining) personality of the OP.
I believe you can even see a lavender-kangaroo under the Elephant's trunk?
The person who believes the Scriptures believes their account of the Noahic Flood. This unique, global catastrophe which God promised never to repeat destroyed all air breathing animals and all mankind.
Based on what we are told in the Bible about the nature of the Flood (fountains of the great deep broken up and closed again, forty days of rain evidently from a source unlike the source of rain as we know it) it is likely that the Flood utterly obliterated the antediluvian topography in a wholesale way.
A wonder of the world like the Grand Canyon is better understood as having formed during and shortly after the Flood than in the way uniformitarians imagine. The Colorado River did not carve out the Grand Canyon over millions of years. That river is the trickle abiding to this day after an unimaginably powerful and gigantic torrent created the Grand Canyon in a very short time.
The Himalayas, the polar caps, the continents themselves, and other geological features likely formed after the Flood on account of the tectonic, volcanic, and other forces unleashed by it and continuing centuries after the Ark came to rest on the mountains of Ararat and the human race began once again to be fruitful and multiply, starting there. cf. Genesis 9:1 ff.
Modern earthquakes, volcanoes, and other phenomena are merely the slight aftershocks of the major "whole lotta shakin' goin' on" which God almighty kicked off after He shut eight people and thousands of critters into that mighty vessel of old.
In short, it is doubtful that we can recover a map of the antediluvian world and gain any idea whatsoever about where on Earth the garden of Eden might have been.
Secondly, as someone has suggested above, the God Who ejected Mankind (Oops, sorry Justin Trudeau, I mean "Peoplekind") from Eden and posted the only real extraterrestrial beings we know to exist as mighty guardians against our reentry has never indicated that He would relent and re-admit us. Rather, sinners will remain shut out and eventually cast into hell forever. Meanwhile, He has something better in store for His redeemed children...a new and improved version of the forest primeval!
"He who has an ear, let him hear what the Spirit says to the churches. To him who overcomes I will give to eat from the tree of life, which is in the midst of the PARADISE of God." (Revelation 2:7)
Finally, consider the Nehushtan, 2 Kings 18:4. The children of Israel perverted something that once had a good purpose in God's redemptive plan. The made it into an object of idolatry. There are enough alleged "pieces of the cross" of Christ to build another wooden Ark of Biblical dimensions! (Aside, the Ark Encounter near Cincinatti Ohio - highly recommended, family friendly, faith building summer vacation spot).
So regarding the garden of Eden and objects that would be allegedly found there, or Noah's ark, or the ark of the covenant and the stone tablets with the Decalog written on them with the finger of God - if we found any of these and other objects described in the sacred record (which gives us all we need for life and godliness, 2 Timothy 3:17), what would happen?
Sinful man would turn them into relics to be superstitiously revered...distractions for those worshippers in Spirit and truth whom God seeks as worshippers (John 4:23).
Let us not be distracted by the sensational, but sanctified by His truth.
The person who believes the Scriptures believes their account of the Noahic Flood. This unique, global catastrophe which God promised never to repeat destroyed all air breathing animals and all mankind.
Based on what we are told in the Bible about the nature of the Flood (fountains of the great deep broken up and closed again, forty days of rain evidently from a source unlike the source of rain as we know it) it is likely that the Flood utterly obliterated the antediluvian topography in a wholesale way.
A wonder of the world like the Grand Canyon is better understood as having formed during and shortly after the Flood than in the way uniformitarians imagine. The Colorado River did not carve out the Grand Canyon over millions of years. That river is the trickle abiding to this day after an unimaginably powerful and gigantic torrent created the Grand Canyon in a very short time.
The Himalayas, the polar caps, the continents themselves, and other geological features likely formed after the Flood on account of the tectonic, volcanic, and other forces unleashed by it and continuing centuries after the Ark came to rest on the mountains of Ararat and the human race began once again to be fruitful and multiply, starting there. cf. Genesis 9:1 ff.
Modern earthquakes, volcanoes, and other phenomena are merely the slight aftershocks of the major "whole lotta shakin' goin' on" which God almighty kicked off after He shut eight people and thousands of critters into that mighty vessel of old.
In short, it is doubtful that we can recover a map of the antediluvian world and gain any idea whatsoever about where on Earth the garden of Eden might have been.
Secondly, as someone has suggested above, the God Who ejected Mankind (Oops, sorry Justin Trudeau, I mean "Peoplekind") from Eden and posted the only real extraterrestrial beings we know to exist as mighty guardians against our reentry has never indicated that He would relent and re-admit us. Rather, sinners will remain shut out and eventually cast into hell forever. Meanwhile, He has something better in store for His redeemed children...a new and improved version of the forest primeval!
"He who has an ear, let him hear what the Spirit says to the churches. To him who overcomes I will give to eat from the tree of life, which is in the midst of the PARADISE of God." (Revelation 2:7)
Finally, consider the Nehushtan, 2 Kings 18:4. The children of Israel perverted something that once had a good purpose in God's redemptive plan. The made it into an object of idolatry. There are enough alleged "pieces of the cross" of Christ to build another wooden Ark of Biblical dimensions! (Aside, the Ark Encounter near Cincinatti Ohio - highly recommended, family friendly, faith building summer vacation spot).
So regarding the garden of Eden and objects that would be allegedly found there, or Noah's ark, or the ark of the covenant and the stone tablets with the Decalog written on them with the finger of God - if we found any of these and other objects described in the sacred record (which gives us all we need for life and godliness, 2 Timothy 3:17), what would happen?
Sinful man would turn them into relics to be superstitiously revered...distractions for those worshippers in Spirit and truth whom God seeks as worshippers (John 4:23).
Let us not be distracted by the sensational, but sanctified by His truth.
I only outlined what He did..so maybe you should tell him your thoughts on this and not me.
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