Strata: “Garden of Eden”—Preserved for Posterity

“And the Lord God planted a garden in Eden, in the east, and there he put the man whom he had formed.”—Genesis 2:8

Where is—or was—the Garden of Eden? As with Noah’s Ark, many have been intrigued and have hunted for this Biblical place, but all have come up empty-handed. This question isn’t answerable—at least not for the average archaeologist. Perhaps Indiana Jones or Lara Croft would be able to locate it, but the rest—with modern research agendas and scientific methodology—would not even attempt such a quest.

For our purposes, then, a more salient question is: Where did the Biblical authors think Eden was located? Numerous scholars have pondered this, and most have arrived at the conclusion that Genesis 2–11 is set in Mesopotamia, with many placing these chapters more specifically in southern Iraq.