I consider the fact that there is incredibly good evidence that it’s not literally true to, in and of itself, be pretty good evidence that it’s not intended literally.
How good that evidence is depends on whether the incredibly good evidence was available to (and incredibly good evidence for) the original writers.
A lot of the best reasons for thinking that the early chapters of Genesis are not literally true were (so far as anyone knows) completely unknown when those chapters were written.
According to Genesis 2 verse 10-14, the Garden was watered by a stream, which later split into four rivers. Two of those have, according to a brief Google search, gone missing in the time since Genesis was written, but the Tigris and the Euphrates would have been well known, even then. So checking up on Eden would have simply required heading up one of those rivers.
...which, now that I think about it, would have required someone willing to leave home for perhaps several days at a time and travel into the unknown, just to see what’s there.
checking up on Eden would have simply required heading up one of those rivers.
Nah. If you head up those rivers and don’t find Eden, the obvious conclusion is just that God removed it some time after Adam and Eve left because it was surplus to requirements. It doesn’t (at least not obviously, so far as I can see) refute the Genesis story.
Genesis says it was protected by an angel with a flaming sword. I think it might be reasonable not to expect to find the Garden… but one could expect to find the angel with the flaming sword. After all, if something’s there as security, it’s generally put where unauthorised people can find it.
It’s not an obvious refutation, but it’s more likely the result of a non-literal than a literal Garden of Eden.
If Eden was removed as surplus to requirements, so presumably was the angel. And this all seems like such an obvious thing for an Eden-literalist to say after trekking up the river and finding nothing that I really don’t see how the (then) present-day absence of the GoE and angel could possibly have been much evidence against a literal Eden.
How good that evidence is depends on whether the incredibly good evidence was available to (and incredibly good evidence for) the original writers.
A lot of the best reasons for thinking that the early chapters of Genesis are not literally true were (so far as anyone knows) completely unknown when those chapters were written.
According to Genesis 2 verse 10-14, the Garden was watered by a stream, which later split into four rivers. Two of those have, according to a brief Google search, gone missing in the time since Genesis was written, but the Tigris and the Euphrates would have been well known, even then. So checking up on Eden would have simply required heading up one of those rivers.
...which, now that I think about it, would have required someone willing to leave home for perhaps several days at a time and travel into the unknown, just to see what’s there.
Nah. If you head up those rivers and don’t find Eden, the obvious conclusion is just that God removed it some time after Adam and Eve left because it was surplus to requirements. It doesn’t (at least not obviously, so far as I can see) refute the Genesis story.
Genesis says it was protected by an angel with a flaming sword. I think it might be reasonable not to expect to find the Garden… but one could expect to find the angel with the flaming sword. After all, if something’s there as security, it’s generally put where unauthorised people can find it.
It’s not an obvious refutation, but it’s more likely the result of a non-literal than a literal Garden of Eden.
If Eden was removed as surplus to requirements, so presumably was the angel. And this all seems like such an obvious thing for an Eden-literalist to say after trekking up the river and finding nothing that I really don’t see how the (then) present-day absence of the GoE and angel could possibly have been much evidence against a literal Eden.
...I take your point. If there had been Eden literalists back then, then that evidence alone would have been insufficient to convince them otherwise.