The Garden of Eden

Genesis 2 describes the creation of a circle of stars called the Zodiac. Allegorically, it has trees, animals, a river, and a man and woman. Readers can get a visual image of Eden by taking the Garden Tour. The heroes in the Bible were not historical; they were celestial myths.

Summary-Gen. 2:4b-25

1.   Lord God made the earth and the heavens in one day.

2.   Earth was bare and the ground was dry; there was no water.

3.   A mist came up from the earth and watered the whole surface.

4.   God formed man from dust and breathed into his nostrils to give him life.

5.   He planted a garden in Eden in the east and put the man there.

6.   Out the ground, he made plants pleasing to the eye and good for food. In the middle, he made the tree of life and the tree of knowledge of good and evil.

7.   One river flowed out of Eden where it divided into four rivers.

8.   He put the man in the garden to till it and keep it. He commanded that he may eat from any tree except the tree of knowledge of good and evil. If he violates this command, he will die on the same day.

9.   Man was alone without help. So, from the ground the creator made land animals and birds. The man gave them all names. Alas, none of the animals were fit to help.

10.  So he put the man to sleep, took one rib and closed the wound. Then he made the rib into a woman and brought her to the man.

11.  The man and his wife became one flesh. When the two saw each others nakedness, they were not ashamed.

Interpretation

Historians credit the Egyptians, Sumerians and the Greeks for developing the constellations and the mythologies of the Zodiac. Their influence was impressed on almost every major religion during those times. Hebrew mystics had their own interpretations of the constellations which we have to draw out from its esoteric language. That is why there is no place on earth that fits the description of Eden.

There is a controversy about whether the creation account in Genesis 2 is a detailed subset of Genesis 1 or whether they are two conflicting accounts of a single creation. There are reasons to believe they are neither. The first was intended to be a material creation and the second, a celestial creation. For the details, see When Was Eden Created

To get into the minds of these ancient writers, we have to use some imagination to approximate how they thought. Heaven would be composed of water because of its blue color. The stars seem to branch out like trees. They have colors which shine like precious gems. Some form patterns that look like people, and animals such as serpents, bulls and rams.

It has two rivers; the largest one, the Milky Way, is very wide and flows all the away across. The second is called Eridanus. When stars are not visible, they are in the wilderness. The background stars are a blur like the grains of sand in a desert. The star formations they have identified make up God's garden.

Within the Zodiac, there is the constellation Bootes, facing a woman called Virgo. One of his arms is raised, exposing his ribs cage. Virgo is facing him with her hands holding some stalks, the forbidden fruit. At their feet are the stars of Serpens the serpent.

The middle of Eden defines the North Pole star Polaris, the tree of life. The tree of knowledge of good and evil is symbolized by the previous Pole Star Thuban which lays on the tail of the constellation Draco the serpent. The star's fall from the pole symbolizes the eaten fruit. This is where God moved Serpens when he cursed him "above" the other animals-the pole is perceived as the highest spot in the Garden. Draco glares down from its high spot every day as if to be spreading evil.

The Zodiac has a quadrant called the Sea. This is how it plays: The water, in Genesis 1, that started creation, came from underneath to wet the ground. God combined the water and dust into clay to form the man. The word "spirit" comes from the Hebrew rauch, meaning air or breath-ancients believed air gives us life supernaturally. So when God breathed into the man, his "Spirit" with a large "S", went into his body as a "spirit" with a small "s".

By planting the garden, he is filling it with an array of stars which connect like tree branches. The man that he put there to till and keep it is the constellation Bootes. The tree of life and the tree of good and evil are the stars Polaris and Thuban as described above. There is a river flowing south out of the Zodiac; we call it the Milky Way. It flows down across the Zodiac to the horizon as if to be feeding four rivers on earth.

Man was alone without help, so God created the animal constellations. The man gave them names like bull, sheep and fish a.k.a. Taurus, Aries and Pisces. When they weren't fit to help, he took a rib from the man to make the woman. Bootes has one arm raised as if to expose his rib cage to Virgo, when he is giving up a rib. (See Garden Tour)

The following passages provide some allegorical examples as to Eden's astronomical whereabouts.

1.   Eden is equated to a wilderness and the garden of God to a desert. The wilderness is like a forest of stars with branches of connecting points. In the desert, the vast array of stars is so overwhelming, that they seem like grains of sand.

³For the Lord will comfort Zion; he will comfort all her waste places, and will make her wilderness like Eden, her desert like the garden of the Lord; joy and gladness will be found in her, thanksgiving and the voice of song. (Isaiah 51:3)

2.   Ezekiel 28:12-19 summarizes the Garden of Eden and the Adam and Eve saga.

Ezekiel calls Eden the garden of God. Since God is in heaven, his garden is in heaven. Precious stones symbolize stars by the way they reflect different colors.

¹²"Son of man, raise a lamentation over the king of Tyre, and say to him, Thus says the Lord God: "You were the signet of perfection, full of wisdom and perfect in beauty.
¹³You were in Eden, the garden of God; every precious stone was your covering, carnelian, topaz, and jasper, chrysolite, beryl, and onyx, sapphire, carbuncle, and emerald; and wrought in gold were your settings and your engravings. On the day that you were created they were prepared. (Ezekiel 28:12-13)

The heavenly dome over earth is a kind of a "holy mountain of God". "Stones of fire" describe stars.

¹⁴With an anointed guardian cherub I placed you; you were on the holy mountain of God; in the midst of the stones of fire you walked.
¹⁵You were blameless in your ways from the day you were created, till iniquity was found in you.
¹⁶In the abundance of your trade you were filled with violence, and you sinned; so I cast you as a profane thing from the mountain of God, and the guardian cherub drove you out from the midst of the stones of fire. (Ezekiel 28:14-16)

"I cast you to the ground", describes Adam's fall from heaven.

¹⁷Your heart was proud because of your beauty; you corrupted your wisdom for the sake of your splendor. I cast you to the ground; I exposed you before kings, to feast their eyes on you. (Ezekiel 28:17)

God turned Adam from a star to a man.

¹⁸By the multitude of your iniquities, in the unrighteousness of your trade you profaned your sanctuaries; so I brought forth fire from the midst of you; it consumed you, and I turned you to ashes upon the earth in the sight of all who saw you.
¹⁹All who know you among the peoples are appalled at you; you have come to a dreadful end and shall be no more for ever." (Ezekiel 28:18-19)

3.   Eden has trees with branches and boughs, whose roots go down to the water. Those roots would be seen as the stars coming over the horizon. The blue sky is the water whose stars connect like tree branches.

⁷It was beautiful in its greatness, in the length of its branches; for its roots went down to abundant waters.
⁸The cedars in the garden of God could not rival it, nor the fir trees equal its boughs; the plane trees were as nothing compared with its branches; no tree in the garden of God was like it in beauty.
⁹I made it beautiful in the mass of its branches, and all the trees of Eden envied it, that were in the garden of God. (Ezekiel 31:7-9)

4.   In the flat earth days, the sun was seen to rise and fall with the seasons. The gate to Sheol or hell occurred at the beginning of fall, when dark hours start to exceed light hours. The Pit was at the lowest point of descent in the middle of winter, December 21.

¹⁶I will make the nations quake at the sound of its fall, when I cast it down to Sheol with those who go down to the Pit; and all the trees of Eden, the choice and best of Lebanon, all that drink water, will be comforted in the nether world. (Ezekiel 31:16)

5.   Eden has trees when you see the stars as a bramble of interconnecting dots that branch off in different directions.

¹⁸Whom are you thus like in glory and in greatness among the trees of Eden? You shall be brought down with the trees of Eden to the nether world; you shall lie among the uncircumcised, with those who are slain by the sword. "This is Pharaoh and all his multitude, says the Lord God." (Ezekiel 31:18)

Deconstruction

After God, the sequence records the four primeval elements: earth (2.5), water (2.6), air (2.7)and fire (2.8).  

In the Day-Gen. 2:4b

Lord God made the earth and the heavens in one day.

In the day that the LORD God made the earth and the heavens. (Gen 2:4b)

1.   In Hebrew, Lord means Yahweh and God means Elohim. Elohim means gods. This clearly is not the Christian Trinitarian god; Lord God means Yahweh of the gods-Jews don't subscribe to the Trinity. Scholars refer to this second story of creation as the "Yahwist" version and the seven day version as the "Elohist" version.

2.   Absurdity: Asserts that the universe come into form in one day.

3.   Contradiction: According to Gen. 2:2, creation took seven days, not one day.

4.   Whichever, it is off by six billion years.

Earth-Gen. 2:5

Earth was bare and the ground was dry; there was no water.

⁵when no plant of the field was yet in the earth and no herb of the field had yet sprung up-for the LORD God had not caused it to rain upon the earth, and there was no man to till the ground; (Gen 2:5)

1.   Contradiction: Gen. 1:9-10 says Earth was surrounded by water.

2.   Contradiction: Gen. 1:11 says plant life was created from earth without water.

3.   Fact: As earth cooled, heavy solid matter came into form before the lighter liquids and the gases that rose to the surface.

Water-Gen. 2:6

A mist came up from the earth and watered the whole surface.

⁶but a mist went up from the earth and watered the whole face of the ground (Gen. 2:6)

1.  Absurdity: Asserts Lord God created water from earth.

2.  Contradiction: Gen. 1:2 says water existed before earth.

3.  Fact: As earth was cooling, the lighter elements floating on the surface condensed into liquid and gas. Water can't come up from the ground until it first seeps in from the atmosphere.

4.  This has an Egyptian flavor to it. Egypt has almost no rain; they get their water entirely from the Nile.

Man-Gen. 2:7

He formed man from dust and breathed into him to give him life.

⁷then the LORD God formed man of dust from the ground, and breathed into his nostrils the breath of life; and man became a living being. (Gen 2:7)

⁷And the LORD God formed man of the dust of the ground, and breathed into his nostrils the breath of life; and man became a living soul. (Gen. 2.7 KJV)

1.   The analogy is to that of a potter making man from clay.

2.   Asserts that a man's soul is separate from his body. This can be inferred from the Hebrew translations. "Spirit" translated to Hebrew is rauch, meaning wind. "Soul" in Hebrew is nephesh, meaning a breathing creature. Air in biblespeak symbolizes the soul which gives man life when it enters into him.

3.   Asserts man came before plant life. What did he eat meanwhile?

4.   Contradiction: In biblespeak according to Gen. 1:26, when God made man in "our" image, he was automatically infused with a soul. If God made man in his image, then it stands that God looks like man complete with genitalia. Early gods were anthropomorphic.

²⁶Then God said, "Let us make man in our image, after our likeness.." (Gen 1:26)

5.   Contradiction: According to Gen. 3:22, it wasn't until man ate from the tree of knowledge of good and evil, that he became like the gods.

²²Then the LORD God said, "Behold, the man has become like one of us, knowing good and evil; and now, lest he put forth his hand and take also of the tree of life, and eat, and live for ever" (Gen. 3:22)

Garden of Eden-Gen. 2:8

He planted a garden in Eden in the east and put the man there.

⁸And the LORD God planted a garden in Eden, in the east; and there he put the man whom he had formed. (Gen. 2:8)

1.   He took the man from earth and put him in heaven.

2.   The Hebrew translation of Eden comes from eden, meaning a place of pleasure. Translators converted the common noun "eden" into a proper noun, "Eden". Eden with a small "s" has no geographic whereabouts.

3.   "East" infers the stars in heaven which rise from the east.

Plant Life-Gen. 2:9

Out the ground, he made plants pleasing to the eye and good for food. In the middle, he made the tree of life and the tree of knowledge of good and evil.

⁹And out of the ground the LORD God made to grow every tree that is pleasant to the sight and good for food, the tree of life also in the midst of the garden, and the tree of the knowledge of good and evil. (Gen. 2:9)

1.  From the Eden-is-on-earth view, it asserts that vegetation was magically created from earth; there are no animals so meat eating is impossible.

2.   From the Eden-is-in-heaven view, the stars symbolize trees. Or perhaps imaginary lines between them seem to sprout out like branches.

3.  The location of the trees in the middle of the garden, would point to the North Pole.

4.   Around the year 2750 BCE, Thuban from the constellation Draco laid directly on the North Pole. Its position on the serpent defined it as the tree of good and evil. Due to precession, Thuban fell as Polaris rose to the pole position. Its falling was symbolized by Adam and Eve eating the forbidden fruit. The way the Adam and Eve story ends with the tree of life being guarded, Polaris symbolized the tree of life. Thuban stands out too because it was the star with which the ancient Egyptians aligned their pyramids.

Figure 1. Thuban the North Pole star 2750 BCE.

Rivers-Gen. 2:10-14

One river flowed out of Eden where it divided into four rivers.

¹⁰A river flowed out of Eden to water the garden, and there it divided and became four rivers.
¹¹The name of the first is Pishon; it is the one which flows around the whole land of Havilah, where there is gold;
¹²and the gold of that land is good; bdellium and onyx stone are there.
¹³The name of the second river is Gihon; it is the one which flows around the whole land of Cush.
¹⁴And the name of the third river is Tigris, which flows east of Assyria. And the fourth river is the Euphrates. (Gen. 2:10-14)

1. There is no river in Mesopotamia that divides into four rivers. There is just the Tigres and Euphrates which flow from different sources in an almost parallel southeast direction. They converge into the Shatt al Arab River 110 miles north of the Persian Gulf.

2.  Eden has two rivers: the constellation Eridanus and the Milky Way. Eridanus starts at Orion's left foot and flows southerly. Pishon fits the description of the Milky Way because it flows across the entire zodiac; it is very wide, and it sinks below the horizon as if to touch earth. To the Egyptians, the Milky Way represented the Nile

The river, Pishon, is listed first, presumably because it is the most important. It means, "free flowing" in Hebrew, which doesn't say much. Pishon is described as flowing around the whole land of Havilah, where there is gold, bdellium and onyx stone. Havilah, in Hebrew, means "sandy stretch", which fits the description of the Sinai Peninsula. Gold denotes wealth, suggesting a wealthy empire of sorts. Bdellium is believed to be either a gum or a stone. Onyx is quartz like stone. All suggest a developed civilization like Egypt.

Rather then trying to translate Pishon to some known river, we'll look for a proper name that means river. The Egyptians called the Nile, "HEP, HEPR, HAPR, HAPI," which etymologists suspect means "river". The word "Nile" is of Greek origins, but nobody knows its etymology. Adding it up, the etymology of Nile probably means "river", as does Pishon. Conclusion: Pishon symbolizes the Milky Way and is the Hebrew equivalent for "Nile".  

The river Gihon happens to be the name of an underground spring that feeds Jerusalem. The mention of Gihon suggests that the writer connected Eden to the holy city of Jerusalem. Cush-now Ethiopia-is located on the southern border of Egypt. It is nowhere near Jerusalem and there is no river that flows around it. Either Gihon implies the Jerusalem spring alone or simultaneously the Eridanus river in the Zodiac.

The Pishon, Gihon, Tigris and Euphrates add up to four rivers which symbolize the four corners of earth or the four cardinal points of the Zodiac.

Forbidden Fruit-Gen. 2:15-17

He put the man in the garden to till it and keep it. He commanded that he may eat from any tree except the tree of knowledge of good and evil. If he violates this command, he will die on the same day.

¹⁵The LORD God took the man and put him in the garden of Eden to till it and keep it.
¹⁶And the LORD God commanded the man, saying, "You may freely eat of every tree of the garden;
¹⁷but of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil you shall not eat, for in the day that you eat of it you shall die." (Gen 2:15-17)

1.   God took the man from earth and put him in the Zodiac. He is the constellation Bootes. In heaven, the man has immorality.

2.   Suggests that Lord God did not want man to know the difference between good and evil. Under such circumstances, how can man be expected to act morally?

3.   Contradiction with Gen. 1:29: God said man can eat freely from any tree.

Animals-Gen. 2:18-20

Man was alone without help. So, from the ground the creator made land animals and birds. The man gave them all names. Alas, none of the animals were fit to help.

¹⁸Then the LORD God said, "It is not good that the man should be alone; I will make him a helper fit for him."
¹⁹So out of the ground the LORD God formed every beast of the field and every bird of the air, and brought them to the man to see what he would call them; and whatever the man called every living creature, that was its name.
²⁰The man gave names to all cattle, and to the birds of the air, and to every beast of the field; but for the man there was not found a helper fit for him. (Gen. 2:18-20)

1.   Man was alone without help, so he created the animal constellations. The man gave them names like bull, sheep, fish, fish-goat or respectively Taurus, Aries, Pisces and Capricorn.

2.   Asserts first animals were created from ground material. Stems from the primitive belief that earth was a primeval element.

3.   Asserts every animal in the world originated in Eden, that is, if Eden was literally on the ground.

4.   Without a woman, man would have to engage with the animals if he wanted sex. In the constellations, there is no sex.

5.   If Eden was on the ground, there would be no sea life.

6.   How could anybody know a language if he had no one to talk to?

7.   None of the animals were fit to help. Lord God made a mistake?

8.   Shows what Lord God thinks of women. The animals were good company but they didn't have the capacity to do man's menial work.

9.   Contradiction: Gen. 1:20 says God brought birds from out of the waters.

10.  Contradiction: Gen 1:25 says God makes animals before man.

Woman-Gen. 2:21-23

Put the man to sleep, took one rib and closed the wound. Then he made the rib into a woman and brought her to the man.

²¹So the LORD God caused a deep sleep to fall upon the man, and while he slept took one of his ribs and closed up its place with flesh;
²²and the rib which the LORD God had taken from the man he made into a woman and brought her to the man.
²³Then the man said,"This at last is bone of my bones and flesh of my flesh; she shall be called Woman, because she was taken out of Man." (Gen. 2:21-23)

1.   The constellation Bootes faces the constellation Virgo with one arm raised as if to be exposing its rib cage.

2.   Man gives birth to a full grown woman. Qualifies as tabloid news.

3.   Rib turns into woman. Qualifies as tabloid news.

4.   Absurdity: Implies God ran out of materials, so he had to use the man's rib.

5.   Woman was the last to be created. The mythological reason for this has to do with the social pecking order. God is first. Man is second. Animals third. Women fourth.

6.   Lord God did not breathe into woman to give her a soul. It puts her in the same category with the wild beasts. She retains goddess status as the constellation Virgo.

7.   Contradiction: Gen. 1:27 says God created man and woman at the same time and told them both to be fruitful and multiply.

8.   Absurdity: In Gen. 3:20, the woman is called the mother of all living. The problem is that this incident makes the man her mother. How can she be a mother if she hasn't had any children yet? Again, this description portrays Virgo as a goddess.

Wife-Gen. 2:24-25

The man and his wife became one flesh. When the two saw each others nakedness, they were not ashamed.

²⁴Therefore a man leaves his father and his mother and cleaves to his wife, and they become one flesh.
²⁵And the man and his wife were both naked, and were not ashamed. (Gen. 2:24-25)

1.   Lord God marries the father to his daughter. The daughter is the same age as her father, and cows can jump over the moon. With God, anything is possible.

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