When arguing for the “historical reliability” of the Old Testament, many proponents pick and choose which evidences from the Bible they will use to build their case. On July 21, 1993 an inscription was found in an archaeological dig at the site of Tel Dan, in the Galilee in Israel. [1] That inscription was to excite those around the world interested in the field of biblical archaeology. While some students and scholars of the Bible reject wholesale the claim of historical reliability in the Hebrew scripts, [2] this inscription was another dagger in their arguments, placed happily there by those who would argue for the historical integrity and reliability of the Old Testament documents. The inscription made mention the name of Israel’s celebrated king, David. Dated to have been inscribed on the fragment in the 9th century BCE, this was the first time in the archaeological record that King David’s name had been discovered outside the Bible. Additional fragments (discovered at the same site in June of 1994) seal the date as having come from the reign of Joram (“Jehoram”) of Judah who ruled c. 847-842 BCE. [3] This fragment is used by proponents of the Bible’s historical reliability as evidence that the stories of the Old Testament were not merely literary creations invented in the third and fourth centuries BCE [4], and by biblical inerrantists to show the remarkable accuracy of the “God-breathed” text[5]. It is true that this fragment is supportive of the claim that a king of Israel named David once ruled the nation. It is the first (and only to date) extrabiblical mention of King David. But, does this inscription lend credibility to the biblical claim that David slew a giant named Goliath? Some biblical enthusiasts likely think so.

Simply because a claim in the Bible can be found to have extrabiblical mention in the archaeological data, that does not mean that every claim in the Bible should be given the benefit of the doubt and considered to be true until contrary external evidence is found to disconfirm the claim. While there certainly are points of agreement between what the Old Testament claims and what archaeological evidence has revealed, what of those internal claims in the biblical text which obviously, with a little attention and investigation, contradict themselves without any assistance from the outside world? What of those claims that do not need to wait on any disconfirming evidence from the archaeological record? What of such portions of the text that proponents of biblical inerrancy ignore while feasting on such inscriptions as found at Tel Dan? Is the Bible a reliable witness to ancient history? If the Bible is ultimately the inspiration and work of a divine entity, an entity with absolute knowledge and power, then shouldn’t all its claims be reliable? Proponents of biblical inerrancy would seem to think so. [6] However, as noted, most defenders of biblical inerrancy focus only on those intersections between history and the Bible that suit their needs. What of claims made in the Bible that are historically false and demonstrably so?

The Garden of Eden

According to the Old Testament book of Genesis, humankind’s first appearance was in a lush garden in which grew every tree suitable for food and pleasant to the eye (Genesis 2:9). The garden, according to the text, was located in the eastern portion of a larger region known as Eden. The text is quite explicit in detailing the location of the garden and of Eden. Genesis 2:10-14 gives a very good description of Eden’s locale using river and place names as well as hints as to the type of precious stones that can be found readily in the vicinity. The verses read,

Of course, most readers familiar with Near Eastern geography readily recognize two of the rivers named in the text: Tigris and Euphrates[7]. A map of the Near East reveals that the Tigris and the Euphrates run today through the country of Iraq with their headwaters coming from the mountains in Turkey, winding through Syria until meeting just before they empty inot the Persian Gulf near Kuwait[8]. The other two river names are unfamiliar to most readers but that does not seem to cause much difficulty in making the location of Eden fairly evident. The biblical writer seems to have the region of modern day Iraq in mind for the location of Eden and its famous garden.

This location should come as no surprise since most scholars of human history place the "cradle of civilization" in the southern region of the so-called Fertile Crescent." It is not at all unlikely that folk stories and legends made their way through the centuries of the region's first great empires that florished in the oasis of the ancient floodplains of southern modern Iraq. It would not be beyond reason that such stories would place not only the birthplace of civilization i the area but the orgins of humanity as well.

The apparent biblical location for Eden would not create many problems for readers if not for the glaring question such a specific –and well-known—location for the garden raises. If the garden of Eden were located somewhere in Iraq, wouldn’t someone have stumbled upon it by now?! It would be very difficult to miss!

Such a question is actually answered much later, and subtlety, in the biblical text. The garden of Eden was apparently a paradise for the early humans and was spoiled by their disobedience of the Hebrew god’s command of them not to eat the fruit off of “the tree of the knowledge of good an evil” (Genesis 2:17). The humans were then banished from the garden and two guardians were placed at the east of the garden of Eden with flaming swords to protect the tree of life from similar molestation. Such a garden would surely be quite a site to see and certainly would have become a source of great tourism if it indeed still existed!

However, in the story of the great flood that destroyed all of humankind save one family and a handful of animals aboard a large ark, the earth too is said to have been utterly destroyed. In the generations that separated the first pair of humans on the earth and the family who built and survived the great flood, humankind had grown wicked in the eyes of its creator. Genesis 6:5-6 says,

Seeing this wickedness, Yahweh decided to destroy not only all living things on the earth –humans, animals, insects and plants—but even the earth itself. Genesis 6:13 clearly states that the earth itself will perish along with all those living upon it:

The violence that Yahweh unleashes upon the earth to destroy it along with all life would have had to be unlike any natural disaster ever known. In such a disaster, any trace of the once beautiful and bountiful garden of Eden would have been utterly wiped out. This is how most believers in the biblical tales explain why no physical remains of the garden of Eden can be found in the region of modern Iraq. The garden disappeared in the violence of the great flood.

But what of the rivers? What of the Tigris and the Euphrates? Wouldn’t the beds of these rivers have been utterly destroyed in the flood as well? The unimaginable forces that must have wrecked the earth in order to destroy not only all life upon it but to destroy the earth itself must have also destroyed any trace of these rivers, their courses and even the mountains from which they gain their source. And yet, there they are, named in the Hebrew text chronologically centuries before they must have been destroyed in the great flood! How do apologists[9] explain the absence of the garden of Eden in Iraq due to the flood but not the disappearance of two very prominent rivers in the area? If the rivers survived the flood, why couldn’t the supernatural guardians of the tree of life and even the tree of life itself?

What’s In a Name?

This obvious problem in the text has been addressed by Christian apologist Mark Looy, member of the internet website Answers in Genesis[10]. While the Old Testament clearly names two of the rivers that flowed out of Eden Euphrates and Tigris, Looy claims that these are not the same Euphrates and Tigris that run through Iraq today. Looy notes, as did I earlier, that the great flood of Genesis 6:5-8:22 would have utterly wiped out any trace of these rivers had they been the same ones flowing through modern Iraq. He then notes, quite without any supporting evidence, that the rivers named in modern Iraq are namesakes for the original Tigris and Euphrates that ran through Eden in the pre-flood world! Looy unabashedly announces,

Obviously? Obviously to whom? Looy does not provide any topographical evidence (although, admittedly, this would be impossible!) or any other kind of objective support to strengthen his argument that the post-flood Euphrates and Tigris are obviously named in honor of pre-flood rivers that did not survive Yahweh’s cataclysm.

However, Looy also notes that there are a total of four rivers mentioned in the Hebrew text, Pishon and Gihon along with the Tigris and the Euphrates, but that only the Tigris and the Euphrates run currently through Iraq. He also notes that the text tells us that Pishon flowed around “the whole land of Havilah.” Havilah, Looy states, is another name for Ethiopia which, today, is “over 1,000 miles from Iraq (and across water: the Red Sea).” This, he claims, proves that the rivers mentioned in Genesis 2:10-14 cannot be those of modern Iraq. Looy concludes his argument by stating:

For Looy, and many other Christians who visit AiG and agree with his assessment, the Old Testament is historically accurate in its mention of the garden of Eden and skeptical objections to this reliability are put to rest with simple reasoning and an appeal to the inerrancy of the biblical text. However, and of course, the solution is hardly so simple.

The Four Rivers of Eden

In Kenneth Kitchen’s book, On the Reliability of the Old Testament, he argues that the Genesis writer indeed was familiar with Near Eastern geography and in fact, this knowledge dates back to far antiquity. Demonstrating this knowledge, Kitchen calls into question Looy’s assertion above that the rivers Tigris and Euphrates in modern Iraq are simply the namesakes of pre-flood watercourses, long destroyed and buried beneath the sediment of Yahweh’s wrath.

Kitchen notes that the Hebrew text describes the four rivers as having come from one single river with its start in the garden itself. Again, the relevant text reads,

In other words, as Kitchen states, “This is a “snapshot”-type view, taken…looking out from where the single stream entered the garden, and looking back just upstream to the point where four “head” rivers came together to form the single stream that entered the garden.” [11] Kitchen then goes on to name the four rivers which have already been discussed above and notes the familiarity of the Tigris and the Euphrates. He states that these two rivers “join up in south Iraq to form the Shatt el-Arab to enter the gulf, but this was not always so in antiquity.” [12] Kitchen is, of course, interested in locating the two lesser known rivers mentioned in the text, Pishon and Gihon. Gihon, he notes, is mentioned in the text before the Tigris and surmises that it may have been east of the Tigris as the Euphrates is west of the river and is mentioned last in the biblical story. He then points out that Genesis 2:13 states that the Gihon “winds through all the land of Kush,” and notes that this could not be in reference to Upper Nubia in East Africa or the Kushu/Kushan in Edom because of the vast distance that separates these places from the seemingly apparent location of Eden in southern Iraq. Kitchen then argues,

Mesopotamia, of course, being located in modern Iraq [13] making the reference to “C[K]ush” in Genesis 2:13 not to a place in East Africa, Edom or some long lost pre-flood locale “on the other side of the world!” The river was very real and indeed existed in the region of southern Iraq.

Pishon, however, creates a much more difficult problem. Kitchen acknowledges that for years this river presented difficulties for scholars and researchers who tried to place it in the geographic context of the ancient Near East. Kitchen builds his case for the historical reliability of the Old Testament and the Genesis author’s familiarity with the geography of ancient Mesopotamia by noting the text’s mention of “Havilah” in verse 11. He locates the river Pishon by noting,

After identifying the river Pishon, Kitchen then goes on to explain how the ancient landscape of Arabia was far different in antiquity than it is today. The landscape experienced alternating periods of “wetter” and “dryer” climates from roughly 70,000 BCE to 1000 CE while the gulf likely expanded and contracted the area it covered over the centuries. Kitchen concludes that in the ancient world, Pishon would have flowed c. 7500/6500 BCE up to at least 2500/2200 BCE with dry intervals inbetween. After c. 2200 BCE, Kitchen claims, Pishon dried up and disappeared forever. He then concludes,

It would seem for Kitchen’s argument on the reliability of the Old Testament, his Eden too has conveniently vanished beneath an impenetrable layer of salty waves. However, he seems to have discovered and documented the Iraqi location of the four rivers out of Eden which is something AiG creationist Mark Looy denied. Looy had opted for rivers that had long since vanished not under the waters of the northern Persian Gulf, but under the piles of sediment left after Noah’s flood. And herein lies an insurmountable problem for proponents of biblical inerrancy.

Damned If You Do, Damned If You Don’t

In my opinion, Kenneth Kitchen successfully argued for the geographical and historical location of the four rivers of Eden mentioned in the Old Testament book of Genesis. Not only did he locate them on the topography of the region, but he gave a most lucid explanation as to how their presence in history led to their inclusion in the biblical tale. Kitchen even puts a knife in the argument of those who may lobby for a "mythical" interpretation of the story of the garden of Eden. He writes,

Kitchen’s conclusion, of course, is that the Old Testament author is painting a historically accurate geographical portrait of ancient Mesopotamia, a portrait that could not have been invented in the third or fourth centuries BCE by over-exuberant and hyper-patriotic Jews looking to create a national myth from scratch. However, in doing such a fine job, Kitchen has demonstrated just the opposite of historical reliability in the Old Testament stories as read by those who believe the text is ultimately the inspired word of an omniscient deity.

While Kitchen has located the rivers of Eden in their historical and geographical contexts, AiG creationist Mark Looy has demonstrated another aspect of the Old Testament story that ultimately reduces Kitchen’s study into a mere handful of academic, but otherwise irrelevant, details for the biblical inerrantist. Looy correctly noted that the book of Genesis (chapters 6-8) describes such a cataclysmic event as to have wiped out every pre-flood geographic landmark on the planet. Genesis 6:13 itself explicitly states that all life, along with the earth, will be destroyed in the global flood. Articles abound on AiG’s website and in their publications on the destructive and violent forces that must have been unleashed in this re-creation of the earth. There is not a chance, if Genesis 6-8 are reliable accounts of history, that the four rivers Pishon, Gihon, Tigris and Euphrates would still be following their courses in a post-flood world. Yet, as Kitchen has demonstrated, these rivers indeed exist (or, in one case, existed) in modern Iraq. This means that either the narrative of Genesis 2 is incorrect in locating the garden of Eden in southern Mesopotamia or that the flood story of Genesis 6-8 is incorrect in its narrative of a devastating worldwide flood. Either way, the Old Testament is shown to be a historically inaccurate document and the case for biblical inerrancy, and divine inspiration, is again revealed to be a tenuous position to defend. [14]

NOTES

1. See http://www.kchanson.com/ANCDOCS/westsem/teldan.html
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2. People throughout history have believed in the literal truth of the stories told in the Old Testament. Until relatively recently, few challenged the history relayed in those first books of the Bible. However, as noted in Kenneth Kitchen’s new book, On the Reliability of the Old Testament,the authenticity of those stories have come under closer scrutiny in the modern era and some have even concluded that much of the Old Testament is pious fiction, created centuries after the supposed “historical facts” given in the text. Such critics are termed “minimalists” and, as Kitchen describes, maintain that “the constituent writings in the Hebrew Bible [are] exclusively the product of a group of Jewish literary romantics of the fourth-third centuries B.C.; and [are] thus truly a late Perso-Hellenistic product” (p. 449). These critics dismiss “virtually the whole of it [the Old Testament] as pure fiction, as an attempt by the puny Jewish community of Palestine to write themselves an imaginary past large, as a form of national propaganda.” (p. 2) Return to Text

3. See Dever, What Did the Biblical Writers Know and When Did They Know It, p.128 Return to Text

4. See Note 2Return to Text

5. Many believers in the literal interpretation of the Bible rely upon 2 Timothy 3:16 to support this view. This verse reads, All scripture is inspired by God and is useful for teaching, for reproof, for correction, and for training in righteousness. The Greek word for “inspired” from the original language in which this passage was written is theopneustos and means, literally, “God-breathed.” Theos, “God,” pneo, “to breathe.” In this way, the words of Scripture literally were chosen by God to express exactly what the deity intended. As expressed by Richard W. DeHann in the booklet “How To Recognize A Good Church” from the evangelical Christian television program “Day of Discovery” and found on the Internet website, Gospelcom.Net,
   Yes, we believe that ‘all Scripture is given by inspiration of God.’ In fact, we hold to verbal plenary inspiration…When we speak of verbal inspiration, we mean that the Holy Spirit led the authors of Scripture so meticulously that even the words they used were controlled by Him. He so guided them that they never made a wrong choice. This assures us that the Bible is true in every minute detail. When we say we believe in the plenary inspiration of the Scriptures, we mean that all 66 Bible books are equally inspired…When we affirm our belief in plenary inspiration, we are declaring that the Bible from Genesis to Revelation is inspired of God.” See http://www.gospelcom.net/rbc/ds/rd951/point1.html
   
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6. See works by apologists Josh McDowell, Gleason Archer and Ken Ham for examples.Return to Text

7. In certain translations of the Hebrew text, the names “Tigris” and “Euphrates” are not given. For example, in Young’s Literal translation, Genesis 2:14 reads,
   and the name of the third river [is] Hiddekel, it [is] that which is going east of Asshur; and the fourth river is Phrat

   Hiddekel and Phrat in Young’s replaces the Tigris and Euphrates, respectively, found in other versions (e.g. NRSV). Some have claimed that this proves the rivers that flowed through Eden were not those located in modern Iraq and that these rivers, the Hiddekel and the Phrat, are long lost pre-flood waterways. Such a designation can assist in retaining biblical reliability and inerrancy as there is no readily apparent way to uncover long lost rivers that disappeared beneath a global flood!

   However, the names “Tigris” and “Euphrates” are Greek in origin, found in the Greek translation of the Hebrew scriptures, otherwise known as the Septuagint. According to one source,

   Before 3,000 BC the Sumerians called the Euphrates "Puranum" meaning, "Great water;" sometimes they called it "Pura," that is, "water." The Semitic people, including the Hebrews, called it "Purat." The Persians altered the "p" to "ph" or "f", and added an initial vowel, making it, "Ufratu." To the Greeks this became, "Euphrates." The Arabs today still call it "Furat." For over 5,000 years this important river has kept actually to one name, varying only in pronunciation from language to language.

   While not everyone reading English will immediately recognize the name "Hiddekel,'yet scholars are quite in agreement about it. It is the modern "Tigris."

   Those ancient Sumerians called the Tigris, "Idikna" or "Idikla." The early Semitic people called it, "Idiklat" (in Hebrew, "Hiddekel,"), later shortened to "Diklat." The Persians pronounced it, "Tigra," from whence the classical Greek name came, "Tigris." Today, in Arabic it is, "Dijla."

   Once again, these are but variants of one name retained throughout all history. This identification is upon firm ground. To make the identification doubly sure, the Tigris is definitely the river of Assyria. The Assyrian capital city Nineveh stood upon that river's banks.

   See http://nabataea.net/eden2.html
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8. See this and this   Return to Text

9. ”Apologetics is the attempt to make a defense for the Christian faith. If you do that in any way, then you are an apologist. In fact, you are commanded to be an apologist by Peter: ‘but sanctify Christ as Lord in your hearts, always being ready to make a defense to everyone who asks you to give an account for the hope that is in you, yet with gentleness and reverence, (1 Pet. 3:15).

   If God commands you to make a defense, then He is commanding you to be an apologist. So, you are, whether you like it or not, called to be an apologist. But don't worry. God is not in the habit of sending people to accomplish His will without equipping them.” See http://www.carm.org/apologetics/areyouanapolgist.htm
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10. See http://www.answersingenesis.org/docs2003/1021eden.asp
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11. On the Reliability of the Old Testament pp.428-429 Return to Text

12. Ibid Return to Text

13. See the British Museum’s educational website, http://www.mesopotamia.co.uk/
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14. To anticipate an obvious objection by adherents to biblical inerrancy, even though all four of the rivers mentioned in Genesis can be found to have corresponding waterways in southern Iraq, that doesn’t necessarily mean that they are not namesakes for four other pre-flood rivers. And if these rivers were the only such corresponding sites, this argument may carry a little bit of weight (even without any substantiating evidence to support it.) However, there are a number of site names in the “post-flood” world of the Bible that correspond with “pre-flood” localities for this to be a mere coincidence. It is odd for such an argument that in the pre-flood world a river known as Pishon flowed around a land known as Havilah where there is gold, bdellium and onyx stone just like there is in the post-flood world. It is oddly coincidental that this same river shared the region with another waterway known as Gihon which, in both the pre-flood and post-flood worlds, flowed around an area known as Cush. It is equally odd that these two rivers in the pre-flood world flowed together into two other rivers named the Tigris and the Euphrates, just as the four rivers of the same name flow together in the post-flood world of southern modern Iraq. Additionally, it seems strange that another Assyria with another Tigris flowing to its east would have existed in the pre-flood world just as one existed in days of Sargon II in the 8th century BCE. What are the odds that all these locales shared names and geographical similarities in a relatively small area in the post-flood world with a pre-flood local that may very well have existed “on the other side of the world”? The more likely explanation (because to posit a pre-flood world would require substantial evidence of its existence as well as supportive evidence that these place names originated from there and a substantial stretch of the imagination) is that these site names existed in far antiquity as identified by Kenneth Kitchen and that no flood occurred at all. The Bible simply is not a historically accurate document in all that it claims. Return to Text

SOURCES

Dever, William G. (2001) What Did the Biblical Writers Know and When Did They Know It? Wm. B. Eerdmans Publishing Co.

<>Kitchen, Kenneth A. (2003) On the Reliability of the Old Testament Wm. B. Eerdmans Publishing Co.