Was The Garden Of Eden In The Middle East Near The Tigris And Euphrates Rivers?
Bodie Hodge, M.Sc., B.Sc., PEI
Biblical Authority Ministries, September 22, 2025 (Donate)
Far too often people see map of Iraq, noticed the Tigris and
Euphrates Rivers and get excited thinking the Garden of Eden must have been
there in the region. When Christians do this, they are making a huge mistake
though.
While Genesis 2:10–14 gives details about Eden, describing a
river flowing out of the Garden, which was eastward in the region of Eden, and then
it divided into four separate rivers—including the Euphrates and Tigris as well
as the Gihon and the Pishon. These details no longer match the current
geography of the world.
Many people assume Eden was somewhere in the Middle East,
especially near Mesopotamia, because two of the river names, the Tigris and
Euphrates, are familiar today. However, this conclusion is missing that there
is a huge, catastrophic problem.
Between Creation and today was a massive global Flood
that affected geography, rearranged continents, pushed up mountains, and made
new rivers. Because of this, the Garden of Eden was likely not located in the
Middle East, and its exact location cannot be identified today.
Geography After The Flood
In the biblical account, there is one river flowing from
Eden that splits into four branches, but in today’s geography, the Tigris and
Euphrates do not share a single headwater—they come from completely separate
sources. This means the current rivers cannot be the same rivers mentioned in
Genesis.
As mentioned, the main reason for this mismatch is the
global Flood described in Genesis 6–9. The Flood was a worldwide, catastrophic
event that dramatically altered the surface of the earth. Mountains rose,
valleys sank, (e.g., Psalm 104:8-9) and massive amounts of sediment were
deposited across the globe. The current Tigris and Euphrates rivers are
actually flowing on top of these tremendous amounts of Flood sediment.
Because of the Flood, the pre-Flood world—including the land
where Eden once stood—was destroyed, rearranged, and buried. What we see today
is a completely different landscape from the one described before the Flood.
Reusing Pre-Flood Names
When Noah’s family came off the Ark and began to repopulate
and map the earth, they simply reused names of the pre-Flood rivers—the same
way English settlers to the New World named two different rivers the “Thames”—one
in Connecticut, USA and one in Ontario, Canada. Of course, the original Thames
River flows through London, England. Reusing names in a new land was very
common for rivers, cities, regions, descendants, and so on.
Additionally, two of the rivers mentioned in Genesis, the
Pishon and the Gihon, cannot be connected to any known modern rivers. This makes
it even more difficult to pinpoint Eden’s location. One of these four rivers (Gihon)
ran from the Garden through the land of Cush (Ethiopia) which by today’s geography
is on another continent (Genesis 2:13)! Again, this is because the name was
reused after the Flood.
Concluding Remarks
The Garden of Eden cannot be located anywhere on today’s
map. The destruction caused by the Flood erased the original geography, and any
attempts to match modern rivers or regions to the Genesis account will only
lead to speculation.
While the Middle East may share some familiar names (for
obvious reasons that Noah’s family reused some names), the true location of
Eden remains unknown and likely unrecognizable in the post-Flood world.
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Bodie Hodge, Ken Ham's son in law, has been an apologist
since 1998 helping out in various churches and running an apologetics website.
He spent 21 years working at Answers in Genesis as a speaker, writer, and
researcher as well as a founding news anchor for Answers News. He was also head
of the Oversight Council.
Bodie launched Biblical Authority Ministries in 2015 as a
personal website and it was organized officially in 2025 as a 501(c)(3). He has
spoken on multiple continents and hosts of US states in churches, colleges, and
universities. He is married with four children.
