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If you have been searching for paradise, you will be interested to learn that the Bible supplies the Garden of Eden's exact geographical coordinates. Eden was located in a land then called "Havilah," 150 miles north of the present head of the Persian Gulf, in a section of what is now southern Iraq (Gen. 2:10-11). Don't book your flight just yet: anyone who has served lately in the United States Armed Forces will tell you that southern Iraq is not your typical paradise.
I'm with the GIs on that one. Mention "paradise," and I think of the Italian Riviera. The Maldives. The Kathmandu Valley. Tahiti. North America before the White Man. Now here is God's idea: Iraq. Palestine. Rome. Wheaton, Illinois. Heaven. And even (in Beelzebub's hilarious parody, the Book of Mormon) the State of Utah! Ha!
Personally, I would not buy a timeshare in any one of those places. But I'll say this: the holy Trinity is a genius when it comes to promoting worthless real estate:
Welcome to south Iraq, it's THE GARDEN OF EDEN!
Take a trip to the West Bank, it's the PROMISED LAND!
Experience Gaza, it's THE LAND OF MILK AND HONEY!
I think it was by divine inspiration that human real estate developers first decided to call Greenland, "Greenland"; Arkansas, "the Land of Opportunity"; and New Jersey, "the Garden State."
Yet Iraq in those days did have certain worldly attractions. Outside the four walls of the Garden of Eden stretched "the whole land of Havilah [i.e., Iraq], where there is gold – and the gold of that land is good" (Gen. 2.11-12). Another man might have ditched Eve and gone for the gold. But Adam knew he could not easily get his hands on that good gold because the entire land of Havilah, in 4000 BCE, was overrun with intelligently designed dinosaurs, wooly mammoths, saber-toothed tigers, and more "crawly things" than you could shake a stick at (Gen. 6:4). Adam weighed his options:
Inside Eden: plenty of good food and a naked woman, and no work except to make babies.
Outside Eden: good gold, badly behaved monsters, and south Iraq.
Forget about George W. Bush. Which one would you choose?
– L.
(Up next: The Fall of Man -- What really went down in the incident of Eve and the Snake!)
