Whatever Happened To Eden?

The forbidden fruit had been eaten and mankind was banished from the Garden of Eden. So what happened to Eden?

No one is quite sure where it was originally located, although there seems to be a general consensus that the garden was somewhere in the Middle East, perhaps in modern-day Iraq. Presumably, the great flood of Genesis would have wiped out it out, but, for centuries, the Christian world had an unquestioning belief in the continued existence of Eden on earth, hidden from man.

St. Thomas Aquinas <http://www.newadvent.org/summa/1102.htm>  wrote that the terrestrial paradise was “shut off by mountains, or seas, or some torrid region” which he said could not be crossed. So firm was the belief in the enduring physical presence of Eden that it was depicted on medieval maps. The belief persisted into the age of exploration: in 1498, Christopher Columbus recoiled with horror from sailing further up the Orinoco River in present-day Venezuela, believing that he was about to enter the Garden of Eden and would incur certain death as a result.

Today, with our maps now complete, it seems that Eden has truly vanished without a trace.


http://catholicexchange.com/six-great-mysteries-of-the-bible/