Die Gelegenheit Des Paradeis Und Des Lands Canaan Mit Sampt Den Erst Bewohnten Landeren Der Partriarchen Auss Der H. Schrifft Und Anderen Auctoren Zusamen Getragen [The Location of Paradise and of the Land of Canaan, together with the Lands First Inhabited by the Patriarchs, from the Holy Scriptures and Other Authors, Assembled]
Die Gelegenheit Des Paradeis Und Des Lands Canaan Mit Sampt Den Erst Bewohnten Landeren Der Partriarchen Auss Der H. Schrifft Und Anderen Auctoren Zusamen Getragen [The Location of Paradise and of the Land of Canaan, together with the Lands First Inhabited by the Patriarchs, from the Holy Scriptures and Other Authors, Assembled]
From the Middle Ages to our own time, the land of Eden - the site of biblical Paradise - has been a continuing subject of study, theological and geographical. See generally Scafi 2006. The pendulum has repeatedly swung from a symbolic reading of the biblical Paradise to a literal one and back again. Ibid. 352. "Mapping paradise [is] one of the most powerful expressions of the fundamental tension between the locative and utopian tendencies in Christianity." Ibid. 153.
The Age of Discovery led in the 17th century to persistent pressure for Christian theology to identify the precise location of Paradise in order to validate the text of Genesis. As Thomas Gale wrote in 1694: "Atheists and scoffers, whom the psalmist call Pests, usually demand, What's become of paradise? Shew us the place in the Maps? And if this be not done for them (they are generally lazy) with all exactness, . . . they will slide into a disbelief first of Genesis, then of the whole bible, and lastly of all revealed religion." (Quoted ibid. 284.) There are more than a dozen such maps in the collection, locating Eden from the Middle East (Iraq, Armenia, Palestine) to Western China, Bristol Florida, Jackson County Missouri, and the North Pole; Search > "Eden."
On this map, Eden is located in Armenia, well north of the Persian Gulf. The Tower of Babel and Mount Ararat are also clearly identified. Two vignettes show Adam and Eve in Paradise, and the expulsion.
