Where is Eden? A Map and a Mystery | Ep 16 Enoch Explained: Book of Enoch Bible Study

Can the Book of Enoch help us find the location of the Garden of Eden? In this episode, we map Enoch’s journey from Jerusalem to Arabia, India and eventually to Eden. How he gets to the garden described in Genesis will surprise you.

Part 16 of a verse-by-verse study of the Book of Enoch (also known as 1 Enoch). This episode covers Enoch 28:1-32:2.

Thanks for watching, and hope you enjoy.

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Timestamps:

0:00 Introduction
0:35 Starting point: Jerusalem
1:17 Hebrew word study: qadim (east)
2:51 To the waterfalls
3:46 Towards frankincense
6:17 Land of Cinnamon
8:32 Is Eden in Philippines?
9:00 Theories on Location
10:43 What is the Erythraean Sea?
12:44 The mystery begins
14:02 The Philip Effect
15:36 Garden of Eden in Genesis
16:30 Pishon River
17:08 Gihon River
17:51 Pre or post Flood?
18:13 Tigris River
18:37 Euphrates River
19:13 Where is Eden?
19:42 The 3 options
22:31 An even bigger mystery

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Transcript:

Dawson: The road to Eden.

Carlos: The road to Eden is going to be amazing. Brother Enoch is gassed up, charged up. I don’t think they had EV Merkavas (Chariots) in those days.

Dawson: No electric Merkavas.

Carlos: No electric Merkavas, but he has definitely got his angelic Merkava charged up. The angels are coming ready to blast off for more travels of Enoch.

Dawson: Yes.

Carlos: The man who saw more than any other man.

Dawson: Yeah.

Carlos: I’m always intrigued by that saying.

Dawson: Yeah.

Carlos: So, let’s start.

Dawson: So, his takeoff point is Jerusalem. Last time around, Carlos drew out for us the topography, the landscape of Jerusalem. Yes.

Carlos: And how do you say that?

Dawson: Kind of looks like a letter shin. So, he drew out the Mount of Olives, Mount Zion, the Western Hill, and all that good stuff. So, we know that that’s where Enoch is starting from when he begins this portion of his journey’s record. He says in chapter 28, verse 1, “And thence I went towards the east, into the midst of the mountain range of the desert, and I saw a wilderness, and it was solitary, full of trees and plants.”

Now, one word that we’re going to see a lot in this particular, these few chapters of Enoch, is the word “east,” because he goes east a lot. And I wanted to share the Paleo-Hebrew word for east with you guys, because it has a bit of a connection with the Book of Enoch.

Carlos: I know, I know.

Dawson: You know, what’s the word?

Carlos: Qadim.

Dawson: Qadim. So, in Hebrew, the word for east is qadim.

Carlos: Quf.

Dawson: Starts with a quf, which is the picture of the sun at the horizon.

Carlos: Dalet.

Dawson: Dalet, which is a picture of a door.

Carlos: Mem.

Dawson: Mem, which is a picture of waters. Now, if you guys have studied Enoch, then you know that a significant part of the Book of Enoch deals with things like the calendar and the sun, and the movements that the sun makes through the sky. And he describes the sun coming out, rising and setting out of portals, which is just another word for gates or doors.

Carlos: Trajectories.

Dawson: Yes. So, gates or doors, that’s the letter dalet. The sun, that’s the letter quf. The letter mem is used in Hebrew words to make things plural, so many. So, if you look at this word qadim, it’s a picture of the many gates of the sun. So that’s what you see in the east.

Carlos: East, east, east, east, east, east.

Dawson: Yeah, it’s actually one of the—it’s a very cool word, and it’s a nice picture of what Enoch describes later in his book. So, he starts off from Jerusalem, and he heads qadim, east. And the first thing that he sees is this mountain range of the desert and a wilderness, which is solitary, full of trees and plants. The next verse is, “And water gushed forth from above, rushing like a copious watercourse, which flowed towards the northwest. It caused clouds and dew to ascend on every side.”

Carlos: Now, we looked, and there’s quite a few waterfalls and quite a few runoffs from rain.

Dawson: Yeah.

Carlos: So how many is there?

Dawson: There’s a lot.

Carlos: A lot.

Dawson: I’ll put a little list on here.

Carlos: Last we stopped was 14 or 16.

Dawson: Yeah. East of Jerusalem, he could, just by that description, he could be talking about Jordan, Iraq, Iran, or some of the areas south…

Carlos: Saudi Arabia.

Dawson: …South, yeah, southeast. So, let’s keep going. Chapter 29, “And thence I went to another place in the desert and approached to the east of this mountain range. And I saw aromatic trees exhaling the fragrance of frankincense and myrrh. And the trees also were similar to the almond tree.”

So, before we leave this place, this mountain range in the desert that he’s talking about, just a couple of notes on this frankincense and myrrh that he sees. A lot of what he’s about to describe has to do with the spices that are part of the anointing oil that Father gave the recipe to Moses for, and part of the incense.

Carlos: Of which Egypt had all.

Dawson: Yes.

Carlos: When they left Egypt in a hurry, and they said, “Give us something that’s valued,” they gave them their best incense.

Dawson: Yeah.

Carlos: Hence, bring them to the temple.

Dawson: Yeah, they had to have gotten it from Egypt because when Father had Moses put together the tabernacle and this oil, which was used to anoint the items of the tabernacle and also the priests, and He had them put together the incense, they had to have had all that stuff with them. And it was only about a year out of Egypt.

Carlos: Including a red calf, red heifer.

Dawson: Yes, yes, exactly.

Carlos: They had a red heifer from Egypt.

Dawson: Yeah, so frankincense and myrrh, these things were used in Egypt for their own purposes, but Father, you know, commandeered them for His holy purpose, which is kind of cool.

Carlos: Dawson’s going to mention something about another little thing that I was going to mention, but I’ll wait.

Dawson: No, now I got to hear it.

Carlos: Cinnamon.

Dawson: Cinnamon. Okay, cinnamon. We’re getting to cinnamon, and cinnamon, interesting. I didn’t realize that cinnamon was part of the anointing oil. That Father likes cinnamon, which is cool.

Carlos: There are two types of cinnamon.

Dawson: There are two types of cinnamon.

Carlos: And one they use for coloring and modifying, and another one they use for taste and smelling good.

Dawson: Yeah, so apparently, even today, what we call cinnamon, if you buy a bottle of cinnamon, you’re probably not getting what they call true cinnamon, which is Ceylon cinnamon. But hold on, we’re two verses away from cinnamon, because it actually is important to getting our bearings on the map.

Carlos: I love talking about cinnamon in Enoch.

Dawson: So, past the frankincense and the myrrh, chapter 30, “And beyond these I went afar to the east, and I saw another place, a valley full of water, and therein there was a tree, the color of fragrant trees such as the mastic, and on the sides of those valleys I saw fragrant cinnamon.”

Carlos: There we go. Now, if we look, where does cinnamon come from?

Dawson: Asia.

Carlos: One particular island.

Dawson: Sri Lanka.

Carlos: Sri Lanka, that’s where it comes from.

Dawson: What they call the true Ceylon cinnamon.

Carlos: The good stuff.

Dawson: Right, and there’s also all kinds of cinnamon in India.

Carlos: Which brings us to…

Dawson: Many things.

Carlos: If you see a chart, it’s going down to the point of Saudi Arabia, where you have a lot of frankincense there.

Dawson: We think.

Carlos: Okay. Sure looks like it. And then he crosses over and there’s cinnamon.

Dawson: Okay, so he sees fragrant cinnamon, and beyond these I proceeded to the east. So, from somewhere in Asia, we think Sri Lanka, probably, he proceeds still again to the east.

Carlos: He keeps going east.

Dawson: Yes. And I saw other mountains, and amongst them were groves of trees, and there flowed forth from them nectar, which is named sarara and galbanum. Now, galbanum is another one of those spices which is in Father’s incense.

Carlos: Amen. Now, we don’t know if it’s that exact galbanum or if there’s something else they call galbanum.

Dawson: That’s fair.

Carlos: That’s fair enough, amen. Things weren’t classified yet.

Dawson: Yeah. “And beyond these mountains, I saw another mountain to the east of the ends of the earth, whereon were aloe trees, and all the trees were full of stacte, being like almond trees, and when one burnt it, it smelled sweeter than any fragrant odor.” Now…

Carlos: He’s talking about the best.

Dawson: Yes, and that stacte, I don’t know if I’m pronouncing it right, but that’s another ingredient in Father’s incense.

Carlos: Would that be myrrh, what they call myrrh?

Dawson: Some people think it’s a type of myrrh, or they think it’s something that today we call styrax.

Carlos: Father’s children, the big question, where is Enoch at now?

Dawson: Where is he at now?

Carlos: Because I’m going to bring something up. There are people that, I believe they really love Yeshua, and they love Father, you could tell, but to them, it’s the Garden of Eden and the promised land is in the Philippines.

Dawson: Yeah, that’s one of the theories.

Carlos: We love you guys. Yeah, we get it.

Dawson: There are a few major theories on where the Garden of Eden is. That is one of them.

Carlos: That is one of them.

Dawson: Another one is that it’s in Jerusalem, which is interesting, because he takes off from Jerusalem. So you would kind of think that it cannot be Jerusalem, because he starts from Jerusalem and goes east, east, east. But Jerusalem is actually still on the table, because of something we’ll share in just a wee bit.

Carlos: Yeah.

Dawson: Some other people think it’s where the Tigris and the Euphrates dump out into the sea. And some people think it’s on the northern end of where the Tigris and Euphrates – they don’t meet, but where they are. So somewhere like in the Haran area.

Carlos: Where Mount Ararat would be.

Dawson: But just from reading this, you can see why people think it’s in Asia, from where we are right now.

Carlos: Sounds like.

Dawson: But let’s keep going, and you’ll see why we don’t agree with that. Chapter 32, “And after these fragrant odors, as I looked towards the north over the mountains, I saw seven mountains full of choice nard and fragrant trees and cinnamon and pepper.” So cinnamon again. Now cinnamon only grows in certain places of the world, and they’re all in Asia. So, if he sees cinnamon initially, and then he travels east, northeast, and he sees more cinnamon, we think that a good position for him to be at that moment has to be in India.

Now, the next verse is where Enoch throws everybody for a loop. Okay, so verse two of chapter 32, “And then I went over the summits of all these mountains far towards the east of the earth and passed above the Erythraean Sea.”

Carlos: Now, now listen what it says. He went over the summit of all these mountains. Now, to me, those are Himalayas.

Dawson: Okay. Far towards the east of the earth. So still going qadim.

Carlos: Still qadim-ing all the way. And then he winds up …

Dawson: He passes over the Erythraean Sea. Now, some translations will put Red Sea there. Now, the Red Sea we know is back, you know, between Egypt and Sinai.

Carlos: To me, it is Erythraean Sea from Africa going in and turning up.

Dawson: Okay, so historically what people have called the Erythraean Sea is not – it’s not just one little body of water.

Carlos: It’s all the way, all the way down. Africa was a new – all of it was Erythraean Sea.

Dawson: It’s the entire, it’s the entire Indian Ocean even.

Carlos: Yeah.

Dawson: So, what’s the difference between calling the entirety of the Indian Ocean the Erythraean Sea and the water beyond, you know, a few islands that turns to the entire Pacific Ocean, the Erythraean Sea?

Carlos: You know, when I read what the prophets wrote, he says, “I will call the tribes from Assyria and from Egypt.” Well, Assyria’s all the way east and Egypt’s all the way west. That’s what it means.

Dawson: Yeah.

Carlos: All around the world.

Dawson: Yeah.

Carlos: So, it’s just Erythraean all the way in those days. As you said, they haven’t invented degrees, the compass, the navigation, it’s just the portals of the earth is what you get.

Dawson: Yeah. And where do you get the spices? Somewhere from the Erythraean Sea. That’s – you know, as far as they knew. So, he says, “I passed over the Erythraean Sea and went far from it.” And that’s where, that’s where…

Carlos: Far, far.

Dawson: I am convinced from this point that the point of Enoch’s – what he’s recording here, is not to let us know where the Garden of Eden is because it says he went over the summits of all these mountains, far towards the east of the earth, passes over the sea and goes far from it. And that’s the last direction that you’re going to get before he…

Carlos: Far from it is pretty rough direction.

Dawson: Far from it, which way? Which way is he going? North, south, east or west, doesn’t say. How far did he go from it? We don’t know. He just went far from it.

Carlos: Which way did he go?

Dawson: Yeah.

Carlos: Right now, we don’t know. He just went far from it. He didn’t give instructions. Father didn’t give us instructions there.

Dawson: And, okay, so there’s one more thing that he’s going to pass over before, between what he’s saying here and him coming to the garden. But the thing that he passes over gives us zero clue as to the direction. We won’t – we’re not going to talk about that right now.

Carlos: However, I will give you a clue.

Dawson: No, we won’t.

Carlos: Carlos thinks it’s the Philip effect.

[Music]

Carlos: He goes far east and then…

Dawson: He passes over the sea.

Carlos: And then…

Dawson: He goes far from it.

Carlos: No particular direction, just…

Dawson: He passes over this one thing that we’re not going to talk about yet.

Carlos: Right.

Dawson: And then he’s in the garden. So…

Carlos: Amen. Is it the Philip effect?

Dawson: Now, what is the Philip effect?

Carlos: Well, you know, one of the apostles, Philip, he was talking with a brother from Africa. And when he was done, the Spirit fell on both of them. They were praising the Lord. And the Holy Spirit took them and dropped him off somewhere in Antioch or back in Jerusalem.

Dawson: Yeah. So, Philip kind of teleported somewhere else.

Carlos: Back into the heat. Now, was it the Philip effect? Because all of a sudden, far, far away.

Dawson: Yes.

Carlos: So, is it the Philip effect possible here? Because Father doesn’t change.

Dawson: Yes, it is possible.

Carlos: He does what He wants. Amen.

Dawson: I think the one thing that I note from all of this is that he’s not trying to give us directions to Eden. Because you can’t get directions to Eden from what he’s writing here based on this last line. It’s just too wide open.

Carlos: He’s just observing and reporting.

Dawson: Yeah. You have a few options. Either it’s the Philip effect. And let me back up a bit so you understand what I’m saying. He’s going to end up in the garden and this is Scripture. So, it has to match Scripture. We know from Moses a general idea of where the garden is because Moses describes a river that comes out of this garden and it breaks into four rivers. And we have descriptions of those four rivers and the lands that those four rivers make their journey around in Genesis. So, we have a general idea. Not a specific idea. But a general idea of where Eden was. And we’re going to go through those rivers in Genesis because it’ll make sense what we’re saying about Enoch too.

Dawson: Moses describes Eden as having this river coming out of it that parts and becomes four headwaters and the first one is Pishon, which he says winds through the whole land of Havila. And Havila is described in Genesis 25 as the land where Ishmael’s descendants settled. And they settled from Havila to Shur, which is opposite Egypt in the direction of Assyria. Okay, so that’s one data point.

Carlos: Sinai.

Dawson: The… you think it’s Sinai?

Carlos: Sinai Peninsula.

Dawson: Okay. The second river is called Gihon, which winds through the whole land of Cush. Now Cush is generally identified as Southern Ancient Egypt, Modern Sudan and Ethiopia. A lot of people think that Gihon might be a reference to the Nile. But this is Moses writing and Moses references the Nile very often and he never uses the word Gihon. He uses ha’yeor.

Carlos: I like to note that when he’s writing this, he’s writing this pre-flood. Is this correct?

Dawson: No, we don’t know. That’s another thing. With Enoch, you don’t know if he’s looking at something pre…

Carlos: No, I’m talking about Moses.

Dawson: Oh, Moses. It does sound to us like he is describing it pre-flood. Yeah.

Carlos: Amen, he’s talking pre-flood before the cataclysm.

Dawson: Yeah, now the flood very reasonably could have changed all of these rivers. But not necessarily the land. So, if he’s talking about where Ishmael’s descendants settled, that’s a land post-flood. So that helps us get our bearings.

There’s another one. The Third River, they translate it as Tigris. And it’s the same name Tigris that Daniel uses when he’s talking about the Tigris River. But it specifically says that it’s the Tigris which flows east of Assyria. So, Assyria is a post-flood location that we can identify.

Carlos: We got two rivers that were there post-flood.

Dawson: And then the fourth one is the Euphrates, Perat. And this river, the Euphrates is the Euphrates. When Father makes a covenant with Abraham, and He says, “To you and your descendants, I will give this land, I will give it to you from Perat, from the Euphrates.” So, from the Perat to the Nile.

Carlos: Yeah, and the Nile all the way to the Tower of Syene.

Dawson: So, we know where that land is. It’s the eastern border of Abraham’s land. So, there’s a river—

Carlos: All that’s going to be Israel.

Dawson: Yeah, there’s a river coming out of Eden. And the way it’s described by the entire books of Moses is it’s somewhere coursing around southern Egypt, opposite of Egypt, like you were saying maybe Sinai, in the direction of Assyria, Babylon, and east of Assyria. So that’s where we got to end up. That’s somewhere in the area of where the Garden of Eden is.

Carlos: That’s somewhere there.

Dawson: Now if everything that Enoch just described has left us at the point where we’re like in India. So, the question is, if we left off clearly in Asia, just by the cinnamon, how do we get back towards the Holy Land? And there’s only a couple options. One of them is what Carlos mentioned earlier, the Philip Effect.

Carlos: Well, you took me here, here, here, here, here, here. And then I wound up—

Dawson: Somewhere else.

Carlos: Oh, the Erythraean Sea again. Just – and then passed something on the way to Jerusalem.

Dawson: Yeah, which is 100% it’s a very valid option, especially if you guys have watched the last few episodes because the last episode he was in Jerusalem. And the episode prior to that, he was at Mount Zion, which is in Jerusalem. He was at a future Mount Zion. The way that Mount Zion is going to be when Yeshua is here and he’s raining from it, right? And it’s like the biggest mountain. So, he clearly traveled through time.

Carlos: When it is the biggest mountain.

Dawson: Yeah. He traveled through time to get to the same place at a prior point in time.

Carlos: For the future, for sure.

Dawson: Yeah. So, this is – Father knows everything, and He can show people whether it’s in a vision or in a body. Like Paul says, I don’t know if I was in the body or not.

So, we don’t know exactly what happened here. But we do know that the Garden of Eden needs to be somewhere in the vicinity of Abraham’s land. And we do know that cinnamon, maybe it didn’t, maybe if it’s before the flood, cinnamon was growing everywhere.

But if it’s after the time of the flood, which it seems to be, because when he left off, it matches the topography of our modern-day Jerusalem. So, if he’s post-flood, as I think he is, and then he’s going to cinnamon land, there’s only a couple ways for him to get back to the Holy Land. He either pulls a Philip, or he doubles back, or—

Carlos: It doesn’t say.

Dawson: It doesn’t say. Or the other option is he goes around the world.

Carlos: Which is, you could take your choice.

Dawson: Yeah.

Carlos: Either one. He went all the way around, and it wasn’t revealed that there’s North-South Poles, no South America, no Canada.

Dawson: Yeah.

Carlos: And then he just wound up back in the Erythraean Sea. That’s one choice. Or the Philip effect.

Dawson: Yes.

Carlos: Poof. Then I went far away. He didn’t say east, west, north, or whatnot.

Dawson: I went far from it.

Carlos: Then I went far from this place.

Dawson: Yeah.

Carlos: From where I was at, I went very far from it. Now, what did he pass? Something happens on the way.

Dawson: Yes. There’s one more thing that happens on the way before he finds himself in the garden, and we read that in verse 2. Enoch says he passed over the Erythraean Sea and passed over the angel Zotiel.

Carlos: Wow. So, who is Zotiel?

Dawson: We will talk about that next time.

Carlos: Welcome to Original Hebrew, Enoch’s Journeys.

Dawson: We’re going to do quite a bit of Paleo next time around to find out who this angel Zotiel is, and I think I’ve got a pretty good idea.

Carlos: Let’s do it.

Dawson: Yup.

Carlos: Shalom unto Jerusalem.

Dawson: Shalom, everybody.

[End of transcript]

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In this video: Enoch explained, Book of Enoch, 1 Enoch, Location of the Garden of Eden, Frankincense, Cinnamon, Incense Trade Route, Galbanum, Anointing Oil, Holy Incense, Philip teleporting in the Book of Acts

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About the series:

Our Book of Enoch Bible Study series offers a down-to-earth look at this often sensationalized text. Instead of focusing mainly on fallen angels, our goal is to learn the heart of our Father and gain understanding of the Old and New Testament Scriptures that parallel Enoch’s words. Throughout this series, we’ll read together and discuss:

• Life before the Flood
• How sin and transgression caused GOD to destroy His creation,
• Enoch’s epic prophecies covering the history of humanity and Israel,
• The many passages in Enoch that point to YASHUA HA MASHIACH (JESUS CHRIST),
• The ancient calendar of Israel,
• End-times prophecies and how Father will protect us through the days to come, and
• What life will be like in Millennium.

Enoch is a remarkably full book that sheds light on everything from Genesis to Revelation, so, in our view, to understand Enoch is to better understand the entire Bible.

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