Was the Garden of Eden on a Mountain?

And a poem for your Wednesday

Jun 18, 2025

Hello! Hope you’re well. Here’s the latest:

Creation Continues

We’re almost to the end (of the beginning). It’s time for the penultimate episode in the Creation series: The Garden of Eden.

Among other passages in Scripture, we’re drawing from this section of Genesis 2:

Then God planted a garden in Eden, in the east. He put the Man he had just made in it. God made all kinds of trees grow from the ground, trees beautiful to look at and good to eat. The Tree-of-Life was in the middle of the garden, also the Tree-of-Knowledge-of-Good-and-Evil.
A river flows out of Eden to water the garden and from there divides into four rivers.
God took the Man and set him down in the Garden of Eden to work the ground and keep it in order.
—Genesis 2:8-10,15; The Message

What a wild thing to consider. (And what a privilege to be able to spend time in the Garden not fast-forwarding to the Fall, no? As you might have guessed, I’m not exactly a fan of our obsession with iniquity, as evidenced by our so often acting as if Genesis 1 and 2 are not much more than a greased slide headed straight to Genesis 3.

Anyway, I’m preaching to the choir here. Thank you for joining me on yet another journey into the wonders of the Beginning.

As we consider part 11 in this series, here are some things of note:

The Holy Ghost Over the Bent World Broods…

This installment of the story opens with an homage to “God’s Grandeur,” by Gerard Manley Hopkins:

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The world is charged with the grandeur of God.     
     It will flame out, like shining from shook foil;
     It gathers to a greatness, like the ooze of oil
Crushed. Why do men then now not reck his rod?
Generations have trod, have trod, have trod;
     And all is seared with trade; bleared, smeared with toil;
     And wears man's smudge and shares man's smell: the soil
Is bare now, nor can foot feel, being shod.

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And for all this, nature is never spent;
      There lives the dearest freshness deep down things;
And though the last lights off the black West went
      Oh, morning, at the brown brink eastward, springs—
Because the Holy Ghost over the bent
      World broods with warm breast and with ah! bright wings.

Like many of you, I suspect, I’ve long loved this poem. I was delighted to have it accompany us on this trip to the Garden of Eden.

But Why Did You Make it a Mountain?

You’ll notice that I set the Garden on a mountain—a place where earth meets heaven. If you’re interested in why, you might check out this episode of the BibleProject podcast. It’s not just an interesting case for a mountaintop Garden, but a great exploration of how this location becomes the pattern for every future mountaintop story in the Bible.

Here’s an article from Dr. Desmond Alexander, PhD, chairman of the Tyndale Fellowship for Biblical and Theological Research, who makes a similar case.

And if you’re short on time, here’s a quick video from BibleProject on the mountain theme throughout Scripture:

Listen

I hope this one blesses you. Here’s part 11 of the Creation: “The Garden of Eden.”

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Tune In Next Time…

Big news in the next edition of The Latest. It has to do with this Creation series and I can’t wait to share it with you. Make sure you don’t miss it!

2 Cool Things

Home - A theme I’m constantly coming back to in my heart and mind is home—what it is, how it’s made, its power and pull, etc. I’m watching Pachinko right now with my wife and wow—Season 1 Episode 4 is one of the strongest explorations of that theme I’ve ever seen.

Cathedral - I love this song by Cageless Birds. Such a wonderful prayer. Amen and amen. Oh—and if you have headphones, crank them up and check out this live recording they did in Wells Cathedral in Wales:

That’s the latest! Happy listening.

Gratefully,
Justin

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