Geneva Bible map of the Garden of Eden

An antiquities expert has identified a map within a 1599 edition of the Geneva Bible that attempts to locate the biblical Garden of Eden. Titled ‘The Situation of the Garden of Eden’, the illustration is a copy of a map originally created by Protestant reformer John Calvin for his 1554 commentary on Genesis.

The map situates the paradise in the region of Great Armenia, near the headwaters of the Euphrates River and the foothills of Mount Ararat in present-day Turkey. It identifies several landmarks, including Mesopotamia, Babylon, the Arabian Desert, the Persian Gulf, and the Caspian Sea.

While the map’s placement of the Euphrates aligns with the Book of Genesis, the identity of the other biblical rivers—the Pishon and Gihon—remains a point of scholarly debate. Some researchers have previously linked these to the Nile and Ganges rivers. However, Calvin proposed a resolution suggesting that the biblical ‘headwaters’ might refer to river mouths, which would place all four waterways within the Mesopotamian region.