I saw on the television an evangelist preacher explaining the garden of Eden's supposed existence in Jerusalem.

We all (should) know Abraham came from ancient Sumer, as did many aspects of the Hebrew culture and Israelite faith. The conjunction of the rivers (supposedly at the forest of Edon) are arguably somewhere in ancient Sumer, unless you are an Evangelist who decides the rivers converge at Jerusalem or in the mountains north of Syria.

Anyway, here's the direct translated text, from the Epic of Gilgamesh (of ancient Sumer, Abraham would be very familiar with this), I found it quite interesting indeed:

The account begins: Gilgamesh, two-thirds god and one-third human, is the greatest king on earth and the strongest super-human that ever existed; however, he is young and oppresses his people harshly. The people call out to the sky-god Anu, the chief god of the city, to help them. In response, Anu creates a wild man, Enkidu, out in the harsh and wild forests surrounding Gilgamesh's lands. This brute, Enkidu, has the strength of dozens of wild animals; he is to serve as the subhuman rival to the superhuman Gilgamesh.

A trapper's son, while checking on traps in the forest, discovers Enkidu running naked with the wild animals; he rushes to his father with the news. The father advises him to go into the city and take one of the temple harlots, Shamhat, with him to the forest; 1 when she sees Enkidu, she is to offer herself sexually to the wild man. If he submits to her, the trapper says, he will lose his strength and his wildness. Shamhat meets Enkidu at the watering-hole where all the wild animals gather; she offers herself to him and he submits, instantly losing his strength and wildness, but he gains understanding and knowledge. He laments for his lost state, but the harlot offers to take him into the city where all the joys of civilization shine in their resplendence; she offers to show him Gilgamesh, the only man worthy of Enkidu's friendship.

Thus, the story of the garden of Eden. In forests around ancient Sumer, from their folklore complicated into the ancient Hebrew texts. No ifs, and's, or but's (and it wasn't that hard to figure out). Note also the meteorite, 'Enkindu' is a group of shepherds, etc.

The great flood/story of 'Noah':
At this point, Gilgamesh realizes that he is talking to Utnapishtim, the Far-Away; he hadn't expected an immortal human to be ordinary and aged. He asks Utnapishtim how he received immortality, and Utnapishtim tells him the great secret hidden from humans: In the time before the Flood, there was a city, Shuruppak, on the banks of the Euphrates. There, the counsel of the gods held a secret meeting; they all resolved to destroy the world in a great flood. All the gods were under oath not to reveal this secret to any living thing, but Ea (one of the gods that created humanity) came to Utnapishtim's house and told the secret to the walls of Utnapishtim's house, thus not technically violating his oath to the rest of the gods. He advised the walls of Utnapishtim's house to build a great boat, its length as great as its breadth, to cover the boat, and to bring all living things into the boat. Utnapishtim gets straight to work and finishes the great boat by the new year. Utnapishtim then loads the boat with gold, silver, and all the living things of the earth, and launches the boat. Ea orders him into the boat and commands him to close the door behind him. The black clouds arrive, with the thunder god Adad rumbling within them; the earth splits like an earthenware pot, and all the light turns to darkness. The Flood is so great that even the gods are frightened:

http://www.wsu.edu/~dee/MESO/GILG.HTM

__________________
"Fools rush in where angels fear to tread." - Alexander Pope

True, the story of the Garden and the Flood appear in ancient Sumerian texts, many years before the Bible was written. What has always interested me, though, is that these two tales are present in the mythos of nearly every ancient civilization. From the Aztecs to the Iroquois, from the ancient Japanese to the Sumerians, these legends always seem to crop up. Geological records seem to indicate some kind of worldwide natural disaster somewhere around the Cambrian period. Who knows? Perhaps the events portrayed actually happened.

__________________
"Has this world been so kind to you that you should leave with regret? There are better things ahead than any we leave behind."

-C.S. Lewis

I was leaning toward the Garden of Eden, superimposed through Sumerian culture to Semitic (specifically Hebrew) culture. Because Abraham left the Sumerian region, this would be his greatest access to epic stories. The story of man coming from the forest, quite evidently, comes from the Epic of Gligamesh. (The flood also.)

While I do agree a flood story exists in so many cultures. It could be a mere coincidence because each early civilization existed in the presence of a source of water. Those bodies of water, in the early days, were prone to flood as techniques for control were nonexistent. After a definite period of time, great floods were inevitable, just as today. A vast flood from a body of water would seem to cover the known earth for people so attached to a specific location.

It is hard to prove, or fathom, our species was so advanced in the Cambrian/pre-Cambrian to create epic stories of floods passed between generations until now.

__________________
"Fools rush in where angels fear to tread." - Alexander Pope

.
i read that Garden o f Eden are onderwater i n Persian nahr Bahrein.
.

__________________
Globalisation has made us more vulnerable. It creates a world without borders, and makes us painfully aware of the limitations to meet its challenges.
Anna Lindh

Everything will be all right when people stop thinking of the United Nations as a weird Picasso abstraction and see it as a drawing they made themselves.
Dag Hammarskjold

It's not only hockey, it's every sport. You know, it's a big event.
Peter Forsberg

I love gardens, but I do not have a "Green Finger", what did "God" use as Fertilzer, I would presume that it would be organic?

If you tried to take a literal translation of the specific location given from the Bible, you would end up around that area. What I have tried to show, is fundamental religious ideas usually come from other areas, other religions/cultures. One of the first was Sumer, the 'Epic of Gilgamesh' is a direct antecedent of the Hebrew story of Adam and Eve. Read for yourself, there are many translated links on the net. It places the 'Garden of Eden' somewhere close to the ancient city of Uruk. Today this would be the forests around Nasiriyah, maybe even as far south as Basrah - but not likely, who knows? But this is the region given from the predecessor of the Bible story in question.

__________________
"Fools rush in where angels fear to tread." - Alexander Pope

Tree leaves, excrement, dead anything.

__________________
"Fools rush in where angels fear to tread." - Alexander Pope

Bull S.h.i.t., not your comment, it is in ref to the type of excrement, and its common use by Christian gardeners to fertilze the seed after planting it into sterile minds!