Is Gobekli Tepe where the Garden of Eden was located?

Göbekli Tepe (Turkish for “Belly Hill”) is an important archaeological site in modern Turkey that contains the world’s oldest known megaliths 12–15,000 years old. The hill is 1,000 feet in diameter and located at the high point of a mountain ridge in southeastern Turkey. The megaliths form circles somewhat similar to Stonehenge in England. Göbekli Tepe was discovered in the 1900s and investigated by German archaeologists under the leadership of Klaus Schmidt from 1996 to 2014.

The discovery of Göbekli Tepe contradicts as aspect of Young earth creationism (YEC) which is the belief that the earth is relatively young. Young earth creationists usually place the age of the earth at 6,000 years (10,000 years being an upper limit). Beyond other evidence of dinosaurs and other fossils dating back to millions of years, Göbekli Tepe as a civilization upends the young earth philosophy in the specific.

Göbekli Tepe was built prior to Stonehenge, it is considered by some to be the world’s oldest temple or religious site. What has been excavated so far in Göbekli Tepe reveals 43 monolithic limestone pillars, up to about 20 feet tall, linked by stone walls to form roughly circular structures. The structures vary in size between around 33 and 98 feet in diameter. Some of the pillars are decorated with carvings of animals or abstract symbols. There is much more to excavate; surveys of the hill indicate that there are as many as 250 more megaliths still buried around the sited dating to 15,000 BCE.

Göbekli Tepe is seven miles northeast of the city of Şanlıurfa, also called Urfa or Ur Kasdim, the hometown of Abraham, the grandfather of Jacob whom God named Israel. Some have surmised that Göbekli Tepe is somehow connected with the biblical Garden of Eden. Biblically the location of the Garden is hidden from mankind.

“So he drove out the man; and he placed at the east of the garden of Eden Cherubims, and a flaming sword which turned every way, to keep the way of the tree of life.” Genesis 3:24

In addition, there are two details that demonstrate that Göbekli Tepe is not the Garden of Eden:

First, the location of Göbekli Tepe is problematic. According to Genesis 2:10–14, “a river watering the garden flowed from Eden; from there it was separated into four headwaters. The name of the first is the Pishon; it winds through the entire land of Havilah, where there is gold. (The gold of that land is good; aromatic resin and onyx are also there.) The name of the second river is the Gihon; it winds through the entire land of Cush. The name of the third river is the Tigris; it runs along the east side of Ashur. And the fourth river is the Euphrates.”

Though the locations of the Pishon and Gihon are uncertain, the locations of the Tigris and Euphrates Rivers are known. These rivers are both in the Middle East, not in Turkey. Assuming that the modern-day Tigris and Euphrates are the same rivers mentioned in the Bible, Genesis 2:14 certainly excludes Göbekli Tepe as a possible site for the Garden of Eden.

A second biblical detail that makes Göbekli Tepe an unlikely candidate for the biblical Eden is the lack of any construction at Eden. After Adam and Eve sinned against God, their judgment included a forced expulsion from the garden: “Therefore the Lord God sent him forth from the garden of Eden, to till the ground from whence he was taken. So he drove out the man; and he placed at the east of the garden of Eden Cherubims, and a flaming sword which turned every way, to keep the way of the tree of life.” Genesis 3:23–24

Adam and Eve had no opportunity to build a site of worship at Eden. Once they were ejected from the garden, they were barred readmittance. Instead, the Garden of Eden remained an unoccupied garden or orchard, likely up to the flood in the time of Noah (Genesis 6–8).

Whether Göbekli Tepe was constructed before or after the time of Noah’s flood is uncertain; what is certain is that it fits neither the location nor the description of the biblical Garden of Eden.