The rivers of Mesopotamia endured numerous floods in ages past. It is interesting to note that the apocryphal Book of Jasher (Sefer ha-Yasher) mentions a flooding of the river Gihon that took place prior the Great Deluge. (Jasher 2:6)

So the rivers of Eden were definitely in Mesopotamia. Where, according to scripture, are the mountains of Adam-ondi-Ahman?

In translated scripture, “mountains” can just mean hills or hill country. (B-D-B-G Lexicon, 2042, pp. 249-251) There are plenty of hills (not impressive mountains) in the state of Missouri. This is important to know because LDS scripture indicates that “…the mountains of Adam-ondi-Ahman, and … the plains of Olaha Shinehah, or the land where Adam dwelt” reside in North America - in the state of Missouri. (LDS Doctrine and Covenants 117:8)

But contrary to Mormon tradition, there is no explicit statement in LDS scripture placing “Eden” in North America – none whatsoever.

The following are the scriptural references to “Adam-ondi-Ahman” (the American land where Adam came to be): LDS Doctrine and Covenants 78:15-16; 107:53-57; 116:1; 117:8-11. The dates of these revelations range from1832 to 1838.

Scripture plainly indicates that Adam-ondi-Ahman was in North American while Eden was in Mesopotamia. How these scriptural facts are reconciled is another matter. They can be reconciled, but not in the way contrived by committee in the following footnote.

Concerning the Middle-Eastern lands and rivers mentioned in Genesis 2:8-14, Moses chapter 3, footnote 13a reads:

“In the area of Eden and Adam-ondi-Ahman there were rivers and lands that received names that were later attached to other lands and rivers. As to the location of Eden and its environs, see D&C 117:8-9. Gen. 2:13.”

The scriptures cited do not say that Eden was in America. The recent footnote is suggesting that the names of rivers and lands mentioned in Genesis 2 originated in antediluvian America. The footnote is, at best, a desperate attempt at reconciling Mormon tradition with LDS Scripture. It should be suspect on the basis of the English translation of Moses 3 alone; but its folly becomes clear to those who study the Hebrew scriptures. The specious quality of the footnote also becomes apparent when utilizing LDS Scripture Resource (see this article’s Appendix).

While no doubt inserted with good intentions, footnote 13a of Moses chapter 3 ("Ethiopia") not only is erroneous, it poses an unnecessary obstacle in discussions with peoples outside the Church who understand the scriptural details.

Hebrew scripture plainly reveals what English translations mask, and which so few readers of translated scripture see; that the actual names of the lands associated with the Edenic rivers correspond to names of descendents born after the Great Floods. These were lands and rivers extant in Moses’ day. These lands and rivers were well known to Hebrew prophets. LDS scripture clearly places ancient Eden somewhere in the vicinity of “the Euphrates” and mighty Tigris rivers; in the neighborhood of the lands of “Kush”, “Havilah” and “Ashur”.

God was not trying to be ambiguous or to confuse his son Moses when he gave him geographic particulars about “a garden eastward in Eden”. The actual Hebrew names of the eastern lands near Eden are plainly those named after post-deluge descendents, and Moses and generations of Israelites understood this!

So how did the American Eden tradition and the ill-conceived attempt to reconcile it, come about? How could this have happened if the Prophet Joseph Smith first translated Genesis 2 as early as 1830?

Opinions of 19^th Century Latter-day Saints and Antiquarians

The vast majority of early Mormons were not aware of the content of the Prophet’s inspired translation of KJV Genesis 2 – in which God tells Moses firsthand that Eden was “eastward” in the region of Mesopotamia. Excerpts from Joseph Smith’s translation of the Bible that featured in early Mormon periodicals (i.e. the Evening and Morning Star and the Times and Seasons) did not include his retranslation of KJV Genesis 2. The Saints didn’t know details of the Prophet’s inspired translation of KJV Genesis 2 until decades later.

The Prophet continued to revise his translation of Genesis up until the time of his martyrdom (1844). The prophetically authoritative account of Eden in the vicinity of Mesopotamia remained among the Prophet’s personally reworked manuscripts. His manuscripts came into the possession of his widow, Emma Smith. These manuscripts were the source for the 1867 publication of the RLDS Inspired Version of the Bible.  

It wasn’t until 1851 that the Prophet’s translation of KJV Genesis 2 was published. LDS Apostle Franklin D. Richards (Editor) published it in the Millennial Star (March 15, 1851), in England, under the title “The First Part of the Book of Genesis, Rendered by Joseph Smith, First Prophet, Seer and Revelator, to the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints”. “Elder Richards does not state how he obtained this latest material, but he must have had a handwritten source for it, since most of it had never before been printed.” (Robert J. Matthews, “How We Got the Book of Moses”)

The tradition that Eden was in North America was well entrenched in the minds of most Latter-day Saints, by the time the inspired translation of KJV Genesis 2 (Moses 3) was made available to the public. Rather than dismiss the American Eden tradition in favor of revealed scripture, Latter-days Saints attempted to reconcile, albeit erroneously, the apparent contradiction.

It is important to recognize that there is no known firsthand statement by Joseph Smith specifically placing Eden in North America. The tradition, however, appears to have settled in the minds of his close associated as early as the mid to late 1830s. An early Mormon hymn features the line:

“For in Adam-ondi-Ahman Zion rose where Eden was” (William W. Phelps, “Glorious Things Are Sung of Zion”, LDS Hymns, 48, 2^nd verse)

The Prophet Brigham Young openly taught that Eden was in America:

“In the beginning, after this earth was prepared for man, the Lord commenced his work upon what is now called the American continent, where the Garden of Eden was made. In the days of Noah, in the days of the floating of the ark, he took the people to another part of the earth: the earth was divided, and there he set up his kingdom.” (Journal of Discourses 8:196)

“When he comes again, … he will appear first on the land where he commenced his work in the beginning, and planted the Garden of Eden, and that was done in the land of America.” (DISCOURSES of Brigham Young, pg. 122)

Brigham Young reportedly told Orson Hyde, “…for in Jackson County was the Garden of Eden. Joseph has declared this, and I am as much bound to believe that as to believe that Joseph was a prophet of God.” (John A. Widstoe, Evidences and Reconciliations, pg. 396)

Mark E. Peterson quoted President Wilford Woodruff who quoted Brigham Young as saying, “Joseph, the Prophet, told me that the Garden of Eden was in Jackson County, Missouri. When Adam was driven out he went to the place we now call Adam-ondi-Ahman. Daviess County, Missouri. There he built an altar and offered sacrifices.” (Matthias F. Cowley, Wilford Woodruff: History of his Life and Labors, Bookcraft, p. 481; Mark E. Petersen, The Great Prologue, pg. 111)

Regarding the sacrifices performed by Adam in America, President John Taylor related:

“…it was stated by the Prophet Joseph Smith, in our hearing while standing on an elevated piece of ground or plateau near Adam-ondi-Ahman ^fn (Davis Co., Missouri,), where there were a number of rocks piled together, that the valley before us was the valley of Adam-ondi-Ahman; or in other words, the valley where God talked with Adam, and where he gathered his righteous posterity …” (John Taylor, The Mediation and Atonement, pp. 69-70)

But, the scriptural fact that Adam and many of his righteous posterity gathered to a land that would later be called America, does not mean that the Garden of Eden, from which Adam and Eve were expelled, was in America.

The American Adam idea was not unique to Mormonism. Early members of the LDS Church were keenly aware of Josiah Priest’s 1833 bestseller American Antiquities and Discoveries in the West. Priest noted the opinion of the “celebrated antiquarian, Samuel L. Mitchell” of New York. This was the same Dr. Mitchell who, according to Martin Harris, performed the service of sanctioning the authenticity of a sample of characters copied from the Book of Mormon plates. (H.C. 1:20) It was Dr. Mitchell’s considerate opinion that Adam was created in ancient America. Priest explains:

“The celebrated antiquarian, Samuel L. Mitchell, late of NewYork, with other gentlemen, eminent for their knowledge of natural history, are even of the opinion, that America was the country where ADAM was created. In a letter to Governor De Witt Clinton, in which this philosopher argued the common origin of the people of America, and those of Asia, he says: " I avoid the opportunity which this grand conclusion affords me, of stating, that America was the cradle of the human race; of tracing its colonies westward over the Pacific Ocean, and beyond the sea of Kamschatka, to new settlements; of following the emigrants by land and water, until they reached Europe and Africa. I had no inclination to oppose the current opinions relative to the place of man's creation and dispersion. I thought it was scarcely worth the while to inform an European, that in coming to America, he had left the new world behind him, for the purpose of visiting the old." —American Antq. Society, p. 331.” (Josiah Priest, American Antiquities, 1833 Ed, pg. 129)

Priest however, was convinced that Eden was in the Old World. Priest pointed out that the notion that the biblical Eden was in America, contradicts “the statement of Moses, in the Book of Genesis; …stating the names of the very rivers, arising out of the regions of country …”

Curiously, Priest was willing to concede the possibility that some of Adam’s immediate posterity settled in America:

“It is not impossible but America may have been the country where Noah built his ark, as directed by the Most High.

We know very well, when the mind refers to the subject of Noah's Ark, our thoughts are immediately associated with Mount Ararat, because it rested there, on the subsiding of the flood. But this circumstance precludes a possibility of its having been built there, if we allow the waters of the deluge to have had any current at all. It is said in Genesis, that the Ark floated, or was borne upon the waters above the earth, and also, that the ark "went upon the face of the waters.'' From which fact we imagine there must have been a current, or it could not have went upon the waters. Consequently, it went from the place where it was built, being obedient to the current of the waters.

Now, if it had been built any where in the country called Armenia, where the mountain Ararat is situated ; and as it is found the waters had a general eastern direction, the Ark in going on the face of the waters, would have, during the time the waters of the deluge prevailed, which was an hundred and fifty days, or five months, (that is, prevailed after the commencement of the deluge, till its greatest depth was effected;) gone in an eastern direction as far perhaps as the region of the islands of Japan, beyond China, east, a distance of about six thousand miles from Ararat, which would be at the rate of about forty miles a day, or if it had floated faster, would have carried it into the Pacific Ocean.

But if we may imagine it was erected in North America, or some where in the latitude of the State of New-York, or even farther west, the current of the deluge would have borne it easterly. And suppose it may have been carried at the rate of forty or fifty miles a day, would, during the time the waters prevailed, in which time, we may suppose, a current existed, have progressed as far as to Ararat; a distance of nearly six thousand miles from America, where it did actually rest-

More than sixteen hundred years had elapsed, when the ark was finished, and it may fairly be inferred, that as Noah was born about one thousand years after the creation of the world, that mankind had from necessity, arising from the pressure of population, gone very far away from the regions round about Eden; and the country where Noah was born may as well be supposed to have been America, as any other part of the earth; seeing there are indubitable signs of antediluvian population in many parts of it. Unite this circumstance with that of the ascertained current of the deluge from America, and with the fact of the ark's having rested in an easterly direction from this country, we come to a conclusion, that here, perhaps in the very State of New-York, the miraculous vessel was erected, and bore away, treasured in its enormous capacity, the progenitors of the human race renewed. So that if America have not the honor of being the country where Adam was created, as is believed by some, it has nevertheless the honor, as we suppose, of being the country where the ark was erected.” (Josiah Priest, American Antiquities, 1833 Ed, pp. 130-131)

Early Mormons, including Joseph Smith, would have been exposed to the views of Mitchell and  Priest. It is natural that some members of the early Church would favor Dr. Mitchell.

In 1863 Apostle Heber C. Kimball stated:

“We have been taught that our Father and God, from whom we sprang, called and appointed his servants to go and organize an earth, and, among the rest, he said to Adam, "You go along also and help all you can; you are going to inhabit it when it is organized, therefore go and assist in the good work." It reads in the Scriptures that the Lord did it, but the true rendering is, that the Almighty sent Jehovah and Michael to do the work. They were also instructed to plant every kind of vegetable, likewise the forest and the fruit trees, and they actually brought from heaven every variety of fruit, of the seeds of vegetables, the seeds of flowers, and planted them in this earth on which we dwell. And I will say more, the spot chosen for the garden of Eden was Jackson County, in the State of Missouri, where Independence now stands; it was occupied in the morn of creation by Adam and his associates who came with him for the express purpose of peopling this earth.

Father Adam was instructed to multiply and replenish the earth, to make it beautiful and glorious, to make it, in short, like unto the garden from which the seeds were brought to plant the garden of Eden. I might say much more upon this subject, but I will ask, has it not been imitated before you in your holy endowments so that you might understand how things were in the beginning of creation and cultivation of this earth? God the Father made Adam the Lord of this creation in the beginning, and if we are the Lords of this creation under Adam, ought we not to take a course to imitate our Father in heaven? Is not all this exhibited to us in our endowments? the earth made glorious and beautiful to look upon, representing everything which the Lord caused to be prepared and placed to adorn the earth. The Prophet Joseph frequently spoke of these things in the revelations which he gave, but the people generally did not understand them, but to those who did they were cheering, they had a tendency to gladden the heart and enlighten the mind.” (J. D. 10:235, Remarks by President Heber C. Kimball, delivered in Provo City, June 27, 1863, Reported by J. V. Long)

Did Joseph Smith express something favorable about Dr. Mitchell’s hypothesis in the presence of Brigham Young and others? If so, this evidently took place after the Prophet's inspired translation of KJV Genesis 2, placing Eden near Mesopotamia. Did Joseph say something about a paradisiacal garden and mankind’s first parents in America? Did he relate Isaiah’s prophesy of Zion’s wilderness becoming “like Eden, and her desert like the garden of the LORD” to the American land called Zion? (Isaiah 51:3)

We do not know exactly what Joseph Smith said about such things, but he likely said something which Brigham Young and others interpreted as encouraging the belief that the ancient garden of our first parents was in America.

For whatever reasons, the inspired passages of Abraham 5:10-11, revealed in the Nauvoo period, did not feature the geographic detail presented in Moses 3:10-15. (See “The Book of Abraham”, Times and Seasons, March 15, 1842, Volume 3, pg. 722)

The fact that the Book of Abraham Garden of Eden account does not feature the geographic detail found in Genesis 2:11-14 (Moses 3:11-14), does not necessarily justify the footnote recently attached to Moses 3:13. If, as the erroneous footnote insists, the names of rivers and lands were antediluvian, then why were they not passed down in the Book of Abraham account? Does the absence of geographic information surrounding the rivers in Abraham 5:10-11, indicate that not all of the lands listed in Genesis 2:11-14, went by the same post-flood names in Abraham’s time, as they did (or were revealed) in the time of Moses? Are there other reasons why the Abraham account does not feature the geographic detail of the Moses account? Did the Prophet Joseph deliberately edit out this information in the Book of Abraham?

Regardless of when the post-flood rivers and lands assumed their biblical names, Moses 3 rightly stands today as authoritative LDS scripture – a direct communication from God to Moses. Combined with available Hebrew scripture, we have sufficient witness and grounds for placing Eden where Hebrew scripture says it was - in the vicinity of Mesopotamia. We may consider that there was an edenic garden in Ancient America, but it was not the biblical “garden eastward in Eden”. See Ah-meh-strah-an Aleph-Beth, Second Part, 3rd Degree, "Beth", pg. 23.

Resolving the LDS Eden Dilemma

“Art thou the first man (Heb. “Adam”) that was born?” (Eliphaz the Temanite, Job 15:7)

It would seem  that the simplest solution to the Eden dilemma would to be accept LDS scripture over Mormon tradition. But is there a more excellent, scriptural way to resolve the problem? Do Brigham Young’s seemingly unscriptural pronouncements deserve re-examination?