What connection is there between the Garden of Eden and the Tower of Babel? Is there one? Could we prove, in some way, that what the Scriptures and the Book of the Life of Adam and Eve tell us truly happened? In the next three episodes, we will try to find correspondences between human science and spiritual understanding regarding this subject.
According to the Scriptures, the Garden was a place in the east where God, after creating man, placed him so that he would cultivate it and care for it. Immediately after placing Adam in the Garden, He warned him that he must not eat from the tree of the knowledge of good and evil.
The Book of the Life of Adam and Eve also places the Garden in the eastern part of the earth. The account adds, moreover, a striking detail: it bordered heaven. This suggests that Eden had a direct connection to God’s domains, as if it were a portal into heaven or the divine realm.
This detail is important to underline, especially when we consider the motivations behind the construction of the Tower of Babel. According to many traditions, that tower was built precisely in the region where the Garden was believed to have been: near Babylon, in ancient Mesopotamia.
When we consider this, we cannot ignore the fact that both the Scriptures and ancient Mesopotamian texts place this setting in the eastern region of the known world of that time, where the great rivers are born: the Tigris and the Euphrates. A region that would later be identified with Sumer, and afterward with Babylon.
Throughout this episode we will see that the memory of Eden never completely disappeared. The peoples who inhabited that region—descendants of Noah, according to spiritual understanding—did not entirely forget that heavenly portal sealed by God. On the contrary, they tried to return to it by their own means, raising temples, towers, and religious systems which, according to their beliefs, would allow them to reach again that lost spiritual plane.
The text of Adam and Eve states that once humans left the Garden, because of their transgression, they would be born on the earth. This suggests that before, there existed a different way of producing offspring, not through a physical process like the one we know today. Everything indicates that this procreation was spiritual, consistent with the nature they possessed before being transformed.
This shows us that the first pair was created in what we would today call the Kingdom of God, but that after breaking the covenant they could no longer remain in their spiritual place of origin. As a consequence, their bodies were transformed so they could live in a material world. They passed from a spiritual nature to an earthly one, and thus lost access to God’s spiritual Garden.
By this I do not mean that it was a vague, subtle, or vaporous place. That is how we imagine it from our physical perception. But the spiritual world has form, even though its substance is not material. That is what we call spiritual.
The same text gives further explanation about that place. It says that when God exiled the couple from the Garden, He located them in the western region, just below it:
“He caused our father Adam to live at the western border of the Garden, because on that side of the earth there is a wide territory. And Elohim commanded them to live there, in a cave, inside a great rock, which was below the Garden.”
It also mentions that Eden was not made up of a single garden, as we sometimes imagine, but of several. That means the area was extensive.
“When Eve heard these words of Adam, she agreed with him; they rose and came to the southern border of the Garden, to the edge of the river, at a short distance from the gardens.”
We are also told that when they left the Garden:
“They walked on the earth with their feet, not knowing that they were walking. And when they came to the opening of the gate of the Garden, and saw the wide expanse of land before them, covered with stones large and small, and with sand, they feared and trembled, falling on their faces because of the fear that came upon them, and they were as dead.”
There is a phrase in this passage that, although it sounds obvious to us, deserves to be observed carefully: “they walked on the earth with their feet, not knowing that they were walking.”
Why tell us something that seems so natural? Why clarify that they walked with their feet, and without knowing what they were walking on, if there is no other way to do it in our human condition and every human being knows what they walk on?
The answer could be in what they were before the transgression. If their bodies were spiritual—not subject to gravity or the laws of this physical world—then that phrase marks the beginning of something completely new for them: a life limited by the body, by the ground, by time, by fatigue… by what we now call matter. A total transformation.
And in that new context, God’s promise to Adam that he and his descendants would return to the Garden resonates with another meaning:
“You and your descendants will live standing upon the earth… until the Words that created you, and those that brought you out of the Garden, are spoken again.”
“To live standing” might not only refer to being physically upright, but also to remaining in this new bodily, earthly, limited existence while learning—here, from a lower plane—to keep the Word, to hear and obey the Voice of God as it is done in the domains of heaven.
When the text says that the promise of return to the Garden will be fulfilled at the time when the Word is kept again, it refers to having learned, with our feet on the earth—in this physical body—to submit to His commandments, as happens in His domains. This means that, in the spiritual body like God, our parents did not come to learn or understand the magnitude of the importance of submission to His Voice, but in this material body we would have the opportunity to achieve it, if we wanted to. The fact that we are created and free implies that we must learn from the One in whom all wisdom and intelligence reside.
In addition, there is a passage where Adam clearly expresses that his body had been transformed from another, higher form:
“O Lord, when I was in the Garden and saw the water that flowed from beneath the Tree of Life, my heart did not desire it, nor did my body need it to drink; neither did I thirst, because I was living above what I am now.”
After the episode of God’s promise to Adam, the account says that Adam returned to the entrance of the Garden and saw a cherub with a flaming sword at the gate, which terrified him deeply. This is interesting because, according to the text, before the spiritual fall the angels revered Adam and Eve and were even commanded to honor them; but after their transformation, in this earthly condition, it was they who began to feel fear before the angels.
The same book also tells us that before the breaking of the Covenant, the first pair could see the things of heaven and its heavenly creation—a capacity to see the spiritual world that they lost through transgression. The reading reveals the authority and power with which God had created them, and the loss that followed.
In that same passage, the angel speaks with God and expresses sorrow at seeing Adam in his fallen state. It also informs us that the angel was sent to care for the Garden so that it would not fall into abandonment. It becomes clear from the reading that although Adam and Eve tried to enter several times, they could not. They began to realize that the physical transformation they were experiencing—and which had not yet fully completed—would definitively prevent them from ever entering the Garden of God again.
“And the cherub who guarded the Garden stood at the western gate and protected it from Adam and Eve, so that they would not enter it. And they walked in that condition to the southern border of the Garden; then they walked so far that they reached the eastern border, and even beyond, where there was no more land.”
The text says that the angel, standing, guarded the portal at the western border. The phrase “standing” suggests that he was not floating or suspended in the air, as spiritual bodies can do, since they are not matter and are not subject to gravity as we are. But the eastern entrance had remained unguarded for a time. Then the couple attempted to enter again, but the angel appeared to them with the flaming sword, and they were very afraid.
At that moment, God spoke to them with firmness and clarity:
“Why have you come here? Do you intend to enter the Garden, despite the words that were spoken to you? It cannot be today, but only when the covenant I have made with you has been fulfilled—only then will you be able to enter.”
This behavior of our first parents reveals one of the most harmful traits of our fallen spiritual nature: stubbornness that leads to self-sabotage. Their desire to recover that piece of heaven on earth—the Garden—by their own means shows a profound incoherence of understanding: believing that a created being can be spiritually self-sufficient, detached from the One who created it. They attempted it several times, despite having heard that it was not yet the time. But they did not do it from submission to the Voice of God; they did it from resistance, with an immature spirituality that insisted on returning before the proper time.
We will see later that this same attitude—only more twisted—was reflected in the construction of the Tower of Babel.
Later, Adam also comments to Eve about the physical transformation they were undergoing. Faced with the need to drink water to survive, he says:
“If this water enters our inner being, it will increase our sorrows and those of our descendants.”
Adam perceives that the transformation into a material body would imply pain, and he resists the change with all his strength. His obstinacy—seeking quick results without meekly submitting to the Voice—appears once again.
There are two primary reasons why we should commit ourselves to following the Voice of God.
The first is that we are created beings and, as such, we need protection from ourselves, because we are free. That freedom can become a risk without spiritual direction.
The second reason is the need for protection against the schemes of evil. If Eve and Adam had consulted God about the serpent’s proposal, they would have realized it was deception. They would have been protected both from their wrong decisions and from the deception of evil. Tragically, they believed they were sufficient on their own, forgetting their condition as created beings. Without God, we cannot be spiritually self-sufficient.
Finally, Adam and Eve accept their new destiny—the one they themselves traced. The text says:
“Then Adam and Eve returned again to the cave, sad and weeping because of the transformation their bodies had suffered. And from that hour they both knew that they were transformed beings, and that all hope of returning to the Garden was now lost. They knew they could no longer enter it. Their bodies carried out strange functions for them, and they understood that all flesh needs food and drink to survive.”
Adam concludes his lament about the loss of his spiritual state, saying:
“Behold, our hope is now lost, and so is our confidence to enter the Garden. We no longer belong to the inhabitants of the Garden, for from now on we are of the earth and dust, and inhabitants of the earth. We will not return to the Garden until the day Elohim has promised to save us and bring us back, as He promised.”
In addition to Adam and Eve’s attempts to return to the light of Eden—by their own means—they also tried to end their lives more than once. But God told them that no matter what they did, the time of the Word established by the Covenant had to be fulfilled. Adam and Eve wanted to return to their origin, to their native home. God promised that we would return, but that first we had to learn to submit to His Voice with meekness, with spiritual maturity—and that is a process. It cannot be forced. It must be learned.
The Garden of God, according to this text, had several access gates from the earth. There seems to have been a main entrance, and it was composed of several gardens. The fact that it speaks of borders and entrances suggests it was an extensive and enclosed place. It speaks of a boundary between the territory of the Garden of God—part of His domains—and the territory of the earth. A place not just anyone could enter. Borders speak to us of protection, belonging, and order. And as I have mentioned before, God reproached them for leaving the place where He had placed them.
As I understand the text, what is commonly called the temptation took place at the exit of the western gate—not within God’s territory, but in the place where His Law was not obeyed, because God had already cast the transgressing angels down to this earth. The Garden was territory of light, and fallen spirits could not enter it. It also seems that the western exit opened to a wide territory of the earth, and it is there—in a cave below the Garden—that He commanded them to live after the expulsion.
All of this carries incredible symbolism. Adam and Eve break the Alliance, and God, although He sends them outside His domains, still keeps them close—under His shadow, under His protection. The cave where they would live is considered by Adam as a prison. It is the opposite of the light of the Garden: a closed, dark place without the luxuries that, according to the text, they had in their home within the Garden. Yet as humanity multiplies, it moves farther and farther away from that circle of protection and relationship with the Creator.
First they leave the Garden, and then they leave the protective mountain where they still lived under God’s care. From there they intermix with the descendants of Cain, violating the command of God and of their ancestors not to do so. There is a very illuminating passage that shows that Adam and his sons, up to Noah, had returned to a flowing relationship with the Creator—though it was still not the time to return to the Garden.
The passage says:
“Therefore they heard at all times the voices of messengers, exalting and honoring Yahweh (YHVH) from inside the Garden, or when they were sent by Yahweh (YHVH) on a task, or when they went up to heaven. For Sheth (Seth) and his sons, because of their own purity, heard and saw those messengers.
Thus, again, the Garden was not far above them, but only about fifteen spiritual cubits. Now a spiritual cubit corresponds to three cubits of a man; altogether forty-five cubits.”
The entrance to the Garden had been sealed, and access restricted to those who had broken the Covenant of the Alliance. Yet it was at a very small spiritual distance, perceptible to those who lived in purity, like Seth and his sons.
The detail of the “fifteen spiritual cubits” does not speak of a geographical distance, but of a spiritual distance. That is, the divine plane remained near, but visible only to those who preserved their connection to the Voice through keeping the Covenant of the Alliance.
Reading this book I often mention, one can clearly observe that the descendants of the first pair remained on that mountain—where the cave was—from Adam to Noah.
The book’s story says that Adam lived with his sons on the mountain below the Garden, and that they did not sow or harvest. They ate fruit from trees that grew abundantly on the mountain where they lived. Seth, Adam’s third son after Abel, often fasted every forty days, as did his older sons. Seth’s family could smell the trees of the Garden of God when the wind blew from there. They were happy, innocent, without sudden fear. There was no jealousy, no evil action, and no hatred among them.
According to the Scriptures, God banished Cain from his home, sending him to wander the earth. The Book of the Life of Adam and Eve says that when Adam died, Seth and his sons separated from Cain’s offspring, and that Cain’s descendants went to live in the west, toward the low plain where centuries later the city of Babel would be built—since Genesis places the Garden in the east, on the opposite side. During that paradisiacal time of Seth’s generation and his sons, Seth forbade them to have any companionship with Cain. Adam, on his deathbed, had already forbidden them to involve themselves with Cain’s children, because among them there was much theft, killing, and wickedness.
From Adam to Noah, the sons of Adam lived on the mountain where the cave was, near the Garden of God with its entrances sealed. In the time of Jared, great-grandson of Enosh (who was Seth’s son), they decided to come down from the mountain and amuse themselves with Cain’s children, forgetting the Law of God and breaking the Covenant of the Alliance. Jared warned them that if they left their dwelling on the mountain, they would not be able to return. The only ones who remained on the mountain of purity, as they called it, were some sons of Enoch (Jared’s eldest son), the sons of Methuselah (Enoch’s son), Lamech (Methuselah’s son), and Noah (Lamech’s son). Jared was Adam’s great-great-great-grandson.
Jared dies of sorrow when he sees that almost all his children had abandoned God, and in his final days he says to them:
“Yahweh will take you to a strange land, and you will never return again to look with your eyes upon this Garden and this pure mountain.”
Humanity’s departure from the Garden and from God, in that cycle, was complete. After Jared’s death, Enoch served in his father’s place in the cave. Of all Adam’s descendants, only three remained on the mountain: Methuselah, Lamech, and Noah. The rest came down from the mountain and intermingled with Cain’s children.
After these events, the known world entered a period of great corruption. It is there that the story of Noah emerges—the one we all know. Something interesting to note is that, summarizing the family events from Adam to Noah, all these figures—both those who stayed on the mountain near the Garden and those who went with Cain—were cousins and brothers. When the flood events described in the Scriptures take place, they involve the descendants of Adam who became involved with the wickedness of Cain’s children. That was the known world of Adam’s children.
Archaeology has been able to prove that a great flood occurred in the area associated with the flood account. Perhaps for those ancient men, a great flood would have seemed like a deluge. If the waters falling from the sky did not stop for forty days, the consequences must have been devastating.
The ground, saturated from the first days, could no longer absorb more water. Rivers and natural channels would have begun to overflow, sweeping everything in their path. In a region as flat as Mesopotamia, what began as a great flood could quickly have become a mass of water covering everything. It was not necessary for the entire planet to be under water. For the descendants of Adam who inhabited that region and formed the only known world up to that time, that event was, without a doubt, a total deluge.
Thus, both the archaeological discoveries and Sumerian literature and the Scriptures coincide in the truth of a significant event that could have wiped out humanity of that generation.
We may not be able to know with exactness the geographical magnitude of that event seen as a deluge, but what we can recognize is that it was deep enough to mark the memory of peoples, ancient tablets, and sacred texts.
In a previous episode I mentioned the relationship I saw between the Garden and the construction of the Tower of Babel. I believe the tower was an attempt to find, by human means, an entrance to the Garden and to the domains of God.
The Scriptures tell us that after the flood, Noah’s family moved toward the east and settled in a plain called Shinar (or Sumer). From Adam to Noah ten generations had passed, according to the biblical narrative. Although for science those periods are symbolic, for those who inherited these accounts they were part of their history. What had happened to the first pair—the expulsion from the Garden, the promise of return, and contact with the divine—was transmitted until it remained engraved as a living memory.
From this perspective, the Tower of Babel was not merely an ambitious work; it was a deliberate attempt to reach what they knew had been lost. No one builds a tower to heaven if they do not believe there is something real up there worth recovering. If that memory had not existed—that the connection with what is above held true power or original life—they would have had no reason at all to attempt it. The tower represents, then, that desire to recover that power without having yet learned to keep the Voice of God.