The pasuk writes by adam, when he was thrown out of gan eden - וישכן מקדם לגן עדן, and by kayin when he was thrown out -וישב בארץ נוד קדמת עדן, both seem to contradict the pasuk ויטע ה' אלקים גן בעדן מקדם, which implies that gan eden was most to the east. How can they be thrown out to the east if they were already on the most eastern spot in the world?
R' Shalomi Eldar pointed out to me that although rashi seems to translate the word קדם in all these places as east, unkelos seems to translate as a place set aside from before. Therefore, according to unkelos both gan eden and the place they were exiled to were set up in advance for that purpose.
Tosafos in baba basra 84a also asks the question and says that גן עדן מקדם and קדמת עדן, don't mean east of eden, rather the east side of the world that is adjacent to eden. Based on this, both gan eden and the place adam and kayin were exiled to, were on the east, next to one another. But, this doesn't seem to fit with rashi 3:24 who says that they were במזרחו של גן עדן חוץ לגן - actually east of gan eden. Rashi in 4:16 also implies that the entrance to gan eden was on the east and they were thrown even more east to guard the entrance to gan eden.
R' Arye Schreiber asked on the pasuk by lot 13:11 which says that he traveled to s'dom by writing ויסע לוט מקדם, but s'dom is the eastern border of EY so he couldn't have traveled from the east and ended up all the way on the east? Rashi therefore makes a drasha that he traveled from the קדמונו של עולם. Unkelos answers that it means ונטל לוט בקדמיתא, meaning that lot took a portion on the east. But according to tosafos in Baba Basra it can mean the same as גן עדן מקדם that lot traveled to a place that was east of the world. The term מקדם doesn't mean that he was traveling from the east, rather he was traveling to an area that was the most eastern part of EY.
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Where on Earth is Gan Eden?
Our sugya explains that the earthly Gan Eden, whence Adam was banished, is somewhere east of Eretz Israel such that the sun rises over it (according to Rashbam and Tosfos), a fact corroborated by the Midrash (cited in Torah Sheleimah, Bereishis 3). Tosfos in Bechoros 55b (s.v. Mitra) remarks that Gan Eden is to the west while Rabeinu Tam (Kidushin 71b s.v. ‘ad) believes it lies to the north, reaching Eretz Israel via Mesopotamia, and according to the Ari z”l, quoted in Hagahos Rav G. Lifshitz on our sugya, Gan Eden is in the south.
Rabeinu Yitzchak Abarbanel attests (Bereishis) in the name of the Rishonim that Gan Eden is somewhere on the equator and the mekubal Rabbi Shalom Shar’abi holds the same opinion (Nehar Shalom, cited in Sod Yesharim by the Ben Ish Chai, V, 6) while Rabbi Chayim Vital contends it lies “in the midst of the globe”. Despite all the directions, though, no one has ever found it. The Rishonim explain that the angels known as keruvim and the fiery revolving sword put there when Adam was exiled prevent people from discovering it. The Abarbanel offers some reasons for its elusive location and suggests it may lie beneath a constantly active volcano but immediately rejects the idea.
When Aspalkinos and his 40 necromancers sought Gan Eden: In his Sha’ar HaGemul,(ch. 4) Ramban recounts that “according to medical books of the ancient Greeks and our own Asaf HaRofeh, a Macedonian sage named Aspalkinos and 40 learned magicians reached beyond India, east of Eden, in search of medicinal leaves and the Tree of Life…When they arrived, the fiery revolving sword struck them with lightning and no one survived and medical wisdom vanished from those peoples for a long time…All this is true and well known as many traveling to the East can see the fiery revolving blade from afar”. Still, we have only to wait in yearning to witness the promise of the Midrash HaGadol (quoted in Torah Sheleimah, Bereishis 3): “Eden is a special place on Earth, no one knows where, but Hashem will show us the way there when Mashiach comes.”
meoros Hadaf HaYomi
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