It like all parables that are historically true are given as poetic representation to hide the unseen spiritual understanding. . No one knows the location of Eden that he set aside or the location of the four rivers . It would seem that some have named rivers according to the names God used. The literal rivers used in that parable represent the gospel going out the unseen understanding hid..
If we did know the location it would of been turned into what some call a Holy Place, a center for idol worship like the earthly Jerusalem giving the illusion the kingdom of God is of this corrupted creation.
East is a metaphor used throughout scripture to represent our unseen God. Perhaps having to do with the rising of the Sun as representative of the unseen glory of God. Many religions take the east direction literally and have turned it into opportunity of image worship.
I would agree there was no Cherubim placed physically in the EAST to protect a tree. Angels have no form they are administering spirits of truth that guard the way to fellowship with God.
The tree as that seen, the temporal in that parable represents to way of faith to our unseen eternal God. Like all parables we search for things which are not
seen the eternal using the things which are seen .
2 Corinthians 4:18 While we look not at the things which are seen, but at the things which are not seen: for the things which are seen are temporal; but the things which are not seen are eternal.
While i agree with you that most of these things are unseen, doesn't mean that we can not understand them. They are unseen because we can understand them. The events in Eden are not just a parable, they are real but to me, reality is nothing more than a thought. So the 6 creation days were God's thoughts before being put in man's mind on the 6th day and from that moment on, existence was as we see it. If everyone is to pass away today, the universe will vanish. Every time sin increased among men, God would wipe out almost all men and leave a few and the scriptures will declare that that world has passed away because the world is in the people and the new world is in those that survive to teach their children the precepts of God.
Thinking that Eden was some physical garden in the East doesn't get anyone far because it would contradict what's in Genesis 1.
Gen 1:
11Then God said, “Let the earth bring forth vegetation: seed-bearing plants and fruit trees, each bearing fruit with seed according to its kind.” And it was so.
12The earth produced vegetation: seed-bearing plants according to their kinds and trees bearing fruit with seed according to their kinds. And God saw that it was good.
According to Gen 1, plants were fully available on earth at the end of 3rd day. Yet:
Gen 2:
4This is the account of the heavens and the earth when they were created, when the Lord God made the earth and the heavens.
5Now no shrub had yet appeared on the earth
a and no plant had yet sprung up, for the Lord God had not sent rain on the earth and there was no one to work the ground,
6but streams
b came up from the earth and watered the whole surface of the ground.
7Then the Lord God formed a man
c from the dust of the ground and breathed into his nostrils the breath of life, and the man became a living being.
8Now the Lord God had planted a garden in the east, in Eden; and there he put the man he had formed.
9The Lord God made all kinds of trees grow out of the ground—trees that were pleasing to the eye and good for food. In the middle of the garden were the tree of life and the tree of the knowledge of good and evil.
'No plants' takes us to day 2 in Genesis 1, but why does it say that God planted a garden in the East with every kind of plant in it?
Eden was never a part of the 6 days creation according to Genesis 1, why is Eden not part of the 6 days creation yet it was God's work?
