2 out of 4 stars
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Paradise Found by Anipe Steeven K. V. Premajyothi is ostensibly an attempt to establish the original location of the Garden of Eden on a modern map. Eden, for those who are not familiar with the Christian story of origins, was allegedly the place where the first humans (Adam and Eve) lived and interacted with God for a time after the creation of the world (for Biblical reference, see Genesis 2). Eventually, the story reports that a serpent, usually assumed to be Satan, persuaded Eve (who persuaded Adam) to disobey God’s instructions, which then led to the two of them being thrown out of Eden and cursed with struggle, pain, and death. Eden was closed to Adam and Eve and guarded by an angel in order to prevent anyone from reaching the tree of life inside (Genesis 3).
It’s understandable that Eden is a fascinating topic. Eden was supposed to be paradise on earth; it was a place without evil, frustration, pain, hardship, or death. If Eden could be found today, what answers or mysteries would be hidden there? Mr. Premajyothi claims to have discovered Eden’s location, and while he shows some evidence of research and reasoning to this end, he also claims in the introduction to his book that Paradise Found is based on a special revelation from God to himself. Mr. Premajyothi therefore feels compelled to share this knowledge with the world in hopes that it will inspire others and help bring them closer to Christianity.
Undeniably, Paradise Found is a very passionate book. It is sprinkled with exclamatory statements about the majesty and goodness of God. It is enthusiastic, and the reader can easily divine the sincerity of the author. However, the quality of the research and the manner of its communication to the reader allows something to be desired.
When I am reading a paper in support of a thesis (namely, that the Garden of Eden is located [here]), I expect support for that thesis to follow some kind of recognizable order. There should be distinct arguments or perhaps a trail of clues leading to a discovery. Instead, Paradise Found gave me many arguments thrown together a bit haphazardly, as if the writer was trying to say everything at once without planning the presentation beforehand. Some of these arguments may have been legitimate, but in order to make sense of them, I needed to go back and re-read the book, taking notes to recall what was said where, with what support. That’s a lot of effort to ask of a reader.
Another difficulty comes from this claim of divine revelation. Several times in the book, the author declares something “known”. Logic is based on the idea that premises lead to conclusions. However, if a premise is rejected, the conclusion may change. If the author declares something “known”, and the reader can’t find adequate reason to share the assumption, the reader may also reject the conclusion. It would be better if Mr. Premajyothi consistently supported his premises with some kind of evidence. In that case, readers would be more likely to accept and maybe even share his conclusions. For the most part, whenever his reasoning came from the Biblical text, Mr. Premajyothi was very conscientious about offering references to show the origins of his claims. This is an excellent start, but thoroughness is very necessary in this genre, and unsupported statements can do enormous damage to credibility.
By the time I finished reading the book, I decided that, regardless of the description offered when I accepted the task of reading and reviewing, Paradise Found was more a statement of faith than a presentation of research and discovery. The Christian faith hinges on this promise of restoring Edenic paradise. The idea is that Jesus Christ offers the opportunity to re-enter Eden, figuratively speaking. Through the forgiveness of sins and faith, Christians are promised that after death or the end of the world, they will live again in an evil-free, pain-free, struggle-free environment where they will be able to interact with God as Adam and Eve once did. I concluded that although Paradise Found does make a claim on the location of Eden, the author’s real purpose was to show why losing Eden and finding it again has been important in his life and might be important to others as well. That was the part that made the book make sense to me and made it worth reading. So, because Paradise Found seems to be a book about a man’s faith masquerading as a somewhat-ineffective presentation of research, I am rating it 2 out of 4 stars. The research angle needs some serious work, especially in organization, but the book still has a message that becomes very clear by the end. As it stands, I would hope that the author looks into re-editing the book in order to help it live up to this secret potential. Then it could become recommendable.
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Paradise Found
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