I dunno, I mean the myth doesn't say "Then The Lord Smote the Garden Unto Sand", it says that Eden (and the plants) persisted in the same spot as before... Humans were just being actively blocked by an angel with a flaming sword.
I do not struggle to see echoes of an oral tradition recalling receding greenery. I can quite imagine a cult feeling expelled from Eden as the productive grasslands walked away.
> Many people, meeting Aziraphale for the first time, formed three impressions: that he was English, that he was intelligent, and that he was gayer than a treeful of monkeys on nitrous oxide.
