Garden of Eden

Eden as depicted in Bosch's The Garden of Earthly Delights includes many exotic African animals.

The Garden of Eden (from Hebrew Gan Eden) is described by the Book of Genesis as being the place where the first man and woman—Adam and Eve—lived after they were created by God until their expulsion for disobedience. The origin of the term "Eden", which in Hebrew means "delight," may be related to the Akkadian edinu, which derives from the Sumerian E.DIN. The latter words mean "plain" or "steppe."

Eden is described as a paradise where the first human couple lived naked an unashamed, in which God Himself walked, talked, and interacted directly with his creations. In the Garden, humans did not need to work, but simply lived on whatever vegetables and fruits they wished to eat. However, one particular fruit—from the Tree of Knowledge of Good and Evil—was forbidden to them, for it would cause them to die. The animals posed no threat to them, again with one major exception: a talking serpent which tempted the first woman to eat of the forbidden fruit.

The Genesis account supplies the geographical location of Eden in relation to four major rivers, two of which exist today: the Tigris and the Euphrates. However, the true location of Eden is the subject of much speculation. Many believe that Eden was not an actual physical location, but a state of mind from which mankind fell because of sin.

Eden is recognized in the three Abrahamic religions of Judaism, Christianity, and Islam. Some other religions and cultures have a creation story containing a similar concept to the biblical Garden of Eden, ascribing various locations to the place of first habitation.

Biblical account

The story of the Garden of Eden story is found in Genesis 2-3. God, called Yahweh, creates Adam from the "dust of the ground" when "no shrub of the field had yet appeared on the earth and no plant of the field had yet sprung up." Yahweh then plants the Garden of Eden and places Adam there. After this, Yahweh causes trees to grow in the Garden, including the special Tree of Life and the Tree of Knowledge of Good and Evil. From the latter tree alone Adam is commanded to refrain from eating, on pain of death. Seeing that Adam was alone, Yahweh decides to make a helper for him. He creates the animals and brings them to Adam, who gives them names. However, none of them is an adequate mate for him. Yahweh then creates a female out of Adam's own body. Adam names her "woman." Both of them are naked and without shame.

The Garden of Eden by Lucas Cranach, a sixteenth-century German artist

Despite its paradise-like character, the Garden of Eden is not an entirely safe place. A talking serpent appears on the scene and begins to tempt the woman to eat of the forbidden fruit of the Tree of Knowledge of Good and Evil. She resists, for she understands that she and Adam have been commanded not to eat of this fruit. However, the serpent convinces her that they will not die by eating it, and shows her that the fruit is "good for food and pleasing to the eye, and also desirable for gaining wisdom." She eats of it, and gives some to Adam. As a result, "the eyes of both of them were opened" and they realize that they are naked. They feel ashamed of themselves and cover their sexual areas with fig leaves. They also begin to fear Yahweh because of their nakedness.

Yahweh walks through the Garden and looks for the couple but cannot find them. When he discovers them hiding, they reveal their shame over being naked, and Yahweh realizes they have eaten of the forbidden fruit. Although they do not die, as Yahweh had predicted they would, the consequences of their actions are dire indeed. Yahweh curses the serpent to crawl on its belly and eat dust. He curses the woman—who is still unnamed—to painful childbirths and to be subservient to her husband. He curses the land on account of Adam's sin. And He curses Adam to live by arduous labor, "for dust you are and to dust you will return." (Gen. 3:19)

Only then does Adam finally give the woman a name, Eve, meaning "the mother of all living."

After this, Yahweh makes garments for Adam and Eve, but condemns them to live outside of the Garden of Eden. To prevent the couple from eating of the Tree of Life and living forever, he drives them out of the Garden and places two cherubim and a flaming sword at its entrance, "flashing back and forth to guard the way to the Tree of Life."

Other Biblical references

The Garden of Eden is rarely referred to outside the first chapters of Genesis. It is most prominently mentioned in the Book of Ezekiel, who speaks of the "trees of Eden" as a metaphor of fallen greatness:

Consider Assyria, once a cedar in Lebanon,

with beautiful branches overshadowing the forest...

I made it beautiful with abundant branches,

the envy of all the trees of Eden in the garden of God...

The prophet Joel refers to Eden as a metaphor of the current state of affairs compared to the coming doom:

Like dawn spreading across the mountains a large and mighty army comes..

Before them fire devours, behind them a flame blazes.

Before them the land is like the garden of Eden,

behind them, a desert waste—nothing escapes them.

The New Testament does not mention Eden by name. However, Jesus is referred to as a new "Adam," (1 Cor. 15:44), and the Book of Revelation quotes Jesus as promising "To him who overcomes, I will give the right to eat from the Tree of Life, which is in the paradise of God." (Revelation 2:7) Revelation identifies this paradise as a highly civilized place—the New Jerusalem—rather than a primordial garden. It is described as a the "Holy City... coming down out of heaven from God," in which the Tree of Life is situated, and the "River of the Water of Life, as clear as crystal," flows from the throne of God.

Location

Genesis describes both the Tigris and Euphrates as originating in the Garden of Eden.

Yedi Göller (Seven Lakes), in the Taurus Mountains, Turkey.

The Book of Genesis contains little information on the Garden of Eden itself beyond the above account. However, in terms of the Garden's location, some fairly specific information is given.

“

A river watering the garden flowed from Eden; from there it was separated into four headwaters. The name of the first is the Pishon... The name of the second river is the Gihon; it winds through the entire land of Cush. The name of the third river is the Tigris; it runs along the east side of Asshur. And the fourth river is the Euphrates.

”

The identity of Pishon and Gihon have been the subject of endless argument, but if the Garden of Eden had really been near the sources of the Tigris and the Euphrates, then the original narrators would have identified it as located generally in the Taurus Mountains, in Anatolia.

Alternate locations

A number of other claims as to the geographic location of the Garden of Eden, though many of these has much connection to the text of Genesis. The first century C.E. Jewish historian Josephus and several early Church Fathers Josephus believed the Pison to be one of the rivers of India, while Cush is Ethiopia and thus the Gihon is the Nile. In the Talmud, Resh Laḳish states: "If the paradise is situated in Palestine, Beth-Shean is the door; if in Arabia, then Bet Gerim is the door; and if between the rivers, Damascus is the door." ('Erubin 19a) In another part of the Talmud (Tamid 32b) the interior of Africa is pointed out as the location of Eden, and no less a personage than Alexander the Great is supposed to have found the entrance of Garden in African regions which are inhabited and governed exclusively by women.

John Calvin and others believed the the Shatt al-Arab—formed by the union of the Tigris and Euphrates near the Persian Gulf—to be the river that "went out of the Garden."

The Olduvai Gorge area, seen from space, is posited as a possible place of human origin.

Some historians working within the cultural horizons ancient Sumer, where the earliest surviving non-Biblical sources of the Eden legend may lie, point to the Bronze Age commercial center of the island Dilmun (now Bahrain) in the Persian Gulf, described as "the place where the sun rises" and "the Land of the Living." After its decline, beginning about 1500 B.C.E., Dilmun developed such a reputation as a long-lost garden of exotic perfections that some theorists believe it influenced the story of the Garden of Eden.

Various African locations have been suggested on the basis that human life is believed to have originated there, according to scientific theories. Locations as diverse as Ethiopia, Java, Sri Lanka, the Seychelles, and Bristol, Florida, have all been proposed as locations for the Garden. One recent claim by archaeologist, David Rohl, puts the Garden of Eden in northwestern Iran. According to him, the Garden was a river valley east of Sahand Mountain, near Tabriz. He cites several geological similarities with biblical descriptions and multiple linguistic parallels as proof.

Independence Temple, the headquarters of the Community of Christ, formerly known as the Reorganized Church of Latter Day Saints

There is also an attempt to tie the location of Eden with the mystical sunken land of Atlantis. One suggested location of this Eden is Sundaland in the South China Sea. In this theory, the current Tigris and Euphrates rivers are not be the ones referred to in the narrative, but are later rivers named after two of the earlier rivers, just as in more modern times colonists named features of their new land after similar features in their homeland.

In Latter-day Saint theology, the Garden of Eden is believed to be located at what is now inside the city limits of Independence, Missouri. Mormons believe the configuration of the continents was different before the Great Flood and that the geographical descriptions of Eden in Genesis refer to lands and rivers that were later renamed after the Flood.

The Urantia Book (1955), a channeled revelation supposed to come from angelic beings, places the Garden of Eden in a long narrow peninsula projecting westward from the eastern shores of the Mediterranean and having been long ago submerged in connection with volcanic activity.

Many contemporary theologians believe that the Garden never had a terrestrial existence, but was instead an adjunct to heaven as it became identified with Paradise. Others take the story allegorically, seeing Eden as a psychological state rather than any physical location.

Biblical literalists answer that even though Eden may not exist today, it did once exist just as the Bible says it did. However, the world of Eden's time was destroyed during Noah's Flood; and thus it is impossible to attempt to identify Eden's physical location.

Eden as Paradise

The word "paradise," often used as a synonym for the Garden of Eden, is originally a Persian word, which describes a walled orchard garden or an enclosed hunting park. In the post-Exilic apocalyptic literature and in the Talmud, "paradise" became associated with the Garden of Eden and its heavenly prototype. Literary Hellenistic influences led to the Pauline Christian association of "paradise" with the realm of the blessed. The Greek Garden of the Hesperides also influenced the Christian concept of the Garden of Eden.

In Rabbinical literature. both the Talmudists and kabalistic rabbis agree that there are two gardens of Eden: one, the terrestrial, of abundant fertility and luxuriant vegetation; the other, celestial, the habitation of righteous, immortal souls. These two are known as the "lower" and "higher" Gan Eden.

Some anthropologists have hypothesized that the Garden of Eden does not represent a "geographical" place, but rather represents "cultural memory" of "simpler times," when man lived off God's bounty (as "primitive" hunters and gatherers still do) as opposed to toiling at agriculture (being "civilized")... a metaphor reinforced by the words of the Book of Genesis.

Critical views

Chart of the Documentary Hyopthesis

Biblical critics point out that the story of the Garden of Eden is clearly mythological and also that it contradicts the earlier version of Creation given in Genesis 1.

In the story of Eden, Adam is the first creation, formed from dust even before the plants and animals. Eve, on the other hand, is created last of all. The name of the Creator God is Yahweh. However, in Genesis 1, the unnamed first man and woman are created simultaneously on the sixth day of creation, only after God (called Elohim) creates the plants and animals. Genesis one describe a true paradise, in which there are only blessing and no commandments; nor is there any serpent to tempt the first couple. Genesis 2-3 presents the world as a dangerous place, in which a tempting poisonous fruit is prominent and Yahweh has created a serpent to lure Adam and Eve into sin. According to the Documentary Hypothesis, the Garden of Eden story originated with the "J," or Yahwist, source, while Genesis 1 comes from the later P or priestly source, emphasizing the holiness of the Sabbath as the seventh day, in which even God rested from His labor.

Mythologists such as Joseph Campbell note that in early creation myth—known mainly through pictorial representations—there is also a garden and a tree of life, but apparently no forbidden tree of knowledge. In this theory, the Yahwist's Garden of Eden story was designed to denigrate Canaanite traditions in which the "mother of all living" was not a woman, but a goddess, who shared her life-giving fruit freely; and the serpent was not an agent of sin but of healing and spiritual power.

While there is no single Babylonian legend similar to the Garden of Eden to which the biblical story can be traced—as there are in the case of the stories of the Creation and the Flood—there are clear points of relationship between it and Babylonian mythology. In the Enuma Elish, after consulting with Ea and the other gods, the victorious deity Marduk slays his adversary Kingu and uses his blood mixed with mud to create humankind to serve the gods. In the Amarna tablets, Adapa, the first man, is the son Ea, by whom he has been endowed with wisdom, but not with everlasting life. He lives in Eridu, and cares for the sanctuary of the god. Ea gives his son instructions as to his behavior before Anu, the god of Heave: "Bread of death will they offer thee; eat not of it. Water of death will they bring thee; drink not of it." Adapa does as he is told, but the bread and water Anu causes to be placed before him are of life, not of death. Thus Adapa loses his chance of eternal life.

The Restoration of Eden

Many groups have sought the restoration of the Garden of Eden, some appealing directly to the biblical vision of paradise, while others conceiving of an ideal world transcendent of religion's moral constraints. Early Christians looked forward to the "New Jerusalem," a heavenly city in which the Tree of Life gives forth twelve types of abundant fruit and the curse given by God in Eden is forever removed. (Revelation 22) The medieval Jewish mystical tradition, the Kabbalah, saw the Edenic Tree of Life as symbolic of the a restored archetypal human being, called Adam Kadmon. Various millennialist movements have hoped for a more literal restoration of the Garden of Eden, often conceived as a kind of Heaven on Earth in which humans will no longer have to die.

In the modern era, numerous utopian communes sprang up, inspired by vision of an ideal world free from selfishness and guilt. Even Karl Marx, who detested religion as the "opiate of the masses," nevertheless hoped for a communist revolution which would created a "kingdom of freedom" instead of a "kingdom of necessity." Vegetarian groups appeal to the God's blessing to Adam to eat of fruits and vegetables only, hoping that a return to this Edenic standard will bring about a parallel change in the patterns of human aggression and other social ills. The Unification Church, founded by the Reverend Sun Myung Moon looks to a restored Garden of Eden in terms of a unified world of peace based on "ideal families."

External links

• Returning to Eden investigates the Garden of Eden motif from a political, historical, and philosophical perspective, viewing it as a precursor of political utopianism.
• Smithsonian article on the geography of the Tigris-Euphrates region
• Review of the Young Earth Creationist Book "After Eden"

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