Garden of Eden

The Garden of Eden (from Hebrew Gan Ēden, "גַּן עֵדֶן") is described by the Book of Genesis as being the place where the first man - Adam - and woman - Eve - lived after they were created by "God". The past physical existence of this garden forms part of the creation belief of the Abrahamic religions.

The Genesis account (specifically, the Jahwist version of the creation story) supplies the geographical location of Eden in relation to four major rivers. However, because the identification of these rivers has been the subject of much controversy and speculation, a substantial consensus now exists that the knowledge of the location of Eden has been lost. There is no other indication of its existence beyond the record found in Genesis.

There are other religious groups contain similar subject elements, but who ascribe different locations to the place of first habitation. (See origin belief.)

In the Garden of Eden story, God molds Adam from the dust of the ground, then forms Eve from one of Adam's ribs and places them both in the garden. God charges both Adam and Eve to tend the garden in which they live, and specifically commands Adam not to eat from the Tree of the Knowledge of Good and Evil, a tree peculiarly pleasing to the eye. In the narrative Eve is quizzed by the serpent why she avoids eating of this tree. In the dialogue between the two Eve childishly elaborates on the commandment not to eat of its fruit. She says that even if she touches the tree she would die. Psychologically the Serpent induces in her a state of inferiority. Eve is then filled with desire to be like God and have wisdom and knowledge. She and Adam then eat the fruit. Adam becomes aware of his "nakedness" and ashame hides from God. God finds them, confronts them, and judges them with a sentence of "death", beginning with the serpent first, then Eve, then Adam. God then expels them from the garden because they have disobeyed Him by eating the forbidden fruit. In order to guarantee the punishment of death and to keep Adam and Eve from partaking of the Tree of Life, (which would give them perpetual life), God places cherubim to guard against any entrance into the garden with an omnidirectional "flaming" sword, preventing Adam and Eve from returning in the future.

Christianity and Judaism associate the serpent with Satan, based on a common interpretation of Old Testament texts. The serpent is given a natural desire to eat "dust", which was previously described as the original stuff from which Mankind was made and the stuff to which they would return. Other passages of the Hebrew Scripture tests describe Satan as the perpetual prosecutor of mankind, devouring them whenever he gets the chance. So in this interpretation God's words to the serpent, that he would "eat dust", was an analogy to his evil nature after the curse. In Christianity there is also a correspondence between Genesis and the Revelation. However, an early Gnostic Christian sect, known as the Ophites, turned this on its head, worshipping the serpent as the hero trying to impart gnosis, and casting God as the evil villain trying to imprison them in the creation of the demiurge.

In the account the garden is planted "eastward, in Eden", and accordingly "Eden" properly denotes the larger territory which contains the garden rather than being the name of the garden itself: it is, thus, the garden located in Eden. The Talmud also states (Brachos 34b) that the Garden is distinct from Eden.

For the association of the Garden of Eden with Paradise, see below.

Geography

The Book of Genesis contains little information on the garden itself. It was home to both the Tree of Life and the Tree of Knowledge of Good and Evil, as well as an abundance of other vegetation that could feed Adam and Eve.

"And a river went out of Eden to water the garden; and from thence it was parted, and became into four heads.".

-Genesis 2:10

Suspected locations

There have been a number of claims as to the actual geographic location of the Garden of Eden, though many of these have little or no connection to the text of Genesis. Most put the Garden somewhere in the Middle East near Mesopotamia. Locations as diverse as Ethiopia, Java, Sri Lanka (Adam's Peak), the Seychelles, Brabant, Jackson County, Missouri and Bristol, Florida have all been proposed as locations for the garden. Some Christian theologians believe that the Garden never had a terrestrial existence, but was instead an adjunct to heaven as it became identified with Paradise (see below).

The text asserts that the Garden was planted in the eastern part of the region known as Eden and that in Eden the river divided into four branches: Hiddekel (also known as Tigris), Euphrates, Pishon and Gihon. The identity of the former two are commonly accepted, though the latter two rivers 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 in the land of Canaan would have identified it as located generally in the Taurus Mountains, in Anatolia. Satellite photos reveal two dry riverbeds flowing toward the Persian Gulf near where the Tigris and Euphrates also terminate. While this accounts for four easterly flowing rivers, those who believe the garden to be at the source of the rivers disregard this information.

Some literalists point out that the world of Eden's time was destroyed during Noah's Flood and it is therefore impossible to place the Garden anywhere in post-flood geography. There is also an attempt to tie this with the mystical sunken land of Atlantis. One favourite location is Sundaland in the South China Sea. In this theory the current Tigris and Euphrates rivers would not be the ones referred to in the narrative, but later rivers named after two of the earlier rivers, just as in more modern times colonists would name features of their new land after similar features in their homeland. This idea also resolves the apparent problem in the theory that the rivers had a common source, which the current rivers do not.

One recent claim by archaeologist David Rohl puts the garden in the north-western Iran. According to him, the Garden is a river valley east of the Sahand Mountain, near Tabriz. He cites several geological similarities with Biblical descriptions, and multiple linguistic parallels as evidence. The Medians lived in this area before founding the Persian Empire.

The Urantia Book (1955) 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 and the submergence of a Sicilian land bridge to Africa, features unidentified by geologists.

Another theory is that the textual descriptions are from the perspective of Adam and Eve, that is, from within the garden. From their viewpoint you would be looking upstream to see the river leaving Eden and entering the garden. Further upstream and further into Eden the river parts into four separate rivers. Following each of these upstream will lead you to their headwaters. This theory also puts the Garden of Eden in the vicinity of the northern end of the Persian Gulf.

Sumeria and Dilmun

The first Sumerians lived in the plains of what is now southern Iraq. Some of the historians working from within the cultural horizons of southernmost Sumer, where the earliest surviving non-Biblical source of the legend lies, point to the quite genuine Bronze Age entrepôt of the island Dilmun (now Bahrain) in the Persian Gulf, described as 'the place where the sun rises' and 'the Land of the Living'. The setting of the Sumerian creation myth, Enûma Elish, has clear parallels with the Genesis narratives. After its actual decline, beginning about 1500 B.C., Dilmun developed such a reputation as a long-lost garden of exotic perfections that it appears to have influenced the story of the Garden of Eden. Some interpreters have tried to establish an Edenic garden at the trading-center of Dilmun.

Latter Day Saints' geography for Eden

For members of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints (also known as the Mormons or LDS), the Garden of Eden is believed to have been located in present-day Jackson County, Missouri based on revelation given to Joseph Smith, Jr. Independence, Missouri was revealed to be the "center place" of Zion and the original dwelling place of Adam and Eve in the Garden which God planted "eastward in Eden". According to the Prophet Joseph, Adam and Eve travelled 85 miles north to the valley of Adam-ondi-Ahman after they had transgressed and were driven from the Garden. Many have presumed the continents were not yet separate before the Great Flood, consistent with the configuration of the super-continent Pangaea. The account in Genesis relates that the earth was divided in the days of Peleg (Gen. 10:25). In the Pearl of Great Price it is explained that there were lands and rivers that were given names later attached to other lands and rivers as in the Book of Genesis. The geographic descriptions of Eden in the Bible would therefore refer to entirely different lands and rivers, whose names were transposed after the biblical flood to local lands and rivers in the Near East. Some have also speculated that Noah (whose name means division) had not yet left what is now the American continent but built his ark closer to the Garden of Eden before the flood while his ark rested on Mount Ararat when the flood subsided. Thus his offspring populated the eastern hemisphere.

See: Noah and the Flood, Mark E. Petersen, p. 36. Moses 3:8,13(with footnote),23, D&C 57:1-3,116,117:8-9, Genesis 2:13, 15, 22. Journal of Discourses XI, 336-337. Deseret News, 10-25, 1895 (Letter Benjamin F. Johnson), Historical Record, Jenson Vol. 7&8, p. 438; Life of Heber C. Kimball, Whitney, p. 219 (1888 ed.), The Refiner's Fire Alvin R. Dyer p.111,167. Millennial Messiah: The Second Coming of the Son of Man, Bruce R. McConkie p. 622.

Eden as Paradise

"Paradise" (Hebrew פרדס PaRDeS) used as a synonym for the Garden of Eden shares a number of characteristics with words for 'walled orchard garden' or 'enclosed hunting park' in an ancient Persian language. This word "paradise" occurs three times in the Old Testament, but always in contexts other than a connection with Eden: in the Song of Solomon iv. 13: "Thy plants are an orchard of pomegranates, with pleasant fruits; camphire, with spikenard" ;Ecclesiastes ii. 5: "I made me gardens and orchards, and I planted trees in them of all kind of fruits";and in Nehemiah ii. 8: "And a letter unto Asaph the keeper of the king's orchard, that he may give me timber to make beams for the gates of the palace which appertained to the house, and for the wall of the city, and for the house that I shall enter into. And the king granted me, according to the good hand of my God upon me. ". In the Song of Solomon, it is clearly "garden;" in the second and third examples "park." In the post-Exilic apocalyptic literature and in the Talmud, "paradise" gains its associations with the Garden of Eden and its heavenly prototype. In the Pauline Christian New Testament, there is an association of "paradise" with the realm of the blessed (as opposed to the realm of the cursed) among those who have already died, with literary Hellenistic influences observed by numerous scholars. The Greek Garden of the Hesperides was somewhat similar to the Christian concept of the Garden of Eden, and by the 16th century a larger intellectual association was made in the Cranach painting (see illustration). In this painting, only the action that takes place there identifies the setting as distinct from the Garden of the Hesperides, with its golden fruit.

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"). Of course there is much dispute between Judeo-Christian and secular scholars as to the plausability of this idea - the refuting claim being that cultivation and agricultural work were present both before and after the "Garden Life".

Author Ann Druyan considers the Garden of Eden to be far removed from the typical view of Paradise, observing;

"It's puzzling that Eden is synonymous with paradise when, if you think about it at all, it's more like a maximum-security prison with twenty-four hour surveillance. It's a horrible place. Adam and Eve have no childhood. They awaken full-grown...They have no mother, nor did they ever have one...Their father is a terrifying, disembodied voice who is furious with them from the moment they first awaken." Ann Druyan Talks About Science, Religion, Wonder, Awe...and Carl Sagan. Skeptical Inquirer, Volume 27, Number 6.

Hebraic and Christian Scholars, on the other hand, claim that a state of "maximum-security with twenty-four hour surveillance" surrounded the garden only after the disobedience of man and woman. They also disagree with her view of God in the text, noting that in the Genesis account, Adam and Eve had a daily positive interaction with their "Father" prior to eating the forbidden fruit. These scholars also claim that Adam and Eve were at full liberty in the garden prior to this incident, since otherwise they could not have chosen to eat the forbidden fruit; others suggest that the forbidden nature of the fruit suggests that their liberty was compromised.

According to Judaic traditions, Eden is in Shehaqim, the fourth of the seven heavens

Etymology

The origin of the term "Eden", which in Hebrew means "delight", may be with Akkadian edinu which derives from the Sumerian E.DIN. The latter words mean "plain" or "steppe", so the connection between the terms may be coincidental. However, to modern eyes, the wording "east, in Eden" suggests a geographical rather than metaphorical use of the term.

Eden in Art

Garden of Eden motifs most frequently portrayed in illuminated manuscripts and paintings are the "Sleep of Adam" ("Creation of Eve"), the "Temptation of Eve" by the Serpent, the "Fall of Man" where Adam takes the fruit, and the "Expulsion". The idyll of "Naming Day in Eden" was less often depicted. Much of Milton's Paradise Lost occurs in the Garden of Eden. Michelangelo depicted a Michelangelo Buonarroti 022.jpg at the Garden of Eden in the Sistine Chapel ceiling.

Notes

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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