Garden of Eden

The Garden of Eden (from Hebrew גַּן עֵדֶן Gan ‘Ēden ; Arabic جنة عدن Jannatu ‘Adin) is described in the Book of Genesis as being the place where the first man, Adam, and the first 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 creation story in Genesis relates the geographical location of both Eden and the garden in relation to four major rivers (Pishon, Gihon, Hiddekel, Euphrates), as well as in relation to a number of named regions (Havilah, Cush, Asshur or Assyria) (see Genesis 2:10-14). This seems to suggest a setting in the ancient near east, specifically somewhere in Mesopotamia. 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 yet no other indication found of its existence beyond the record found in Genesis and other early Judaeo-Christian literature, such as Jubilees.

There are other religious groups who believe in a place of first habitation with similar elements to the Garden of Eden, but who ascribe different locations to the place (See origin belief).

In the Garden of Eden story, God moulds Adam from the dust of the Earth, then forms Eve from one of Adam's ribs and places them both in the garden, eastward in Eden. 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. Eve is quizzed by the serpent why she avoids eating of this tree. In the dialogue between the two, Eve elaborates on the commandment not to eat of its fruit. She says that even if she touches the tree she will die. The serpent responds that she will not die, rather she would become like God, knowing good and evil. Eve then eats from the Tree of Knowledge of Good and Evil and persuades Adam to eat from it too. They then become aware. God finds them, confronts them, and judges them for disobeying.

The next verse says that God was afraid that they might become immortal if they ate of the Tree of Life. It is at this point that God expels them from Eden, to keep Adam and Eve from partaking of the Tree of Life. The story says that God placed cherubim with an omnidirectional "flaming" sword to guard against any future entrance into the garden.

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.

The Book of Jubilees, canonical to this day in the Ethiopian Orthodox Church, relates a tradition that the angels did not place Adam in the garden until his 40th day, and his wife Eve on the 80th day. Later on (4:23-27), it states that they also conducted Enoch into the garden of Eden when he was translated from the Earth at age 365, where he records the evil deeds of mankind for all time — adding further that the garden is one of four holy places that the Lord has on Earth, the other three being Mount Sinai, Mount Zion, and the 'Mount of the East' (usually assumed by scholars to mean Mount Ararat).

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.

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 theologians have claimed 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. While the identity of the first two is commonly accepted, the latter two rivers have been the subject of much debate. If the Garden of Eden had been near the sources of the Tigris and the Euphrates, then the narrative might have identified it as located in the Taurus Mountains, or 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, this information disregards the traditional interpretation of Genesis that the garden was at the source of the rivers. Archaeologist Juris Zarins claimed that the Garden of Eden was situated at the head of the Persian Gulf, where the Tigris and Euphrates Rivers run into the sea, from his research on this area using information from many different sources, including LANDSAT images from space. In this theory, the Bible’s Gihon River would correspond with the Karun River in Iran, and the Pishon River would correspond to the Wadi Batin river system that once drained the now dry, but once quite fertile central part of the Arabian Peninsula. His theory is strongly supported by C. A. Salabach [1].

Michael Sanders, director of expeditions for the Mysteries of the Bible Research Foundation, in Irvine, California, says that the Garden of Eden is in eastern Turkey, because the Tigris and Euphrates take their source in the mountains there. Sanders identifies the 4 rivers of Eden as the Murat River, the Tigris, the Euphrates, and the north fork of the Euphrates. Since the Genesis text states that the four rivers flowed together as one into Eden, this would seem to contradict Sander's theory, although in Assyrian records, there is mention of a "Beth Eden", (House of Eden), a small Aramaean state, located on the bend of the Euphrates River just south of Carchemish.

Other 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 mysterious sunken land of "Atlantis" mentioned by Plato. Another location that has been mentioned 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 rather later rivers named after two earlier ones, just as colonists often 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.

Another possibility was proposed by archaeologist David Rohl, based on archaeological evidence, putting the garden in north-western Iran. According to him, the Garden was located in a vast plain referred to in ancient Sumerian texts as Edin (lit. "Plain", or "Steppe") east of the Sahand Mountain, near Tabriz. He cites several geological similarities with Biblical descriptions, and multiple linguistic parallels as evidence. In the Sumerian texts, an emissary is sent north through "Seven Gates", also known as Mountain passes in ancient texts. Hebrew lore includes references to Seven layers of Heaven, the 7th being the Garden of Eden, or Paradise. Just beyond the seventh gate, or pass, was the kingdom of Aratta^{[citation needed]}. The region today is bound by a large mountain range to the North, East and South, and marshlands to the west. The eastern mountain region has a pass leading in and out of the Edin region. This fits with the Biblical geography of Eden containing marshlands to the west^{[citation needed]}, and the Land of Nod to the east, outside the Garden. Geographically speaking, it would form a "wall" around the Garden, conforming to the definition of the Persian word pairidaeza, or Paradise, as a "walled garden or park". Additionally, this location would be bound by the four biblical rivers to the West, Southwest, East and Southeast.

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 one 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 would lead one to their headwaters. This theory also puts the Garden of Eden in the vicinity of the northern end of the Persian Gulf, supporting the theory of Jarins. However, this interpretation is at odds with the wording in Genesis indicating the river goes out of Eden to water the garden, and thenceforth forms the 'heads' (assumed to mean 'sources') of the four rivers.

Some people believe that Garden of Eden was somewhere in Northeast Africa. Evidence given in support of this includes the facts that the oldest human remains have been found in Africa, and that the Gihon is usually thought to be a name for the Nile.

Sumer and Dilmun

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 Babylonian creation myth, Enûma Elish, has clear parallels with the Genesis narratives. After its actual decline, beginning about 1500 BC, Dilmun developed such a reputation as a long-lost garden of exotic perfections that it may have influenced the story of the Garden of Eden. Some interpreters have tried to establish an Edenic garden at the trading-center of Dilmun.

There is also a Sumerian story about a mountainous kingdom accessible from Sumer by river called Aratta. Recent excavations of the Jiroft civilization in the southeast highlands of Iran have led prominent Iranian archaeologists to suggest that Jiroft was Aratta, although this location is not connected with Sumer by river.

Latter Day Saints' geography

For members of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints (also known as the Mormons or Latter Day Saints), the Garden of Eden is believed to have been located in present-day Jackson County, Missouri based on revelation given to Joseph Smith, Jr.^[1] 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".^[2] According to the Prophet Joseph, Adam and Eve traveled 85 miles north to the valley of Adam-ondi-Ahman after they had transgressed and were driven from the Garden.^[3] (Adam-ondi-Ahman is sometimes mistakenly associated with the location of the garden itself). As for its location in the western hemisphere, some Latter-day Saints have presumed the continents were not yet separate before the Great Flood^[4] and that this approach would be consistent with the configuration of the super-continent Pangaea.^[5] While geologists believe that the continents had separated by the Cretaceous period, some Latter-day Saints have pointed to the account in Genesis which states that the earth was "divided" in the days of Peleg.^[6]

In the Pearl of Great Price, it is taught that there were lands and rivers that were given names later attached to other lands and rivers as in the Book of Genesis.^[7] The geographic descriptions of Eden in the Bible would therefore refer to entirely different lands and rivers than those carrying the same names today, 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.^[8] Thus, it is argued, the offspring of Noah populated the eastern hemisphere.

See also: Journal of Discourses 11:336-337; Alvin R. Dyer, The Refiner's Fire, 111, 167; Bruce R. McConkie, Millennial Messiah: The Second Coming of the Son of Man, 622; Genesis 2:13, 15, 22; D&C 116; D&C 117:8-9.

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.

Alan Millard has 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").^[9] Of course there is much dispute between Judeo-Christian and secular scholars as to the plausibility of this idea - the refuting claim being that cultivation and agricultural work were present both before and after the "Garden Life".

The Second Book of Enoch, of late but uncertain date, states that both Paradise and Hell are accommodated in the third sphere of heaven, Shehaqim, with Hell being located simply " on the northern side:" see Seventh Heaven.

Etymology

The origin of the term "Eden", which in Hebrew means "delight", may lie with the Akkadian word edinu, which itself derives from the Sumerian term E.DIN. The Sumerian term means "plain" or "steppe", so the connection between the words may be coincidental, although this word is known to have been used by the Sumerians to refer to Mesopotamia as the "valley of E'din", meaning the fertile lands between the Tigris and Euphrates. Alan Millard has put forward a case for the name deriving from the Semitic stem dn, meaning "abundant, lush"^[9].

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 scene at the Garden of Eden in the Sistine Chapel ceiling. Also, in the film Star Trek VI: The Undiscovered Country, Captain Spock has a painting hanging in his room he calls "Expulsion from Paradise", depicting Adam and Eve being expelled from Eden. He explains to a fellow member of the crew that it is a personal reminder that all things must end.

See also

• Genesis
• Adam and Eve
• Tree of Knowledge
• Tree of Life
• Palmette
• Paradise
• Utopia
• Original Sin
• Pandora's Box
• Serpent
• Tomoanchan
• Seth in the Garden of Eden
• Fertile crescent
• Antediluvian

Notes

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