The Garden of Eden ( ; ; ; ), also called Garden of God ( and ) or the (Terrestrial) Paradise, is the biblical paradise described in Genesis 2–3 and Ezekiel 28 and 31..
The location of Eden is described in the Book of Genesis as the source of four tributaries. Various suggestions have been made for its location: at the head of the Persian Gulf, in southern Mesopotamia where the Tigris and Euphrates rivers run into the sea; and in Armenia. Others theorize that Eden was the entire Fertile Crescent or a region of substantial size in Mesopotamia, where its native inhabitants still exist in cities such as Telassar.
Like the Genesis flood narrative, the Genesis creation narrative, and the account of the Tower of Babel, the story of Eden echoes the Mesopotamian myth of a king, as a primordial man, who is placed in a divine garden to guard the tree of life. Scholars note that the Eden narrative shows parallels with aspects of Solomon's Temple and Jerusalem, attesting to its nature as a sacred place. Mentions of Eden are also made in the Bible elsewhere in Genesis 13:10,. in Isaiah 51:3,. Ezekiel 36:35,. and Joel 2:3;. Zechariah 14 and Ezekiel 47 use paradisical imagery without naming Eden..
The name derives from the Akkadian , from a Sumerian word meaning or , closely related to an Aramaic root word meaning . Another interpretation associates the name with a Hebrew word for 'pleasure'; thus the Vulgate reads in Genesis 2:8, and the Douay–Rheims Bible, following, has the wording "And the Lord God had planted a paradise of pleasure".
Biblical narratives Genesis
The second part of the Genesis creation narrative, Genesis 2:4–3:24, opens with Yahweh-Elohim (translated here "the God") creating the first man (Adam), whom he placed in a garden that he planted "eastward in Eden":, "The root of Eden denotes fertility. Where the wondrously fertile gard was thought to have been located (if a realistic location was ever conceived) is unclear. The Tigris and Euphrates are the two great rivers of the Mesopotamia (now found in modern Iraq). But the Piston is unidentified, and the only Gihon in the Bible is a spring in Jerusalem (1 Kings 1:33, 38)."
The man was free to eat from any tree in the garden except the tree of the knowledge of good and evil, which was taboo. Last of all, God made a woman (Eve) from a rib of the man to be a companion for the man. In Genesis 3, the man and the woman were seduced by the serpent into eating the forbidden fruit, and they were expelled from the garden to prevent them from also eating of the tree of life, and thus living forever. Cherubim, and a flaming sword which turned every way, were put in place at the east of the garden, "to guard the way of [or to] the tree of life". in the JPS translation, cf. in the Revised Standard Version
Genesis 2:10–14 lists four rivers in association with the garden of Eden: Pishon, Gihon, Tigris (Hiddekel in Hebrew), and the Euphrates (Perath in Hebrew). It also refers to the land of Cush—translated/interpreted as Ethiopia, but thought by some to equate to Cossaea, a Greek name for the land of the Kassites. These lands lie north of Elam, immediately to the east of ancient Babylon, which, unlike Ethiopia, does lie within the region being described.. In Antiquities of the Jews, the first-century Jewish historian Josephus identifies the Pishon as what "the Greeks called Ganges" and the Geon (Gehon) as the Nile.Josephus, Antiquities of the Jews, Book I, Chapter 1, Section 3.
Ezekiel
In Ezekiel 28:12–19,. the prophet Ezekiel the "son of man" sets down God's word against the king of Tyre: the king was the "seal of perfection", adorned with precious stones from the day of his creation, placed by God in the garden of Eden on the holy mountain as a guardian cherub. However, the king sinned through wickedness and violence, and so he was driven out of the garden and thrown to the earth, where now he is consumed by God's fire: "All those who knew you in the nations are appalled at you, you have come to a horrible end and will be no more." (Ezekiel 28:19).
Proposed locations
The location of Eden is described in Genesis 2:10–14:
Suggestions for the location of Eden include the head of the Persian Gulf, as argued by Juris Zarins, in southern Mesopotamia where the Tigris and Euphrates rivers run into the sea; and in the Armenian Highlands or Armenian National Plateau.Zevit, Ziony. What Really Happened in the Garden of Eden? 2013. Yale University Press, p. 111. .Day, John. Yahweh and the Gods and Goddesses of Canaan. 2002. Sheffield Academic Press, p. 30. .Duncan, Joseph E. Milton's Earthly Paradise: A Historical Study of Eden. 1972. University Of Minnesota Press, pp. 96, 212. .Scafi, Alessandro. Return to the Sources: Paradise in Armenia, in: Mapping Paradise: A History of Heaven on Earth. 2006. London, England and Chicago, Illinois: British Library and University of Chicago Press, pp. 317–322. . British archaeologist David Rohl locates it in Iran, and in the vicinity of Tabriz, but this suggestion has not been adopted by mainstream academia.
Others theorize that Eden was merely a region of "considerable size" in Mesopotamia, where its native inhabitants still exist in cities such as Telassar, based on verses such as Isaiah 37:12, or that it encompassed the entire Fertile Crescent.
According to Terje Stordalen, the Book of Ezekiel places Eden in Lebanon.. "[I]t appears that the Lebanon is an alternative placement in Phoenician myth (as in Ez 28,13, III.48) of the Garden of Eden",. and there are connections between paradise, the Garden of Eden and the forests of Lebanon (possibly used symbolically) within prophetic writings.. Edward Lipinski and Peter Kyle McCarter have suggested that the garden of the gods, the oldest Sumerian analog of the Garden of Eden, relates to a mountain sanctuary in the Lebanon and Anti-Lebanon ranges..
Some religious groups have believed the location of the garden to be local to them, outside of the Middle East. Some early leaders of Mormonism held that it was located in Jackson County, Missouri. The 20th-century Panacea Society believed it was located at the site of their home town of Bedford, England, while preacher Elvy E. Callaway believed it was on the Apalachicola River in Florida, near the town of Bristol.Gloria Jahoda, The Other Florida, chap. 4, "The Garden of Eden." ISBN 9780912451046. Some suggested that the location is in Jerusalem.
On his third voyage to the Americas in 1498, Christopher Columbus thought he may have reached the Earthly Paradise upon first seeing the South American mainland.
Following its acceptance of Christianity in 1491, leaders of the Kingdom of Kongo came to believe that the Terrestrial Paradise, and thus the Garden of Eden was in Central Africa. Following logic of medieval European maps, Portuguese cartographers claimed that both the Congo River and the Zambezi flowed out from the Paradise, and Kongolese intellectuals, perhaps students in Lisbon, accepted that its location in maps drawn in Mediterranean Europe showed Kongo's eastern border of the Paradise.John Thornton, "How Jesus Became Black: Kongo's Discovery of its Role in the Creation and Nativity Stories, Journal of Early Modern History, 28 (2024): 305-328
The idea was fully accepted, as Italian missionary Giovanni Antonio Cavazzi, reported in 1687 that the Kongolese "constantly assert that in the creation of the Universe, God assigned to the angels and his other ministerial confidants the task of putting the rest of the earth in order, reserving for himself alone, according to his sublime idea and his genius, the forming of the countries of Ethiopia, and especially the kingdoms of Congo. All the rest were extracted from nothing in the dark night of shapeless Chaos, and only this one part, with singular privilege received its most perfect form in the serenely bright light of a beautiful afternoon."
In his book The Creation, the Garden of Eden and the Origin of the Chinese, Tse Tsan-tai argued that the Garden of Eden was located in modern-day Xinjiang.
Blissful garden concept
Scholars have identified and proposed connections to similar concepts from ancient religions and mythologies, and have studied the post-scriptural evolution of the concept in religion and arts.
Sumeria and ancient Greece; Renaissance A number of parallel concepts to the biblical Garden of Eden exist in various other religions and mythologies. Dilmun in the Sumerian story of Enki and Ninhursag is a paradisaical abode of the immortals, where sickness and death were unknown. The garden of the Hesperides in Greek mythology was also somewhat similar to the Jewish concept of the Garden of Eden, and by the 16th century a larger intellectual association was made in the Cranach painting.
Henrik Pfeiffer believed that in Genesis 2, the tree in the middle of the garden was a form of the concept of a universal world tree, and the serpent's inclusion could be traced to a Sumerian tradition of the Inanna and the Huluppu Tree.Henrik Pfeiffer (October 27, 2009), Der Baum in der Mitte des Gartens. Zum überlieferungsgeschichtlichen Ursprung der Paradieserzählung. (Gen 2,4b – 3,24). Teil I: Analyse, p. 6-7, "If the world tree is an integral part of the Eden tradition, it stands to reason that the 'tree in the middle of the garden' in the tradition recorded in Genesis 2 should also be interpreted as the world tree. [...] The sudden appearance of the serpent in the story of Paradise could be explained by [the huluppu-tree tradition]." Tablet XI in the Epic of Gilgamesh has also been compared; where the gods take Utnapishtim and settle him at the mouths of the two great rivers Tigris and Euphrates, with Yahweh settling a man in the garden located near the same area.
Canaanite origin theory By studying late-13th-century BCE clay tablets from Ugarit, Hebrew Bible scholars M.J.A. Korpel and J.C. de Moor reconstructed close Canaanite parallels, which they posit as being the origin of the biblical creation myth from the first chapters of Genesis including the Garden of Eden and Adam narrative. Their reconstructed texts talk about the creator deity El, who lived in a vineyard or garden together with his wife Asherah on Mount Ararat.
Another god, Horon, tries to depose El and when thrown down from the mountain, he transforms the Tree of Life from the garden into a Tree of Death. Horon also spreads around a poisonous fog, Adam is sent from the mountain to restore life on earth, Horon takes the shape of a large serpent and bites him, which leads to Adam and his wife losing their immortality. However, John Day argues that these stories are not explicitly attested in the Ugaritic texts but are reconstructed on the basis of speculative and dubious suppositions.
In the original fragmented text, the "tree of death" grows near the Tigris River and is used by Horanu to cure a snakebite and restore El's Garden. It may have functioned similarly to the tree of life, but it was not a final solution and would not grant immortality.
Evolution of Old Iranian "paradise" concept The word "paradise" entered English from the French , inherited from the Latin , from the Greek (). The Greek was derived from an Old Iranian form, ultimately from Proto-Iranian *paridayjah, which also derived Old Persian (p-r-d-y-d-a-m, , and Avestan , . The literal meaning of this word is 'walled enclosure', from *pari- 'around' (cognate with the Greek and the English peri-, of identical meaning), and *dáyjah, "to make, form (a wall), build" (cognate with the Greek , 'wall'). The word's etymology is ultimately derived from the Proto-Indo-European root 'around', and the word , 'something that is formed'.