Earthly Paradise

In Abrahamic religions, the Garden of Eden ( he, גַּן־עֵדֶן, ) or Garden of God (, and גַן־אֱלֹהִים ''gan- Elohim''), also called 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 (now Iraq) where the Tigris and Euphrates rivers run into the sea; and in Armenia.

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. The Hebrew Bible depicts Adam and Eve as walking around the Garden of Eden naked due to their sinlessness.

Mentions of Eden are also made in the Bible elsewhere in Genesis, 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 "plain" or "steppe", closely related to an Aramaic root word meaning "fruitful, well-watered". 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 YHWH- Elohim (translated here "the God") creating the first man (Adam), whom he placed in a garden that he planted "eastward in Eden":

The man was free to eat from any tree in the garden except the tree of the knowledge of good and evil, which were 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 eating of the tree of life, and thus living forever. Cherubim were placed east of the garden, "and a flaming sword which turned every way, to guard the way of the tree of life".

Genesis 2:10-14 lists four rivers in association with the garden of Eden: Pishon, Gihon, Hiddekel (the Tigris), and Phirat (the Euphrates). 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.

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).

According to Terje Stordalen, the Eden in Ezekiel appears to be located in Lebanon. " 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.

Proposed locations

The location of Eden is described in Genesis 2:10–14:

Suggestions for the location of the Garden of Eden include the head of the Persian Gulf, as argued by Juris Zarins, in southern Mesopotamia (now Iraq and Kuwait) where the Tigris and Euphrates rivers run into the sea; and in the Armenian Highlands or Armenian Plateau.Zevit, Ziony. ''What Really Happened in the Garden of Eden?'' 2013. Yale University Press, p. 111. ISBN 9780300178692Day, John. ''Yahweh and the Gods and Goddesses of Canaan.'' 2002. Sheffield Academic Press, p. 30. ISBN 9780826468307Duncan, Joseph E. ''Milton's Earthly Paradise: A Historical Study of Eden.'' 1972. University Of Minnesota Press, pp. 96, 212. ISBN 9780816606337Scafi, Alessandro. ''Return to the Sources: Paradise in Armenia, in: Mapping Paradise: A History of Heaven on Earth.'' 2006. London-Chicago: British Library-University of Chicago Press, pp. 317–322. ISBN 9780226735597 British archaeologist David Rohl locates it in Iran, and in the vicinity of Tabriz, but this suggestion has not caught on with scholarly sources.

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. 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.

The Philippines was said to be the Garden, as well as the land of Ophir.

Parallel concepts

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. 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.

The word "paradise" entered English from the French , inherited from the Latin , from the Greek (). The Greek, in turn, was derived from an Old Iranian form, itself from the Proto-Iranian ''*parādaiĵah-'', "walled enclosure", which was derived from the Old Persian (p-r-d-y-d-a-m, , whence from the Avestan , . The literal meaning of this word is "walled (enclosure)", from ''pairi-'' 'around' (cognate with the Greek and the English ''peri-'', of identical meaning), and ''-diz'', "to make, form (a wall), build" (cognate with the Greek , 'wall'). The word's etymology is ultimately derived from a PIE root, , "to stick and set up (a wall)", and , "around".

By the 6th/5th century BCE, the Old Iranian word had been borrowed into the Akkadian language as , "domain". It subsequently came to indicate the expansive walled gardens of the First Persian Empire, and was subsequently borrowed into a number of languages; into Greek as (), "park for animals", in '' Anabasis'', the most famous work of the early 4th century BCE Athenian Xenophon; into Aramaic as , "royal park"; and into Hebrew as pardes (), "orchard", appearing thrice in the Tanakh