terrestrial paradise

In Abrahamic religions, the Garden of Eden (; ; ) or Garden of God ( and ), 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 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 substantial in 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, 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 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 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 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, 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.

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. .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. " 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. 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.

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.

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.

Evolution of Old Iranian "paradise" concept

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 Proto-Indo-European 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 later borrowed into a number of languages: into Greek as (), 'park for animals', cf. ''Anabasis'', the most famous work of Xenophon; into Aramaic as , 'royal park'; and into Hebrew (see below).

The idea of a walled enclosure was not preserved in most Iranian usage, and generally came to refer to a plantation or other cultivated area, not necessarily walled. For example, the Old Iranian word survives as in New Persian, as well as its derivative (or ), which denotes a vegetable patch.

Hebrew Bible and Jewish literature

The word entered the Hebrew language with the meaning of pardes (), 'orchard', appearing thrice in the Tanakh

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