Garden of Eden

The sound comes first. In the cool of the day, when the wind gets up, something is walking among the trees, and the two people who live there do a thing they have never done before. They hide. They have stitched fig leaves into coverings, coarse and already going limp, and they crouch in the leaves of the only home either of them has known. Before the day is out they will be on the wrong side of its border for good.

Genesis describes the place they are about to lose with odd precision. God plants a garden in a region called Eden, somewhere to the east, and makes every kind of tree grow there that is good to look at and good to eat from. A single river rises in Eden, waters the garden, and then parts into four. The Pishon winds around the land of Havilah, where there is fine gold, fragrant resin and onyx. The Gihon circles the land of Cush. The third is the Tigris and the fourth is the Euphrates. Two of those rivers are on any map. The other two have never been found. In the middle of the garden stand two trees unlike the rest: the tree of life, and the tree of the knowledge of good and evil.

The man is shaped from dust before any of it exists, then set down among the trees with a job. He is to work the ground and keep watch over it. Eden is a place of labour from the start, though the labour is light and the wages are generous. He may eat from anything that grows, with one exception, and the price of that exception is death. On an ordinary day the animals are brought to him one at a time, bird and beast, and whatever he calls each one becomes its name. None of them is a fit partner. So he is put into a deep sleep, a woman is built from his side, and the two of them go about the garden naked and untroubled by it.

Then the serpent speaks. Genesis calls it the craftiest of the wild animals and leaves it at that; the idea that it was the Devil wearing a disguise belongs to later readers. It tells the woman that the fruit will not kill her, that it will open her eyes and make her like a god. The fruit looks good. She eats, and hands some to the man, and he eats too. Their eyes do open, and the first thing they understand is that they have no clothes on.

The questioning among the trees is short and nobody comes out of it well. The man blames the woman, and in the same breath blames God for supplying her. The woman blames the serpent. Sentence is passed down the line: the serpent to its belly and a diet of dust, the woman to pain in childbirth, the man to thorns, sweat and a return to the dust he was made from. God sews them clothes of skin, a strangely gentle act in the middle of an eviction, and then puts them out, so that they cannot reach for the tree of life and live forever. East of the garden he posts the cherubim, and with them a flaming sword that turns every way.

That is the famous garden. The prophet Ezekiel knew another. Taunting the king of Tyre, he pictures a figure who once lived in Eden, the garden of God, dressed in gold and nine kinds of gemstone, walking on God’s holy mountain among stones of fire, until fault was found in him and a guardian cherub threw him out. No woman appears, no serpent, no fruit. Elsewhere Ezekiel speaks of the cedars of that garden, taller than any on earth. Eden, in this telling, is a mountain blazing with jewels, and its story of a fall is a different story.

The name has been heard two ways. A Hebrew ear catches the word for delight or abundance, and the Jewish scholars who turned Genesis into Greek duly wrote of a park of luxury, using a Persian loanword for a walled royal garden. That word was paradeisos, and Paradise has followed Eden around ever since. The rival theory ties the name to an old Sumerian word for open steppe, which would make it a garden set in the plain. An Old Aramaic word meaning a giver of plenty has since tipped the balance toward abundance.

People have looked for it. Josephus, in the first century, decided the Gihon was the Nile and the Pishon was the Ganges, which stretches the garden across half the known world. The rabbis of the Talmud argued the point by regions: one sage named a likely gateway for Eden if it lay in the land of Israel, another if it lay in Arabia, a third if it lay between the rivers. Another passage sends Alexander the Great all the way to its door, where he is refused. In the 1980s the archaeologist Juris Zarins proposed that the site lies drowned under the head of the Persian Gulf. Nobody has found it.

Later tradition kept building. The Book of Jubilees gives Adam seven years inside and calls the garden the holiest ground on earth. The rabbis divided Eden in two, a lower garden on earth and an upper one where the righteous dead are at rest, and that upper garden became the Jewish name for heaven. They also argued over the fruit, which Genesis never identifies: wheat, said one, grapes, said another, a fig, said a third, since fig leaves were what the guilty reached for. The apple arrived much later, in the Latin West, where the words for apple and evil are near twins. Christian readers made the day in the garden the Fall of all humankind and the serpent a mask for Satan. The Quran tells of Adam and his wife in the Garden, an unnamed tree, a whisper from Satan, a shared guilt and a pardon, and gives the name Gardens of Eden to the paradise that waits for the faithful.

What the garden grants is plain enough. Food comes without struggle, water without digging, and God walks there in the afternoon breeze close enough to be heard. One tree at the centre holds off death entirely for anyone who eats from it.

Its limits are just as plain. Everything in it hangs on one instruction, and a single meal undoes the lease. It cannot be re-entered; the guard stands on the eastern side, the direction the exiles went. And it does not follow its tenants. The man goes out to break the ground he was taken from, the woman’s first child is born outside, and the last the Bible shows of the garden is fire turning at the gate.

Frequently Asked Questions

What is the Garden of Eden?

The Garden of Eden is the garden God plants as the first home of humankind in the Book of Genesis. It holds every kind of fruit tree, the tree of life and the tree of the knowledge of good and evil, and a river that divides into four. Adam and Eve live there until they eat the forbidden fruit and are driven out.

Where was the Garden of Eden located?

Genesis places the Garden of Eden in the east and names four rivers flowing from it: the Pishon, the Gihon, the Tigris and the Euphrates. The Tigris and Euphrates are real, but the Pishon and Gihon have never been identified. Josephus linked them to the Ganges and the Nile, the rabbis of the Talmud debated several regions, and the archaeologist Juris Zarins proposed a site now under the Persian Gulf. Nobody has found it.

What was the forbidden fruit in the Garden of Eden?

Genesis never says what kind of fruit grew on the tree of the knowledge of good and evil. The rabbis suggested wheat, grapes or a fig. The apple became the usual answer much later in the Latin West, where the words for apple and evil are almost the same.

What guards the Garden of Eden?

After Adam and Eve are sent out, God posts cherubim east of the Garden of Eden along with a flaming sword that turns every way. Their task is to guard the road to the tree of life, so that no human can eat from it and live forever.

Is the Garden of Eden the same as heaven?

In Genesis the Garden of Eden is a place on earth, not an afterlife. Later Jewish tradition spoke of two gardens, a lower one on earth and an upper one where the righteous dead rest, and that upper garden became a name for heaven. The Quran likewise calls the paradise of the faithful the Gardens of Eden.

Related Entries

Adam, Eve, Cherubim, Gehinnom and Gan Eden, Cain, Abel, Yahweh, Lilith, Samael, Satan, Chol, Iblis, Jannah, Dilmun, Sirin