Eden in the Bible Encyclopedia - ISBE

e'-d'-n (`edhen, "delight"; Edem): (1) The land in which "Yahweh God planted a garden," where upon his creation "he put the man whom he had formed" (Gen 2:8). In the Assyrian inscriptions idinu (Accadian, edin) means "plain" and it is from this that the Biblical word is probably derived. Following are the references to Eden in the Bible, aside from those in Gen 2 and 3: Gen 4:16; Isa 51:3; Ezek 28:13; 31:9,16,18; 36:35; Joel 2:3. The Garden of Eden is said to be "eastward, in Eden" Gen (2:8); where the vegetation was luxurious (2:9) and the fig tree indigenous (3:7), and where it was watered by irrigation. All kinds of animals, including cattle, beasts of the field and birds, were found there (2:19,20). Moreover, the climate was such that clothing was not needed for warmth. It is not surprising, therefore, that the plural of the word has the meaning "delights," and that Eden has been supposed to mean the land of delights, and that the word became a synonym for Paradise. The location of Eden is in part to be determined from the description already given. It must be where there is a climate adapted to the production of fruit trees and of animals capable of domestication, and in general to the existence of man in his primitive condition. In particular, its location is supposed to be determined by the statements regarding the rivers coursing through it and surrounding it. There is a river (nahar) (Gen 2:10) which was parted and became four heads (ro'shim), a word which (Jdg 8:16; Job 1:17) designates main detachments into which an army is divided, and therefore would more properly signify branches than heads, permitting Josephus and others to interpret the river as referring to the ocean, which by the Greeks was spoken of as the river (okeanos) surrounding the world. According to Josephus, the Ganges, the Tigris, the Euphrates and the Nile are the four rivers, being but branches of this one river. Moreover, it is contended by some, with much show of reason, that the word perath translated Euphrates is a more general term, signifying "the broad" or "deep" river, and so may here refer to some other stream than the Euphrates, possibly to a river in some other region whose name is perpetuated in the present Euphrates, as "the Thames" of New England perpetuates the memory of the Thames of Old England. In ancient times there was a river Phrath in Persia, and perhaps two. It is doubtful whether the phrase "eastward, in Eden" refers to the position with reference to the writer or simply with reference to Eden itself. So far as that phrase is concerned, therefore, speculation is left free to range over the whole earth, and this it has done. 1. Central Asia: Columbus when passing the mouth of the Orinoco surmised that its waters came down from the Garden of Eden. It is fair to say, however, that he supposed himself to be upon the East coast of Asia. The traditions of its location somewhere in Central Asia are numerous and persistent. Naturalists have, with Quatrefages, pretty generally fixed upon the portion of Central Asia stretching East from the Pamir, often referred to as the roof of the world, and from which flow four great rivers--the Indus, the Tarim, the Sur Daria (Jaxartes), and the Ainu Daria (Oxus)--as the original cradle of mankind. This conclusion has been arrived at from the fact that at the present time the three fundamental types of the races of mankind are grouped about this region. The Negro races are, indeed, in general far removed from the location, but still fragments of them both pure and mixed are found in various localities both in the interior and on the seashore and adjacent islands where they would naturally radiate from this center, while the yellow and the white races here meet at the present time in close contact. In the words of Quatrefages, "No other region of the globe presents a similar union of extreme human types distributed round a common center" (The Human Species, 176). Philology, also, points to this same conclusion. On the East are the monosyllabic languages, on the North the polysyllabic or agglutinative languages, and on the West and South the inflectional or Aryan languages, of which the Sanskrit...