Gan Eden
The Garden of Eden ( Heb. , Garden of Delights) is the name of the wonderful garden where Genesis ( Chapters 2 and 3 ) places the story of Adam and Eve. It is often likened to paradise.
Summary |
The Book of Genesis delivers only limited information on the garden itself. Eden was home to the Tree of Life , the Tree of Knowledge of Good and Evil which bears apples (according to oral tradition, although the word appears nowhere in apple) and a lush vegetation and varied enough to cater for the needs of Adam and Eve. Only 2:10-14 verses seem to contain an index rather vague about the location:
- A river flowed out of Eden to water the garden, and thence it was parted into four heads.
- The name is the first Pishon that is it which surrounds the whole land of Havilah , where there is gold.
- The gold of that land is good, we also find bdellium and the onyx stone.
- The name of the second river is Gihon ; it flows around the whole land of Coush (Ethiopia? Hindi Kush?).
- The name of the third river is Tigris, it flows to the east of Ashur (Assyria, so the Tiger ). The fourth river is the Euphrates.
Locations putative
Amount of hypotheses have been advanced, sometimes without much relation (if any) of the biblical text. While most are in the Eden Middle East , near the ancient Mesopotamia , others have "seen" in Ethiopia , in Java , in Sri Lanka , in the Seychelles , or, as the humanist Bcancour . Some Christian theologians thought, like the garden of Eden began to be associated with heaven (see below), that the Garden never had an own earthly existence, it was a "piece of heavenly paradise on earth "literally.
As mentioned above, according to the text, a river irrigates Eden before dividing into four branches: Hiddekel , Euphrates , Pishon and Gihon. If the first two are generally agreed to the Tigris and Euphrates, the identities of two other rivers is not resolved yet.
However, if we take the text literally, the Garden of Eden, finding himself near the sources of the Tigris and Euphrates, is expected to be established according to the original narrators in the land of Canaan (according to Jewish tradition, Adam and Eve are buried in the cave of Machpela in Hebron ) in the Taurus Mountains in Anatolia.
Satellite photos taken in these regions show two dry river beds where the mouth would result in the Persian Gulf , which also discharge the Tigris and Euphrates.
However, this is only the "mouth" of these rivers, not their source.
Other literalists believe that the world of the time of Eden was destroyed and reworked by the Flood , it is impossible to locate Eden in a post-flood geography. Some try to link with the sunken city of Atlantis.
One of the favorite locations is the Sundaland in the South China Sea. However, if so, there can be identity between the Tigris and Euphrates rivers of Genesis and the rivers current. In this view, they have been renamed after the former by the descendants of Noah returned to the Middle East. This solution may seem attractive, but it contradicts the Bible itself, describing the country traversed by rivers such as the countries of the Fertile Crescent.
Archaeologist David Rohl has recently estimated the location of Eden in the north-western Iran : according to him, the Garden is located in a valley east of Mount Sahand , near Tabriz. It lists several geological similarities between this place and the Biblical descriptions, and parallel language it seemed decisive. This place was then colonized by the Medes before they founded the Persian empire.
Released in 1955, the Urantia Book is the Garden of Eden in a long narrow peninsula , extending westward from the east coast of the Mediterranean and has long been submerged because of the powerful volcanic activity , which has also overwhelmed (?) an arm of the sea (?) linking Sicily to Africa . These assumptions have not yet been confirmed by the discoveries of geology.
Sumer and Dilmun
The early Sumerians lived in the plains, located in the south of modern Iraq. Some historians working from the cultural backgrounds of southern Sumer , where we find the source of the earliest extra-biblical legends, their attention to the warehouse dating from the Bronze Age, located on the island of Dilmun (now Bahrain ) in the Persian Gulf. This island is described as "the place where the sun rises" and "Land of the Living."
The Sumerian story of creation, Enuma Elish , has marked parallels with the story of Genesis.
After its decline, in 1500 ACS, Dilmun was endowed with a reputation as a paradise lost, so full of perfection that it could, according to these historians Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints According to the theology of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints , the configuration of continents was completely modified six generations after the Flood ( Gen. 10:21-25 ), and the countries and rivers described in Genesis were completely delocalized. It therefore assumes that the Garden of Eden is currently in the precincts of the city Independence , located in the State of Missouri (where it is still guarded, not by cherubim , but archangel ). Independence is for this reason one of the holiest places in the world. As for the Tigris , the Euphrates , and all the places mentioned at the beginning of Genesis , it would be entirely different lands and rivers, later renamed after the most familiar landscapes of the Near East in the post-Flood. The word " paradise "( Heb. PaRDeS) used as a synonym of Gan Eden, has connotations similar to the old Persian, which describes a fenced orchard or a hunting ground bounded. The word "paradise" appears three times in the Hebrew Bible and in other contexts that a report with Eden: In the Song of Solomon, this is clearly a "garden" in the other two examples of a "park." It is from the post-exilic, in apocalyptic literature and the Talmud , the "havens" will be associated with the Garden of Eden, in his understanding earthly heaven. In the New Testament Christian "paradise" is associated with the domain of the Blessed (as opposed to the domain of the damned) among those who have already died. The garden of the Hesperides Greek has affinities with the Christian concept of the Garden of Eden, and from the sixteenth century, the total combination is obvious, especially in Luke Cranach painting (see illustration). In the latter, only the action that takes identifies the frame as distinct from the garden of the Hesperides and its golden apples. Jewish scholars and Christian Etymology The origin of the word "Eden" which in Hebrew means "delight" could also be the term Akkadian edinu , which itself derives from the Sumerian E. DIN. These last two words mean "plain" or "steppe", and the resemblance between the words could be a coincidence. The verb Akkadian namu means "inhabiting the steppe" makes it very plausible literary figurative use: the writing of the Mesopotamian word association uses the NA-ME "human being" or sign NAM . The proper meaning of this sign NAM (-TAR) indicates "the fates" which according to Mesopotamian mythology, inscribed by the gods on a shelf. However, according to modern criticism, the phrase 'to the east of Eden "or" in the east, in Eden "seems to suggest use of the term geographical rather than metaphorical. The Garden of Eden was the subject of frequent representations in illuminated manuscripts and paintings like the Sleep of Adam (or Creation of Eve), the Temptation of Eve by the Serpent , the Fall of Man, or the Expulsion. The scene of the Nomination Day in Eden was less often depicted. Michelangelo depicted a scene from the Garden of Eden on the ceiling of the Sistine Chapel. In the poetic register, the bulk of the action of Paradise Lost Milton's happening in the Garden of Eden. Gan Eden and Paradise
Eden in art
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