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This article is about the Biblical location. For the concept in cellular automata, see Garden of Eden pattern.
Garden of Eden, from hebrew Gan Eden, גןעדן is the location of the story told in Genesis 2 and 3—part of the creation myth of the Abrahamic religions. The Garden of Eden story recounts how God created Adam and Eve, commanded them not to eat from the Tree of Knowledge of Good and Evil, and how they were expelled from the garden after they disobeyed Him and ate the fruit. As part of the Expulsion, cherubim and a flaming sword were stationed at the entrance to the garden, in order to prevent man from returning and eating from the Tree of Life.
In the tale the garden is planted "in" Eden, and accordingly "Eden" properly denotes the larger territory which contains the garden rather than being the name of the garden itself: it is, thus, the garden located in Eden.
For the association of the Garden of Eden with Paradise, see below.
1 Geography
The Book of Genesis contain little information on the garden itself. It was home to both the Tree of Life and the Tree of Knowledge of good and evil, as well as an abundance of other vegetation that could feed Adam and Eve. "A river flowed out of Eden to water the garden, and there it divided and became four rivers:" the text asserts that within the Garden the river divided into four branches: the TigrisThe Tigris ( Old Persian: Tigr Syriac Aramaic: Deqlath Arabic: , Dijla Turkish: Dicle biblical Hiddekil is the eastern member of the pair of great rivers that define Mesopotamia, along with the Euphrates, which flows from the mountains of Anatolia through, EuphratesThe Euphrates (the traditional Greek name for the river, which is in Aramaic Frot/Frat Old Persian Ufrat in Arabic , in Turkish Firat and in ancient Assyrian language Pu-rat-tu is the westernmost of the two great rivers that define Mesopotamia ( Bethnahri, the PishonThe Pishon is mentioned in the Biblical Genesis (2:11) as one of four rivers branching off from a single river within the Eden. The river is described as encircling "the entire land of Havilah", which remains as unidentified as Pishon itself. Since two of and the GihonGihon is the title of a river first mentioned in the second chapter of the Biblical book of Genesis. The Gihon is mentioned as one of four rivers issuing out of the Garden of Eden that branched from a single river within the garden. The name ( Hebrew, Gic. The identity of the latter two rivers have been the subject of endless argument, but if the Garden of Eden has really been near the sources of the Tigris and the Euphrates, then the original narrators in the land of CanaanThis article is about the land called Canaan. For other meanings see Canaan (disambiguation). Canaan or Kna'an Standard Hebrew Knaan Tiberian Hebrew Knaan / Knan Septuagint Greek Khanaan is an ancient term for a region roughly corresponding to present-day would have identified it as located generally in the Taurus MountainsThe Taurus Mountains or simply the Taurus ( Turkish Toros also known as Ala-Dagh or Bulghar-Dagh are a mountain range, forming the rugged southeastern rim of the Anatolian plateau, from which the Euphrates River descends into Syria. The system extends alo.
1.1 Alternate locations
If the location of the original tellers of the tale is ignored, then there have been a number of claims as to the actual geographic location of the Garden of Eden, though none of these have much connection to the text of Genesis. Most put the Garden somewhere in the Middle EastThe Middle East is a geographical and cultural area comprising the lands around the southern and eastern parts of the Mediterranean Sea, a territory that extends from the eastern Mediterranean Sea to the Persian Gulf. The Middle East is a subregion of Afr near Mesopotamia. Locations as diverse as Ethiopia, Scunthorpe, Java, the Seychelles, and Bristol, Florida have all been proposed as locations for the garden. Many Christian theologians believe that the Garden never had a terrestrial existence, but was instead an adjunct to heaven as it became identified with Paradise (see below).
Others point out that the world of Eden's time was destroyed during Noah's Flood and it is therefore impossible to place the Garden anywhere in post-flood geography. In this case the current Tigris and Euphrates rivers are not the ones referred to in the narrative, but later rivers named after two of the earlier rivers, just as in more modern times colonists would name features of their new land after similar features in their homeland. This idea also resolves the apparent discrepancy that the Bible describes the rivers having a common source, unlike the current rivers.
