This page was migrated in July 2022 from my older website, biblicalambiguities.net.
28 July 2022
Genesis tells the story of the first human couple, and places them in an orchard in Eden. Where was Eden? The writer of Genesis 2 seems to have placed it somewhere in "the east", or Mesopotamia. The references in the strange aside in Genesis 2 (vv. 10-14) list two rivers in Mesopotamia, and the story is littered with constant references to the "east." Of course, the description in vv. 10-14 is geographically impossible, so one can't be too precise about the location of a mythological garden.
A word eden or adnah refers to sexual pleasure in Genesis 18:12, to fine clothing in 2 Samuel 1:24, to prosperity in Psalm 36:8, and to delicious food in Jeremiah 51:34. A "house of Eden," apparently a reference to some historical place, occurs in a verse concerned with Aram (Amos 1:5), and the "sons of Eden" as an apparently historical people in 2 Kings 19:12, Isaiah 37:12. What connection, if any, these Edens have with the Eden of Genesis I cannot say.
It is easy to read the term Eden, implying an enclosed garden of pleasure, as setting up a contrast with the sdh, the unenclosed field of pain, to which humanity is consigned in Genesis 3.
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