Eden

Eden à la Grec

עדן


With an Ayin (ע) not an Aleph (א), it means "delight", "pleasure", from the root Adan (עדן) signifying "softness" or "beauty"; it also means a "cane", a "reed" or a "tall rod vacillating or vibrating in the air", an image whose significance is self-evident.

But Eden may also be Edon (עדון) = "to put on ornaments" or "to adorn"; and in addition is used to mean "to pass over", "to pass away"; "to leave", "to depart".

Given that On in Yehudit is used as a suffix to signify a place, Edon may also be treated as "the place of the mist" (Genesis 2:6), from Ed (עד = "mist") because the Creation story tells how a mist went up etc etc; for which cf various accounts of the fertilisation of Earth-Mother by Sky-Father.

Ezekiel 28:13-19, (also Isaiah 51:3, Joel 2:3) places Eden on "a mountain of YHVH", though which mountain is left unstated - probably the intention was Mount Tsi'on, his palace in Yeru-Shala'im.

In addition to the descriptions given in the Tanach, Midrashim add further detail: that Eden has seven gates, one of which opens in the cave of Machpelah at Chevron; that Adam found this gate while burying Chavah (Eve) there; that Adam is buried in the same cave; that his spirit still guards the gate of Eden through which a celestial light shines; that there are no truths outside the gates of Eden; alternately that the outermost gate of Eden opens from Mount Tsi'on (Zion); that the only other person ever to enter Eden alive was Chanoch (Enoch): he saw the Tree of Life and the three hundred angels who tend the garden: he noted that the four streams were in fact composed of milk, honey, wine and oil: but Chanoch's Eden was located in Third Heaven and not on Earth. After Chanoch both Yistchak (Isaac) and Ya'akov (Jacob) gained admittance, though it is not recorded what they saw. Mosheh was taken there by Shamshi-El, its guardian angel, who showed him several jewelled thrones, on the largest of which sat Av-Raham.

The exact location of Eden seems to have changed several times: the original "mountain of god" was Mount Sappho, but later it moved to the two principal shrines of King David, first Chevron and later Yeru-Shala'im. The description of Eden in Genesis 2 seems to be a late addition from the time of the exile: in it one in which the four rivers become Tigris and Euphrates as mentioned, but presumably also Choaspes and the Pallakopas Canal, the other principal streams of the region. My rather more extensive notes on this topic can be found inside the commentaries to Genesis 2.

Amos 1:5 and Ezekiel 27:23 refer to Bet Eden (בית עדן) which is probably Bit Adini, the source of the Euphrates and briefly the site of a great civilisation (9th & 10th centuries BCE). The description of the rivers though is not as absurd as it may seem. The [re]discovery of Petra in Jordan in the 19th century CE took place while an English archaeologist was seeking in Jordan the source of the Niger, still believed to start there! Alexander the (not-really-all-that) Great believed that the Bit Adini was the source not only of the Tigris and Euphrates but also of the Nile. Other views equate the Orontes river with Piyshon; Josephus equated Giychon with the Nile.

2 Kings 19:12 refers to the Beney Eden (בני עדן) as a tribe from Thelassar, in a phrase echoed almost exactly in Isaiah 37:12.

Ezekiel 27:23 places it in Ashur (Assyria), close to Charan and Kanneh.

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