pleasure; delight

(pleasure).

1. The first residence of man, called in the Septuagint Paradise. The latter is a word of Persian origin, and describes an extensive tract of pleasure land, somewhat like an English park; and the use of it suggests a wider view of man's first abode than a garden. The description of Eden is found in (Genesis 2:8-14) In the eastern portion of the region of Eden was the garden planted. The Hiddekel, one of its rivers, is the modern Tigris; the Euphrates is the same as the modern Euphrates. With regard to the Pison and Gihon a great variety of opinion exists, but the best authorities are divided between (1) Eden as in northeast Arabia, at the junction of the Euphrates and Tigris, and their separation again, making the four rivers of the different channels of these two, or (2), and most probably, Eden as situated in Armenia, near the origin of the rivers Tigris and Euphrates, and in which same region rise the Araxes (Pison of Genesis) and the Oxus (Gihon).
2. One of the marts which supplied the luxury of Tyre with richly-embroidered stuffs. In (2 Kings 19:12) and Isai 37:12 "The sons of Eden" are mentioned with Gozan, Haran and Rezeph as victims of the Assyrian greed of conquest. Probability seems to point to the northwest of Mesopotamia as the locality of Eden.
3. BETH-EDEN, "house of pleasure:" probably the name of a country residence of the kings of Damascus. (Amos 1:5)

A province in Asia, in which was Paradise. "The Lord God planted a garden eastward in Eden, and there he put the man whom he had formed," Genesis 2:8. The topography of Eden is thus described: "And a river went out of Eden to water the garden, and from thence it was parted, and became into four heads. The name of the first is Pison," etc.

This obscure passage has received many different explanations and applications, none of which are fully satisfactory; and now it is impossible to say with certainty where Eden lay. Most writers have sought for it in some elevated and central region, the heights of which would give rise to various rivers flowing off in different directions through lower grounds to their outlets. Such a region exists in the high lands of Armenia, west of Mount Ararat and 5,000 feet above the sea. Here, within a circle but a few miles in diameter, four large rivers rise: the Euphrates, and Tigris, or Hiddekel, flowing south into the Persian Gulf; the Araxes, flowing northeast into the Caspian Sea; and the Phasis, or the Halys, flowing northwest into the Black Sea. This fourth river may have been the Pishon of Eden; and the Araxes may well be the Gihon, since both words mean the same, and describe its dart-like swiftness. This elevated country, still beautiful and fertile, may have been the land of Eden; and in its choicest portion, towards the east, the garden may once have smiled.

Another location of Eden is now preferred by many interpreters-near the spot where the Euphrates and Tigris from a junction after their long wanderings, a hundred and twenty miles north of the Persian gulf, and where the river Ulai flows in from the northeast. This region may have been greatly changed by the lapse of many thousand years, and may now bear little resemblance to the luxuriant and beautiful plain of primeval times. Yet long after the flood the plain of Shinar in the same region attracted the admiration of the sons of Cush, Genesis 10:8-10; 11:2. As two of the rivers of Eden bear the familiar names of the Euphrates and Tigris, it seems probable that it was in one or the other of the regions above named. Wherever it was, it is there no more since the fall and the curse. The first chapters of the Bible show Paradise withdrawn from man's view, and no pilgrimage can discover it upon earth. The last chapters of the Bible restore to our view a more glorious and enduring Paradise: "Blessed are they that do his commandments, that they may have right to the tree of life."

e'-d'-n (bene `edhen): In 2 Kings 19:12 Isaiah 37:12 "the children of Eden that were in Telassar" are mentioned in connection with "Gozan, and Haran, and Rezeph" as having been destroyed by the Assyrians who were before the time of Sennacherib. The expression, "the children of Eden that were in Telassar," undoubtedly referred to a tribe which inhabited a region of which Telassar was the center. Telassar means "the hill of Asshur" and, according to Schrader, it was a name that might have been given to any place where a temple had been built to Asshur. Inasmuch as Gozan, and Haran, and Rezeph were in Mesopotamia it would seem probable that "the children of Eden that were in Telassar" belonged to the same locality. The "children of Eden" is quite probably to be identified with the Bit `Adini of the inscriptions and this referred to a district on the middle Euphrates. According to the inscriptions Gozan, Haran, Rezeph, and Bit `Adini were destroyed by Sennacherib's forefathers, and this is in accord with the account in 2 Kings and Isaiah.

The "Eden" of Ezekiel 27:23 is usually taken as the name of a place in Mesopotamia with which Tyre had commercial relations, and probably belongs to the region of "the chilrden of Eden," discussed above.

Some writers think the "Beth-eden" of Amos 1:5 the Revised Version, margin (the American Standard Revised Version "Aven") is to be identified with the Bit `Adini of the inscriptions and hence, with "the children of Eden," but this is doubtful. This was perhaps in Syria in the neighborhood of Damascus.

A. W. Fortune

EDEN

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" (Genesis 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 Genesis 2 and 3: Genesis 4:16 Isaiah 51:3 Ezekiel 28:13; Ezekiel 31:9, 16, 18; 36:35 Joel 2:3. The Garden of Eden is said to be "eastward, in Eden" Genesis (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) (Genesis 2:10) which was parted and became four heads (ro'shim), a word which (Judges 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 is an example, being closely allied to nearly all the languages of Europe. Moreover, it is to this center that we trace the origin of nearly all our domesticated plants and animals. Naturally, therefore, the same high authority writes, "There we are inclined to say the first human beings appeared and multiplied till the populations overflowed as from a bowl and spread themselves in waves in every direction" (ibid., 177). With this conclusion, as already said, a large number of most eminent authorities agree. But it should be noted that if, as we believe, there was a universal destruction of antediluvian man, the center of dispersion had in view by these naturalists and archaeologists would be that from the time of Noah, and so would not refer to the Eden from which Adam and Eve were driven. The same may be said of Haeckel's theory that man originated in a submerged continent within the area of the Indian Ocean.

2. The North Pole:

Dr. William F. Warren has with prodigious learning attempted to show that the original Eden was at the North Pole, a theory which has too many considerations in its support to be cast aside unceremoniously, for it certainly is true that in preglacial times a warm climate surrounded the North Pole in all the lands which have been explored. In Northern Greenland and in Spitzbergen abundant remains of fossil plants show that during the middle of the Tertiary period the whole circumpolar region was characterized by a climate similar to that prevailing at the present time in Southern Europe, Japan, and the southern United States (see Asa Gray's lectures on "Forest Geography and Archaeology" in the American Journal of Science, CXVI, 85-94, 183-96, and Wright, Ice Age in North America, 5th edition, chapter xvii). But as the latest discoveries have shown that there is no land within several hundred miles of the North Pole, Dr. Warren's theory, if maintained at all, will have to be modified so as to place Eden at a considerable distance from the actual pole. Furthermore, his theory would involve the existence of "Tertiary man," and thus extend his chronology to an incredible extent, even though with Professor Green (see ANTEDILUVIANS) we are permitted to consider the genealogical table of Genesis 5 as sufficiently elastic to accommodate itself to any facts which may be discovered.

3. Armenia:

Much also can be said in favor of identifying Eden with Armenia, for it is here that the Tigris and Euphrates have their origin, while two others, the Aras (Araxes) emptying into the Caspian Sea and the Choruk (thought by some to be the Phasis) emptying into the Black Sea, would represent the Gihon and the Pishon. Havilah would then be identified with Colchis, famous for its golden sands. But Cush is difficult to find in that region; while these four rivers could by no possibility be regarded as branches of one parent stream.

4. Babylonia:

Two theories locate Eden in the Euphrates valley. Of these the first would place it near the head of the Persian Gulf where the Tigris and Euphrates after their junction form the Shatt el-'Arab which bifurcates into the eastern and the western arm before reaching the Gulf. Calvin considered the Pishon to be the eastern arm and the Gihon the western arm. Other more recent authorities modify theory by supposing that Gihon and Pishon are represented by the Karum and the Kerkhah rivers which come into the Shatt el-'Arab from the east. The most plausible objection to this theory is that the Biblical account represents all these branches as down stream from the main river, whereas this theory supposes that two of them at least are up stream. This objection has been ingeniously met by calling attention to the fact that 2,000 years before Christ the Persian Gulf extended up as far as Eridu, 100 miles above the present mouth of the river, and that the Tigris and the Euphrates then entered the head of the Gulf through separate channels, the enormous amount of silt brought down by the streams having converted so much of the valley into dry land. In consequence of the tides which extend up to the head of the Gulf, the current of all these streams would be turned up stream periodically, and so account for the Biblical statement. In this case the river (nahar) would be represented by the Persian Gulf itself, which was indeed called by the Babylonians nar marratum, "the bitter river." This theory is further supported by the fact that according to the cuneiform inscriptions Eridu was reputed to have in its neighborhood a garden, "a holy place," in which there grew a sacred palm tree. This "tree of life" appears frequently upon the inscriptions with two guardian spirits standing on either side.

The other theory, advocated with great ability by Friedrich Delitzsch, places Eden just above the site of ancient Babylon, where the Tigris and Euphrates approach to within a short distance of one another and where the country is intersected by numerous irrigating streams which put off from the Euphrates and flow into the Tigris, whose level is here considerably lower than that of the Euphrates-the situation being somewhat such as it is at New Orleans where the Mississippi River puts off numerous streams which empty into Lake Pontchartrain. Delitzsch supposes the Shatt el-Nil, which flows eastward into the Tigris, to be the Gihon, and the Pallacopas, flowing on the West side of the Euphrates through a region producing gold, to be the Pishon. The chief difficulties attending this theory pertain to the identification of the Pishon with the Pallacopas, and the location of Havilah on its banks. There is difficulty, also, in all these theories in the identification of Cush (Ethiopia), later associated with the country from which the Nile emerges, thus giving countenance to the belief of Josephus and many others that that river represented the Gihon. If we are compelled to choose between these theories it would seem that the one which locates Eden near the head of the Persian Gulf combines the greater number of probabilities of every kind.

(2) A Levite of the time of Hezekiah (2 Chronicles 29:12; 2 Chronicles 31:15).

LITERATURE.

Dawson Modern Science in Bible Lands; Friedrich Delitzsch, Wo lag das Paradies? (1881); Sayce, HCM, 95; Hommel, Anc. Hebrew Tradition, 314; William F. Warren, Paradise Found, 1885.

George Frederick Wright

EDEN, HOUSE OF

See AVEN; BETH-EDEN; CHILDREN OF EDEN.

EDEN, CHILDREN OF

See CHILDREN OF EDEN.

RIVERS OF EDEN

See EDEN (1).

(1.) The garden in which our first parents dewlt (Genesis 2:8-17). No geographical question has been so much discussed as that bearing on its site. It has been placed in Armenia, in the region west of the Caspian Sea, in Media, near Damascus, in Palestine, in Southern Arabia, and in Babylonia. The site must undoubtedly be sought for somewhere along the course of the great streams the Tigris and the Euphrates of Western Asia, in "the land of Shinar" or Babylonia. The region from about lat. 33 degrees 30' to lat. 31 degrees, which is a very rich and fertile tract, has been by the most competent authorities agreed on as the probable site of Eden. "It is a region where streams abound, where they divide and re-unite, where alone in the Mesopotamian tract can be found the phenomenon of a single river parting into four arms, each of which is or has been a river of consequence."

Among almost all nations there are traditions of the primitive innocence of our race in the garden of Eden. This was the "golden age" to which the Greeks looked back. Men then lived a "life free from care, and without labour and sorrow. Old age was unknown; the body never lost its vigour; existence was a perpetual feast without a taint of evil. The earth brought forth spontaneously all things that were good in profuse abundance."

(2.) One of the Markets whence the merchants of Tyre obtained richly embroidered stuffs (Ezek. 27:23); the same, probably, as that mentioned in 2 Kings 19:12, and Isaiah 37:12, as the name of a region conquered by the Assyrians.

(3.) Son of Joah, and one of the Levites who assisted in reforming the public worship of the sanctuary in the time of Hezekiah (2 Chronicles 29:12).

1040. Beth Eden -- "house of pleasure," a place in Aram (Syria)
Beth Eden. << 1039, 1040. Beth Eden. 1041 >>. "house of pleasure," a place
in Aram (Syria). Transliteration: Beth Eden Phonetic Spelling ...
/hebrew/1040.htm - 6k

5729. Eden -- a territory conquered by Assyr.
... << 5728, 5729. Eden. 5730 >>. a territory conquered by Assyr. Transliteration:
Eden Phonetic Spelling: (eh'-den) Short Definition: Eden. ...
/hebrew/5729.htm - 6k

5730b. Eden -- a Levite
... Eden. 5731 >>. a Levite. Transliteration: Eden Short Definition: Eden. Word Origin
from the same as eden Definition a Levite NASB Word Usage Eden (2). ...
/hebrew/5730b.htm - 5k

5730. eden -- a luxury, dainty, delight
... << 5729, 5730. eden. 5730a >>. a luxury, dainty, delight. Transliteration: eden
Phonetic Spelling: (ay'-den) Short Definition: delicate. ... See also Beyth 'Eden. ...
/hebrew/5730.htm - 5k

134. eden -- a base, pedestal
... << 133, 134. eden. 135 >>. a base, pedestal. Transliteration: eden Phonetic Spelling:
(eh'-den) Short Definition: sockets. ... << 133, 134. eden. 135 >>. Strong's Numbers
/hebrew/134.htm - 6k

5730a. eden -- a luxury, dainty, delight
... << 5730, 5730a. eden. 5730b >>. a luxury, dainty, delight. Transliteration: eden
Short Definition: delicacies. ... << 5730, 5730a. eden. 5730b >>. Strong's Numbers.
/hebrew/5730a.htm - 5k

6376. Pishon -- one of the rivers of Eden
... << 6375, 6376. Pishon. 6377 >>. one of the rivers of Eden. Transliteration: Pishon
Phonetic Spelling: (pee-shone') Short Definition: Pishon. ...
/hebrew/6376.htm - 6k

1521. Gichon -- "a bursting forth," one of the rivers of Eden ...
... << 1520, 1521. Gichon. 1522 >>. "a bursting forth," one of the rivers of Eden,
also a spring near Jer. Transliteration: Gichon Phonetic ...
/hebrew/1521.htm - 6k

2051. Vedan -- a place of unknown location
... Dan also. Perhaps for eden; Vedan (or Aden), a place in Arabia -- Dan also. see
HEBREW eden. << 2050, 2051. Vedan. 2052 >>. Strong's Numbers.
/hebrew/2051.htm - 6k