EARTHLY PARADISE. - A most fertile garden, the cradle of the human race, prepared by the Creator so that Adam and Eve might lead there, in familiarity with him, a life free from fear and suffering (Gen. 2:5-3:24).
The Hebrew term pardēs appears only in post-exilic literature (Neh. 2:8; Eccles. 2:5; Cant. 4:13); it is of Persian origin: pairi daeza, "enclosure, hedge" and therefore "walled garden," or "reserve." The Septuagint (παράδεισος), followed by the Latin versions and by St. Jerome, used it to translate the Hebrew gan (Gen. 2:8-10, 15 ff.; 3:1-3, 8, 10, 23 ff.), from the Sumerian gan "garden," an irrigated plot rich in plants and crops.
Genesis describes the terrestrial paradise as east of Palestine, in a region suitable for cultivation (= 'ēdhēn, Sumerian edinu "countryside"), rich in fruitful trees, among which were the tree of life (v.) and the other of the knowledge of good and evil (v.). Abundant waters feed its extraordinary vegetation.
A river coming from ēdhēn runs through it and, on leaving the terrestrial paradise, branches into 4 arms or rivers (Gen. 2:10-14): the Phison (Pīlān) which skirts the region of Hevilath (Hāwīlāh), rich in gold; the Gehon (Gīhān) which runs through the land of Chus (Kāt), the Tigris (Heb. Hiddegēl, Akkadian I-di-ik-lat) and the Euphrates (Heb. Pērāth, Akkadian Pu-rat-tu). Man, because of sin (Gen. 3:1-13; v. ORIGINAL SIN), is driven out of the terrestrial paradise, at whose entrance the Cherubim keep watch, so that guilty humanity may no longer approach it (ibid. 3:14-24).
In the inspired narrative, the essential historical fact must be distinguished from the descriptive elements (or "literary vesture"), which correspond to the conceptions of the much later time in which it was written. The historicity of the terrestrial paradise, of the full happiness of the first human couple, with the preternatural gifts of immortality, of immunity from concupiscence, with work as occupation and delight, in filial familiarity with God, stands out from the whole immediate context: creation of the universe, of man, the first sin, the punishment.
The whole teaching of the Old and New Testaments echoes it (Apoc. 2:7; Prov. 3:18; 11:30; etc.; Wis. 2:23 ff.; Io. 8:44; Rom. 5:12, 14; I Cor. 15:21 ff., etc.). Such is the case from the very tenor of the text (B. Brodmann [v. bibl.], pp. 213-36) and from the universal belief, widespread among all the peoples of the earth, in a primitive happiness that was lost (J. Feldmann [v. bibl.], pp. 55-484; P. Heinisch, Problemi ... [v. bibl.], pp. 105-12). The attempted symbolic explanations (Philo, L. A., I, 45-97; II, 64; Op., 154-57; Origen; K. Barth), or, worse, mythical ones (E. Kant, F. Schiller, E. Böhlen), arbitrary and fanciful, are unproven and unprovable (P. Heinisch, Problemi [v. bibl.], pp. 67-73).
Modern exegetes recognize in the geographical picture a descriptive element and rightly hold that it is impossible (and in any case of wholly secondary importance) to determine the real location of the terrestrial paradise (A. Bea, P. Heinisch, J. Coppens, F. Ceuppens).
Of Chus (Kāt) the Bible (Gen. 10:7 ff., 29) knows two, one African and the other Asiatic; the diversity of explanations (about 80) is therefore not surprising. From the text it may be inferred that the author was thinking of the region of lakes Van and Urmia, to the north of Mesopotamia (cf. Gen. 8:4), where the Tigris and the Euphrates have their sources; the Phison would be the Phasis (today's Rion) or the Čoroch (Hevilath = Colchis); the Gehon (v.) would be the Araxes, and Chus the Akkadian Kaš, to the northeast of Babel (thus E. Kalt, A. Šanda, H. Gressmann, etc.). The terrestrial paradise has also been sought in central-southern Mesopotamia: the last two rivers would be merely canals (Fr. Delitzsch, J. Theis, A. Deimel). Wholly improbable hypotheses were put forward, up to those that suppose a syncretism of Akkadian and Egyptian elements; finally, A. Ungnad identifies the terrestrial paradise with the gū-ediu-na of the Sumerians, not on earth but in the constellation of Pegasus (A. Bea [v. bibl.], p. 152; P. Heinisch, Problemi, p. 73 ff.).
The memory of the extraordinary vegetation of the terrestrial paradise returns in the Bible as a term of hyperbolic comparison: Gen. 13:10; Is. 51:3; Ez. 28:13; 31:8 ff.; 36:35; Ioel 2:3; Eccli. 40:17.
Bibliography19 works
Francesco Spadafora
ARCHAEOLOGY
The four rivers that, flowing out of the earthly paradise, water the earth — Geon, Pishon, Euphrates, Tigris — are found carved on an architrave at Ostia, in a floor mosaic discovered at Digne (G. B. De Rossi, Mu.
saico d'un battistero presso la cattedrale di Die, in Bull. di arch. crist., 1st series, 5 [1867], pp. 87-88). But Paulinus of Nola teaches that the four rivers that gush from the rock, upon which the Redeemer stands also in the form of the divine lamb, are Evangelistae viva Christi flumina (Epist. XXXII ad Severum: PL 61, 336). The representation is found in sarcophagi, in gilded glass, in mosaics and in the ivory Chapel of Samagher, near Pola.
Bibliography
Enrico Josi