Garden of Eden גן עדן
The garden where the first man was placed, and the place from which all later history begins—the history of return.
Eden is the Torah's first place that has no map. Scripture describes a garden in the east, a river dividing into four, and two trees at its centre—the tree of life and the tree of knowledge. Commentators debate its location, but tradition is largely uninterested in geography: the garden matters as a condition, not a coordinate.
Here Adam is given work—to till and to guard—and a single prohibition. Here the first question addressed to a human being is asked: "Where are you?" And from here comes the first exile, sealed by cherubim and a turning sword of fire.
The sages read this as the pattern of every later exile: a person leaves the place where he belonged and spends history trying to return. In later usage Gan Eden no longer means a garden on earth but the world of souls—the name of something lost and promised at once.
On the timeline
Related
Sources
Tanakh
- Bereishit 2–3 — the garden, the commandment, and the expulsion
Chazal: Mishnah, Talmud, midrash, Zohar
- Bereishit Rabbah 15, 21 — the trees of the garden and the meaning of the expulsion
- Sanhedrin 38b — the twelve hours of the sixth day
- Eruvin 18b — Adam after the expulsion
Basis: tradition.