Garden of Eden

English

Etymology

Calque of Biblical Hebrew גַּן עֵדֶן (gan ʿḗḏen).

Pronunciation

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Proper noun

the Garden of Eden (plural Gardens of Eden)

2. (Abrahamism) In the Book of Genesis of the Bible and Surat Sad of the Qur'an, a garden at the source of the Gihon, Pishon, Tigris, and Euphrates rivers, where Adam and Eve first lived after being created.

   Synonyms: earthly paradise, paradise

   • 1611, The Holy Bible, […] (King James Version), London: […] Robert Barker, […], →OCLC, Genesis 3:23–24:

     Therefore the Lord God sent him forth from the garden of Eden, to till the ground from whence he was taken. So he drove out the man; and he placed at the east of the garden of Eden Cherubims, and a flaming sword which turned every way, to keep the way of the tree of life.

   • 1943, John A. Widtsoe, Evidences and Reconciliations: Aids to Faith in a Modern Day‎^[1], Salt Lake City: Bookcraft, ch. 22, page 127:

     Latter-day Saints know, through modern revelation, that the Garden of Eden was on the North American continent and that Adam and Eve began their conquest of the earth in the upper part of what is now the state of Missouri.

   • 1971, Western Fruit Grower, volume 25/26, Western Farm Publications:

     Up until two decades ago, the Garden of Eden was, we thought, in Eastern Ontario, where the McIntosh variety happened along. Probably Americans feel you had two Gardens of Eden, the first one being where the Red Delicious was discovered, and the second one, where the Golden Delicious was discovered. The Australians must have thought the Garden of Eden was somewhere in Australia, where the Granny Smith appeared. According to the Bible, however, there was only one Garden of Eden and probably the population explosion started there, but from that time onward, all control was lost of both apple production and population.

   • 2001, George Szanto, The Condesa of M., Cormorant Books Inc., →ISBN, page 173:

     “Were there many Gardens of Eden?” Surely! To read only of the biblical Adam and Eve is to grasp the story in this one way. In the hills they speak of the beginning as the time of the giants, another utopia. In eastern heathen lands, surely giants reigned in many Edens.

   • 2011, Brook Wilensky-Lanford, “Practically Paradise”, in Paradise Lust: Searching for the Garden of Eden, Grove Press, →ISBN:

     For religious thinkers like William Warren and Landon West, the whole point of Eden was to unify mankind. To have two Gardens of Eden was worse than having none at all.

Translations

place where Adam and Eve first lived

• Arabic: عَدْن (ʕadn), جَنَّة عَدْن f (jannat ʕadn), جَنَّات عَدْن f pl (jannāt ʕadn)
• Basque: Eden
• Catalan: Jardí de l'Edèn m
• Chinese:

  Cantonese: 伊甸園／伊甸园 (ji¹ din^6-1 jyun⁴)

  Hakka: 伊甸園／伊甸园 (Yî-thien-yèn)

  Hokkien: 埃田園／埃田园 (Ai-tiân-hn̂g)

  Mandarin: 伊甸園／伊甸园 (zh) (Yīdiànyuán)

• Danish: Eden n, Edens Have c, Paradisets Have c
• Dutch: hof van Eden m
• Estonian: Eedeni aed
• Ewe: Eden-bɔ
• Finnish: Eedenin puutarha
• French: jardin d’Éden (fr) m
• German: Garten Eden m
• Greek: Εδέμ (el) (Edém)

  Ancient: Ἐδέμ (Edém)

• Hebrew: גַּן עֵדֶן (he) m (gan 'éden)
• Hungarian: édenkert (hu), éden (hu)
• Irish: Gairdín Pharthais m, Gairdín Éidin m
• Italian: giardino dell'Eden m
• Japanese: エデンの園 (エデンのその, Eden no sono)
• Korean: 에덴 동산 (Eden dongsan)
• Ladino: ganedén m
• Latin: hortus in Eden m, paradisus in Eden m, paradisus voluptatis m
• Latvian: Ēdenes dārzs m
• Maore Comorian: zarde ya Eden class 9
• Norwegian:

  Bokmål: Edens hage

  Nynorsk: Edens hage, hagen i Eden

• Portuguese: Jardim do Éden m
• Romanian: Grădina Edenului f
• Russian: Эде́м (ru) m (Edɛ́m)
• Spanish: jardín de Edén m
• Swahili: bustani ya Edeni class 9
• Swedish: Edens lustgård n (the most well-known, older translation), Edens trädgård n (newer translation)
• Ukrainian: Едем m (Edem)
• Welsh: Gardd Eden f
• Yiddish: גן־עדן m (gan-eydn)

Noun

Garden of Eden (plural Gardens of Eden)

1. An idyllic place wherein innocence and perfection reign; any delightful region or abode; a pastoral utopia; an Arcadia.
2. A state or condition of unsullied innocence.
3. (cellular automata) A pattern that can only exist as an initial state and is not reachable from any other state.
   • 1986, Patrick Chenin, Claire Di Crescenzo, François Robert, Computers and Computing: Proceedings, page 181:

     In this paper the author presents some properties regarding the existence or non-existence of gardens of Eden for the cellular automata.

   • 1989 October 20, Rajeev Pandey, “hints and topics, anyone?”, in comp.theory.cell-automata‎^[2] (Usenet):

     I have gotten interested in Garden-of-Eden configurations in Life. All that I have been able to uncover thus far is that there are 2 know configurations:

   • 2004, Tullio Ceccherini-Silberstein with Francesca Fiorenzi and Fabio Scarabotti, “The Garden of Eden Theorem for Cellular Automata and for Symbolic Dynamical Systems”, in Vadim A. Kaimanovich, editor, Random Walks and Geometry: Proceedings of a Workshop at the Erwin Schrödinger Institute, Vienna, June 18 - July 13, 2001, Walter de Gruyter, →ISBN, →OL:

     A configuration e not in the image of τ, namely e ∈ C \ τ[C] is called a Garden of Eden (briefly GOE) configuration, this biblical terminology being motivated by the fact that GOE configurations only appear as initial configurations.