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IN the
eastern part of the earth, on the mountain of Eden, beyond the ocean, God
planted Paradise, and adorned it with fruit-bearing trees of all kinds, that it
might be a dwelling-place for Adam and his progeny, if they should keep His
commandments. He made to spring forth from it a great river, which was parted
into four heads, to water Paradise and the whole earth. The first river is
Pîshôn, which compasseth the land of Havîlâ, where there is gold and beryls and
fair and precious stones. The second river is Gihôn, that is, the Nile of Egypt.
The third river is Deklath (the Tigris), which travels through the land of
Assyria and Bêth-Zabdai1.
The fourth river is Perath (the Euphrates), which flows through the middle of
the earth. Some teachers say that Paradise surrounds the whole earth like a wall
and a hedge beyond the ocean. Others say that it was placed upon the mount of
Eden, higher than every other mountain in the world by fifteen cubits. Others
say that it was placed between heaven and earth, below the firmament and above
this earth, and that God placed it there as a boundary for Adam between heaven
and earth, so that, if he kept His commands, He might lift him up to heaven, but
if he transgressed them, He might cast him down to this earth. And as the land
of heaven is better and more excellent than the land of Paradise, so was the
land of Paradise better and more glorious and more excellent (than our earth);
its trees were more beautiful, its flowers more odoriferous, and its atmosphere
more pure than ours, through superiority of species and not by nature. God made
Paradise large enough to be the dwelling-place of Adam and of his posterity,
provided that they kept the divine commandments. Now it is the dwelling-place of
the souls of the righteous, and its keepers are Enoch and Elijah; Elijah the
unwedded, and Enoch the married man: that the unwedded may not exalt themselves
above the married, as if, forsooth, Paradise were suitable for the unwedded only.
The souls of sinners are without Paradise, in a deep place called Eden. After
the resurrection, the souls of the righteous and the sinners will put on their
bodies. The righteous will enter into heaven, which will become the land of the
righteous; while the sinners will remain upon earth. The tree of good and evil
that was in Paradise did not by nature possess these properties of good and evil
like rational beings, but only through the deed which was wrought by its means;
like the 'well of contention,' and the 'heap of witness,' which did not possess
these properties naturally, but only through the deeds which were wrought by
their means. Adam and Eve were not stripped of the glory with which they were
clothed, nor did they die the death of sin, because they desired and ate of the
fruit of the fig-tree--for the fruit of the fig-tree was not better than the
fruit of any other tree--but because of the transgression of the law, in that
they were presumptuous and wished to become gods. On account of this foolish and
wicked and blasphemous intention, chastisement and penalty overtook
them.--Concerning the tree of life which was planted in the middle of Paradise,
some have said that Paradise is the mind, that the tree of good and evil is the
knowledge of material things, and that the tree of life is the knowledge of
divine things, which were not profitable to the simple understanding of Adam.
Others have said that the tree of life is the kingdom of heaven and the joy of
the world to come; and others that the tree of life was a tree in very truth,
which was set in the middle of Paradise, but no man has ever found out what its
fruit or its flowers or its nature was like. |
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