Garden of Eden

The Garden of Eden, or simply Eden, is a fundamental concept in the Judaeo-Christian myth of The Creation. Eden is the name of the ideal garden created by God for the first humans (Adam and Eve) to live in. It is thought of as a perfect place, from which Man is excluded following his Fall. The Hebrew word עֵדֶן aden means 'pleasure, delight'.

Eden is also known by the name Paradise, from the Old Iranian pairadaēza 'enclosure' (from pairi- 'around' + daēz 'to heap up, build'). The qur'anic equivalent, the Arabic firdaws, is a back-formation from the Byzantine Greek παράδεισος‚ (paradeisos). It is this word that Milton uses in his great retelling of the Expulsion from Eden Paradise Lost.

Paradise is also used to mean 'Heaven': the ideal world in which good Christians will live eternally after their deaths in this world. The word 'Eden' is used in this context, but much less often. Both words can also be used in figurative contexts as 'perfect place', 'ideal world' and so on.

There are four rivers in the United Kingdom called Eden. One is in Fife (Scotland); Eden Water is a tributary of the Tweed. in the Scottish borders; one in Cumbria, in England, originally the Ituna to the Romans, who took this from the Celtic; and one in Kent, named after a misunderstanding of the Old English name of a town now called Edenbridge, but then Eadhelmsbrigge which means 'Eadhelm's Bridge').

The Eden Project in Cornwall is an attempt to conserve as many plants as possible by recreating, in greenhouses and other artificial environments where necessary, appropriate habitats.