Saturday, October 10, 2020

Ziony Zevit on the Garden of Eden being called "Bountiful"

 

 

Since the name Eden itself evoked the image of an agriculturally productive area, it is not surprising that the word appears in the name of another locale. The prophet Amos refers to a kingdom called Beth Eden, bēyt ‘ēden, part of a coalition of Aramaic- speaking groups centered on Damascus (Amos 1:5; see also 2 Kings 19:12 = Isa 37:12). This place is identified with Bit Adini, a kingdom located on both sides of the Euphrates where the Balikh River flows into it from the north. Its name translates as “House of Bounty.” The Garden was planted in a place called “Bountiful.”

 

The major wonder of this particular garden on the eastern side of Eden/Bountiful may have been its landlord, who could guarantee rain. The river flowing through it made watering in dry seasons a simple matter of digging and maintaining systems of sluice gates and small channels to bring water to the plant plots and tree groves (Gen 2:5, 10). In this natural setting, the Garden offered the best of Egypt, with its regular supply of irrigation water from the Nile, and the best of the land within which the tribes of Israel lived, with its fairly predictable pattern of generous rainfall: “from the rain of the heavens it drinks water” (Deut 11:11). (H. C. Brichto, The Names of God: Poetic Readings in Biblical Beginnings, Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1998, p. 73.) (Ziony Zevit, What Really Happened in the Garden of Eden? [New Haven: Yale University Press, 2015], 88-89, emphasis in original)