Page:Judaism and Islam, a prize essay - Geiger - 1898.pdf/51

 GARDEN OP EDEN, 33

known in the Arabic language in the sense of pleasure or happiness, but this is the meaning which suits the word in this connection. 1 In Hebrew this is the radical meaning ; still this expression, viz., Garden of Eden, which occurs often in the Bible, is never to be explained out and out as Paradise ; but rather Eden 2 is there the proper name of a region which was inhabited by our first parents in their innocence, and the part in which they actually lived was a garden of trees. It is only natural that this earthly region of the golden age should by degrees have come to be regarded as Paradise, in that the word itself 3 no longer stands for the name of a place but is applied to a state of bliss ; 4 though the Jews still held to Eden as a locality also. It is clear from the translation " gardens of pleasure " that the Jews of that time not merely transferred the name Eden into Arabic, but carried over its supposed etymology as well. The more distinctively Christian name 5 occurs seldom in the Quran, though it also is not quite

1 The Arabic commentators give widely different meanings to the word,

but they know nothing of that given by us just because it is foreign to the

o, Arabic language. Elpherar seems to decide for the view that SUu\

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as well as 0^c, means permanence, as the pious will remain there for ever.

3

4 Muhammad uses it thus in Suras IX. 73, XIII. 23, XVI 33 XVIII. 30, XIX. 62, XX. 78, XXXV. 30, XXXVIII. 50, XL. 8, LXI. 12J and in other places he translates it A**Ji yU^. e. g, V. 70, X. 9 XXII. 55, XXXI. 7, XXXVII. 42, LXVI1I. 34. Sometimes also he uses it in the singular p*x$ 14 XXVI. 85; and even without the article,

LVI. 88, LXX. 38.

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