The story of Adam and the garden of Eden is one of the best known and yet least understood parts of the Bible. It sets out the biblical teaching on the nature of human beings, and all too often has been read as no more than the story of the fall. The familiar talking snake and the missing rib which have caused such problems belong in the pre-phisosphical culture of ancient Israel, and an over-literal reading of the text can obscure not only its profound insights but also its importance in the framework of the New Testament.
Adam and Eden are the beginning and the end of the great story of the Bible. Returning to Eden was an important part of Christian teaching from the beginning; paradise was regained when one entered the Church. Cyril of Jerusalem told the newly baptised that he was leading them by the hand ‘into the brighter and more fragrant meadow of paradise before us’....(First Lecture on the Mysteries, 1). In the New Testament, Jesus was described as the last Adam, the second Adam (1 Cor.15.45-7 [1 Cor. 1:61-66]) and he was also described as the great high priest (Heb.4.14 [Heb. 1:11]). Adam and the high priest, as we shall see, were the same figure. Jesus promised his faithful followers that they would once again eat from the tree of life in the paradise of God (Rev.2.7 [Rev. 1:9]). The story in the New Testament reverses the story of Adam in Eden, and the Church’s claim to be paradise is rooted in the ancient belief that the original temple represented the garden of Eden.
Paradise, pardes, is not a Hebrew word, and when it is found in the Hebrew Bible, English translations usually give something other than ‘paradise’: forest (Neh.2.8), park (Eccles 2.5) or orchard (Song 4.13-15). In the LXX, the LORD planted a paradise, an enclosed garden, in Edem [not Eden, Gen.2.8 [Gen. 2:12]] The original Hebrew word Eden can mean either ‘delight’ or ‘plain’, so Eden could have been a garden on a plain, or a garden of delight. The prophet Ezekiel, a priest who had known the first temple (Ezek.1.3 [Ezek. 1:1]), described Eden as the mountain garden of the gods, the ’elohim (Ezek.28.13-14 [Ezek. 14:11]), and so the meaning ‘plain’ would not have been appropriate for his Eden. ‘Delight’ fits better as the meaning of Eden, especially since Eden was used as an image for fertility. Isaiah, for example, prophesied of Zion ‘I will make her wilderness like Eden, her desert like the garden of the LORD (Isa.51.3 [Isa. 18:2]); and Ezekiel prophesied that the desolate land would become like the garden of Eden (Ezek.36.35 [Ezek. 18:10]). In the LXX, Isaiah’s Eden was translated as ‘paradise’ and Ezekiel’s as ‘garden of delight/ luxury’.
Various purges of the temple show other Eden items used in worship: Hezekiah broke in pieces a bronze serpent that had been venerated with incense since time immemorial (2 Kgs 18.4), although the text does not say that the serpent was in the temple; and when Josiah purged the temple, he burned the chariot of the sun [Hebrew has plural but Greek is singular] which was probably the great throne of the LORD in the holy of holies (2 Kgs 23.11), another feature of the later traditions that link the temple to Paradise. According to the Enoch tradition, when the LORD came to Paradise, he rested under the tree of life (2 Enoch 8.3), and the Greek version of the Life of Adam and Eve says that when he returned to Paradise, seated on the chariot of cherubim, all the plants came into bloom, and the throne was set by the tree of life (Apocalypse of Moses 22.3-4).
The Burial
Two rich men who had kept quiet come forward as soon as there is nothing left to lose, and bury him properly and far too fast. Two women sit opposite the tomb and watch where he is put. On the other side of the city, his enemies are the only people in Jerusalem who remember he said he would rise.
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Note. After two chapters of the densest revision in the Gospels, the Joseph Smith Translation leaves the burial almost untouched: two changes of substance in four columns. One of them dates Joseph of Arimathea’s dissent to the day of the trial; the other has the chief priests call the resurrection an imposture rather than an error.
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The reading is the Joseph Smith Translation, in the text of the Covenant Christian Edition, carried beside each Gospel and set against the King James baseline. Headers give both numbering systems: the CCE chapter and verse, and the traditional KJV reference.
57When the evening came, there came a rich man of Arimathea named Joseph, who also himself was Jesus’ disciple. 58He went to Pilate and begged the body of Jesus. Then Pilate commanded the body to be delivered. 59And when Joseph had taken the body, he wrapped it in a clean linen cloth 60and laid it in his own new tomb, which he had hewn out in the rock. And he rolled a great stone to the door of the sepulcher and departed. 61And there was Mary Magdalene, and the other Mary, sitting opposite the sepulcher.
62Now the next day that followed the day of the preparation, the chief priests and Pharisees came together unto Pilate, 63saying, Sir, we remember that that deceiver said, while he was yet alive, After three days I will rise again. 64Command therefore that the sepulcher be made sure until the third day, lest his disciples come by night and steal him away, and say unto the people, He is risen from the dead, so this last error shall imposture will be worse than the first. 65Pilate said unto them, You have a watch; go your way, make it as sure as you can. 66So they went and made the sepulcher sure, sealing the stone and setting a watch.
42And now when the evening had come, because it was the preparation day — that is, the day before the Sabbath — 43Joseph of Arimathea, an honorable counselor who also waited for the kingdom of God, came and went in boldly unto Pilate and asked for the body of Jesus. 44And Pilate marveled and asked him if he were already dead. And calling unto him the centurion, he asked him if he had already died. 45And when he knew it of the centurion, he gave the body to Joseph. 46And he Joseph bought fine linen, and took him down and wrapped him in the linen, and laid him in a sepulcher which was hewn out of a rock, and rolled a stone unto the door of the sepulcher. 47And Mary Magdalene and Mary the mother of Joseph beheld where he was laid.
50And behold, a man named Joseph, a counselor, and he was a good man and a just one, 51the same day had not consented to the counsel and deed of them; a man of Arimathea, a city of the Jews, who also himself waited for the kingdom of God, 52he went unto Pilate and begged the body of Jesus. 53And he took it down, and wrapped it in linen, and laid it in a sepulcher which was hewed in a stone wherein never man before was laid. 54And that day was the preparation, and the Sabbath drew on.
55And the women also who came with him from Galilee followed after, and beheld the sepulcher and how his body was laid. 56And they returned and prepared spices and ointments, and rested the Sabbath day according to the commandment.
38And after this, Joseph of Arimathea, being a disciple of Jesus (but secretly, for fear of the Jews), implored Pilate that he might take away the body of Jesus, and Pilate gave him leave. He came therefore and took the body of Jesus. 39And there came also Nicodemus, who at the first came to Jesus by night, and brought a mixture of myrrh and aloes, about a hundred pound weight. 40Then took they the body of Jesus and wound it in linen clothes with the spices, as the manner of the Jews is to bury. 41Now in the place where he was crucified there was a garden, and in the garden a new sepulcher wherein was never man yet laid. 42There they laid Jesus therefore because of the Jews’ preparation day, for the sepulcher was near at hand.
Why There Were Spices Twice
A Hundred Pounds of Myrrh, and the Women’s Own Ointment
The observation comes from an unlikely place: an 1842 Times and Seasons piece about mummies found in a Kentucky cave, arguing that embalming was a Hebrew practice as well as an Egyptian one. In passing, Joseph Smith accounts for something the four columns here leave unexplained: Nicodemus brings a hundred pounds of spices on the day of the crucifixion, and the women prepare more. That second set of spices is why they are walking to the tomb before dawn on Sunday.
Editorial, “A Catacomb of Mummies found in Kentucky” · Times and Seasons 3 (2 May 1842): 781–82 (Teachings of the Prophet Joseph Smith) · Joseph Smith Papers ↗It is well known that the art of embalming was known among the Hebrews, as well as among the Egyptians, although perhaps not so generally among the former, as among the latter people; and their method of embalming also might be different from that of the Egyptians. Jacob and Joseph were no doubt, embalmed in the manner of the Egyptians, as they died in that country, …
When our Saviour was crucified his hasty burial obliged them only to wrap his body in linnen with a hundred pounds of myrrh, aloes, ahd [and] similar spices, (part of the ingredients of embalming,) given by Nicodemus for tbat [that] purpose: but Mary and other holy women had prepared ointment and spices for embalming it, …
The Garden Is Not Scenery
Only John says there was a garden. He also says the tomb was new, that nobody had ever been laid in it. Barker’s work on the temple as a representation of Eden explains why a first-century reader would have heard both details as one claim, and why, three days later, the first person to see him alive takes him for the gardener.
In each Genesis story, Adam was created as male-and female, and only later, after being set in the garden as high priest, was Adam separated into distinct male and female beings. He was set in the garden ‘to till and to keep’- the usual translation - but both these words have a temple meaning (Gen.2.15 [Gen. 2:13]), and Adam was understood to be a high priest even though that is not explicit. ‘Till’ ‘bd, was also the technical term for temple service, and ‘keep’, šmr, meant to preserve the tradition. The traditional Jewish interpretations did not think this was a command about gardening. The debate was: did it mean serve for six days and then preserve the Sabbath, or serve God and perform the sacred duties (Genesis Rabbah XVI.5).
Apart from the biblical accounts, there were many stories about Adam and Eden, some of which echo material in the Hebrew Bible and so may well have been known to its writers. They confirm that the temple was Eden. Amongst texts known in the time of Jesus, the Book of Jubilees, an alternative version of Genesis, had Adam wait forty days from his creation until he could enter Eden, and Eve eighty days, since both applied to Eden the temple laws about impurity after childbirth (Jub.3.8-14). When Adam was leaving Eden, he burned an incense very like the one prescribed for use only in the tabernacle (Exod.30.34-38): frankincense, galbabum, stacte and sweet spices (Jub.3.27). Noah knew that the garden of Eden was the holy of holies, and the dwelling of the LORD (Jub. 8.19). It is sometimes said that Jubilees reworked Genesis in order to make the link between Eden and the temple, but this is unlikely, since the temple-as-Eden tradition was older than Genesis.
The temple as Eden was the setting of the Book of Revelation, where St John described the heavenly city itself as a huge holy of holies (Rev.21.15-16 [Rev. 8:11]), and so there was no need of a further temple there (Rev.21.22 [Rev. 8:12]). In the holy of holies St John saw the tree of life and the heavenly throne, and from the holy of holies flowed the river of the water of life (Rev.22.1-2 [Rev. 8:13]). The risen LORD promised to his faithful followers that they would have access again to the tree of life (Rev.2.7 [Rev. 1:9]), and St John saw them standing before the throne and the tree of life (Rev.22.3-4 [Rev. 8:14]) – exactly as described in the other texts. They were restored to Eden whence Adam had been banished, but in fact they were standing in the holy of holies.
There are two accounts in Genesis of the creation of Adam: God [or the ’elohim] resolved to create Adam ‘according to our invisible heavenly form, as our material image’ (Gen.1.26 [Gen. 2:8], translating literally; ‘as’ c.f Exod. 6.3 as El Shadddai). Adam was created male and female. The second account has Yahweh of the Elohim (the LORD God), form the man from dust and then breathe into the man the breath of life so that the man became a living being (Gen.2.7 [Gen. 2:11]). Breathing into a statue was a well known ritual for bringing it to life as the dwelling place of the god it represented, and all the Targums agree that breathing into Adam meant giving him the power of speech. The image of the beast was brought to life in this way in the Book of Revelation and given the power of speech (Rev.13.15 [Rev. 4:10]).
Read forward: the next thing that happens in this garden is that Mary Magdalene mistakes him for the man who keeps it (John 20:15). If Barker is right that the gardener of Eden was understood as a priestly office rather than a job, her mistake is the most accurate thing anyone says in the resurrection narrative.