Annotatio XXXIV

”God had planted a Paradise.” — Genesis 2:8

Francis George [Francesco Giorgio Veneto], in the first volume of the Problems, expounding this, called back into the light Origen’s error about the allegorical Paradise — now extinguished a little before our age — and endeavored to make it persuasive with these arguments.¹ First, that in the sacred letters it is nowhere found that Paradise, or that garden, was planted on the earth. Secondly, that Moses would say in vain that this garden was planted with material plants and trees on the earth after the sixth day, since he had before written that all the plants and trees of the whole earth were produced by God on the third day. Thirdly (item), that God would in vain and with idle counsel have built a terrestrial garden for the first parents — one which would not be of use to them even immediately [because of] their sins, and which after Adam’s sin would be cultivated by no one. Finally, he brought in this too: that Jerome, having considered these things, declared that Paradise was founded by God before he made heaven and earth — namely, to signify by these words that that Paradise described by Moses is not situated on this visible earth, but in that “land of the living,” which was created before this visible world in the invisible world. These things Francis wrote in many places, but especially in the first volume of the Problems, where, from Problem 1 to Problem 48, he contends to destroy the whole history of Paradise with long windings of allegories — yet with no valid reason adduced for it.

For what he proposed in the first place — that it is by no means established from the sacred letters whether Paradise is on the earth — is most false.² For Moses most clearly declares that Paradise was planted by God in a region of the Eastern land, which is called Eden. And that Eden is the proper name of a place appears from the fourth chapter of Genesis, where we read that Cain dwelt to the eastern region of Eden;³ and in Ezekiel chapter 27 it is had that Eden was near Charran [Haran], a region of Mesopotamia.⁴ But that which Moses writes — that the garden of delights was planted by God after the sixth day — by no means conflicts with what he reported before, namely that all the plants were brought forth on the third day.⁵ For it can be, as Augustine judges, that the plants which had been produced on the third day according to certain seminal reasons were, after the works of the six days, again produced and completed in act; or, according to Basil’s and Chrysostom’s opinion, it can be said that all the plants, together with the plants of Paradise, were founded at once on the third day, but that Moses, after the works of the six days, again by way of epilogue made mention of the production of the plants of Paradise.

Which Paradise, even if it were inhabited by no one after sin, no one of sound mind would call superfluous.⁶ For just as (by Augustine’s testimony) it must not be said that the immortality of the body was given to man in vain — which he was not going to preserve — so neither ought one to think that that Paradise was founded in vain, because human habitation is not there after sin. For although that place does not serve man for dwelling, yet it profits him for instruction: that he may recognize himself to have been cast out thence by the fault of the first parent, and that, through the things which are written to be in it corporeally, he may lift up his mind to the spiritual and invisible mysteries of the heavenly paradise. But as to that which, in the last place, he violently wrests from Jerome’s words — namely, that Paradise was founded by God in that invisible world which preceded the constitution of this visible world⁷ — satisfaction has been made in Annotation 37, in which this opinion of Jerome has been most exactly discussed.

John Noviomagus, in the scholia published by him on Bede’s book On the Nature of Things, himself also thinks that the whole passage about Paradise is to be understood enigmatically and allegorically — yet in a sense different from Origen and those who followed Origen’s opinion. For they think Paradise to be nothing other than this world:⁸ for just as the Gentiles call the world a dwelling and a certain temple of the Gods, from its inexplicable beauty and its work of highest veneration, so [Noviomagus] supposes that in the sacred Letters this world is to be understood [as] the “place of pleasure,” than whose absolute elegance nothing more adorned can be conceived — in which adornment the mind of man, admiring the variety of nature, cannot be sated with delight. For he interprets that fountain, from which the four rivers flow, as the Ocean, whence (as pleased Homer too) all rivers and fountains take the force and beginning of their course. He thinks also that it cannot be that the Ganges, the Nile, and the Euphrates should [flow], in regions so far apart as those of Armenia, India, and Ethiopia, from one [the Ganges, Nile, and Euphrates cannot proceed] from one fountain of Paradise, unless we accept that Paradise is the globe of the earth, and the fountain the sea — which, by hidden subterranean channels, poured out far and wide, supplies moisture to all the rivers. But this too is far from the truth.⁹ For if Paradise is the globe of the earth, how does Moses say that Paradise was planted in the region of the East? How were the first parents expelled from it? How does the Cherub keep watch before its doors, lest the now-ejected parents return again into Paradise? Nor indeed ought it to seem a wonder to anyone if Moses writes that those rivers flow from one fountain: for thus, from the beginning of the nascent world, God willed them to flow from one and the same fountain. But after, in the universal Flood, the fountains of the abyss were burst open, it is credible that the places of the fountains and the beginnings of the rivers were so changed that one took the beginning of its course from the East, another from the South.