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… And the Lord God planted a garden eastward in Eden; and there he put the man whom he had formed. And out of the ground made the Lord God to grow every tree that is pleasant to the sight and the tree of knowledge of good and evil. And a river went out of Eden to water the garden; and from thence it was parted and became into four heads.
… And the Lord commanded the man saying. “Of every tree of the garden thou mayest freely eat; but of the tree of knowledge of good and evil thou shalt not eat of it: for in the day thou eatest thereof thou shalt surely die.”
… And the serpent said unto the woman. “Ye shall not surely die: for Goes does know that in the day ye eat thereof, then your eyes shall be opened and ye shall be as gods, knowing good and evil.”
The bible myth, best known among all myths dealing with the origin of mankind and probably least original in shape speaks of the home of mankind as of a garden watered by a river parting into four branches. This reminds one of the delta region in Egypt and one of the myth makers must have been an Egyptian. But nobody can admit that mankind has developed from cultivated soil, and the garden of Eden was neither a flower-garden nor a granary. What it really was, is indicated by the tree which the Lord made grow out of the ground; the most conspicuous figure in the myth is the tree. The emphasis laid upon the tree conforms entirely with our present conception of the home of mankind which was ostensibly in the dense primeval forest. Only in the moist-warm semitropical climate with its luxuriant vegetation had man despite his nudity and helplessness a chance to feed and to survive. The garden of Eden, in which the Lord made grow so many trees, and in which man lived among all beasts and cattle and creeping things, is a representation of the virgin-forest of the subtropics.