Digital Commons@RISD Home > Division of Liberal Arts > Contemporary Aesthetics (Journal Archive) > Vol. 20 (2022)
Abstract
No garden in the history of the world has had a greater impact on gardens and gardening than the Garden of Eden, as expressed in the Jewish, Christian, and Islamic religions, regardless of whether the Garden of Eden ever existed. Yet, given evidence in the texts of the stories of Eden of its unchanging nature, and given that all gardens are naturally dynamic, Eden does not qualify to be a true garden. In addition to the story’s impact on gardens and gardening, Eden is aesthetically impactful because it is from appreciation of the story as a morality tale that we get our second argument that Eden had to be perfect and, if perfect, essentially unchanging. The unchanging nature of Eden is necessary to the instructional impact of the story as a morality tale, an impact dependent on its literary properties.