Description
In the Book of Genesis, we read that God creates a garden and placed Adam and Eve in it to look after it. The LORD God himself walked in the garden and therefore it represented the dwelling place of God, comparable to the Holy of Holies of the Tabernacle and Jerusalem Temples. One of the earliest extra-biblical references to the Garden of Eden being a representation of the Temple comes from the deuterocanonical Book of Jubilees 8:19: “[Noah] knew that the Garden of Eden is the holy of holies, and the dwelling place of the Lord.” There were two special trees in the Garden of Eden, namely the Tree of Life and the Tree of the Knowledge of Good and Evil. After Adam and Eve had transgressed God’s commandment to eat of the latter tree, they were exiled from the Garden of Eden.