Question from a reader:

Was Eden world-wide, not just a specific place God placed Adam and Eve to cultivate? Do you believe the whole earth was Eden? Or if Eden was a walled garden paradise, would Adam and Eve have had access to areas beyond it, including the sea, and therefore have been familiar with sea creatures?

Answer from Randy Alcorn:

The word paradise comes from the Persian word pairidaeza, meaning “a walled park” or “enclosed garden.” It was used to describe the great walled gardens of the Persian king Cyrus’s royal palaces. The Greek translation of the Old Testament, the Septuagint, uses pairidaeza to describe the Garden of Eden (e.g., Genesis 2:8; Ezekiel 28:13).

Around 400 BC, the Greek writer Xenophon, when writing his most famous work, Anabasis, transliterated the Persian word into Greek as parádeisos, “a park for animals.” What does an enclosed garden and animal park contain? Both flora and fauna, vegetation and animals.

The word paradise does not refer to wild nature. It always depicts nature under mankind’s dominion. The garden or park was not left to grow entirely on its own—instead, people used their creativity to manage, cultivate, and preserve it. The same applied to human governance of animals; they weren’t left on their own, as we think of “wildlife” today, but were tended by people and kept healthy and happy under their care. Genesis 1 and 2 confirm that Paradise is a perfect synonym for Eden.

Of course, there’s no way of knowing the geography or extent of Eden. But we know that God had created all the animals, including those living in the oceans on day 5. We are told that Adam named the animals (Genesis 2:19-20). Does the text mean that he saw and named only the land animals, or was the sea accessible enough that he named those also? God could have brought them up one by one as he did to Noah two by two.

I don’t think Eden as a walled garden in any way suggests Adam and Eve were confined by walls. They could surely walk and run and explore, and there could have been beaches. Since the rest of the world wasn’t fallen, no matter how small or large Eden was at first, surely wherever the animals went, they were still in an Eden-like environment. Eden itself could actually have been very large; we aren’t told. But for Eden to be shut off from the rest of creation after man’s fall, it had to have defined boundaries. Adam was warned not to eat of the tree of knowledge of good and evil, but not warned, “Don’t walk too far or you’ll step outside of Eden.”