Interpretation of Garden of Eden
Eden as paradise
"Paradise" (Hebrew PaRDeS) used as a synonym for the Garden of Eden shares a number of characteristics with words for 'walled orchard garden' or 'enclosed hunting park' in Old Persian.
The word "paradise" occurs three times in the Old Testament, but always in contexts other than a connection with Eden: in the Song of Solomon iv. 13: "Thy plants are an orchard of pomegranates, with pleasant fruits; camphire, with spikenard"; Ecclesiastes 2. 5: "I made me gardens and orchards, and I planted trees in them of all kind of fruits"; and in Nehemiah ii. 8: "And a letter unto Asaph the keeper of the king's orchard, that he may give me timber to make beams for the gates of the palace which appertained to the house, and for the wall of the city, and for the house that I shall enter into. And the king granted me, according to the good hand of my God upon me."
In the Song of Solomon, it is clearly "garden"; in the second and third examples "park". In the post-Exilic apocalyptic literature and in the Talmud, "paradise" gains its associations with the Garden of Eden and its heavenly prototype.
In the New Testament, there is an association of "paradise" with the realm of the blessed (as opposed to the realm of the cursed) among those who have already passed away, with literary Hellenistic influences obworked by a lot of scholars.
The Greek Garden of the Hesperides was somewhat just like the Christian concept of the Garden of Eden, and by the 16th century a huger intellectual association was made in the Cranach painting (see illustration at top). In this painting, only the action that takes place there identifies the setting as distinct from the Garden of the Hesperides, with its golden fruit.
Alan Millard has hypothesized that the Garden of Eden doesn't represent a 'geographical' place, but rather represents 'cultural memory' of "simpler times", when man lived off God's bounty (as "primitive" hunters and gatherers still do) as opposed to toiling at agriculture (being "civilized").
Of course there is much dispute between Judeo-Christian and secular scholars as to the plausibility of this idea - the refuting claim being that cultivation and agricultural work were present both before and after the "Garden Life".
The Second Book of Enoch, of late but uncertain date, states that both Paradise and Hell are accommodated in the third sphere of heaven, Shehaqim, with Hell being found simply " on the north side:" see Seven Heavens.
Psychoanalytic treatment
The myth of Adam and Eve in the Garden of Eden has been interpreted psychoanalytically as an archaic form of the Oedipus myth.
The Garden of Eden symbolizes the closed parental system which is safe but oppressive and the Tree of Knowledge represents individuation and free of chargedom but also risk, and even death.