Eden: An Indian Exploration of Jewish, Christian and Islamic Lore

Description

Eden is the garden of happiness that humankind lost when Adam and Eve the first human couple, disobeyed the one true god, i.e., God, and ate the fruit of the forbidden tree. To this garden all humanity shall return if we accept God's love and follow God's law. It represents paradise in Abrahamic lore, which emerged over 4,000 years ago in the Middle East and has since spread to every corner of the world in three forms: Judaism, Christianity and Islam.Like the Ramayana and Mahabharata, Jewish, Christian and Islamic tales too are cultural memories and metaphors, i.e. mythologies. They seek to make life meaningful by establishing a worldview based on one God, one life, and one way of living based on God's message transmitted through many messengers. But these stories contrast Indian mythologies that are rooted in rebirth, where the world is without beginning or end, where there are infinite manifestations of the divine, both within and without, personal and impersonal, simultaneously monotheistic, polytheistic and atheistic.Eden explores the vast world of Abrahamic myths from a uniquely Indian prism, through storytelling that is intimate but not irreverent, and to introduce reader

Devdutt Pattanaik writes, illustrates and lectures on the relevance of mythology in modern times. He has, since 1996, written over 50 books and 1000 columns on how stories, symbols and rituals construct the subjective truth (myths) of ancient and modern cultures around the world. His books with Penguin Random House India include Myth = Mithya: A Handbook of Hindu Mythology; The Book of Ram; Jaya: An Illustrated Retelling of the Mahabharata, Sita: An Illustrated Retelling of the Ramayana, Shyam: An Illustrated Retelling of the Bhagavata and the Devlok series. He consults with corporations on l