The rabbis of old certainly pondered this question.

In Bereshit Rabbah, that incredible collection of rabbinic interpretations on the Book of Genesis, we find Rabbi Yehuda and Rabbi Yosei locked in a friendly debate about just this. It all revolves around one simple question: which was bigger, the Garden, or Eden itself?

Rabbi Yehuda, he's on Team Garden. He argues that the Garden was actually larger than Eden. How does he figure this? Well, he points to the Book of Ezekiel. In one verse (Ezekiel 31:9), it says “All the trees of Eden that were in God’s garden envied it.” And another verse (Ezekiel 28:13) states, “You were in Eden, of God’s garden.” See his point? The phrasing suggests that Eden is inside the Garden, a smaller area contained within a larger one.

But Rabbi Yosei sees it differently. He believes Eden was the larger entity. His proof text? Genesis 2:8: "The Lord God planted a garden in Eden.” That little word "in" is key. It implies the garden is located within Eden.

And he doesn't stop there. Genesis 2:10 tells us "A river emerges from Eden to water the garden." Rabbi Yosei takes this to mean that even the runoff from a small part of Eden could irrigate the entire garden! He illustrates it with measurements: from the runoff of a beit kor (a unit of land measurement), a tarkav (one-sixtieth of a beit kor) could be watered. So, Eden must have been huge!

Rabbi Yehuda counters that the river was like a spring situated right in the middle of the garden, efficiently watering everything. It's a good point, but...Rabbi Yehuda needed two verses to make his argument, while Rabbi Yosei only needed one.

But wait! The story doesn't end there. Rabbi Hanin of Tzippori steps in, and according to Bereshit Rabbah, he says, “The Holy One blessed be He illuminated the eyes of Rabbi Yosei and he found another verse that was decisive in addition to the first.” What was this game-changing verse? Isaiah 51:3: “He will render its wilderness like Eden and its desert like the garden of the Lord.” The verse compares Eden to the wilderness of the Land of Israel, and the Garden to its desert. The wilderness is far larger than the desert, implying that Eden is larger than the Garden.

So, in the end, it seems Rabbi Yosei's view might have gained the upper hand. But what does this all mean? Why should we care about the square footage of paradise? Perhaps it's not about the literal size. Maybe the Rabbis were trying to teach us something about perspective. About how we perceive the world, about how we understand the relationship between the contained and the boundless. Maybe, just maybe, Eden, in all its vastness, is still within our reach.