by
Roth, following one whom he calls the “amateur historian Reginald Walker”,
proceeds to identify the biblical Gihon
with “... the river
called Gaihun”. The Pishon, he identifies with “...
the river Uizhun (the modern Kezel Uzun) ... [which] flows from the mountains
of Kurdistan and empties
into the southern
basin of the Caspian Sea”.
Introduction
In 1999 there appeared in the
colour supplement to The Weekend
Australian newspaper an article by David Roth [*] “In Search of
Did Eve tempt Adam with the apple? Did God
banish them from
* Strangely, whilst there is actually a David Roth
who is involved with the UK historical revisionist group Society for Interdisciplinary Studies, this particular newspaper
article on Paradise is virtually identical to that presented by another UK
revisionist, David Rohl, in his The Lost
Testament (Century, 2002), Chapter One.
Roth next wrote:
Since the time of the Jewish historian
Josephus, a near contemporary of Christ, scholars have tried to use Genesis II
to locate
As will become apparent soon
from a consideration of Professor A. Yahuda’s discussion of these same primæval
rivers (in The Language of the Pentateuch
in its Relation to Egyptian, p. 3.
“The Location of Paradise” and p. 4.‘The
Roth, following one whom he
calls the “amateur historian Reginald
Walker”, proceeds to identify the biblical Gihon with “... the river
From this base, Roth believes
himself even able to propose a location for:
·
the
biblical “
Even further to the east of
·
and
to ‘explain’ the Cherubim of Genesis 2:
In the same region we find the town of
I: The Four Rivers
According to Professor A. Yahuda
Professor Yahuda, too, had taken
seriously the notion of a real Eden and had also accepted as a common
denominator that the Tigris and Euphrates of Genesis 2 referred to the
two great Mesopotamian rivers. He, though, whilst following the same biblical
‘road map’ as Roth, had not untypically located the famous Garden closer to
Egypt (though definitely not in Egypt). He did not miss the fact that in
Genesis 13:10 the
In all attempts to find a solution to the
question: ‘Where lay Paradise?’, the greatest difficulty has always been the
assumption that the rivers Pîšôn of Hawîlâ and Gîhôn of Kûš, as well as the
Mesopotamian rivers Tigris and Euphrates, flowed through Paradise itself, and in any case belonged to Paradise.
This made it impossible to obtain a clear idea of the geographical situation of
Paradise, whatever view was taken of the names of the first two rivers and
wherever they were localized, because in no case could the confluence of all
these four streams in one place be explained.
At the outset, it must be pointed out that
in Gen. 2:10ff. there is not the slightest support for the assumption that the
four rivers flowed through
Thus Roth’s contention that “... the problem [of locating
I take up professor Yahuda again
on this subject (p. 171):
Even the ancients were governed by the idea
that the four rivers were world streams, and sought to identify them with the
rivers known in their day as the most important. Thus e.g. in Josephus’s time (Antiquities, I, § 38 f.) the Pîšôn was
identified with the
To evade this difficulty the Pîšôn and
Gîhôn were sought in Mesopotamian rivers, and so long ago as 1706 Reland, De Situ Paradisi, identified the Pîšôn
with the Phasis and the Gîhôn with the Araxes in Armenia ....
Although Reland, and after him Delitzsch
and others, contrived on purely phonetic grounds to interpret Kûš as the land
of the Kossaeans, all attempts failed to identify Hawilâ as a Mesopotamian
land.
[End of quote].
Genesis 2 Edited
Interestingly, in light of P. J.
Wiseman’s thesis (Ancient Records and the
Structure of Genesis, Thos.
Nelson, 1985) that Moses had, for the sake of his contemporaries, added
geographical indicators to the family histories of his forefathers, professor Yahuda
was convinced - as are others - that the description of the four rivers is an
editorial gloss to an original document. Now that original document would be,
according to Wiseman, Adam’s toledôt or “family history”.
Verses 8-10 of this particular
history describe in most uncomplicated terms God’s planting of a Garden in
Eden, and its flora and hydrography, to which Moses would have added the
geographical indicators (Verses 11-14).
We can set out this literary
development as follows:
ADAM’S
ORIGINAL ACCOUNT
And the Lord God had planted a paradise of
pleasure from the beginning; wherein He placed man whom He had formed. And the
Lord God brought forth of the ground all manner of trees, fair to behold, and
pleasant to eat of: the tree of life also in the midst of paradise: and the
tree of knowledge of good and evil. And a river went out of the place of
pleasure [i.e.
TO WHICH MOSES ADDED
The name of the one is Phison [Pishon]: that is it which compasseth all the
Similarly Moses had added
parenthetically to Genesis 14 the new names of five places recorded in that
ancient history; most notably “Vale of
Siddim” to which he appended: “(which
is the Salt Sea)” (v. 3). This very
This makes it perfectly clear
that the recorder of Abra[ha]m’s history had knowledge of what Eden had
actually been like, and that this blissful place had not been some fanciful,
imaginary land totally unlike anything that Abra[ha]m knew.
But, like
Similarly again, in the case of
Adam’s tôledôt, Moses added the
above-mentioned geographical indicators in order that his contemporaries would
be able to identify the four world rivers about which the original writer gave
hardly any detail. I previously quoted Yahuda’s evidence (op. cit., pp. 163-4) that editing had occurred right here.
Professor Yahuda proceeded from
this to suggest why he thought it was necessary to locate Eden and its Garden
to the west, rather than to the east, of Mesopotamia:
... assent could not be given to
Mesopotamia being the home of Paradise as the other two rivers flow through
lands which are far removed from Mesopotamia, namely Kûš, which in the Bible
means exclusively Nubia or Ethiopia, and Hawîlâ, which according to Genesis
10:6,7 lay near Kûš, but according to 10:29 somewhere in Arabia; nor, on the
other hand, is it possible to take Egypt, Ethiopia or Arabia as the home of
Paradise, because then the two streams of Mesopotamia would not fit in.
Roth had for his part,
appropriately to his own geographical reconstruction - but contrary to the more
traditional view that the
The Ahara Chay is a major tributary of the
Gaihun-Aras/Gihon which, according to Genesis II, “winds all through the
Ingenious though this all is, I
think that professor Yahuda’s account of Kûš
(Cush) is by far the better one – and I shall soon explain why.
Thus, despite the footnote in The Jerusalem Bible (7, n. 2a, emphasis added) that “... the rivers Pishon and Gihon are unknown, and the two ‘lands’ named are probably not the regions designated elsewhere
by the same names”, I fully embrace professor Yahuda’s view that Cush
should retain its traditional meaning of Ethiopia.
In Genesis 10:7 and 8, Kûš (Cush) is Ham’s son.
Indeed, if it is correct to
regard Genesis 2:11-14 as an explanatory gloss added by Moses, as I do, then Kûš could only refer to Ethiopia.
As I have shown in a series of
articles for The Glozel Newsletter
[Waikato, N.Z.], pharaonic Egypt of prince Moses’s day was busy extending its
southern border into Ethiopia, or Cush.
Moreover, Jewish tradition has
it that Moses led successful military expeditions for Pharaoh against Ethiopia,
and that he even married an Ethiopian princess (this being confused with
Moses’s marrying Zipporah, the daughter of a Midianite chieftain).
(i) The
Though referred to in the
Genesis account after the Pishon and
the Gihon, I shall deal with the
Now, any doubt I think that the
antediluvian rivers known to Adam (whose later names Moses added) may be
different from the present day rivers is removed by editor Moses’s telling us
specifically: “And the name of the third
river is Tigris: the same passeth along by
the Assyrians” (var. “to the east of Ashur”) (v.14), which is perfectly accurate
since the city of Ashur, the religious capital of Assyria, was situated on the
west bank of the Tigris (unlike Nineveh, the political capital, on its east
bank).
The C2nd BC Book of Sirach (or
Ecclesiasticus) provides us with a further ancient testimony of these four
rivers of Genesis 2, even apparently as then currently active; but now with the inclusion of two new names, the Jordan and the Nile, that may well provide us with a clue to the all-important,
but un-named river of Paradise itself (Sirach 24:25-27):
This
is what makes wisdom brim like the Pishon,
like
the
what
makes understanding brim over like the
like
the
and
makes discipline flow like the
like
the Gihon at the time of vintage.
Some argue that the “Gihon” here is being identified with
the Nile; whilst others prefer, from their interpretation of the parallelism
used here, that Sirach had six rivers
in mind. Professor Yahuda, as we shall now find, will conclude quite
independently from this that there is a connection between Gihon and the Nile,
that the Gihon is in fact the Nubian
Nile.
(ii) The Pishon and Gihon
Yahuda now turns to the other
two rivers (pp. 171-2):
Now what rivers were meant by Pîšôn and
Gîhôn? Starting from the foregoing standpoint and considering that the
Euphrates and Tigris lay in the extreme
east of the then known world, one cannot go far wrong in assuming that it
was the author’s [sic] aim to set against the Mesopotamian pair of rivers
another pair at the opposite end of the world, viz. in the extreme west. This assumption is confirmed first of all by the
statement that the Gîhôn flowed through Kûš, which in the Bible invariably
denoted Nubia or Ethiopia, and which, according to the geographical conception
of those days, actually lay at the extreme western end of the world. If one
further considers that the two Mesopotamian rivers flow near to one another,
framing, so to speak, the eastern part of the world, one may assume that
similarly in the choice of the opposite pair of rivers, Pîšôn and Gîhôn, the
idea was dominant that they, too, flowed near to one another and delimited the
extreme western part of the world.
Professor Yahuda found the task
of identifying the Gihon “... greatly
simplified by the mention of Kûš,
And:
It follows that the Gîhôn, described in
Genesis 2:13 as ‘going round the whole land of Kûš’, can be no other than the Nubian Nile, i.e. that portion of the
Nile which compasses the region that, as we have shown, is identical with Kûš
proper. The emphasis on the ‘whole
land of Kûš’ indicates the author’s [sic] desire to determine exactly the
length of the river covering the entire extent of the Kûš of his time, namely
southern and northern Nubia, beginning at the first cataract.
Those interested can read for
themselves professor Yahuda’s explanation as to why he thought Gihon was an appropriate name for the
Nubian Nile (pp. 184ff).
Now to the Pishon:
Now that the Gîhôn question can be
considered as solved, let us turn to the Pîšôn, and on the strength of the
description of the region watered by it as a
land of gold, bdellium, and šôham (malachite or emerald), attempt to
identify the
After a detailed examination of
all relevant gold-yielding places professor Yahuda, for the Pishon region,
opted for:
.... The gold mines of the so-called
‘Arabian desert’ on the Egyptian side, south-east of upper Egypt, between
Assuan, Koptos (the present Kuft), and the
The boundaries of these mines can be
exactly determined: in the north is the ancient caravan route of Kene on the
Nile to Qosêr on the Red Sea, and in the south is the line that runs in a
south-easterly direction from the district of Gebel el-’Allâqi down to the Red
Sea. ... It was in this district that the Egyptians ... had the most important
gold mines after
(1) ‘Gold of Koptos’ (nb n gb.tyw),
(2) ‘Gold of Edfu’ (nb n db3), and
(3) ‘Gold of Ombos’ (nb n nbt).
Moreover, this same region
yielded the exact precious stones that the editor had ascribed to the environs
of the Pishon:
... this gold land is of still deeper
interest as it was very rich both in malachite and in emeralds; so much so that
apart from the Sinai Peninsula, which for many centuries supplied Egypt with
large quantities of malachite, it was the most productive source of this
semi-precious stone. We have thus established the fact that of the three
products which in Gen. 2:11 f. are described as proper to Hawîlâ, the most
valuable, gold and malachite (or emerald), certainly came from the district of
the Arabian desert.
Yahuda therefore concluded re
the course of the Pishon:
... it logically follows that Pîšôn can
only mean that portion of the
Again those interested may read
through professor Yahuda’s writings to learn why he thought that the name Pishon was appropriate to this part of
the Nile.
Professor Yahuda’s conclusion
that the Pishon “... can only mean the
portion of the
Moses had, as we found, added to
the statement in Isaac’s tôledôt
document that the Ishmaelites had “settled
from Havilah to Shur” (25:18), that this was “opposite Egypt in the direction of Assyria”. The New English Bible
translates it as “east of
This basic matrix for the four
rivers, though, has since been modified, and, perhaps, improved upon, in an
article, “The Lost Rivers of the Garden
of Eden”, that can be read at: http://www.kjvbible.org/rivers_of_the_garden_of_eden.html
The
author here skillfully aligns the four rivers with the Great Rift geological
system:
….
If we
have correctly identified all four rivers, we now have 2 rivers (Euphrates and
Tigris) originating today out of Turkey and another running down what was is
now the Red Sea south of Israel and deep into Africa, following the path of the
present-day Great Rift system. For the moment, we will also include the
previously discussed "fossil river" running through Saudi Arabia.
Look at the same map again:
The
yellow lines show the paths of the four rivers as proposed from what we have
discussed so far. You should note that we did not trace over the Euphrates and
Tigris rivers to their present-day sources, but terminated them close to the
Great Rift fault zone line.
You
will also note that we have not continued the proposed path of the
"Gihon" beyond the top of the Red Sea, and have terminated the
proposed "Pison" at the Great Rift fault zone line.
And here
follows the key issue:
All 4
of these rivers have one thing in common: All are connected to the Great Rift
system. And that is the key to the mystery. Two rivers presently originate out
of Turkey to the north and two other fossil rivers flowed south of Israel. The
geographical "center" of these four points of flow is neither Turkey
nor Kuwait; the center is somewhere near the general region of present day
Israel and Jordan.
The
Bible itself lends further credence to Israel (or someplace nearby) as the
location of the Garden of Eden. If you run the name "Eden" through a
search of the Bible, among several references the following ones provide some
insightful clues:
"Behold, the
Assyrian was a cedar in Lebanon with fair branches, and with a shadowing
shroud, and of an high stature; and his top was among the thick boughs. The
waters made him great, the deep set him up on high with her rivers running
round about his plants, and sent out her little rivers unto all the trees of
the field. Therefore his height was exalted above all the trees of the field,
and his boughs were multiplied, and his branches became long because of the
multitude of waters, when he shot forth. All the fowls of heaven made their
nests in his boughs, and under his branches did all the beasts of the field
bring forth their young, and under his shadow dwelt all great nations. Thus was
he fair in his greatness, in the length of his branches: for his root was by
great waters.
The cedars in the
garden
of God
could not hide him: the fir trees were not like his boughs, and the chesnut
trees were not like his branches; nor any tree in the garden of God was like unto
him in his beauty. I have made him fair by the multitude of his branches: so
that all the trees of Eden, that were in the garden of God, envied
him."
(Ezekiel 31:3-9
KJV)
In this
passage the Bible says that the Assyrian was in Lebanon. Spiritually speaking,
the "trees" in this passage refer to men and leaders. Cedar trees are
mentioned elsewhere in the Bible as references to Lebanon (Judges 9:15, Psalms
29:5 & 104:16, Song of Solomon 5:15, Isaiah 2:13, Jeremiah 22:23 and more).
Notice
also in the last of the passage that the Spirit associates the trees with
"Eden" that "were in the Garden of God." Lebanon, although
not a part of modern political Israel, was a part of the Biblical lands ruled
by the Kings of Israel in times past.
From
this we can infer that the Garden and the source of the rivers of the Garden
was somewhere close to the land of Lebanon.
Assuming
this postulation is correct, that the source of the four rivers was somewhere
near Lebanon, the interconnection of the river systems would need to be
somewhat like the map below:
What
roughly emerges, when all four rivers are connected to trace of the Great Rift
fault system, is a complex river network emerging from a common point of origin
that flows both north and south, with each north and south extension splitting
into two separate streams, for a total of four rivers. That adds up to four
separate heads.
The author
of this excellent article has rightly concluded that the ancient rivers had arisen
from a source different from that of today, and that their courses then, too,
were different:
Of
course, to propose such a reconstruction one would have to assume that the
present day headwaters of the Tigris and Euphrates were not the main source
headwaters in ancient times. It is possible that there could have been older
main tributaries previously flowing from Lebanon which were, at that time, the
main headwaters of those two rivers.
But the
so-called Kuwait River, which has been proposed as the lost river Pison, does
not seem to match with the common denominator of the others, that is the Great
Rift and branching fault systems. Based on the description of its path in the
Bible which says, "compasseth the whole land of
Havilah" and knowing from the geology of present day Yemen that
onyx can be found there, then this part of the verse, "where there is gold; And the gold of that land is good:
there is bdellium and the onyx stone" suggests an alternate path
for the River Pison, to the south of Yemen, and that would give us the path
indicated by the blue and yellow markings on the next graphic.
When
all factors are considered (Bible text and geology) … the paths indicated by
the dotted lines on the large map below [see original article] are probably
where those rivers flowed. And a southern path around Yemen puts the fourth
river squarely into the basin of the Great Rift system, flowing east from the
upwelling Afar Triangle.
….
These paths meets the requirement of the Biblical text
because the single river water source, originating from high ground somewhere
in or near present day Israel, hits the Rift Valley, then would have flowed
both north and south along the path of the Rift zone, with both the north and
south forks each splitting a second time when intercepting other fault zones.
….
Keep in
mind that the course of rivers around and through the vicinity of the Great
Rift fault system may have changed or dried up because of block faulting all
along the Rift zone.
….
The author
has concluded, as have I, that the Garden of Eden must have been situated in the
land of Palestine (I would say more specifically at the site of Jerusalem):
Now,
returning to the general area of Lebanon as the Biblical location of the Garden
of Eden and the water source for the four rivers, let us take a look at the
present-day geology and topography of that area. This map shows a great deal of
block faulting in the area of Lebanon just north of modern day Israel.
….
Below
is a satellite image of the entire area [see original article]. You will note
from the topographical relief that, had waters once flowed out of this area,
they would naturally flow northward into the Euphrates Fault system river
basin. At the time of the Garden of Eden the main headwaters of the Euphrates
could have come from that direction. If the water flow at that time continued
northward along the path of the Great Rift, it would also intersect the
present-day Tigris river basin.
The
prominent bodies of water along the Rift zone in this photo are the Dead Sea
(bottom) and Sea of Galilee (top). They are connected by the Jordan River which
flows south. Before the Earth was divided by the Rift, the mountainous land on
both the Israeli and Jordanian sides were joined. You are looking at
"ground zero" of what was once the Garden of Eden. ….
[End of quotes]
The
Ancient River System
The antediluvian system of
irrigation described in Genesis 2:5, whereby Eden was watered, not by rain but
by a river - by one river - has
continued to prevail in Egypt as professor Yahuda explained:
These are conditions which apply in much
greater measure to
... This contrast between Egypt and other
lands dependent on rain for their fertilization, was in the mind of our author
in contrasting Eden, exuberantly fertilized by river-water, and the dry and
barren ‘red earth’ longing for rain.
(Cf. Job 36:27; Sirach 24:3).
Little wonder, then, that the
Garden of Eden is likened in Hebrew literature to
Professor Yahuda, after he had
given meanings, or related meanings, for the Hebrew word Eden, such as ‘bodily vigour’, ‘youthfulness’, ‘blooming, exuberant
woman’, ‘exquisite delicacies’, ‘to be fat and luxurious’, concluded that Eden
was a most luxuriant oasis:
All this leads us to discern in [Eden] the word for oasis in
contrast to [adamah] (p. 139). As a matter of fact the expression
‘and God planted a garden in
From
there professor Yahuda went on to discuss the origin of the four rivers:
As far as [roshim]
‘heads’ is concerned, it has been
frequently pointed out that it can hardly denote ‘head streams’ because, on the
assumption that they went forth from one river, they ought to be described
rather as subsidiary or secondary rivers. Moreover, [roshim] could not mean
‘beginnings’ in the sense of the bifurcation or divagation of the rivers, as in
this case also they could not possibly be called ‘heads’.
In reality [rosh] is
used here for ‘origin’ or ‘source’ of the rivers. As a matter of fact this
meaning has already been suggested, as in Akkadian reš ‘eni, literally ‘head of the spring’, denotes the source and
origin of the spring.
But taking [yipharayd] erroneously to mean ‘divide’, it is not possible to form a clear idea
of how one stream could be divided into four prime sources. For should such a
division of a river into others be meant, the latter could only be described as
branches, and not original sources. This difficulty, however, disappears on
accepting the real meaning of [yipharayd]
as ‘separate’. The meaning of [umisham yipharayd] is simply that the one stream on leaving the garden was severed from
it, i.e. that it there ceased to continue flowing, so that no visible connexion
remained between the garden and the rest of the earth.
(Cf. Song of Songs 4:12: ‘... a garden enclosed, a sealed fountain
...’).
According to Yahuda the Paradise stream
went underground:
The narrator who conceived the whole earth,
[adamah], with the exception of the oasis, [Edin], as a wilderness, so visualized the disappearance of the stream, that,
on reaching the sandy soil beyond the oasis, it gradually vanished, being
swallowed up by the earth, but that it continued its course underground.
Thereby the conception of the common origin
in this one stream of the four rivers, widely separated from one another, was
rendered possible: under the earth, far away from the spot where the Paradise
river disappeared, its waters flowed in various directions until it reached the
sites where the sources lay from which the four rivers emerged and took their
course on the surface of the earth.
And it is in this very way that
the ancient Egyptians conceived of the
... This interpretation, based on purely
philological grounds, is illustrated in the most startling fashion by the
conceptions which the Egyptians had of the origin of the
It seems to me that this
mythological view of the Egyptians must have had its basis in some primeval
reality. That Genesis 2 is in very fact a description of an actual pristine
river system whose mark is still generally discernible today, whilst being,
however, only a feeble icon of the original as I intend to suggest in a moment
in regard to the
Hydrographers would surely be
able to ‘reclaim the original model’ to a great extent.
David Rohl (The Lost Testament, Century, 2002) has given an account of a
feature of the eastern river system - similar to what we have just seen for
Egypt - about the ‘spring hole’ near the Euphrates at the most ancient city of
Eridu (pp. 37-38):
The sandy mound upon which Enki’s shrine
was built [at Eridu] rose out of a reed swamp bordering on the
The River Corridors
German archaeologists speak of
an Ur Nil, or ancient
This is presumably the same as
is written about by scientist, Charles Peregrino (Return to Sodom and Gomorrah, Bard, 1998) - who has also given a
most interesting account of the thin river corridors of the Nile and Euphrates,
so essential for sustaining life in the Fertile Crescent (I. “The Fabulous
Riverworlds”) - when he writes for example (p. 47):
Under the
This is simply staggering!
Since the Genesis 2 description
of the antediluvian world of probably massive river systems is the only one
that precedes the account of the Flood, then it is logical – so I think – to
expect that the ‘breaking up of the fountains of the deep’ as referred to in
Genesis 7:11 must be connected, at least in part, to this great hydrographic
system that was vastly subterranean.
This ‘breaking up of the
fountains of the deep’, presumably caused by tectonic activity, plus the
torrential and persistent rains (7:12) - perhaps coupled with the
above-mentioned ‘breaking open of the Gibraltar dam’ - may have been the very
combined mechanisms causing “the world
that then was”, in St. Peter’s words, to become “deluged with water” and, thereby,
to have “perished” (2 Peter 3:6).
Centre
of World
“Thus says the
Lord GOD:
‘This is
Jerusalem. I have set her in the centre of the nations, with countries all
around her’.”
Ezekiel 5:5
The most common geographical
expression used in the first 4 chapters of Genesis (so devoid of specific
geographical indicators) is that general word/phrase, “[the] east”.
Thus the Lord plants “a garden in Eden, in the east” (2:8).
And “…east of the garden He placed the
cherubim” (3:24). And Cain “settled
in the land of Nod, east of Eden” (4:16). (This eastern orientation is taken up again in Ezekiel 47:8).
W.F. Albright, though, contended
most interestingly that Hebrew miqeddem
means “in primeval times” and not “from or in the east” (W. Albright
1968:97, as cited by Dr. Livingston). That would certainly make the more sense
for me, at least in regard to the usage of this phrase in Genesis 2:8; for it
would remove a geographical complication (by actually taking the geography
right out of it) that I had encountered in “The Location of Paradise”, when
trying to situate the Garden “in Eden, in
the east” (instead of, perhaps, “in
Eden, in primeval times”).
Presumably the Garden of Eden
still remained the primary point of reference or orientation for exiled man and
woman: their prototypal holy place. Just as Jerusalem would later be for the
Israelites/Jews even during their various exiles (Assyria, Babylon).
Based on the testimony of Jesus
as I have interpreted it, what became the site of Jerusalem was the very site
where Abel the Priest was slain by his envious brother, Cain, when the former
was bringing his acceptable offering unto the holy mountain (Genesis 4:4-8).
Wherever Adam and Eve may have dwelt subsequent to the Fall, the Garden of Eden
presumably continued to be the ‘altar’ to where Adam seasonally would bring his
offerings. Perhaps pious tradition can fill in at least one gap by telling us
that Adam (his head, at least) was buried at this sacred site (Jerusalem).
Thus R. Graves (The Greek Myths, 146:2): “… according to
Ambrose (Epistle vii. 2), Adam’s head was buried at Golgotha, to protect
Jerusalem from the north”.
This may, in fact, be the very
origin of the name of that place:
So they took Jesus; and carrying the Cross
by himself, he went out to what is called The Place of the Skull, which in
Hebrew is called Golgotha. There they crucified him … (John 19:17, 18).
The
Divine plan of salvation has this perfect symmetry about it:
the
New Adam redeemed humankind, died, was buried and rose, precisely where the Old
Adam had caused humankind’s Fall, and was ultimately buried.
Professor
Wyatt on the four rivers
“The
mountain would … not only arise out of the netherworld, but implicitly afford
an
entrance to it, a feature of cosmic centres such as this garden represents,
if
my argument is cogent. This centrality is borne out by the reference to the
four
rivers, logically (schematically) radiating out from the centre”.
Professor Nick Wyatt
The model of Paradise that professor Nick Wyatt depicts agrees with the
one that I have been putting forward, insofar, at least, as the Garden of Eden,
with its one river, is world centrally
(“Jerusalem-centred”) located.
Professor Wyatt, though, interestingly connects one of the four rivers,
the “Gihon”, with the spring of that name in Jerusalem.
Here is the early part of his absorbing article:
A Royal Garden: The Ideology
of Eden
https://www.academia.edu/27601631/A_Royal_Garden_The_Ideology_of_Eden
….
a)
The rivers
Let us begin our discussion with the matter of the rivers.
….
The rivers of Eden echo the widespread appearance of four streams
diverging from a common source in ancient Near Eastern glyptic art. In both
cases, it is one stream which becomes many, here apparently outside the garden
(Genesis 2.10).
We shall return below to the identity of these streams, and their
significance for the garden’s location.
b)
A mountain tradition?
But the first problem to treat is the ultimate source of these rivers,
the one primary stream. Is it, as most translators have it, a distillation from
a mysterious “mist” (’ēd …) which wells up from the underworld? This
would have no obvious parallel in the iconographic tradition, however realistic
it may be. Cyrus Gordon’s suggestion that the term should be seen as relating
to a Cretan (Minoan) term for or name of a mountain, as in Mount Ida, the
traditional birthplace of Zeus, is intriguing. This would allow harmonisation
with the Eden of Ezekiel 28, which is situated on a mountain.
Gordon noted that
Ida, the high mountain in central Crete, was associated in antiquity
with artistic workmanship. The name “Ida” may be the clue to the source of
major elements in the Hebrew creation account, which are not of Egyptian or
Mesopotamian origin. Gen 2,6 states that “’ēd rises out of the earth and
waters all the surface of the ground.”
The traditional rendering of “id as “mist” and the pan-Babylonian
identification with Sumerian id “river” are unsatisfactory. Rivers do
not rise; they descend. What rises from the earth to water the ground is a
mountain carrying its streams to the surrounding countryside. Accordingly, it
is worth considering that “ēd means Ida, pointing to East Mediterranean
elements in the Biblical Creation. There is one objection, however, that
requires clarification; namely, that the Greek form of Ida begins with long î-,
whereas “ēd reflects short i-. ….
Gordon also cited hdm id in the Ugaritic text KTU 1.4 i 34,
though this text is preferably to be corrected to hdm *il, and hdm
here is in any case probably Hurrian (atmi, admi), not
Minoan. …. But this caveat does not affect Gordon’s overall argument.
Further support for such a harmonisation can be found in the vision of a
future paradise in Isaiah 11,6-8 (see v. 9). …. And even if Gordon’s particular
argument be rejected, it remains a useful heuristic tool in pointing us in the
right direction: the welling up of the primal stream still implies an upland,
that is mountain, scenario. For what it is worth, it should be observed that on
the Mari fresco, to be discussed below, the foreground at the bottom shows a
scale-pattern, which is the conventional way of representing mountains in
glyptic art.
The mountain would, as in the description here, not only arise out of
the netherworld, but implicitly afford an entrance to it, a feature of cosmic
centres such as this garden represents, if my argument is cogent. This
centrality is borne out by the reference to the four rivers, logically
(schematically) radiating out from the centre. This approach would also obviate
the necessity felt by some scholars to see in Genesis 2-3 and Ezekiel 28 two
different conceptions of Eden (one with, and one without, a mountain). It makes
more sense to see two allusions to the same common symbolic tradition, and
indeed in this instance to see one (Genesis) as literarily dependent on the
other (Ezekiel) [sic], as we shall see.
Margaret Barker’s observations may also allow us to see these gardens
harmonised in Isaiah 14, which, while not explicitly Edenic, surely represents
the same mythical nexus, though it has now diverged, and deals more
specifically with a mortuary context.
In Isaiah 14, the disobedient royal figure is the king of Babylon, or
some other great power, but the narrative is a West Semitic myth. Margaret
Barker argued that:
Ezekiel’s oracles [in chapter 28] are clearly in the same setting [as
that of Isaiah 14]. The first deals with a fallen god, and the second
apparently with the first man in Eden. If we read the two together, in the
light of the fallen figure in Isaiah, we see that the two figures are one, and
that the problems in reading this text come from our using categories and
distinctions quite alien to Ezekiel. The fallen god and the figure expelled
from Eden were one and the same. Thus Ezekiel forms a link between Isaiah 14
and Genesis 2-3. Ezekiel’s Eden is a strange magical place: I believe that we
glimpse here the mythology of the old temple… ….
Damien Mackey’s comment: For my preferred identification of Ezekiel’s fallen king of Tyre,
however, see my article:
The
Fallen King of Tyre
Nick Wyatt
continues:
The kind of intertextuality Barker recognised here is exactly the level
of sensitive comprehension that is essential for the appreciation of the
mythical world of biblical literature. Furthermore, Bernard Gosse, followed by
Terje Stordalen, also noted that the oracle of Ezekiel 28,12b-15, directed in
its present form against the ruler of Tyre, would originally have been
addressed to the high priest (for which we should perhaps read rather the king)
in Jerusalem.
….
The question is even worth raising—though any answer must remain
speculative—as to whether the melek ṣôr in 28,11 (and the corresponding nĕgîd ṣôr in 28,1) really does designate the ruler of Tyre, and not rather the
“ruler of the rock”, that is, the sacred mountain in Jerusalem.
….
This is all the more plausible in a world of divine kingship, since
“Rock” (ṣôr) was a title of Yahweh
himself. …. We may further note that Targum Pseudo-Jonathan on Genesis 2,15
involves an allusion to a mountain; though it is not explicitly identified with
the garden, this may be implicit:
And the Lord God took Adam from the mountain of the service, the place
from where he had been created, and made him dwell in the Garden of Eden, so as
to be serving in the Torah and observing its commandments.
The location of Eden at the centre of the world
Much ink
has also been spilt on the vexed problem of the location of Eden, but the idea
of four rivers radiating out from a single source (the reverse of what happens
in nature, except at deltas) suggests the idea of a centre and its relationship
to the cardinal points. Equally artificial is the location of El’s dwelling in
Ugaritic tradition, which is also a cosmic centre, as described in Ugaritic
texts KTU 1.2 iii 4, 1.3 v 5-7, 1.4 iv 21-22, 1.5 vi [-3 to -1, to be
restored], 1.6 i 33-34:
Then he
set his face indeed towards El at the source of the rivers, amidst the springs
of the two deeps... ….
Though I
previously took these rivers to be plural (four in number, corresponding to
those of Genesis 2) … I think now that they may well be rather two, as riverine
aspects of the two deeps of the second colon cited. …. One lay above the
firmament, and one below the earth or netherworld, as in Hebrew cosmology. A
remarkable citation of this in the Qur’an (18.61-62) indicates the longevity of
the cosmology behind the formula. ….
The identity of the rivers
As to the
identity of the rivers, two, the Tigris and the Euphrates, are immediately
recognisable. The other two have been regarded as problematic. The Gihon was
identified with the Nile by the LXX of Jeremiah 2,18, followed by Josephus, Antiquities
1.1.3 … who also in the same passage identified the Pishon with the Ganges.
But Jeremiah himself had used the term šiḥôr for the
Nile … and the explicit identification with the Gihon can thus only be dated
with certainty from the time of the Greek translation, ca 300 BC. On the
contrary, it was the Pishon that was interpreted by Manfred Görg … as the Nile,
from the Egyptian expression p3 šny, “the encompassing one,” the
river being conceptualised as an extension of the cosmic ocean surrounding the
world. This is perhaps more compelling than Neiman’s proposal … to link
the Pishon to Hebrew peten, “snake,” a metaphor for the serpentine
ocean, though the term discerned by del Olmo … who proposed that bāšān
(Ugaritic bṯn, usually
cited as cognate with peten) should be recognised as having serpentine
and maritime associations in various geographical contexts, followed up by
myself … seems to be another reasonable etymological possibility.
So I have
suggested in a discussion of oceanic language that in Deuteronomy 33,22 we
should understand the text as follows:
Dān gûr caryê
Dan, the whelp of a sea-monster
yĕzannēq min-habbāšān springs
forth from the Serpent (sc. the Ocean).
This
meaning is concordant with Dan’s original maritime location in the Shephelah
(cf. Judges 5,17) before its migration to northern Galilee. A link with the sea
peoples [sic] is suggested for Dan and Asher by Judges 5,17 and for Zebulun by
Genesis 49,13.
The
Egyptian and Ugaritic etymological proposals for Pishon are both attractive.
Regarding
the Gihon of Genesis 2,13, Neiman also proposed an interesting link between the
Hebrew gîḥôn, which he
associated with the snake’s belly (gāḥôn — gĕḥonĕkâ) in
Genesis 3,14 and with Greek (Ὠκεανός). …. The
latter, in encircling the Greek world, is like the Gihon, which “encircles the
whole land of Cush”. Whether or not this be regarded as a viable etymology, it
is at least a likely paronomasia, and the Gihon also had a local reference, as
the stream supplying Jerusalem with water, and also used in royal rituals, as
in 1 Kings 1,33-34. 38-40 (Solomon’s coronation), and presumably in Psalm
110,7:
Minnaḥal badderek yišteh From the
stream from the throne he drinks,
cal-kēn yārîm r’ōš and thus he raises up
heads ….
I have
taken derek in this latter passage to represent the idea of “dominion”,
translated here metonymically as “throne”, to be compared with Ugaritic drkt,
as perhaps in Job 12,24 and Psalm 107,40. The Gihon in Jerusalem is perhaps
also alluded to in Psalm 36,9-10:
yirwĕyun middešen bêtekâirw They are filled with the abundance of your
house,
wĕnaḥal *cēdenĕkâ tašqēm and the stream of your Eden gives them to drink.
kî-cimmĕkâ mĕqôr ḥayyîm For with you is the
fountain of life:
*bĕ’ērĕkâ nir’ê-’ôr in your
well a light is seen
reading
the Masoretic text plural cӑdānêkâ (“in your
delights”) as singular *cedēnĕkâ, and Masoretic bĕ’ôrkâ (“in
your light”) as *bĕ’ērĕkâ (“in your well”), in parallel with mĕqôr,
“fountain,” of the preceding colon. “They” of the first colon here are “the
gods and the sons of man” of v. 8. …. The stream is to be associated with the
throne, as will be demonstrated below. If the proposed singular reading *cedēnĕkâ
be accepted, we have a clear, implicit identification of Eden with
Jerusalem, since “your house” of the preceding colon can only be the Jerusalem
temple. ….
The implications of the identity of the rivers for
locating Eden
What are
we to make of these riverine data in terms of actually locating the garden? It
hardly provides compelling evidence for a Mesopotamian location, as for those
who took the name Eden (cēden) to represent the Sumerian EDIN
= Akkadian edinu, the plain between the Tigris and the Euphrates. ….
Such a location ignores the claims of the Pishon and the Gihon for inclusion
within the writer’s immediate purview. To reject the original identification of
the paradisal and the Jerusalem Gihon in view of this evidence, on the strength
of its later identification with the Nile (Jeremiah LXX et al.) would
seem to me to be perverse. What we have here are two different explanations for
the data, which on any analysis remain incompatible. (On Neiman’s analysis,
mentioned above, the two are even reconciled.) To my mind the local
significance of the Gihon for Jerusalem is to be taken seriously, in view of
the evidence we have adduced.
….
Even if
the etymology of the cosmic Gihon be unknown, and unconnected with the
Jerusalem stream (the latter means “Gusher” … which is quite improbable, it is
hard to believe that the similarity—or even identity—of the two names was not
clearly in the author’s mind. That is, he was intentionally evoking Jerusalem,
even if not wishing to name it. …. This would also preclude any location of
Eden further east, as far afield as Armenia, as proposed by a number of
scholars … or even India, as suggested on various mediaeval maps.
….
Furthermore,
it would certainly remove Eden from the “never-never land” category some other
scholars seem determined to apply to it. …. The four rivers represent the three
major systems of the ancient Near East and the world-ocean, but crucially link
them with the sacred waters of the city of Jerusalem itself. The point of
allusions to the Tigris and the Euphrates in a Jerusalem-centred text is surely
to extend the sacrality of the latter, the place from which the Jews had been
deported, to the place of their exile (a feature which obviously has a bearing
on the dating of the text). We see a similar pattern of the implicit inclusion
of the place of exile within the sacred territory in the stories of Jacob’s
dream and of Moses’s vision of the burning bush. ….
Theological
Structure of Paradise
“On the summit of Mount Paradise stood the Tree of Life, representing
the divine presence, or the Holy of Holies, an area Adam and Eve were not
allowed to enter ….
The Tree of Knowledge marked the demarcation line (analogous to the
veil in the sanctuary …) to the next level, the slopes of the mountain.
The lower slopes, finally, indicate the realm where the animals lived.
Along the foothills is the fence, produced by the cherub with the
revolving sword …”.
Matthias Henze writes of the Theological Structure of
Paradise according to the interpretation of it by St. Ephrem Syrus, a Christian
theologian, poet, hymnist, and doctor of the church
(conventionally dated to c. 306 -373 AD):
THE MADNESS OF
KING NEBUCHADNEZZAR
The
Ancient Near Eastern Origins and Early History
of
Interpretation of Daniel 4
Brill, 1999
....
2. In the
beginning God created the creation,
the fountainhead
of delights;
the house which
he constructed
provisions those
who live therein,
for upon His
gift
innumerable
created beings depend;
from a single
table
does He provide
every day for
each creature
all things in
due measure (Ps. 145:15-16).
Grant that we
may acknowledge
Your grace, O
Good One.
RESPONSE:
Through Your grace make me worthy
of that Garden
of happiness.
3. A garden full
of glory,
a chaste bridal
chamber,
did he give to
that king
fashioned from
the dust,
sanctifying and
separating him
from the abode
of wild animals;
for glorious was
Adam
in all things –
in where he
lived and what he ate,
in his radiance
and dominion.
Blessed is He
who elevated him above all
so that he might
give thanks to the Lord of all ….
In these two stanzas Ephrem articulates his view of
Paradise and its (theological) geography.
He conceives of Paradise as a circular mountain
which circumscribes the entire world. When Cain says to Abel in the Peshitta,
“Let us go the valley …” (Gen 4:8, Syriac pqatā’, the
Hebrew is lacking at this point; the LXX reads εìς τò πεδíον, i.e., ‘to
the field’), this implied for Ephrem that their home was on a mountain.
….
The Paradise mountain is then divided further into
three concentric circles, designating three levels of sacred space. A careful
reading of the Genesis narrative provides the key to understanding the
distinctive qualities of these three degrees of holiness. In Gen 3:3 Eve
reports to the serpent that God had commanded them not to touch the tree
(Hebrew lō(̒) tigg’û
bô). Hebrew nāga‘ is ambiguous and can mean either ‘to
touch’, or ‘to draw near’. The ambiguity is retained in the Peshitta (Syriac lā(’)
tetqarrbûn), yet the verb used in Syriac (qreb in the Ethpa.)
readily lends itself to Ephrem’s interpretation, which reads the command to
mean ‘to approach’, rather than ‘to touch’. The Syriac thus implies that the
divine prohibition was rather strict in nature and ruled out not only the
touching of, but even the drawing near to, the tree.
In his Commentary on Genesis, Ephrem offers
the same interpretation.
The tempter then turned his mind to the commandment
of Him who had set down the commandment, that [Adam and Eve] were not only
commanded not to eat from one single tree, but they were not even to draw near
to it. The serpent then realized that God had forewarned them abut even looking
at it lest they become entrapped by its beauty. […]
The serpent remained silent, for it perceived
immediately that Eve was about to succumb. It was not so much the serpent’s
counsel that entered her ear and provoked her to eat from the tree at it was
her gaze, which she directed toward the tree, that lured her to pluck and eat
of its fruit…..
The fact that Adam and Eve were forbidden even to
draw near to the tree called for an explanation.
In his commentary, Ephrem suggest that Eve had to
be guarded from gazing at the tree simply because the tree’s beauty would have
enticed her immediately into longing for the fruit – which is, after all, what
happened after the serpent seduced her.
In his Hymns on Paradise, however, Ephrem
provides a different explanation. The closest analogue for the divine
prohibition not to draw near in the Hebrew Bible is found in passages that deal
with notion of sacred space, such as the theophany at Mount Sinai, or the
Divine Presence in the Temple in Jerusalem. In either case we find a tripartite
structure, i.e., three concentric circles which serve as demarcations of
increasing degrees of holiness organized around the divine presence in the
center. God’s command to Eve not to draw near to the tree therefore had to
imply that the geography of Paradise followed the same pattern.
On the summit of Mount Paradise stood the Tree of
Life, representing the divine presence, or the Holy of Holies, an area Adam and
Eve were not allowed to enter (cf. Hymns on Paradise III.3). The Tree of
Knowledge marked the demarcation line (analogous to the veil in the sanctuary;
cf. III.13.17) to the next level, the slopes of the mountain.
The lower slopes, finally, indicate the realm where
the animals lived.
Along the foothills is the fence, produced by the
cherub with the revolving sword (IV.1).
Returning to stanza three in hymn XIII, the “garden
full of glory, a chaste bridal chamber” is a common epithet for Mount Paradise
in Ephrem’s hymns. Adam, here referred to as king, was fashioned from dust,
still within the lower slopes of the mountain, an area he shared with the
beasts. He names the animals, as Ephrem reports in the previous hymn … and is
venerated by them. Adam then discovers his need for a mate, and God creates
Eve. It is at this point that Adam and Eve are separated geographically from the
animals and enter the middle slopes of the garden. In the words of our hymn
(XIII.3), God was “sanctifying and separating him from the abode of wild
animals; for glorious was Adam in all things – in where he lived and what he
ate, in his radiance and dominion”.
Ephrem is quite specific about the distinctive
qualities of Adam’s and Eve’s new environ: no animals dwell here. The first
human beings are thus blessed with a unique domicile, food, radiance, and
dominion. These last lines, of course, anticipate the comparison with
Nebuchadnezzar, who claimed many of the same privileges.
4.
The king of Babylon resembled
Adam
king of the universe:
both
rose up against the one Lord
and
were brought low;
He
made them outlaws,
casting
them afar.
Who
can fail to weep,
seeing
that these free-born kings
preferred
slavery
and
servitude.
Blessed
is He who releases us
so
that His image might no longer be in bondage.
At this point, Ephrem introduces the key
hermeneutic maneuver of the entire hymn, the exegetical coordination of Adam
and Nebuchadnezzar. The obvious analogies between the two kings are quickly
outlined. Like Adam, Nebuchadnezzar indulged in royal splendor. Yet, both
heroes proved unable to remain content with their appointed status. Becoming
increasingly greedy, they grew arrogant before God. Even their swift
punishments were analogous in that both were expelled into an exile among the
beasts.
5.
David wept for Adam,
at
how he fell
from
that royal abode
to
the abode of wild animals (Ps 49:13).
Because
he went astray through a beast
he
became like the beasts:
He
ate, together with them
as a
result of the curse,
grass
and roots,
and
he died, becoming their peer.
Blessed
is He who set him apart
from
the wild animals again.
The discussion returns to Adam, and a new text is
introduced, Ps 49:13, “Man (Hebrew ’ādām) does not abide in
(Hebrew yālîn) honor; he is like the beasts that perish.” Like the
rabbis, Ephrem saw in the third part of the biblical canon a storehouse of
interpretive tools which, once juxtaposed with a verse from the Torah, shed
light on the cryptic line under consideration. Jewish exegetes read the verse
from Psalm 49 as an explanation about how long Adam resided in Paradise: Adam
was expelled from his elevated status in less than a day’s time.
….
Ephrem chooses a different interpretation. In the
Peshitta, the first half of verse 13 reads, “Man (Syriac bārnā šā’) did
not take notice (Syriac ’etbayyan) … of his honor”, which Ephrem
understands to imply that Adam, here understood as the individual, rather than
as the collective as the Syriac would suggest, took no cognizance of his
elevated status he enjoyed at the moment when God led him (and Eve) away from
the animals to the next higher level on Mount Paradise.
Adam was careless and forfeit his privileged
status.
The stanza provides us with the first glimpse into
the ultimate message Ephrem seeks to communicate through his comparison of Adam
and Nebuchadnezzar, and to which he will return at greater length in a short
moment. Like Adam, we as well are unaware of our present status. Ephrem’s goal
thus is to enable us to see what we have lost, since only by discerning this
loss can we appreciate what we are lacking and develop a desire to be restored.
….
