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Gen. ii. 8-14.
Our attention having been wholly occupied with “time”, we have hitherto found no opportunity to give heed to the testimony of the Scriptures concerning “place”. We have the first topographical note in early Genesis:
“And the Lord God planted a garden eastward in Eden” (Gen. ii. 8).
The name of this country, in which Paradise was planted, means “delight”, and the word occurs in various forms six times, being translated “pleasure” and “pleasures”, “to delight”, “delights”, and “delicates”. Eden itself, the country, is named exactly 14 times in the O.T., where it is found in Genesis, Isaiah, Ezekiel and Joel. As we should expect, the name is found in other languages. In Arabic it signifies “delight”, “tenderness” and “loveliness” (Firuzabadi Kamus). In the cuneiform texts it signifies the plains of Babylon, and in the Accado-Sumerian (inhabitants of Mesopotamia that preceded the Babylonians) it is Edin, “the fertile plain”. The Greek word hedone, meaning “pleasure”, is used in the LXX of Isa. xxxvii. 12; Ezek. xxvii. 23 and Amos i. 5, although these “Edens” have no reference to Gen. ii. 8. It was because of their beauty or pleasantness that the districts were called by this name. The Eden of Gen. ii. 8, is the most ancient name in all geography. The garden of Gen. ii. was planted “eastward” in Eden. In his translation of Rosenmuller’s Biblical Geography of Central Asia the Rev. N. Morran has reduced the numerous theories as to the exact situation of Eden to nine, but none of them answer all the conditions of the problem. This brings us to an important question. For whose information were the geographical notes of Gen. ii. 8-14 written? Were they given by God to Adam? We can see no reason why the information should have been given to him. We know that it was given in writing by Moses, and, to illustrate and enforce the point we desire to make, we turn to another geographical note. In Gen. xxiii. we have the record of the death of Sarah, in which Moses wrote:
“And Sarah died in Kirjath-arba, the same is Hebron in the land of Canaan” (Gen. xxiii. 2).
It is evident that when Moses took up his pen to write the book of Genesis, he had in his possession the several “books of the generation” of his fathers. In the family documents relating to Abraham and Sarah, the place where Sarah died is called by but one name, Kirjath-arba, but, later, for the benefit of Israel who were then about to enter the promised land under Joshua, Moses gives the more modern name of the ancient city, namely “Hebron”, and, in Numb. xiii., adds a note,
“Now Hebron was built seven years before Zoan in Egypt” (Numb. xiii. 22).
If, therefore, when he wrote Genesis, Moses found it expedient to bring its ancient geography up to date we must be prepared to find his explaining pen at work in Gen. ii. When we realize that the flood in the days of Noah, must have seriously altered the configuration of the land, diverted the course of rivers, buried some tracts of land beneath the sea, and brought up above sea-level, some part of the sea-bed, we can readily see that references to geographical boundaries, countries and rivers true in the days of Adam, may, in Moses’ day, have proved valueless, except for archæological purposes. Moreover, one of the lands mentioned in Gen. ii. is Ethiopia. Now in the Hebrew this word is “Cush”, and as Cush was not born until over two thousand years after Adam, to speak of Adam knowing the land by the name of one of his descendants who lived two thousand years after his time would be an anachronism.
Ethiopia, in Africa, is not the only land of Cush. Cush was the father of Seba, Havilah, and Sabtechah (Gen. x. 7, 8); Nimrod moved northward into Assyria, the others went South and settled in Arabia, consequently, there is no reason why we should introduce a region of Africa into Gen. ii. We must, however, return to the record of Gen. ii. Moses tells us that the river which watered the garden, parted, and was divided into four heads. The word “head” being rosh, we must understand this to refer to the sources of these rivers, not their mouths.
“The name of the first is Pison: that is it which compasseth the whole land of Havilah, where there is gold; and the gold of the land is good; there is bdellium and the onyx stone.”
Nothing further is said of this river in Scripture but the Companion Bible tells us that it flows West of the Euphrates, and that in the year of Nabonides, the last king of Babylonia, it was called Pullakat. Havilah is associated with “Shur, that is before Egypt as thou goest toward Assyria”, (Gen. xxv. 18), and Ophir, famous for its gold (Job xxviii. 16), is associated with Havilah in Gen. x. 29; and again Moses gives the added note:--
“And their dwelling was from Mesha, as thou goest unto Sephar a mount of the East”
(Gen. x. 30).
If four great rivers took their rise from the river that watered Paradise, it is plain that Paradise itself must have been in an elevated tract of country. Lenormantsays, “Eden, in the Accadian and Sumerian texts is used sometimes to designate a plain in opposition to a mountain. But this is never the bottom of the valley . . . . .” The Tigris (Hiddekel, Accadian for Tigris) and the Euphrates both rise in Armenia, thus, once again, we observe a connection between Adam and Noah, for the Ark rested on “one of the mountains of Ararat”, which tradition places in Armenia. Two other rivers take their rise in this region, the Kur and the Araxes, which flow into the Caspian Sea. These rivers cannot be identified with the Pison or the Gihon, but such may be what remains of them since the disruption at the flood. As the Bible is the only book that declares that this district is the cradle of the human race, it has for thirty three centuries been ahead of the “science” of the day.
Quatrefages, the great French scientist and anthropologists, says, “that the study of the various populations, and of their languages, has led scientists of the greatest deliberation and authority to place the cradle of the human race in Asia, not far from the central mass of that continent, and in the neighbourhood of the region where all the principal rivers which plough their way to the north, to the south, and to the east, take their rise”. It is in Central Asia alone that wheat is indigenous, and must have been carried thence by man as he spread abroad. In Gen. ii. 12 Moses speaks of the gold, the bdellium and the onyx stone as constituting an easy means of identifying this district. The word bdellium occurs but twice in Scripture, once in Gen. ii. 12, and once in Numb. xi. 7, where the manna is likened to it. This shows that Israel, for whom Moses wrote, were well acquainted with this substance, though today there may be uncertainty as to its identity. The LXX considered it to be a precious stone, and translate the word by anthrax and krystallos, while Aquila, Symmachus and Theodotion render it bdellium, a transparent aromatic gum which is formed by a tree that grows in Arabia. The Rabbis, however, translate the word by “Pearl”.
In our earlier studies, we have found that the references to “time” in Gen. i., ii. 3 have a symbolic value far outweighing their primitive meaning. As we look at this first great reference to “place” are we not justified in expecting that its description answers some more important purpose than that of satisfying the Israelites as to the identity of the site of Paradise?
Three great streams of humanity have their origin in this district; the descendants of Shem, Ham and Japheth, and, mingled with the descendants of the true seed preserved alive in the ark, we learn of the Canaanite, and their frightful progeny.
“In the following times of history, we have seen how the river of mankind from the mountains of Armenia poured itself into the plains of the Tigris and the Euphrates. The tribes of men went forth unto the regions of the stream of Paradise, acquired power and gathered riches. But of gold they made gods, decked them with jewels and brought incense to the things which have noses and smell not” (Dr. M. Baumgarten Theological Com. on O.T.).
Whether this be so or not may perhaps remain a moot point, but it seems reasonable to suppose that in a book which covers 2000 years of history in eleven chapters (Gen. i.-xi.) not one verse, certainly not seven (Gen. ii. 8-14), would be devoted to matter transient in its application, and the original meaning of which is now beyond the power of man to ascertain. The geography of the book that brings before us the glorious prophecy of Paradise restored, is centred around the same land that is brought before us in Gen. ii. The references to Asia Minor on the West (Rev. i.-iii.); beyond the Euphrates on the East (Rev. xvi. 12); with Jerusalem and Babylon as rival cities and systems, enable us to see that not only does Revelation corresponds with Genesis as to the entry and removal of the Serpent, sin, death and curse, but that the very geographical site of Eden, may yet form
the earthly basis of the heavenly city when at last it descends from God out of heaven. Its gold will indeed be good, its stones most precious, and its gates pearls (see the earlier reference to the Rabbinical interpretation of bdellium).
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