Ed (Hastings' Dictionary)

In the Hebrew (and also in the Greek) text of Jos 22" the name given by the two and a half tribes to the altar erected by them on the east bank of the Jordan has dropped out. Our English tran.slators have tilled the gap by inserting Ed aa the name of the altar in question. For this they have the authority of a few MSS (see de Rossi, Varies Lectiones Vet. Test., in lot ). The Syriac (Peshitta) reads Nnnnin Knmo 'altar of witness.' The suggestion of Dillmann in his commentary.

Die, Bitcher Num. Deut. u. Josua (1886), that the original text had 1H^3 Gal'ed (aa Gn 31", EV Galeed), ' Mound of witness,' has been very favourably received ( Oettli, Kautzsch, Bennett. See footnote). This name was probably dropped by some later copyist or editor wlio detected therein a possible inconsistency with the earlier narrative in Gn 31. The MT in its present form can only mean that the name of the altar was the whole sentence : It -is -a- witness -between -us -that -J"- is- God 1 A.

R. S. Kennedy. EDDINUS ('ESSfixoCt B, '^SBivovi A), one of the 'holy singers' at Josiahs passover, 1 Es 1". In the parallel passage 2 Ch 35'° the corresponding name is Jeduthun, which is read also, contrary to MS authority, by AV in 1 Es. The text of the latter is probably corrupt. EiSeivoSi may have arisen from one or other of the numerous Gr. equivalents (perhaps 'ESeiSow) of the name Jedu- thun, but a more difficult question is the sub- stitution in the same verse of Zacharias (wh.

see) for Heman. J. A. Selbie. EDEN ipv)- — A Levite in the time of Hezekiah (2 Ch 29'= 31"). EDEN (ni;)-— !• 'The children of E. which are (not were as in EV) in Telassar' are enumerated in 2 K 19" ( = Is 37") amongst the peoples con- quered by Sennacherib's predecessors.

Telassar, if Schrader is right in identifying it with Til- Ahirri of the inscriptions, lay on the east of the Tigris, and must have been the district to which the conquered had been deported, in accordance with the custom introduced by Tiglath-pileser Ul. From their being mentioned along with Gozan, Haran, and Rezeph, we naturally seek for the original home of the Bgn6-Eden in Mesopotamia. They are doubtless the Bit- .

i din i of the inscrip- tions, an Aramsean principality in the far west of Mesopotamia, some 200 miles N.N.E. of Damascus, which we know to have offered a stubborn resistance to Assur-na?ir-pal, and to have been conquered by Shalmaneser II., B.C. 856 (see Assyria, pp. 183^ 184'').

In Ezk 27' Eden is mentioned amongst the traders with Tyr» The name here also occurs in connexion with Haran, and is therefore probably Bit- Adini, although the This location U required by the whole t«nor of the narrative. The west bank is sugrpested by v. 10 in its present form, and maintained also by UV in v. 11, by a translation of doubtful admissibility, ' in tne forefront of the land of Canaan, ork tJie tid* thai pertaineth to the chiUiren of Itrofl.' See further th« Comm. in too.

, and Bennett'i edition of Joshua in Baupl'i polychrome OT. eonjecture of Margoliouth (see Arabia, p. 131''), that it may be the modem Aden in S. AJ-abia, is not without plausibility. LiTERATm.— Schrader, KAT>, 827; DeUtisch on Is 8712; DavidsoD od Ezk 27^ ; Fnl. Delitzsch, Paradiu, 4, 9ti, IM. X ' The house of Eden ' (AVm and RVm Beth- eden) is mentioned in Am 1.

The context has led to the inference that it was in the neighbourhood of Damascus, ' some royal paradise in that region which is still the Paradise of the Arab world' (G. A. Smitli, Twelve Prnph. 125). Ewuld (Pro- phets, i. 159, Eng. tr.) identities it with the Para- due of Strabo, xvi.

2, 19 ; and Farrar (Minor Prophets, 53) thinks it may be Beit el -janne ' House of Paradise ' (see, however, Driver's note on Am 1'), about eight miles from Damascus, referring in support of this view to Porter (Five Years in Damascus, i. 313). Driver considers the most probable identifications to be (1) the modern Ehden, 20 mUes N.W. of Ba.albek ; or (2) Bit- 'Adini, described above. Wellhausen (Kl. Proph.

68) considers it improbable that Beth-eden is to be sought near Dtunascus, and is sceptical also about identifying Aven of the same passage with Baalbek. (See, further, G. Hoffmann in ZAW, 1883, p. 97 ; Schroder, KA V p. 442 ; and esp. Driver, Joel and Amos, 132 f., 228 f.) J. A. Selbie.