Eden (Hastings' Dictionary)

We read that ' the Lord God planted a garden in Eden, eastward, and there put the man whom he had formed ' (Gn 2*). ' And a river went out of Eden to water the garden ; and from thence it was parted, and became four heads' (v.'") Two of these were the Tigris and Euphrates ; a third was the Pison, which compassed the land of Havilah ; the fourth being the Gihon, which com- passed Gush.

After Adam had been expelled from ♦he Paradise, his firstborn, Cain, 'dwelt in the land of Nod, on the east of Eden,' and there built the city of Enoch (Gn 4'"). Eden means ' deli;;ht ' in Hebrew, and the posi- tion of its garden has been assiraed to various parts of the world. P2ven the North Pole and Australia have found advocates. Josephus (Ant. L i 3), the Book of Enoch (xxxii), and Cosmas Indicopleustes place it in the extreme north-east, towards the Altai mountains of Mongolia.

San- son, Keland, Calmet, Bunsen, Keil, and von Raumer locate it in Armenia, between the sources of the Tigris and Euphrates, the Araxes and the Phasis. Calvin, Bochart, Huet, Rask, and the modem Assyriolo^ts assign it to Chaldoea. Le Clercq places it in the neighbourhood of Damascus, be- tween the Chrysorrlioas and the Orontes ; while Heidegger seeks for it in Palestine, near the sources of the Jordan; and Haniouin and HalAvy in southern Arabia. Renan identiliu.

s Eden with CdyAna, ' the garden,' near Kashmir; Bertheau, La-ssen, Obry, pie^el, and Lenormant, with the Meru of the Hinilu Puranas, and the Ain'ana-VaOja and Har.1- Berezaiti of the Zoroastrian VendidAd and Avesta. Meru seems primarily to have denoted the moun- tains alK)ve tlie Pamir, Airj-ana-Va6ja being the country between the sources of the Oxus and Jaxartcs, and Har.1, Berezaiti the Belur, dagh.

Ezk 28'* is appealed to in behalf of the theory that the garden of Eden was on a mountain, though the text may be difTerently explained. The rivers Pison and (!ihon have been the snb- i'ect of a similar variety of identifications. Josephus, Jusebius, Augustine, Ambrose, and Jerome make the Pison the Ganges, Cosmas Indicopleustes iclenti- fies it with the Indus, while the Jewish commen- tators, Sa'adyaand Rashi, as well as the Samaritans, declare it to bo the Nile.

The Nile, on the other hand, is iden'ified with the Gihon by Joscplius (Ant. I. i. 3,, most of the Fathers, Kalisch, Gesenius, Lengerke, and Bertheau, as well as in Sir 24"». The Sept. also, in Jer 2'«, substitutes Gihon (Vtiuv) for Sihor, the .Nile. Cosmas makes Gihon the Ganges ; the Samaritan version calls it the Askiiph, which seems to be the Cho-aspes. Mohamnieilan wTilers identified the Gihon and Pison with the 0.

\us and Jaxartes, whence their modern names of Jilifln and Sihtin, which were transferred by the Seljuk Turks to the Pyramus and Sarus in Cilicia. St. Martin identities the Pison with the waterless Wady er-Kuma in Arabia. The cuneiform inscriptions have, however, cleared up the geography of the garden of Eden. The Sumerian name of the 'plain' of Babylonia was Ediii, which was adopted by the Semites under the form of Edinu. Its A.SS3T. equivalent was Zeru, corresponding to the Arab.

Zor, the name still applied to the ' depression ' between the Tigris and Euphrates. These rivers formerly flowed immedi- ately into the Persian Gulf, thoui;li, owing to the silt annually deposited by them, theirancient mouths are now more than eiglity miles distant from the sea. The seaport of primitive Chald;ea was Eridu, ' the good city,' now AbuShalirein, which stood near the mouth of the Euphrates.

In its neigh- bourhood was a garden, 'a holy place,' wherein grew the sacred palm-tree — the tree of life — whose roots of bright lapis lazuli were planted in the cos- mic abyss, whose position marked the centre of the world, and whose foliage was tlie couch of the goddess I'aliu, while the god Tanimuz dwelt in the shrine under the shadow of its branches, within which no mortal had ever entered.

An oracle was attached to ' the holy tree of Eridu,' and Eri-Aku (Arioch) calls himself its 'executor.' This tree of life is frequently represented in the Assyr. sculptures, where it ls dej)icted with two guardian spints or chenibs, kneeling or standing on either side of it. They are winged, with the heads sometimes of eagles, sometimes of men. Lenor- mant states that on an Ass3Tian talisman in the collection of M.

de Clercq he found the word Kirubu in place of the ordinary sedu or ' protecting genius' (Les Urinines de VHistoire, \. p. 118). The ' flaming sword of the cherubim has its counterpart in the sword of Merodach ' with fifty heads,' ' whose light gleams forth like the day ' ; and Sumerian texts speak of ' the wicked serpent,' ' the serpent of darkness.' See further, art. Cherubim.

The statement of Genesis, that the river which went out of Eden was parted into four heads, is explained by the fact that the Persian Gulf was held to be a river by the Babylonians, and was accordingly called by them nar marratum, ' the bitter river.' In the second millennium B.C., not only the Tigris and Euphrates, but other rivers besides flowed into it ; but the tide, which carried the salt water a long wav up their channels, made it possible to speak of their mouths as 'heads.'

The Ti-jris was called Idi'da and Idigna, ' the encircling, in Sumerian, and irf signified 'a river.' The Pison and Gihon were identified by Sir Henry Rawlinsoii with the Uknu and Surappu, which Tiglatli- pileser III. couples with the Tigris in southern Babylonia (Report of Fortieth Meeting of British Assoc, p. 173). Subsequently he held the Pison to be the Arakhtu or canal on which Babylon was built; and the (Jihon the modem Jfikh.

l, which flows westward from the Euplirates towards Abu- Shahrein. Friedrich Delitzsch also identifies the (iihon with the Arakhtu, which he believes to be the Shattrn-Nll of to-day ; but the Pison with the Pallukat, the Pallacopaa of classical geography. The names of the two rivers are, nowever, still unidentified in the inscriptions.

But the land of Havilah encompassed by tiio Pison was the ' sandy' region of northern Arabia, which extended west- ward towards the frontier of Egypt (Gn 2;')", 644 EDER EDOM, EDOMITES 1 S IS'). The ' bdellium ' that came from it may be the budilkhati of tlie cuneiform inscriptions, which is preceded by the determinative of vegetable; the ' onj'x-stone ' or shoham is the Assyr. sArntu, which we are told was brought from the desert wliich lay to the east of Egypt.

The Gilion is perhaps the Kerkha, which rises east of the Tigris among the mountains of Liiristan, formerly inhabited by the Kosaieans, called Kassi in the cuneiform texts. The whole of Susiana was termed Kissia or Kyssia by the classical ^vriters, and its two chief rivers were the Euljeus or Choaspes, the modern Kerklia, and the Pasi-tisris, the niodem Kardn. In a cuneiform text the Ulai or EuIjeus is described as entering 'the sea.'

The land of Nod or the ' Nomads,' to tlie east of Edom, would correspond ^vith the country of the nomad Sute and Manda in the Babylonian inscriptions. Pinches has found the name of Pardfisu or ' Para- dise ' as that of a country, apparently mythological, in some Babylonian cuneiform tablets {PSBA, Dec. 1S96). It is coupled with the ' land of Bit- Napsanu,' and in one passage, by a punning ety- mology, is derived from the name of ' the god Esu.' LiTERATCBE.— Friedr.

Delitlsch, Wo lag das Parodies H18S1) ; Sayoe, HCM 96 It.; Hommel, Ana. Heb. Traditum, p. 314. A. H. Sayce.