The Location of Paradise
Part Three: Professor Wyatt on 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 Wyatt depicts agrees with the one that I (Damien Mackey) have been putting forward in this series, 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
….
- a)
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)
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. 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… ….
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. ….
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