which was the ancient capital of the Empire, now Ḳal'at Šerḳāt on the W bank of the river. But that city was
replaced as capital by Kalḫi as early as 1300 B.C., and is
never mentioned in OT. It is at least premature to find
in this circumstance a conclusive proof that the Paradise
legend had wandered to Palestine before 1300 B.C. (Gressmann,
ARW, x. 347).—Euphrates] The name ((
Hebrew characters)) needed
no explanation to a Hebrew reader: it is the (Hebrew characters) par excellence
of the OT (Is. 87 and often).
The site of Eden.—If the explanation given above of v.10 be correct,—and
it is the only sense which the words will naturally bear,—it is
obvious that a real locality answering to the description of Eden exists
and has existed nowhere on the face of the earth. The Euphrates and
Tigris are not and never were branches of a single stream; and the
idea that two other great rivers sprang from the same source places
the whole representation outside the sphere of real geographical
knowledge. In 10-14, in short, we have to do with a semi-mythical
geography, which the Hebrews no doubt believed to correspond with
fact, but which is based neither on accurate knowledge of the region
in question, nor on authentic tradition handed down from the ancestors
of the human race. Nevertheless, the question where the Hebrew
imagination located Paradise is one of great interest; and many of
the proposed solutions are of value, not only for the light they have
thrown on the details of 10-14, but also for the questions they raise as to
the origin and character of the Paradise-myth. This is true both of
those which deny, and of those which admit, the presence of a mythical
element in the geography of 10-14.
1. Several recent theories seek an exact determination of the locality of Paradise, and of all the data of 10-14, at the cost of a somewhat unnatural exegesis of v.10. That of Frd. Del. (Wo lag das Paradies?, 1881) is based partly on the fact that N of Babylon (in the vicinity of Bagdad) the Euphrates and Tigris approach within some twenty miles of each other, the Euphrates from its higher level discharging water through canals into the Tigris, which might thus be regarded as an offshoot of it. The land of Eden is the plain (edinu) between the two rivers from Tekrit (on the Tigris: nearly a hundred miles N of Bagdad) and 'Ana (on the Euphrates) to the Persian Gulf; the garden being one specially favoured region from the so-called 'isthmus' to a little S of Babylon. The river of v.10 is the Euphrates; Pishon is the Pallakopas canal, branching off from the Euphrates on the right a little above Babylon and running nearly parallel with it to the Persian Gulf; Giḥon is the Shaṭṭ en-Nil, another canal running E of the Euphrates from near Babylon and rejoining the parent river opposite Ur; Ḥiddeḳel and Euphrates are, of course, the lower courses of the Tigris and Euphrates respectively, the former regarded as replenished through the canal system from the latter. Ḥavilah is part of the great Syrian
