Biblical Hebrew Forum

["Walter Mattfeld" <mattfeld AT mail.pjsnet.com>]

The earliest attempt to identify the Gihon river mentioned in Genesis is to
be found in the Book of Jubilees, variously dated between 160-90 BCE. The
Nile is envisioned as being the Gihon. One is told that in order to get to
the garden of Eden one follows the Gihon/Nile "southwards" then "eastwards"
to Eden. The Nile possesses two major eastern tributaries the Atbara and the
Blue Nile. Only the latter flows all year round the former dries up part of
the year. Due east of Lake Tana, the source of the Blue Nile, is Aden
(Yemen), which according to Jews of the 15th century CE was the land of
Eden, although they confessed they didn't know where the garden was.
Interestingly, the Pseudepigrapha claim the garden was the source of
frankincense, spices and myrrh, and in antiquity these products were
associated with south Arabia and Sheba where the port of Aden is located.
Was the gulf of Aden envisioned as "the river of Eden" that fed the Pishon,
Gihon, Tigris and Euphrates ?

The ancient Mesopotamians, Egyptians and Greeks conceived of a great river
encircling the world. The Egyptians saw the Nile as part of this river which
they called the Great Circle (Jewish traditions associated the Gihon with
the Nile). The Mesopotamians called the great circle the Nar Marratum
(Bitter River from the saltwater ocean). Josephus claimed the river of Eden
encircled the world, mirroring Greek concepts of the freshwater river called
Ocean, from which all rivers arose. The "bone in the throat" for scholars
has been how to link the Gihon/Nile encircling Kush below Egypt with the
Tigris and Euphrates. The answer is that the ancients conceived of the ocean
as a type of river encircling the world (Herodotus noted some thought the
Nile's rise was caused by the mythical freshwater Ocean that surrounded the
world). I date Genesis to the 5th century BCE and see Herodotus' explanation
of the Nile's source being the freshwater Ocean as accounting for the
imagery behind the representation of the Mesopotamian and Egyptian river
systems deriving from one source (the gulf/river of Aden/Eden, a part of the
mythical freshwater ocean). The Mesopotamians also called the saltwater
ocean Tiamat. Marduk slays Tiamat and makes the earth from her carcass.
Piercing her eyes, he creates the Tigris and Euphrates. The Jews called the
freshwater "deep" Tehom, and they used the same word for the saltwater ocean
covering the earth (Ge.1:2 Tehom being translated "the deep"). So,
confusingly, the Jews could call freshwaters under the earth and the salt
water ocean by the same name, Tehom, drawing, I suspect, from the
Mesopotamian myth of freshwaters arising from Tiamat's carcass (she being a
personification of the saltwater ocean).

Because modern scholars looking at modern maps could not conceive of the
ancients linking the Nile/Gihon to the Tigris and Euphrates, they posited
that the ancient Jewish and early Christan traditions must be wrong about
the Nile being the Gihon. They accordingly dismissed the Jewish and early
Christian notions as nonsense and posited a new location for Cush, it would
be the Greek Cossae, modern Khuzistan in lower Mesopotamia, and the Gihon
and Pishon must be rivers in the general vicinity. But when one takes into
account the "ancient mythical sources" telling of a saltwater ocean capable
of giving birth to freshwater rivers, the mystery is cleared up (the Blue
Nile flowing from the east was evidently conceived to be flowing from the
garden of Eden/Aden). I go into all this in greater depth with citations and
footnotes from various sources, in my manuscript titled In Search of the
Garden of Eden (1995, pp.285).

And the Pishon ? Josephus associated it with India (the Ganges), while the
Talmud thought the Pishon flowed into the Gihon. My research has revealed
that in antiquity India was a term applied to East Africa, and South Arabia
as well as continental India (Josephus claiming Egypt abuts India). The
Greeks noted that a great river arose in the east, marking the furthest
borders of their world, calling it the Phasin. As the Phison was a river of
the east, could this lie behind the Genesis story (the problem is that the
Phasin is in Colchis on the Black Sea, not Southern Arabia) ?

All the best,

Walter Reinhold Warttig Mattfeld
Walldorf by Heidelberg
Baden-Wurttemburg
Germany