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  • From: <tladatsi AT charter.net>
  • To: <b-hebrew AT lists.ibiblio.org>
  • Subject: [b-hebrew] Channels, Rivers, & Heads
  • Date: Fri, 13 May 2005 1:14:56 -0400

Just a note on geography.

Rivers will sometime divide into separate channels, ox-
bows, and sloughs. Sand-bars and islands can divide rivers
over short distances. Rivers can channalize in a delta.
However in all of these cases, it is the same river. The
ancients and the moderns understand this point. Several
rivers join to form the Nile. No one, ancient or modern,
has every said the Nile branches out to form seven separate
rivers.

This is not a hair-splitting semantism. A river is not
just a channel with water flowing through it. The Tigris,
Euphrates, and the Nile all occupy not just different
river-beds but entirely separate valleys with different
tributaries and drainages. They geographically and
hydrologically distinct systems.

Ancient peoples understood this distinction, if with less
precision and detail than we do today.

The point about *heads* is interesting. Persumably the
Hebrew term *head* of a river corresponds with the English
word *mouth* of a river. This does not change anything as
the single river in Eden is still the headwaters of four
rivers with different *heads/mouths*. The *tails* of these
rivers still lead the ancient and modern reader to eastern
Turkey.

Jack Tladatsi




  • [b-hebrew] Channels, Rivers, & Heads, tladatsi, 05/13/2005

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