The aegis & intelligencer. [volume] (Bel Air, Md.) 1864-1923, 1869-08-06
interesting Discoveries.

There seems to be reasonable expectation
of the discovery of the site of the Garden
of Eden, if we may credit it, by Sir Henry
Rawlinson, the distinguished Assyrian ex-
plorer, and President of the Royal Asiatic
Society. At meeting of the society, held
in London on the 31st of May, at which he
was inaugurated, he made a speech, in
which he expressed his conviction that
the Babylonian writings and monuments
now in the possession of the British Muse
UNI, would turn out to be intimately con.
nected with the earliest Biblical writings,
and that before long, the whole of the early
history given in the book of Genesis, from
the time of Abraham, downwards, will be
found existing in its original form among
these primitive stone records. He also an
nounced that in a short time he should
submit to the society evidence that the
name ''Garden of Eden" was the old and
natural name of Babylon. He stated that
there were Babylonian documents which
gave an exact geographical description of
that Paradise in which the opening scenes
of history is laid, answering exactly to the
topography and the geodesical particulars
of Holy Writ. In them he has found the
four rivers, or rather the four branches of
"the river which went out of Eden to
water the garden" mentioned by the very
same names, Pison, Gihon, Hiddekel and
Euphrates. He also met with accounts of
the Flood, and the building of the Tower
of Babel, which bear with signal directness
and value upon the Biblical narrative of
those events. If he should realize all he
anticipates, he will have given to the
world one the most interesting archaolog-
ical and antiquarian discoveries ever made.
Among Biblical critics it has long
been matter Of discussion whence came
the two different accounts of the creation
of the world, of man, of his history from
his cmanation from the hands of his Gre
ator down to his destruction by the deuge,
which form the first nine chapters of Gene.
sis. These two narratives have been dis
tinguished respectively as the Jehovah and
Elohim records, because in one the Deity
is spoken of as the Jehovah, and in the
other in the plural form of Elohim. Prob
ably Sir Henry Rawlinson's discoveries
will throw light on tho subject, and thus
clear up the obscurity which hangs over
that portion of the sacred text. If this
should be the case, he will be benefactor
to theology and Biblical lore, as well as to
history and archaeology. There is nothing
amazing in the fact that the sculptured
archives of Babylonia, the chief memorial
of tradition among the Chaldeans, should
be reflected in the annals of race, which
came forth from Chaldea still, the pros
pect of comparing the originals with the
tic sources from which Elohist and Jeho-
visit drew their statement, is one which will
naturally excite vivid expectations among
Biblical scholars, and cannot fail to excite
very general curiosity. The cause of re-
ligion has always been advanced by dis
coveries in science, notwithstanding the
outcry made against them by well meaning
but rather short-sighted persons. Truth
can never gainsay truth, nor can we 90
back to the practice, whether political or
religious, which is said to have laid hands
on Calico for asserting that the earth
moved. "Nevertheless it moves" is true
of everything, as well as of the planet we
live on; and if these new discoveries, or
any others, interpret to u.s. in positive
and simple sense, legends which have been
lost in the sacred mist of tradition, the
Biblical account cannot but gain in clear
ness, while the intent that dictated the re-
cord must DO carried out with directness
and force. The character of all such
investigations has ever been in the
highest sense Scriptural and Christian
1t may turn out that the Chaldeans had
tradition of Eden, of the flood and of Ba-
bel, and that Abraham brought them with
him from "Ur of the Chaldees," to Canaan,
and handed them down to posterity and
these traditions may also have found their
way into other handslong before Abraham's
time, which would partly account for their
universally. Let us, at any rate, know
what the Babylonian records can tell about
the Garden of Eden. If Hiddekel, Pison
and Gihon can be identified, without geo.
graphical bewilderment, let 1T, by all
means be done. We have our doubts
about the probability of this. Euphrates
remains, but it seems strange that the other
three should have disappeared in a coup-