The morning news. [volume] (Savannah, Ga.) 1887-1900, 1895-12-15
THE LOCATION OF EDEN.
THE OLD TRADITION OF THE BA-
BYLONIANS.
Who believed That II Was i'm n Flat
COuatry, on the Edge of the Per-
sian Gulf.

sian Gulf.
From the Baltimore sun.
An address on THE Site Of the Gar
den OF Eden" was made last night by
Prof. Paul Haupt. OF the Johns Hopkins
University. at a meeting of the Folk Lore
Society OF Baltimore. In the assembly
rooms OF the Medical and Chirurgioal So
ciety's new building. So North Eutaw
street
one OF The chief points of Prof Haupt's
address was the statement that the He
brews derived their ideas. of Paradise
from the people of Babylon The latter
believed that Paradise was situated on
the edge of the Persian gulf. where four
great rivers empty themselves. IN close
proximity. and the Hebrews IN adopting
this tradition, according to Prof. Haupt.
confused and led astray modern geogra-
pliers and commentators by locating the
Garden of Eden at the sources. instead
of the mouths, of these rivers These
sources beng widely different places
many different constructions have been
put upon the Biblical story.
AS TO the Biblical idea of the Garden
of Eden. said Prof. Haupt in converse
ton, Il do not believe IL to be entirely
fancituL With our training with maps
and Biographies we are apt TO overlook
the fact that at best the knowledge of
ancient peoples with regard to distant
points was extremely vague. The couu-
try which was considered by the Babylon
iaus to be the Garden of Eden is Hat
one, and in consequence of the inhabit-
ants having long ago abandoned the sys-
TEN on irrigation and drainage by canals
which was used in ancient times. il ia
now simply a succession of swamps and
marshes"
In the second chapter of Genesis the
Garden of Eden is described as follows:
And the Lord God planted "A garden
eastward in Eden; and there he put the
man whom he had formed.
And out Of the ground made the Lord
God to grow every tree that is pleasant
to the sight and good for food. the tree
of life also in the midst of the garden,
and the tree of knowledge of good and
"And a river went out to Eden to wa
ter the garden; and from thence il was
parted and came into four heads.
The name of the first is Pison; that Is.
II which compasseth the whole land of
Havilah, where there is gold; and the gold
of that land is good; there is bellium and
the onyx stone.
And the name of the second river is
Gihon; the same is II which compasseth
the whole land of Ethiopia.
And the name of the third river is
Hidekel that is 1t which goeth toward the
east Of Assyria.
And the fourth river is Euphrates"
There are more than eighty different
theories regarding the Garden of Eden"
SAID Prof Haupt, in his lecture. Or.
Warren, president of Boston University
has published a book in which he tried
to show that Paradise was situated near
the north pole. one of his principal ar
guments is the fact that IL says in Cen
esis that Adam and Eve were clothed in
coats of skins when they came forth
from the garden. This made him infer
that Paradise must have been very far
north.
"A German scholar thought that Para
disc was situated on the coast of the Bal
tic sea in Eastern Prussia. He believed
that the precious stone translated onyx
in the English version Of the Bible rep
resented the amber which is so plentiful
along the shores of the Baltic.
other theorists have laid the Garden
of Eden in some of the POlynesian Islands
in the South Pacific, in the Canary Is
lands, in Scandinavia, at he foot or the
st. Gothard mountain i'm Switzerland. In
Persia, in MesopOtamia, in Armenia, in
Cashmere, India and many other places.
but all these theories are unsatisfac-
tory. They are all deficient in three re-
spects. In the first place the commenta-
tors have tried to harmonic the Biblical
description of Paradise with the actual
geographical conditions. But to expect an
accurate description of a distant region
at he time when the Biblical narrator
wrote would be about as unreasonable as
to attempt to harmonic the Biblical ac-
count Of the creation with the latest re-
suits of modern science.
1.-THE second mistake which all Biblical
commentators have made is that they
give to the words used in the Biblical de-
scription of paradise a different meaning
from those given when used in other pas
sages OF the Bible.
"They think for example, that Assur is
commonly not the name of the whole
country of Assyria, but refers here to
the old capital of the country, a city on
the west bank of the Euphrates. Sull,
everywhere else in the Bible the capital
of Assyria is called NineVeh and not As
sur. In the same way they think that
Cush" the Hebrew name for Ethiopia,
refers not to Ethiopia, but to the dis
trict Of the Cossaeans Of Babylonia.
Their third mistake Is that all the theo-
ries that have been advanced so far do
not distinguish between Biblical and ex-
ira Biblical ideas They confuse the Bibi-
cal narrative with the parallel legends
of other races.
ians, Paradise was situated at the mouth
of four rivers, emptyinB into the Persian
gulf. The Persian gulf was called by the
Babylonians the bitter stream, that
means to say the saltwater river They
had no idea that II was branch or inlet
Of a big ocean.
Paradise stil exist. They are the Eu-
pirates, the Tigris, the Karoun and the
laeus in the book of Daniel. In the Baby
lionian period these four rivers emptied
separately into the Persian gulf. but the
deposits of the four rivers.
when the Hebrews adopted the Baby
lonian idea of Paradise they transferred
the Garden Of Eden, as ] have said, from
the mouths of the rivers TO the heads or
these same four rivers. This was done
in accordance with the idea of the He
brews that God dwelt In the north. Such
an idea is found, for instance, in the first
chapter of Ezekiel, where the prophet, in
relating his vision distinctly says that he
saw ii nOrthward. And so, too, in the
fourteenth chapter of Isaiah.
Now these changes, of course, entailed
a geographical confusion, because, while
the four rivers all empty into the Persian
gulf they do not of course, spring from
The same source. There is no doubt that
the Tigris and Euphrates are clearly des-
ignated the former as Hiddekel. We
know that the sources of these two are
different, nor is it possible to derive the
two rivers east of the Tigris in the Bibli-
cal description of Paradise from the same
source. The river just east of the Tigris
is according to the idea of the Biblical
narrator. an imaginary upper course of
the Nile river.
protection of Africa. or Ethiopia, form
ing much more Of a continental link than
the Suez isthmus really does, connecting
Africa and Asia south of the Red Sea and
the Persian gulf, which the Biblical writ
ers considered to be inland seas. The Tea-
son why this river Is not called by tie