* This location U required by the whole t«nor of the narrative. The west bank is sugrpested by v. 10 in its present form, and maintained also by UV in v. 11, by a translation of doubtful admissibility, ' in tne forefront of the land of Canaan, ork tJie tid* thai pertaineth to the chiUiren of Itrofl.' See further th« Comm. in too., and Bennett'i edition of Joshua in Baupl'i polychrome OT.
eonjecture of Margoliouth (see Arabia, p. 131''), that it may be the modem Aden in S. AJ-abia, is not without plausibility.
LiTERATm*.— Schrader, KAT>, 827; DeUtisch on Is 8712; DavidsoD od Ezk 27^ ; Fnl. Delitzsch, Paradiu, 4, 9ti, IM.
X ' The house of Eden ' (AVm and RVm Beth- eden) is mentioned in Am 1*. The context has led to the inference that it was in the neighbourhood of Damascus, ' some royal paradise in that region which is still the Paradise of the Arab world' (G. A. Smitli, Twelve Prnph. 125). Ewuld (Pro- phets, i. 159, Eng. tr.) identities it with the Para- due of Strabo, xvi. 2 - 19 ; and Farrar (Minor Prophets, 53) thinks it may be Beit el -janne ' House of Paradise ' (see, however, Driver's note on Am 1'), about eight miles from Damascus, referring in support of this view to Porter (Five Years in Damascus, i. 313). Driver considers the most probable identifications to be (1) the modern Ehden, 20 mUes N.W. of Ba.albek ; or (2) Bit- 'Adini, described above. Wellhausen (Kl. Proph. 68) considers it improbable that Beth-eden is to be sought near Dtunascus, and is sceptical also about identifying Aven of the same passage with Baalbek. (See, further, G. Hoffmann in ZAW, 1883, p. 97 ; Schroder, KA V p. 442 ; and esp. Driver, Joel and Amos, 132 f., 228 f.) J. A. Selbie.
EDEN (ny,'E3fM).— We read that ' the Lord God planted a garden in Eden, eastward, and there put the man whom he had formed ' (Gn 2*). ' And a river went out of Eden to water the garden ; and from thence it was parted, and became four heads' (v.'"). Two of these were the Tigris and Euphrates ; a third was the Pison, which compassed the land of Havilah ; the fourth being the Gihon, which com- passed Gush. After Adam had been expelled from ♦he Paradise, his firstborn, Cain, 'dwelt in the land of Nod, on the east of Eden,' and there built the city of Enoch (Gn 4'").
Eden means ' deli;;ht ' in Hebrew, and the posi- tion of its garden has been assiraed to various parts of the world. P2ven the North Pole and Australia have found advocates. Josephus (Ant. L i 3), the Book of Enoch (xxxii), and Cosmas Indicopleustes place it in the extreme north-east, towards the Altai mountains of Mongolia. San- son, Keland, Calmet, Bunsen, Keil, and von Raumer locate it in Armenia, between the sources of the Tigris and Euphrates, the Araxes and the Phasis. Calvin, Bochart, Huet, Rask, and the modem Assyriolo^ts assign it to Chaldoea. Le Clercq places it in the neighbourhood of Damascus, be- tween the Chrysorrlioas and the Orontes ; while Heidegger seeks for it in Palestine, near the sources of the Jordan; and Haniouin and HalAvy in southern Arabia. Renan identiliu.s Eden with CdyAna, ' the
garden,' near Kashmir; Bertheau, La-ssen, Obry, pie^el, and Lenormant, with the Meru of the Hinilu Puranas, and the Ain'ana-VaOja and Har.1- Berezaiti of the Zoroastrian VendidAd and Avesta. Meru seems primarily to have denoted the moun- tains alK)ve tlie Pamir, Airj-ana-Va6ja being the country between the sources of the Oxus and Jaxartcs, and Har.1 - Berezaiti the Belur - dagh. Ezk 28'* is appealed to in behalf of the theory that the garden of Eden was on a mountain, though the text may be difTerently explained.
The rivers Pison and (!ihon have been the snb-
i'ect of a similar variety of identifications. Josephus, Jusebius, Augustine, Ambrose, and Jerome make the Pison the Ganges, Cosmas Indicopleustes iclenti- fies it with the Indus, while the Jewish commen- tators, Sa'adyaand Rashi, as well as the Samaritans, declare it to bo the Nile. The Nile, on the other hand, is iden'ified with the Gihon by Joscplius (Ant. I. i. 3,, most of the Fathers, Kalisch,
Gesenius, Lengerke, and Bertheau, as well as in Sir 24"». The Sept. also, in Jer 2'«, substitutes Gihon (Vtiuv) for Sihor, the .Nile. Cosmas makes Gihon the Ganges ; the Samaritan version calls it the Askiiph, which seems to be the Cho-aspes. Mohamnieilan wTilers identified the Gihon and Pison with the 0.\us and Jaxartes, whence their modern names of Jilifln and Sihtin, which were transferred by the Seljuk Turks to the Pyramus and Sarus in Cilicia. St. Martin identities the Pison with the waterless Wady er-Kuma in Arabia.
The cuneiform inscriptions have, however, cleared up the geography of the garden of Eden. The Sumerian name of the 'plain' of Babylonia was Ediii, which was adopted by the Semites under the form of Edinu. Its A.SS3T. equivalent was Zeru, corresponding to the Arab. Zor, the name still applied to the ' depression ' between the Tigris and Euphrates. These rivers formerly flowed immedi- ately into the Persian Gulf, thoui;li, owing to the silt annually deposited by them, theirancient mouths are now more than eiglity miles distant from the sea. The seaport of primitive Chald;ea was Eridu, ' the good city,' now AbuShalirein, which stood near the mouth of the Euphrates. In its neigh- bourhood was a garden, 'a holy place,' wherein grew the sacred palm-tree — the tree of life — whose roots of bright lapis lazuli were planted in the cos- mic abyss, whose position marked the centre of the world, and whose foliage was tlie couch of the goddess I'aliu, while the god Tanimuz dwelt in the shrine under the shadow of its branches, within which no mortal had ever entered. An oracle was attached to ' the holy tree of Eridu,' and Eri-Aku (Arioch) calls himself its 'executor.' This tree of life is frequently represented in the Assyr. sculptures, where it ls dej)icted with two guardian spints or chenibs, kneeling or standing on either side of it. They are winged, with the heads sometimes of eagles, sometimes of men. Lenor- mant states that on an Ass3Tian talisman in the collection of M. de Clercq he found the word Kirubu in place of the ordinary sedu or ' protecting genius' (Les Urinines de VHistoire, \. p. 118). The ' flaming sword of the cherubim has its counterpart in the sword of Merodach ' with fifty heads,' ' whose light gleams forth like the day ' ; and Sumerian texts speak of ' the wicked serpent,' ' the serpent of darkness.' See further, art. Cherubim.