iii. The celebrated Gcittingen professor, J. D.lNIichae- lis, originated this hypotliesis, thougli he is doubtful as to some of the points. Gatterer, in the main, agrees with him, only he understands the Hiddekel to be the Indus, and takes the Pishon for the Phasis. Cush is found ijy Michaelis in the name of the city Cath or Caths. the ancient ca])ital of C'howrasmia, on the Oxus or Jihun, near the site of Ralkh. Ho refers to Quint. Curtius as speaking of the Cus:\!i or Cusitani being in Bactria upon the Oxus. Wahl sees Cush in the Khou- sti of Closes of Chorene, nyaning the large province between the Caspian and Persian Seas, as far as the Indus and Oxus. The land of Havilah Michaelis connects with the tril)e of Chwaliski or Chwalisses, from whom the Russians call the Caspian Sea the Chwaliuskoie More.
iv. Tills theory has been proposed l)y the eminent Orientalist Yon Hammer. The Sihon, he says, rises near the town of Cha, and compasses the land of Ilah, famous for tlie gold and precious stones of Turkistan.
Y. Thut Paradise was in Syria was the opinion cf
the voluminous Lc Clerc, in his valuable Commentary. Havilah is the tract mentioned in 1 Sam. xv, 7. Cush is Cassiotis or Mount Casius, near Seleucia in Syria. This opinion is shared liy Lakemaehcr, who, however, takes the Pishon to be the Jordan. Heidegger thinks the Jordan was the great river of Paradise, an idea adopted by the paradoxical Hardouin, in his Krcursvs toPlini/s Nat. Hist. lib. vi. Others, who place Eden in Arabia Felix, transform the Pishon into the Persian Gulf, and the Gihon into the Red Sea.
vi. This is perhaps the most ancient opinion of any, being found in Josephus (.h^^ i, 1, 3), and in several of the fathers, e. g. Tlieoi)hilus Autol, ii, 24 ; Epiphan. (I'^'pp. ii, GO) ; Philostorgus in !Nicephor. ///.-/. Eccl. ix, 19, though the latter takes the Pishon for the Indian river Hypasis. The editor of Calmet observes that '■ the inhabitants of the kingdom of Goiam call the Nile the Gihon." Cush is naturally taken for Ethiopia. This view is embraced by tlie celebrated Gcscnius, with the exception that he maintains the Pishon to be the Indus ; in this he is followed in the main by Prof. Rush, who likewise observes : " This view of the sub- ject, it is admitted, represents the ancient Eden as a very widely extended territory, reaching from the In- dus on the east to the Kile and the Mediterranean on the west, and including the intermediate countries. If tlie view above given of the topograpliy of Eden be correct, it will bo seen that it embraced tlie fairest por- tion of Asia, besides a part of Africa, comprising the countries at present known as Cabul, Persia, Armenia, Kurdistan, Syria, Arabia, Aln'ssinia, and E-ypt. The garden, however, which is said to have been ' east- ward in Eden,' was probably situated some\\herc in the neighborhood of the Euphrates, perhaps not far from the site of Ilabylon, a region nearer its eastern than its western limits; but the exact ]Hisition it is apparentl}' vain to attempt to determine.'' Among the most thorough scholars, the contest seems now to lie mainh' between this view and that in Ko. i.
vii. Captain "Wilford, well known for liis ])rofound ac- quaintance with Hindu antiquities, advanced the pres- ent view, as being founded upon the Indian Puranas (Asiatic Researches, vi, 4.')5, Lond. edit.). It was part- ly adopted bj' a late ingenious but fanciful writer, Mr. C. Tajlor, editor of Culmet's Dictionary, who, however, makes the Pishon the Kilab ; the Gihon, the western branch of tlie Oxus ; the Hiddekel, the eastern ; and the Phrat, the Hinnend.
viii. This and the following are given as S)ieeimens of the views of the modern German school of neology, which regards the whole narrative as a myth, similar to the (ireek tradition of the PIcsperides, the Islands of the Blessed, etc. Philip Ruttinan is the author of the hypothesis under the present number. The Pishon he compares with the Besynga, which is mentioned by Ptolcni}' as the most considerable river of India east of the Ganges. Ava was early known as a n'gion of gold ; and an anonymous geographer, in Hudson's col- lection, vol. iii, speaks of the Evilta; or Evih-ci as being near the Seiies or Chinese.
ix. Another neological theory — the author. A, T.
EDEN
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Hartmann, who looks upon the description as a prod- uct of the Babylonish or Persian period. The idea of Eden being the far-famed vale of Cashmere had been anticipated by Herder in his work on the History of Mankind. Appropriate accounts of Cashmere may be found in the travels of Burnes and Jacquemont.
Many of the Orientals think that Paradise was in the island of Serendib or Ceylon ; while the Greeks place it at Beth-Eden, on Lebanon.
These, indeed, are but a few of the opinions that have been propounded ; yet, though many more might he added, it is to be observed that most of them have much in common, and differ only in some of the de- tails. To enumerate the vagaries of German and oth- er writers on this subject would be endless. (See Kitto's Scripture Lands, p. 1-8.) The fact is that not one of them answers to all the conditions of the prob- lem. It has been remarked that this difficulty might have been expected, and is obviously probable, from the geological changes that may have taken place, and especially in connection with the Deluge. This re- mark would not be applicable, to the extent that is necessarj' for the argument, except upon the supposi- tion before mentioned, that the earlier parts of the hook of Genesis consist of primeval documents, even antediluvian, and that this is one of them. There is reason to think, however, that since the Deluge the face of the country cannot have undergone any change ap- proaching to what the hypothesis of a post-diluvian composition would require. But we think it highly probalde that the principal of the innnediate causes of the Deluge, the " breaking up of the fountains of the great deep," was a subsidence of a large part or parts of the land between the inhabited tract (which we ven- ture to place in E. !*ing. from Greenwicn, 30° to 50°, and N. lat. 25° to 40°) and the sea which lay to the south, or an elevation of the bed of that sea. See Deluge.