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Reference: Eden, Garden Of

Hastings

Ge 2 f. relates how God planted a garden in the East, in Eden. A river rose in that land, flowed through the garden, and then divided into four streams. Within the enclosure were many trees useful for food; also the tree of life, whose fruit conferred immortality, and the tree of knowledge, which gave power to discriminate between things profitable and things hurtful, or, between right and wrong. The animal denizens were innocuous to man and to each other. When the first man and woman yielded to the tempter and ate of the tree of knowledge, they were expelled, and precluded from re-entering the garden.

In this account Ge 2:10-14; 3:22,24 seem to be interpolations. But the topographical data in Ge 2:10-14 are of especial importance, because they have supplied the material for countless attempts to locate the garden. It has been almost universally agreed that one of the four rivers is the Euphrates and another the Tigris. Here the agreement ends, and no useful purpose would be served by an attempt to enumerate the conflicting theories. Three which have found favour of late, may be briefly mentioned. One is that the Gihon is the Nile, and the Pishon the Persian and Arabian Gulfs, conceived of as a great river, with its source and that of the Nile not far from those of the Euphrates and the Tigris. Another regards Eden as an island not far from the head of the Persian Gulf. near the mouths of the Euphrates, the Tigris. the Kerkha. and the Karun. The third puts Eden near Erldu (once the seaport of Chald

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