From Berlin to Bagdad and Babylon

by J. A. Zahm

Asia è la prima parte dove l’unomo,

Sendo innocente stava in Paradiso.

And leaving out of consideration the vagaries of certain transformists and polygenists and the lucubrations of certain noted paradoxers like those just referred to, it may be asserted of a truth that the general consensus of the highest and most trustworthy authorities is agreed in locating the cradle of humanity somewhere in that part of Asia which is embraced by the Tigris and the Euphrates.

There would, probably, never have been much doubt about this matter, at least on the part of Scriptural scholars, had it not been for the imperfect geographical knowledge of early Christian writers and for the errors that had been given currency by The Seventy in their version of the Old Testament from Hebrew into Greek. They made no mistake about the Tigris and the Euphrates, which were well known to them, but when it came to the Phison and the Gehon they went completely astray and gave to these two rivers an interpretation which was accepted without question by even the most learned Biblical exegetes for more than a thousand years. For, in their identification of the Phison with the Ganges and the Gehon with the Nile, they so confused all researches respecting the actual site of the Terrestrial Paradise that it was not until long centuries afterwards that students of the Genesiac narrative bethought themselves of making a more serious study of the Sacred Text.

Reading carefully the second chapter of Genesis they discovered that many had been misled by a misunderstanding of the eighth verse. There, according to the Vulgate, it is stated that “the Lord God planted a paradise of pleasure from the beginning.” But a careful examination of the Hebrew word, mid-quedem, which is here made to signify the beginning, should, they found, indicate space rather than time. The real sense of the words above quoted should, therefore, be: “The Lord God planted a garden eastward in Eden.” And they furthermore discovered that the word mid-quedem meant eastward from Palestine and not, as some had imagined, eastward from Babylonia.[473]

The site of Eden, it now seemed clear, should be sought for eastward of Palestine where the writer of the Genesiac narrative lived and somewhere between the well-known rivers, the Tigris and the Euphrates. This greatly reduced the area in which the Terrestrial Paradise was presumed to have been located. For, if the Biblical account of Eden was to be interpreted literally, it necessarily followed that it must have been placed somewhere in that peninsular tract of land which is included between the Tigris and the Euphrates and which extends from their sources—very near each other—in the highlands of Armenia to their confluence in the lowlands of Babylonia near the Persian Gulf.

Guided by these indications of the narrative of Genesis, the learned Benedictine, Dom Calmet, fancied that the seat of Paradise was in the rich plateau of Armenia where even to-day are found some of the most fertile valleys in the world. This opinion, it is avouched by the followers of the distinguished Benedictine, is corroborated by a popular tradition in Armenia which locates the Garden of Eden in the oasis of Ordubad, on the right bank of the Aras.[474]

The four rivers, according to Dom Calmet’s theory, which watered Paradise, are the Tigris and the Euphrates—whose sources are only an hour’s journey from each other—and the Phasis and Araxes mentioned by Pliny and Strabo. It is interesting to note that the sources of all four of these rivers are very near one another, but it is still more interesting to observe that the land which is watered by the Phasis and which is supposed, according to Calmet’s theory, to be the Hevilath of Genesis, “where gold groweth,” corresponds with the Colchis whither the Argonauts sailed in quest of the Golden Fleece.

An objection to this theory is that it does not harmonize with the words of Genesis which declare that the river which went out of Paradise “is divided into four heads,” that is, into four branches. The natural meaning of these words is that the four rivers mentioned in the Edenic narrative had one and the same source. But each river, as has been said, has its own distinct source. The only answer that the defenders of the theory have been able to give is one that is warranted by no known fact—namely that past revolutions of the earth’s surface have materially changed the topography of the original site of the Garden of Eden.[475]

There were many other objections to the theory which located the Paradise of Delights at the headwaters of the Tigris and the Euphrates. Not the least of these was the rigorous climate of the Armenian uplands. For this reason, and for others that need not here be specified, scholars began to consider more favorably the hypothesis which placed the Garden of Eden somewhere in southern Babylonia. Among the first of these was John Calvin. He identifies the Gehon and the Phison with the Tigris and the Euphrates, in as much as he gives the names Gehon and Phison to the two lower reaches of these rivers, which connect the Shat-el-Arab with the Persian Gulf.[476] But Calvin’s theory regarding the location of Paradise is at variance with the words of the Sacred Text while his assumption of the antiquity of the two channels which connect the Shat-el-Arab with the Persian Gulf is completely negatived by the teachings of science respecting the recent formation of these watercourses.