12 pPant Tsore, Tscgcl^^/, and. Isijric/, 



world ; and the Garden of Eden, the Paradise of Adam and Eve, was 

 the choicest and most exquisite portion of Eden. As regards the 

 situation of this terrestrial Paradise, the Biblical narrative dis- 

 tinctly states that it was in the East, but various have been the 

 speculations as to the precise locality. Moses, in writing of Eden, 

 probably contemplated the country watered by the Tigris and 

 Euphrates — the land of the mighty city of Babylon. Many 

 traditions confirm this view : not only were there a district called 

 Eden, and a town called Paradisus, in Syria, a neighbouring 

 country to Mesopotamia, but in Mesopotamia itself there is a 

 certain region which, as late as the year 1552, was called Eden. 

 Some would localise the Eden of Scripture near Mount Lebanon, in 

 Syria ; others between the rivers Tigris and Euphrates, to the west 

 of Babylon ; others, again, in the delightful plains of Armenia, or 

 in the highlands of Armenia, where the Tigris and Euphrates have 

 their rise. An opinion very generally held is, that Eden was placed 

 at the junction of several rivers, on a site which is now swallowed 

 up by the Persian Gulf, and that it never existed after the deluge, 

 which effaced this Paradise from the face of a polluted earth. 

 Another theory places Eden in a vast central portion of the globe, 

 comprising a large piece of Asia and a portion of Africa, the four 

 rivers being the Ganges, the Tigris, the Euphrates, and the Nile. 

 Dr. Wild, of Toronto, is of opinion that the Garden of Paradise 

 embraced what we now call Syria. The land that God gave to 

 Abraham and his seed for ever — the Land of Promise, the Holy 

 Land — is the very territory that constituted the Garden of Paradise. 

 "Before the flood," says the reverend gentleman, "there was in 

 connection with this garden, to the east of it, a gate and a flaming 

 sword, guarding this gate, and a way to the Tree of Life. On that 

 very spot I believe the Great Pyramid of Egypt to be built, to 

 mark where the face of God shone forth to man before the Flood ; 

 and the Flood, by changing the land surface through the chang- 

 ing of the ocean bed, changed the centre somewhat, and threw it 

 further south. It is the very centre of the earth now where the 

 Pyramid stands, .... and marks the place where the gate 

 of Eden was before the Flood."* 



* Besides the localities already mentioned, Paradise has been located on Mount 

 Ararat ; in Persia ; in Ethiopia ; in the land now covered by the Caspian Sea ; in a 

 plain on the summit of Mount Taurus ; in Sumatra ; in the Canaries ; and in the 

 Island of Ceylon, where there is a mountain called the Peak of Adam, underneath 

 which, according to native tradition, lie buried the remains of the first man, and 

 whereon is shown the gigantic impress of his foot. Goropius Becanus places Paradise 

 near the river Acesines, on the confines of India. Tertullian, Bonaventura, and 

 Durandus affirm that it was under the Equinoctial, while another authority contends 

 that it was situated beneath the North Pole. Virgil places' the happy land of the 

 Hyperboreans under the North Pole, and the Arctic Regions were long associated 

 with ideas of enchantment and beauty, chiefly because of the mystery that has 

 always enveloped these remote and unexplored regions. Peter Comestor and Moses 

 Barcephas set Paradise in a region separated from our habitable zone by a long tract 

 of land and sea, and elevated so that it reaches to the sphere of the moon. 



