86 HORMUZD RASSAM, ESQ., 
Hiddekel; that is it which goeth toward the east [or in 
front] of Assyria. And the fourth river is Euphrates.” 
No one ean dispute that these words are quite plain, and 
do not require much learning to understand, whether they are 
read in Hebrew, Aramaic, or any European language. The 
theories I am going to refer to must strike even an un- 
pretending scholar to be inapplicable to the simple meaning 
of the text. 
The first idea that was started contrary to the plain words 
of the tenth and following four verses of the second chapter 
of Genesis was by Josephus, who said that “the garden was 
watered by one river which ran round about the whole earth, 
and was parted into four parts. And Phison, which denotes 
a multitude, running into India, makes its exit into the sea, 
and is by the Greeks called Ganges. Euphrates also, as well 
as Tigris, goes down into the Red Sea.* Now the name 
Euphrates, or Phrath, means either a dispersion or a flower ; by 
Tigris, or Diglah, is signified what is swift, with narrowness ; 
and Geon runs through Egypt, and denotes what arises from 
the east, which the Greeks call Nile.” 
Philo, contemporary to Josephus, gave an allegorical 
meaning to the existence of Eden, which he interpreted as 
pleasure, a symbol of the soul that sees what is night, exults 
in virtue, and prefers our enjoyment, the worship of the only 
wise, to myriads of men’s chief delights. The four rivers he 
explains to be prudence, temperance, courage, and justice, 
while the main stream of which they are branches is the 
virtue and goodness which go forth from Eden, the wisdom 
of God. 
Origen considered Paradise to be heaven, the trees angels, 
and the rivers wisdom. 
Ambrosius placed the terrestrial Paradise in the third 
heaven, in consequence of the expressions used by St. Paul 
in his second epistle to the Corinthians xu, 2 and 4. 
Amongst the Hebrew traditions, mentioned by Jerome, is 
one that Paradise was created before the world was formed. 
and is therefore beyond its limits. 
Moses Bar Cepha assigns it a middle place between the 
earth and the firmament. 
Others affirm that Paradise was on a mountain which 
reached nearly to the moon, while other writers held that it, 
* Josephus does not mean by the Red Sea as it is understood now, but 
all the South Sea, which included the Red Sea, the Gulf of Aden, and the 
Persian Gulf, as far as India. 
