88 HORMUZD RASSAM, ESQ., 
more proof of his single-heartedness, of the literal acceptation 
of Scripture by which his bravest deeds have been rendered 
possible.”* 
I must confess that this is one of the most astounding ideas 
that have been mooted regarding the lost site of Paradise; and, 
coming from a firm believer in the Bible, it makes it the more 
surprising that General Gordon should have conceived such 
a thing. Had the theorist been an unbeliever, or a doubter, 
or even one of those who try to explain away difficult 
passages in the Old Testament to suit their learning and 
scientific knowledge, I could have easily understood their 
hypothesis; but such a notion coming from a man like the 
late guileless Christian, Gordon, who was, as I know, a 
thorough believer in the literal wording of the Pentateuch, 
has certainly bewildered me. He seems to have overlooked 
the fact of the mention of the two well-known historical 
rivers, the Kuphrates and the Tigris, together with Assyria 
and Mesopotamia which they skirt. 
I could quote many others who have, from time to time, 
tried to interpret 11 their own peculiar fashion the meaning 
of certain parts of the Biblical narrative, or strain their 
geographical knowledge to suit their ideas; but I think I 
have adduced sufficient authorities for our purpose to show 
you what conflicting and startling sentiments have been 
brought forward, from time to time, by theologians, eminent 
scholars, and deep thinkers, about the lost site of our first 
parents’ habitation. 
I have now to take up the prominent, and what seems to 
me, at present, the most accepted problem, of fixing the 
position of the Garden of Eden in Babylonia. 
Among other writers, Calvin, Huet, and Bochart place Eden 
in Southern Mesopotamia, on the supposition that the Pison 
and the Gihon are the two channels by which the united 
rivers Euphrates and Tigris, now called Shatt-al-Arab, enter 
the Persian Gulf. 
Hopkinson considers the Pison to be Nahr-Malka, the 
largest artificial canal which joined, in the days of yore, the 
Kuphrates with the Tigris near the ancient Seleucia and 
Ctesiphon; but Greetius made it to be the Gihon. Even 
those commentators who agree in placing the Garden of 
Eden on Shatt-al-Arab, the river formed by the junction of 
the Euphrates and the Tigris, do not agree as to which of 
the branches the two lost rivers represent. 
* The Universal Review, No. 8, Dec. 15th, 1888. 
