Eden (2)
Eden The locality of Paradise has recently been investigated afresh by Friedrich Delitzsch (Wo lag das Paradisus, Leipsic, 1881), who places the garden of Eden in that part of Northern or Upper Babylonia which immediately surrounds the site of Babylon itself. He associates the name Eden with the non-Shemitic edin ("plain"), instead of the well-received Hebraic derivation, and compares the Accadian name Kardunias ("garden of the God Dunias"), of the district around Babylon. He regards "the river going forth from Eden to water the garden" as that system of watercourses, with one general current, which irrigated the isthmus between the Tigris and the Euphrates at its narrowest point, just above Babylon. The other two of the four principal "heads" of the stream he thinks were perhaps half-natural, half-artificial, canals flowing out of the Euphrates — the Pallokopas on the west, and the Shaten-Nil on the east. He has not actually found in the Chaldvean records the names Pishon or Gichon, but he believes the former to be the Accadian pisan ("watervessel"), and the latter is supposed to be the Babylonian Gughan de, possibly pointing to one of these canals. The precariousness of this identification is evident at a glance, and well comports with the fanciful character of many of that learned Orientalist's interpretations. SEE PARADISE, in this volume.
