Upon reading these Bible verses, there is no one river in the Holy Land that can be the one river that came out of the Garden of Eden, which fed four rivers.  Especially in light of the notable historian Josephus’ account of things, a Jew who recorded history in Greek just after the time of Jesus.  However, if one looks a bit peripherally at this Bible narrative, citing Josephus, and using an open mind, one can glean another truth about the Garden of Eden.

The Tigris and Euphrates Rivers in this Genesis story are straight-forward.  The other two rivers are not so straight-forward to us, but if we look to Josephus for clarification we find this:

“Moses says further, that God planted a paradise in the east, flourishing with all sorts of trees; and that among them was the tree of life, and another of knowledge, whereby was to be known what was good and evil; and that when he brought Adam and his wife into this garden, he commanded them to take care of the plants. Now 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, denotes either a dispersion, or a flower: by Tiris, or Diglath, is signified what is swift, with narrowness; and Geon runs through Egypt, and denotes what arises from the east, which the Greeks call Nile.”  ~Josephus, Antiquities of the Jews, Book 1, Chapter 1

So we have the Tigris and Euphrates.  And we have the ‘Geon’ or Gihon which in Hebrew means ‘gushing forth’ as the Nile does in the Delta region of Africa.  Please regard this map:

If that is not a ‘gushing forth’ I don’t know what is.

Please note that a ‘head’ of a river is its beginning, and the mouth is its ending.  So bear in mind that the Garden of Eden is the origin of the four great rivers it recounts in the scripture.

Moving along to the last great river, the Pishon, which the Greeks called the Ganges, I want to propose here that instead of the Ganges, they were really referring to the Indus River, which nearly joins the Ganges in the uppermost reaches of the Himalayas, too far for any ancient man to traverse, or know with certainty.  Please see the following map:

It almost appears that they are connected, and it might have been that ancient man believed the Indus River was the River Ganges.  If we take into account a further consideration of the description of the Pishon River [“The name of the first is Pishon; that is it which compasseth the whole land of Havilah, where there is gold; and the gold of that land is good; there is bdellium and the onyx stone.”]  “Compasseth” in Hebrew means to ‘go around’ versus ‘go through’, much like how the Indus and Ganges rivers make a semi-circle around India.  Havilah means ‘a son of Cush’ in Hebrew, and the Cush could refer to the Hindu Kush, who happen to also live where there are significant amounts of gold, as is related in this excerpt:

Beneath a remote, mountainous patch of northern Pakistan could sit large deposits of gold, and one University of Houston geologist is using cutting-edge remote sensing technology and analysis to find it.

Shuhab Khan, associate professor of geology, is part of a $370,000 National Academies of Science project to aid in the exploration of an area along the Indus River long believed to contain substantial amounts of gold.

Some in the region eke out a meager living panning for gold – earning less than $100 a year – but no serious exploration or mining has been attempted. The project also includes geologists at the University of Peshawar and is intended to foster U.S. – Pakistani relations through scientific cooperation and economic development.

Khan is tasked with identifying and mapping specific target zones where gold deposits could lie by collecting and analyzing satellite and GIS data to look for rock alteration zones that could signify the presence of gold. Then rock samples will be collected to determine if they contain trace amounts of gold.

Gold deposits typically sit in the shallow subsurface and if found could easily be extracted by mining. It may not be another California gold rush, but Khan believes there are economically significant amounts of gold in the isolated Pakistani highlands where the Hindu Kush and Himalaya mountains converge.

The project includes training Pakistani scientists in remote sensing image processing and trace element geochemistry.

The area’s gold panners will also be trained in safer, more efficient methods of panning for the glittering nuggets. They currently use primitive tools to sift through the Indus River sands, extracting course gold while throwing fine, tiny gold particles back in the river. They also use mercury in the panning process which is causing pollution in the river and groundwater, a problem the project hopes to alleviate.

And Bdellium is:

Bdellium (dĕl’ē-əm) (Hebrew bedolach), also bdellion, is an aromatic gum like myrrh that is exuded from a tree. An Arab writer first made the identification with gum guggul, the species Commiphora wightii…

Commiphora wightii (Guggal, Guggul or Mukul myrrh tree) is a flowering plant in the family Burseraceae.  The guggul plant may be found from northern Africa to central Asia, but is most common in northern India. It prefers arid and semi-arid climates and is tolerant of poor soil.

It was a cheaper form of myrrh resin (which was highly revered by ancient peoples) and here is a picture of it:

As for ‘onyx stone’…

“Onyx is mainly found in India and on the continent of South America. This gemstone is also called sardonyx and it comes in different colors, including red, brown and black.”

So, it appears that the 4 great rivers of Life:  the Indus, the Nile, the Tigris, and the Euphrates, had their headwaters in the one source river in the Garden of Eden.

What could the Prophet of the Oral Tradition of the the origins of life from God mean by this?  It obviously isn’t literally a certain garden in a certain place; it is much larger than that, in size and meaning.  God’s Garden of Eden exists somewhere beyond us now, but it created the one great river of Life which promulgated the four great rivers which were the cradle of Homo sapiens sapiens, or modern man, created in God’s image.

In view of this, it is certain that there were many Adams and Eves.  Adam “is the Hebrew word for “man”. It could be ultimately derived from Hebrew (‘adam) meaning “to be red”, referring to the ruddy colour of human skin, or from Akkadian adamu meaning “to make”. According to Genesis in the Old Testament Adam was created from the earth by God (there is a word play on Hebrew (‘adamah) “earth”).”  -Behindthename.com

We (our earliest Adams and Eves) obviously were kicked out of God’s Garden of Eden, since there is no record of it on this earth as we know it.  I think this happened not because of past events in our timeline, but because of future events in our timeline–because Eve will eat from the Tree of Knowledge and Adam will follow suit.  Because God knows all things outside of Time and Space, and He knows we will eat of the Tree of Knowledge and attain His knowledge (as foretold in Jeremiah, see previous post entitled ‘Part III:  Jeremiah’s Hidden Prophecy), He took care  to put us out of the Garden of Eden before we could eat from the Tree of Life and have power over Life, His domain.

Then.  Enter Life as we know it.