It is in the identification of these two, and of the districts which they “compassed,” which form the difficulties of the problem.  Up till recent times, it is remarkable what a variety of speculations have been attempted as to the situation of Eden.  Dr. Aldis Wright, the learned author of the article “Eden” in Smith’s “Biblical Dictionary,” remarks:  “It would be difficult, in the whole history of opinion, to find any subject which has so invited, and at the same time completely baffled, conjecture, as the Garden of Eden.”  And in another place he thinks that “the site of Eden will ever rank with the quadrature of the circle, and the interpretation of unfulfilled prophecy among those unsolved, and perhaps insoluble, problems which possess so strange a fascination.”  It is, however, to be remarked, (1)that all that was written before Professor Delitzsch’s researches were made known; and (2)that really a great mass of the conjecture and speculation has been purely in the air—­undertaken without any reference to the plain terms of the text to be interpreted.  It is the extravagance of commentators, and their insisting on going beyond the narrative itself, that has raised such difficulties, and made the problem look more hopeless than it really is.

To what purpose are “the three continents of the old world” “subjected to the most rigorous search,” as Dr. Wright puts it—­when it is quite plain from the text itself, that the solution is to be sought in the neighbourhood of the Euphrates, or not at all?  The whole inquiry seems to have been one in which a vast cloud of learned dust has been raised by speculators, who began their inquiry without clearly determining, to start with, what was the point at issue.  Either the description in Gen. ii. 3-14 is meant for allegory, or geographical fact:  this question must first be settled; and if the latter is agreed to, then it is quite inconceivable that the words should imply any very extensive region, or any fancied realm extending over a large proportion of one or other quarter of the globe.  The problem is then at once narrowed; and it is simply unreasonable to look for Havila in India, or for Pison in the province of Burma, as one learned author does!

Yet commentators have forgotten this; and gone—­the earlier ones into interpretation of allegory—­the later into impossible geographical speculation; while only the most recent have confined themselves to the obvious terms of the problem as laid down in the narrative itself—­a narrative which (whether true or false) is clearly meant to be definite and exact, as we have seen.  Our A.V. translators are to be held, to some extent, responsible for the freedom which speculation has exercised, by themselves taking the C[=u]sh of the narrative to “Ethiopia,” i.e., to the African continent—­for which there is no authority whatever.

As regards the allegorical interpretations, they are too extravagant for serious notice.  Souls, angels, human passions and motives, are supposed to be represented by towns, rivers, and countries.  To all this it is enough to reply—­What reason can we have for supposing an allegory suddenly to be interpolated at Gen. ii. 8?  There is no allegory before it, there is none after.