Then as to the early geographical expounders.  Josephus and others supposed the allusion was made to the great rivers known to ancient geography, all of which ran into that greatest river of all, which encircled the globe.  In this view, the Gihon might be the Nile, and the Pison the Ganges!  Here, again, it may be remarked it is impossible to read the narrative and believe that the author meant any such widespread region.  Even if the author had the ancient ideas about cosmography generally, that would not prevent his being accurate about a limited region lying to the east of a well-known river in a populous country.  In later times Luther avoided the difficult speculation by supposing that the Deluge had swept away all traces of the site!  But unfortunately for this convenient theory, it is a plain fact that the Deluge did not sweep any two out of the four rivers named.  The reader who is curious on the subject, will find in Dr. A. Wright’s article a brief account of the various identifications proposed by all these commentators.  It would not be interesting to go into any detail.  I shall pass over all those extravagant views which go to places remote from the Euphrates, and come at once to the later attempts to solve the question in connection with the two known rivers, Euphrates and Hiddekel (Tigris); as this is the only kind of solution that any reasonable modern Biblical student will admit.

The different explanations adopted maybe grouped into two main attempts:  (1) to find the place among the group of rivers that surrounds Mount Ararat in Northern Armenia, vis., in the extreme upper course of the Euphrates near its two sources; (2) to find the place below the present junction of the Euphrates and the Tigris, along some part of the united course, which is now more than two hundred miles long, and is called “Shatt-el-’Arab.”

But neither of these attempts has been successful:  the first must, indeed, be absolutely dismissed; because the Hebrew phrases used in describing the four branches of the river that “went out,” and watered the garden, and then parted, cannot be applied to four independent sources or streams—­upstream of the Euphrates.  It will not, then, satisfy the problem, to find four rivers somewhere in the vicinity of the Euphrates, and which, in a general way, enclose a district in which Eden might be placed.  It may, indeed, be doubted whether this first attempt (which I may call the “North Armenian solution”) would ever have been seriously entertained, but from the fact that the name Gihon—­or something very like it—­did attach itself to the Araxes or Phasis, a considerable river of Armenia.  Finding a Gihon ready, the commentators next made the Pison, the Acampsis; and then as Pison was near the “Havila land,” this country was laid on the extreme north of Armenia; all this without a particle of evidence of any kind.[1] I may here take the opportunity of remarking that a chance similarity of names[2]