[Footnote 1:  “Wo lag das Paradies” (Leipzig, 1881) is the title of the book.]

[Footnote:  Professor Friedrich Delitzsch is Professor of Assyriology in the University of Leipzig.]

In placing the site on the Euphrates, and far from the mountain sources, there is no violence done to the Hebrew language used to describe the first river, as one that “went out,” and watered the Garden.  The words do not require that the river should actually take its rise within the Garden limits; but it is necessary that the river should be so situated, that its waters could be distributed by means of creeks or canals across the Garden, that it could be said the river “went out and watered the Garden.”  Now it is a remarkable fact, that in the district just above Babylon, the bed of the Euphrates is in level much higher than the bed of the Tigris (Hiddekel) to the east, and that hence there always have been a number of very variable channels leading from the Euphrates eastward to the Tigris.  These, it is well known, were often enlarged by the ancients and converted into useful “inundation canals” for irrigation and the passage of boats.  Imagine, then, the high level river bed of the Euphrates, and various streams flowing off it down to the valley of the Tigris, and we have a most efficiently irrigated “Garden,” and one accurately described by the text—­the great river “went out” and watered it.  The Euphrates, moreover, is liable to great flushes of water from the melting of the snows in wide tracts of mountain or highlands from which its waters are collected, and these volumes of water found vent from the overcharged mother-channel by escape, not only through the side channels, just spoken of, but also by other important branches on the other side.  Every one who has seen one of the great rivers of Northern India will at once realize the changes that take place where a river liable to floods has its bed at a high level.  It is almost a matter of certainty that, in the course of years, the branches and channels of rivers so constituted will change, and old ones be left dry and deserted.  These essential topographical conditions have always to be remembered in interpreting the narrative of Genesis ii.

In fact, they furnish us with points which help us in the problem at the outset. (1) There is a part of the Euphrates, just above Babylon, where the river naturally furnished abundant irrigation for a Garden planted eastward of it, by means of natural irrigation channels flowing from the high level down to the lower valley of the Tigris; and (2) there is also a point from which the Euphrates did branch out, and several important arms anciently existed.

Nor is the locality, in point of verdure and fertility, unsuitable.  Not only do the ancient histories make frequent mention of the canals and streams flowing from the Euphrates which I have alluded to, but they speak of the palm groves, the vines and the verdure of the Babylonian or Chaldean region.  Herodotus, in his first book, has the most glowing description of the scene; and the kings of Babylon had numerous enclosed gardens or parks:  these were imitated in Persia, and gave rise to the Persian name “Firdaus,” which Xenophon imported into Greek in the form of [Greek:  paradeisos] or “paradise”—­the term which was adopted by the Seventy translators.