the Scripture tells us when it says:  “I am he who fashioned thee in thy mother’s womb,"[22] for he would have it written in this way.  In speaking of the Garden, he says, Moses allegorically referred to the womb, if we are to believe the Word.

And, if God fashions man in his mother’s womb, that is to say in the Garden, as I have already said, the womb must be taken for the Garden, and Eden for the region (surrounding the womb), and the “river going forth from Eden to water the Garden,"[23] for the navel.  This navel, he says, is divided into four channels, for on either side of the navel two air-ducts are stretched to convey the breath, and two veins[24] to convey blood.  But when, he says, the navel going forth from the region of Eden is attached to the foetus in the epigastric regions, that which is commonly called by everyone the navel[25] ... and the two veins by which the blood flows and is carried from the Edenic region through what are called the gates of the liver, which nourish the foetus.  And the air-ducts, which we said were channels for breath, embracing the bladder on either side in the region of the pelvis, are united at the great duct which is called the dorsal aorta.  And thus the breath passing through the side doors towards the heart produces the movement of the embryo.  For as long as the babe is being fashioned in the Garden, it neither takes nourishment through the mouth, nor breathes through the nostrils.  For seeing that it is surrounded by the waters (of the womb), death would instantly supervene, if it took a breath; for it would draw after it the waters and so perish.  But the whole (of the foetus) is wrapped up in an envelope, called the amnion, and is nourished through the navel and receives the essence of the breath through the dorsal duct, as I have said.

15.  The river, therefore, he says, which goes out of Eden, is divided into four channels, four ducts, that is to say; into four senses of the foetus:  sight, (hearing),[26] smelling, taste and touch.  For these are the only senses the child has while it is being formed in the Garden.

This, he says, is the law which Moses laid down, and in accordance with this very law each of his books was written, as the titles show.  The first book is Genesis, and the title of the book, he says, is sufficient for a knowledge of the whole matter.  For this Genesis, he says, is sight, which is one division of the river.  For the world is perceived by sight.

The title of the second book is Exodus.  For it was necessary for that which is born to travel through the Red Sea, and pass towards the Desert—­by Red the blood is meant, he says—­and taste the bitter water.  For the “bitter,” he says, is the water beyond the Red Sea, inasmuch as it is the path of knowledge of painful and bitter things which we travel along in life.  But when it is changed by Moses, that is to say by the