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.
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