Post by rakovsky on Apr 22, 2020 19:28:30 GMT -8
Genesis 2:8 apparently refers to a land called Eden and says the Garden of Eden was in its eastern part: "And the Lord God planted a garden eastward in Eden; and there he put the man whom he had formed."
A common theory is that the Garden of Eden was located in a region in Armenia, western Turkey, or northwest Iran. A second common theory is that it was located in what is today the Persian Gulf, which was flooded in prehistoric times.
One issue with deciding which of those two theories is correct is whether Genesis 2 is referring to Eden being closer to (A) the headwaters of the four rivers that include the Tigris and Euphrates, or closer to (B) the point where those rivers would have poured their waters into a common water basin, the Persian Gulf. Genesis 2 says:
I take this to mean that from Eden, a river went to water the garden, meaning that the river flowed into the garden. To water a garden, a river flows into the garden, rather than the other way, of course.
Next, Genesis 2 says that from the garden, the river parted into four "heads". I take this to refer to the four waters' "heads", ie. their sources or "headwaters", not to the mouths or exits of the rivers. One reason is because a river's source is called its "head". Another reason is because the "flow" of the sentence "flows" with the river's flow, and thus points to Eden being at the rivers' source. The sentence begins with a river flowing from Eden to water the garden, ie. it begins with the source, Eden, and then refers to its target or outlet, the Garden. And then it refers to the Garden again ("from thence", ie. from the Garden), and then refers to its target, the four heads.
So this means that the four rivers start from a river that flows from the Garden of Eden, and not necessarily that the rivers themselves started directly in Eden. It also suggests that Eden was closer to those rivers' source than to their mouth (the Persian Gulf).
On the other hand, a factor in favor of the second theory, that the Garden was in the Persian Gulf, is that there was a Sumerian myth about a primitive paradise resembling the story of the Garden of Eden. In the Sumerian myth, the paradise was located in Dilmun in the Persian Gulf. A second factor in favor of the Persian Gulf theory are the ideas that the Pishon could have run from Havilah in western Arabia and poured into the Persian Gulf, making the Persian Gulf a potential connecting point for the four rivers. In this theory, the Gihon would also have been a river running into the Persian Gulf.
Another issue is the location of Havilah. This is because we don't know the location of the Pishon, which encompasses Havilah. It looks like Havilah refers to western Arabia, which has gold and onyx. In Genesis 10's "Table of Nations", in which Noah's descendants are associated with places and nations, there are two people named Havilah, one a descendant of Shem (Joktan's son Havilah in Gen 10:23) and another a descendant of Ham. Further, Genesis 25 says that the IshmaelitesIt sounds like Havilah is in northwest Arabia, because I imagine that the Ishmaelites lived there. Wikipedia's article on the Ishmaelites says:
A key gold mining area of Arabia is in Mahd adh Dhahab
, in what is now western Saudi Arabia. According to Wikipedia's article on "Mahd adh Dhahab":
Another factor to consider is that Sumerian records refer to a land of "Edin" in Mesopotamia.
One conceptual problem that I have is the geography of how the Pishon River could flow from the headwater area of the Tigris and Euphrates and then encompass Havilah in western Arabia. The Tigris' source is to the south of the Euphrates source. The Pishon's source, in order to get near Havilah, which includes the Sinai region, would have to run from south of the Euphrates, and then north and west around the Euphrates, and then south to Jordan. It would have to run through Syria and Jordan.
I guess that you could theorize that the mountains and elevations were different at that time, and that the Pishon dried up, because there is no river running today from eastern Turkey to Jordan. This might not be baseless, because Genesis 10 seems to suggest a drastic change in the world's geography:Maybe this refers to the earth being divided between Noah's descendants, but it sounds like it is talking about a continental division, like between Eurasia and Africa, or between the Americas and the Old World.
Ezra comments on Shaul Wolf's article about Eden on the Chabad website:
Here is a map of the Euphrates and the Tigris:
The Euphrates runs near Elazig and runs south through Dayr az Zawr, and then south toward Karbala. The Tigris is in dark blue and runs near Elazig and then south to Mosul.
Still, it seems like you could have a river that sheds the Tigris at one lake and then sheds the Euphrates and the Pishon from another lake. Here is a map suggesting a connection by a river in the mountains between the Euphrates and the Tigris:
Shaul Wolf in his article "Where Are the Four Rivers that Come from Eden?" theorizes that the river that went from Eden to the Garden of Eden could have sunk underground and then reappeared above ground as the heads of the four rivers:
This would address the problem of how a river head leading to western Arabia could run from another river that connected to the Tigris. The solution could be that the connecting river ran underground. Unfortunately, I don't agree with Wolf's linguistic argument. Wolf is claiming that in Hebrew, Eden's river was "lost" and then became four heads, but this translation is mistaken. According to Strong's Concordance, the term used in Genesis 2:10 consistently translates as separated or divided. ("Strong's 6504: Parad -- to divide", biblehub.com/hebrew/6504.htm)
An argument favoring the location of the Garden being in eastern Turkey involves the discovery of Gobekli Tepe and the transition from hunting and gathering to agriculture. In this theory, humans were hunters and gatherers originally, living directly off the land's natural bounty, and Gobekli Tepe in eastern Turkey, with its monuments carved with wild animals was a religious center for this environment and lifestyle. Later, the society turned to agriculture, which it is theorized began in this broad region that included Turkey. Along with this theory, humans used up the nutrients of the soil through gathering food and agriculture, turning it into a desert, thereby also excluding themselves from their earlier plentiful paradise in a sense.
Here is a map showing the site of Gobekli Tepe as well as the Euphrates and Tigris rivers:
This map also shows what I mean as the geographic difficulty of having the Pishon River both (A) run from another river that connects to both the Euphrates and Tigres, and (B) run to Havilah in western Arabia. This difficulty arises in part because rivers generally don't cross others river like a four way street intersection. You couldn't have a river east of the Euphrates that both pours into the Tigres and then crosses the Euphrates to pour into the Pishon that runs into Arabia.
Tom Knox in his article "Do these mysterious stones mark the site of the Garden of Eden?" favors a connection between Eden and Gobekli Tepe, noting that
In referring to "Beth Eden" as a minor kingdom, Knox is apparently referring to "Bit Adini", a 10th century BC (as in 1000 BC) kingdom in the northeast corner of this map:
A verse in the Bible about the people of Eden in Thelasar' is 2 Kings 19, where the Assyrian ruler Sennacherib asks rhetorically,
The International Standard Bible Encyclopedia comments on this verse in 2 Kings 19:
Gozan, Haran, and Rezeph are marked on the brown map above as locations surrounding the kingdom of Bit Adini. This implies that the people of Eden in Telassar in 2 Kings 19 were living around or in that region also. So this verse serves as further evidence connecting the Garden of Eden with the eastern region of Turkey.
The Jewish Encyclopedia takes Ezekiel 28 as referring to the Garden of Eden as being on a mountain, although I am not sure whether Ezekiel means to say that the King of Tyre was in the Garden of Eden spiritually and was also on a mountain in another place. There, Ezekiel says:
The article on the "Garden of Eden" on the website "All About Creation" gives a theory identifying the Garden with the river by the Adji Chay river, the city of Tabriz, and Mt. Sahand:
This theory appears to equate Mt. Sahand with the mount in Ezekiel 28 and the fact that Mt. Sahand is a former volcano with Ezekiel 28's reference to coals. However, as I mentioned earlier, it isn't clear to me that Ezekiel 28 was specifying that Eden was on a mountain. Nor is it clear that Ezekiel was saying that Eden had coals.
The article's theory identifies Eden with Edin in the story of a Sumerian envoy's journey to Aratta in Edin. The article notes that
One objection to this theory is that although the envoy went to Aratta in Edin to find precious minerals, even if we identify Edin with the Biblical Eden, it doesn't necessarily follow that the mineral-rich kingdom of Aratta must be the same place as the Garden there. Also, I would want to check whether the Sumerian story was actually identifying Aratta or Edin with the area of northwestern Iran, as opposed to a more western place in Assyria like "Beth Edin."
The Aji Chay river runs westward through Tabriz and empties into Late Urmia. Here is a map used to illustrate the theory that the Aji Char was the Biblical river running through Eden:
The map chooses locations for "Gihon", "Cush", "Nоd", "Havilah", "Edin", and "Pishon" that match the theory, and the identifications may not be correct. The Aji Char on this map is marked as "Gan", meaning "Garden" in Hebrew. One problem that I see with this theory is that the Aji Char runs westward from Tabriz into Lake Urmia, which is east of "Edin", whereas Genesis 2 entails that from Eden, the river watering the Garden flowed eastward, as the Garden was on the east of Eden and the river watered the Garden.
A common theory is that the Garden of Eden was located in a region in Armenia, western Turkey, or northwest Iran. A second common theory is that it was located in what is today the Persian Gulf, which was flooded in prehistoric times.
One issue with deciding which of those two theories is correct is whether Genesis 2 is referring to Eden being closer to (A) the headwaters of the four rivers that include the Tigris and Euphrates, or closer to (B) the point where those rivers would have poured their waters into a common water basin, the Persian Gulf. Genesis 2 says:
10. And a river went out of Eden to water the garden; and from thence it was parted, and became into four heads.
11. The name of the first is Pison: that is it which compasseth the whole land of Havilah, where there is gold;
12. And the gold of that land is good: there is bdellium and the onyx stone.
13. And the name of the second river is Gihon: the same is it that compasseth the whole land of [Cush].
14. And the name of the third river is Hiddekel [ie. the Tigris]: that is it which goeth toward the east of Assyria. And the fourth river is Euphrates.
11. The name of the first is Pison: that is it which compasseth the whole land of Havilah, where there is gold;
12. And the gold of that land is good: there is bdellium and the onyx stone.
13. And the name of the second river is Gihon: the same is it that compasseth the whole land of [Cush].
14. And the name of the third river is Hiddekel [ie. the Tigris]: that is it which goeth toward the east of Assyria. And the fourth river is Euphrates.
I take this to mean that from Eden, a river went to water the garden, meaning that the river flowed into the garden. To water a garden, a river flows into the garden, rather than the other way, of course.
Next, Genesis 2 says that from the garden, the river parted into four "heads". I take this to refer to the four waters' "heads", ie. their sources or "headwaters", not to the mouths or exits of the rivers. One reason is because a river's source is called its "head". Another reason is because the "flow" of the sentence "flows" with the river's flow, and thus points to Eden being at the rivers' source. The sentence begins with a river flowing from Eden to water the garden, ie. it begins with the source, Eden, and then refers to its target or outlet, the Garden. And then it refers to the Garden again ("from thence", ie. from the Garden), and then refers to its target, the four heads.
So this means that the four rivers start from a river that flows from the Garden of Eden, and not necessarily that the rivers themselves started directly in Eden. It also suggests that Eden was closer to those rivers' source than to their mouth (the Persian Gulf).
On the other hand, a factor in favor of the second theory, that the Garden was in the Persian Gulf, is that there was a Sumerian myth about a primitive paradise resembling the story of the Garden of Eden. In the Sumerian myth, the paradise was located in Dilmun in the Persian Gulf. A second factor in favor of the Persian Gulf theory are the ideas that the Pishon could have run from Havilah in western Arabia and poured into the Persian Gulf, making the Persian Gulf a potential connecting point for the four rivers. In this theory, the Gihon would also have been a river running into the Persian Gulf.
Another issue is the location of Havilah. This is because we don't know the location of the Pishon, which encompasses Havilah. It looks like Havilah refers to western Arabia, which has gold and onyx. In Genesis 10's "Table of Nations", in which Noah's descendants are associated with places and nations, there are two people named Havilah, one a descendant of Shem (Joktan's son Havilah in Gen 10:23) and another a descendant of Ham. Further, Genesis 25 says that the Ishmaelites
dwelt from Havilah unto Shur [likely the northern Sinai desert] that is before Egypt, as thou goest toward Asshur [ie. Assyria]: over against all his brethren he did settle.
Throughout history, the Ishmaelites have been associated with Arabs (more specifically, North Arabians). Indeed, two prominent North Arabian tribes, the Qedarites and Nabateans, have names corresponding to two of Ishmael's sons. ... Assyrian and Babylonian royal inscriptions and North Arabian inscriptions from 9th to 6th century BC, mention the king of Qedar. Of the names of the sons of Ishmael the names "Nabat, Kedar, Abdeel, Dumah, Massa, and Teman" were mentioned in the Assyrian royal inscriptions as Arabian tribes.
A key gold mining area of Arabia is in Mahd adh Dhahab
, in what is now western Saudi Arabia. According to Wikipedia's article on "Mahd adh Dhahab":
The Mahd Al Thahab (Arabic: مَـهـد الـذّهـب, "Cradle of (the) Gold"), is a small gold area in the Arabian Peninsula. It is located in the Province of Al-Madinah, in the Hejazi region of Saudi Arabia.
Gold was first mined in Arabia c. 3,000 BC.
Since there are two Havilahs descended from two different sons of Noah, I suppose that there could also be two lands of "Havilah", one being in western Arabia and another one closer to the Garden of Eden. Ham's descendants are broadly associated with northeast Africa, whereas Shem's descendants are broadly associated with the Middle East. This goes against the idea that the Pishon could have been in India.
Gold was first mined in Arabia c. 3,000 BC.
Since there are two Havilahs descended from two different sons of Noah, I suppose that there could also be two lands of "Havilah", one being in western Arabia and another one closer to the Garden of Eden. Ham's descendants are broadly associated with northeast Africa, whereas Shem's descendants are broadly associated with the Middle East. This goes against the idea that the Pishon could have been in India.
Another factor to consider is that Sumerian records refer to a land of "Edin" in Mesopotamia.
One conceptual problem that I have is the geography of how the Pishon River could flow from the headwater area of the Tigris and Euphrates and then encompass Havilah in western Arabia. The Tigris' source is to the south of the Euphrates source. The Pishon's source, in order to get near Havilah, which includes the Sinai region, would have to run from south of the Euphrates, and then north and west around the Euphrates, and then south to Jordan. It would have to run through Syria and Jordan.
I guess that you could theorize that the mountains and elevations were different at that time, and that the Pishon dried up, because there is no river running today from eastern Turkey to Jordan. This might not be baseless, because Genesis 10 seems to suggest a drastic change in the world's geography:
To Eber were born two sons: the name of one was Peleg, for in his days the earth was divided; and his brother’s name was Joktan.
Ezra comments on Shaul Wolf's article about Eden on the Chabad website:
The splitting of the land in the time of Peleg is reference to the splitting up of peoples across the land, as a result of the incident of Babel. "Erets" has an original meaning of "people of the land," as opposed to "land" itself; and the context reveals this is what Genesis 10:25 references. The division is the confusion of the one language into many languages, so that the people would instinctively divide and fill out the earth, as Gd had commanded.
Here is a map of the Euphrates and the Tigris:
The Euphrates runs near Elazig and runs south through Dayr az Zawr, and then south toward Karbala. The Tigris is in dark blue and runs near Elazig and then south to Mosul.
Still, it seems like you could have a river that sheds the Tigris at one lake and then sheds the Euphrates and the Pishon from another lake. Here is a map suggesting a connection by a river in the mountains between the Euphrates and the Tigris:
Shaul Wolf in his article "Where Are the Four Rivers that Come from Eden?" theorizes that the river that went from Eden to the Garden of Eden could have sunk underground and then reappeared above ground as the heads of the four rivers:
While the verses seemingly indicate that the rivers all flow from the same source, this is clearly not the case. It has been suggested that the Hebrew word for “separated,” יפרד, can also be understood as “lost or missing.”13 According to this approach, the river sunk into the ground at the exit of the Garden of Eden, and later reappeared at four distinct locations. The verse now reads, “A river flowed out of Eden to water the garden, and from there it was lost (sunk into the ground) and (later reemerged and) became four heads.”14
It has further been pointed out that the four rivers are referred to as four heads and not four branches, which may imply that they are not four branches of the same river, but rather four distinct riverheads.
It has further been pointed out that the four rivers are referred to as four heads and not four branches, which may imply that they are not four branches of the same river, but rather four distinct riverheads.
This would address the problem of how a river head leading to western Arabia could run from another river that connected to the Tigris. The solution could be that the connecting river ran underground. Unfortunately, I don't agree with Wolf's linguistic argument. Wolf is claiming that in Hebrew, Eden's river was "lost" and then became four heads, but this translation is mistaken. According to Strong's Concordance, the term used in Genesis 2:10 consistently translates as separated or divided. ("Strong's 6504: Parad -- to divide", biblehub.com/hebrew/6504.htm)
An argument favoring the location of the Garden being in eastern Turkey involves the discovery of Gobekli Tepe and the transition from hunting and gathering to agriculture. In this theory, humans were hunters and gatherers originally, living directly off the land's natural bounty, and Gobekli Tepe in eastern Turkey, with its monuments carved with wild animals was a religious center for this environment and lifestyle. Later, the society turned to agriculture, which it is theorized began in this broad region that included Turkey. Along with this theory, humans used up the nutrients of the soil through gathering food and agriculture, turning it into a desert, thereby also excluding themselves from their earlier plentiful paradise in a sense.
Here is a map showing the site of Gobekli Tepe as well as the Euphrates and Tigris rivers:
This map also shows what I mean as the geographic difficulty of having the Pishon River both (A) run from another river that connects to both the Euphrates and Tigres, and (B) run to Havilah in western Arabia. This difficulty arises in part because rivers generally don't cross others river like a four way street intersection. You couldn't have a river east of the Euphrates that both pours into the Tigres and then crosses the Euphrates to pour into the Pishon that runs into Arabia.
Tom Knox in his article "Do these mysterious stones mark the site of the Garden of Eden?" favors a connection between Eden and Gobekli Tepe, noting that
biblical Eden is by four rivers, including the Tigris and Euphrates. And Gobekli lies between both of these.
In ancient Assyrian texts, there is mention of a 'Beth Eden' - a house of Eden. This minor kingdom was 50 miles from Gobekli Tepe.
Another book in the Old Testament talks of 'the children of Eden which were in Thelasar', a town in northern Syria, near Gobekli.
The very word 'Eden' comes from the Sumerian for 'plain'; Gobekli lies on the plains of Harran.
In ancient Assyrian texts, there is mention of a 'Beth Eden' - a house of Eden. This minor kingdom was 50 miles from Gobekli Tepe.
Another book in the Old Testament talks of 'the children of Eden which were in Thelasar', a town in northern Syria, near Gobekli.
The very word 'Eden' comes from the Sumerian for 'plain'; Gobekli lies on the plains of Harran.
In referring to "Beth Eden" as a minor kingdom, Knox is apparently referring to "Bit Adini", a 10th century BC (as in 1000 BC) kingdom in the northeast corner of this map:
A verse in the Bible about the people of Eden in Thelasar' is 2 Kings 19, where the Assyrian ruler Sennacherib asks rhetorically,
11. Surely you have heard what the kings of Assyria have done to all the other countries, devoting them to destruction. Will you then be spared? 12. Did the gods of the nations my fathers have destroyed rescue them— the gods of Gozan, Haran, Rezeph, and the people of Eden who were in Telassar?
The International Standard Bible Encyclopedia comments on this verse in 2 Kings 19:
In 2 Kings 19:12 Isaiah 37:12 "the children of Eden that were in Telassar" are mentioned in connection with "Gozan, and Haran, and Rezeph" as having been destroyed by the Assyrians who were before the time of Sennacherib. The expression, "the children of Eden that were in Telassar," undoubtedly referred to a tribe which inhabited a region of which Telassar was the center. Telassar means "the hill of Asshur" and, according to Schrader, it was a name that might have been given to any place where a temple had been built to Asshur. Inasmuch as Gozan, and Haran, and Rezeph were in Mesopotamia it would seem probable that "the children of Eden that were in Telassar" belonged to the same locality. The "children of Eden" is quite probably to be identified with the Bit `Adini of the inscriptions and this referred to a district on the middle Euphrates. According to the inscriptions Gozan, Haran, Rezeph, and Bit `Adini were destroyed by Sennacherib's forefathers, and this is in accord with the account in 2 Kings and Isaiah.
The Jewish Encyclopedia takes Ezekiel 28 as referring to the Garden of Eden as being on a mountain, although I am not sure whether Ezekiel means to say that the King of Tyre was in the Garden of Eden spiritually and was also on a mountain in another place. There, Ezekiel says:
11. Moreover the word of the LORD came unto me, saying,
12. Son of man, take up a lamentation upon the king of Tyrus, and say unto him, Thus saith the Lord GOD; Thou sealest up the sum, full of wisdom, and perfect in beauty.
13. Thou hast been in Eden the garden of God; every precious stone was thy covering, the sardius, topaz, and the diamond, the beryl, the onyx, and the jasper, the sapphire, the emerald, and the carbuncle, and gold: the workmanship of thy tabrets and of thy pipes was prepared in thee in the day that thou wast created.
14. Thou art the anointed cherub that covereth; and I have set thee so: thou wast upon the holy mountain of God; thou hast walked up and down in the midst of the stones of fire.
12. Son of man, take up a lamentation upon the king of Tyrus, and say unto him, Thus saith the Lord GOD; Thou sealest up the sum, full of wisdom, and perfect in beauty.
13. Thou hast been in Eden the garden of God; every precious stone was thy covering, the sardius, topaz, and the diamond, the beryl, the onyx, and the jasper, the sapphire, the emerald, and the carbuncle, and gold: the workmanship of thy tabrets and of thy pipes was prepared in thee in the day that thou wast created.
14. Thou art the anointed cherub that covereth; and I have set thee so: thou wast upon the holy mountain of God; thou hast walked up and down in the midst of the stones of fire.
The article on the "Garden of Eden" on the website "All About Creation" gives a theory identifying the Garden with the river by the Adji Chay river, the city of Tabriz, and Mt. Sahand:
One archaeologist claims to have found the site described in Genesis as “Eden” in a lush valley beneath an extinct volcano in northern Iran. ... Just 10 miles northwest of Tehran, the capital city of Iran, lies an industrial city called Tabriz, and it is here that this archaeologist believes the biblical garden lies. Today, the area flourishes with mud brick villages, but as you descend a narrow mountain path, one sees a beautiful alpine valley just like the Bible describes it with terraced orchards on its slopes crowded with every kind of fruit-laden trees.
In order to make the journey to this remote location, you must travel from western Iran north through the Zagros Mountains of Iranian Kurdistan down Mt. Sahand, which is a towering mountain described in Scripture as the Prophet Ezekiel’s Mountain of God where the Lord resides among red-hot coals (Ezekiel 28:11-19). This mountain once housed a volcano which is now extinct, and cascading down this mountain is a small river, the Adji Chay (the name of which translates in local dialect as ‘walled garden’). The people in this community hold this mountain as sacred and attribute magical powers to the river’s water.
In order to make the journey to this remote location, you must travel from western Iran north through the Zagros Mountains of Iranian Kurdistan down Mt. Sahand, which is a towering mountain described in Scripture as the Prophet Ezekiel’s Mountain of God where the Lord resides among red-hot coals (Ezekiel 28:11-19). This mountain once housed a volcano which is now extinct, and cascading down this mountain is a small river, the Adji Chay (the name of which translates in local dialect as ‘walled garden’). The people in this community hold this mountain as sacred and attribute magical powers to the river’s water.
This theory appears to equate Mt. Sahand with the mount in Ezekiel 28 and the fact that Mt. Sahand is a former volcano with Ezekiel 28's reference to coals. However, as I mentioned earlier, it isn't clear to me that Ezekiel 28 was specifying that Eden was on a mountain. Nor is it clear that Ezekiel was saying that Eden had coals.
The article's theory identifies Eden with Edin in the story of a Sumerian envoy's journey to Aratta in Edin. The article notes that
ancient Sumerian cuneiform clay tablets... describe a 5000-year-old route to Eden, and in these tablets was documented an epic story called, “Enmerkar and the Lord of Aratta,” supposedly written by an emissary of the Sumerian priest-king of Uruk. The emissary had been dispatched to Aratta on the plain of Edin – known to the Sumerians as a land of happiness and plenty -- to obtain gold and lapis lazuli to decorate a temple that Enmerkar was building in Uruk. This epic describes the emissary’s three-month trek on foot via seven passes through the Zagros Mountains to the foothills of Mt. Sahand and his successful procurement of the required valuables.
One objection to this theory is that although the envoy went to Aratta in Edin to find precious minerals, even if we identify Edin with the Biblical Eden, it doesn't necessarily follow that the mineral-rich kingdom of Aratta must be the same place as the Garden there. Also, I would want to check whether the Sumerian story was actually identifying Aratta or Edin with the area of northwestern Iran, as opposed to a more western place in Assyria like "Beth Edin."
The Aji Chay river runs westward through Tabriz and empties into Late Urmia. Here is a map used to illustrate the theory that the Aji Char was the Biblical river running through Eden:
The map chooses locations for "Gihon", "Cush", "Nоd", "Havilah", "Edin", and "Pishon" that match the theory, and the identifications may not be correct. The Aji Char on this map is marked as "Gan", meaning "Garden" in Hebrew. One problem that I see with this theory is that the Aji Char runs westward from Tabriz into Lake Urmia, which is east of "Edin", whereas Genesis 2 entails that from Eden, the river watering the Garden flowed eastward, as the Garden was on the east of Eden and the river watered the Garden.
- there are 70 faces to 
