EDEN, the garden of paradise. It would be difficult in the whole history of opinion, to find any subject which has so invited and at the same time so completely baffled conjecture, as the Garden of Eden. The three continents of the Old World have been subjected to the most rigorous search; but no locality which in the slightest degree corresponded to the de scription of the first abode of the human race has been left unexamined. Philo Judmus (flourished about 20) first broached the allegor ical theory of interpretation, teaching that para dise shadowed forth the governing faculty of the soul, and that the tree of life represented religion, the true means of immortality. Ori gen, adopting a somewhat similar view, regarded Eden as heaven, the trees as angels, and the rivers as wisdom ; and Ambrosius considered the terrestrial paradise and the third heaven, mentioned by Saint Paul (2 Cor. xii, 2-4), as identical. Luther taught that Eden was guarded by angels from discovery and conse quent profanation until the Deluge, when all traces were destroyed. Swedenborg, who re garded the first 11 chapters of Genesis as con stituting a divine allegory, taught that Eden represented the state of innocence in which man was originally created and from which he degenerated in consequence of the Fall. The
account given in Genesis of the situation of Eden is not such as to enable us to identify it with any existing locality. It is said to have had a garden in the eastern part of it, and we are told that a river went out of Eden to water this garden, and from thence it was parted into four heads, which were called respectively Pison, Gihon, Hiddekel and Euphrates (Phrat). The Pison is said to compass the whole land of Havilah; the Gihon that of Ethiopia (Cush) ; and the Hiddekel to go toward the cast of Assyria. Of the rivers mentioned the Phrat of the original seems to have been cor rectly identified with the Euphrates, and the name Hiddckel appears elsewhere in Scripture (Dan. x, 4) to be applied to the Tigris; but it is impossible to say what rivers or places were meant by the names Pison, Gihon, Havilah and Cush.