VII. The description of the garden of 'Eden in Genesis, with all the characteristic features of the marvellous topography of this abode of delight and of the geography of the surrounding region, so similar to that of the Indian Mêru and the Iranian Harâ-Berezaiti, most certainly forms one of those primitive traditional documents, anterior to the migration of the Tera'hites into Syria, which the family of Abraham brought with them when they left the banks of the Euphrates, and which the Jehovistic writer has used in his book, preserving with remarkable fidelity their legendary colour, and even, as we shall prove, some peculiarities of composition which belong to a date much earlier than his time, and which had their origin in Chaldea. This description refers to countries and rivers of which no mention is afterwards made in the rest of the Bible, and everything in it, as in other passages from the Jehovistic document which are likewise placed at the commencement of Genesis, is tinged with the symbolic colouring peculiar to the spirit of the first ages, so much so that Philo and Origen, anticipating the opinion of a certain number of modern interpreters, have taken it as allegorical and not real. The garden of delight, which served as the abode of the first human pair before their fall, and where Yahveh Elohîm himself" walked in the cool of the day,"* is conceived on the plan of one of those paradises of the Asiatic monarchs, such as the Bible and the ancient Greek writers describe them to us among the Persians, having in the centre the pyramidal cypress, the symbolic and sacred tree. But we cannot find in this analogy an argument in support of the opinion which momentarily found favour with a certain school of interpreters, who looked upon the narratives relating to 'Eden as borrowed by the Jews from the Persians about the time of the Captivity. In fact, if the name of the paradises (called apádaoo by the Greeks since the time of Xenophon) of the Asiatic kings is purely Iranian-the Zend pairi-daéza, "a place enclosed with walls," which had become pardez in Armenian, pardés in Hebrew, pharduisó in Syriac, and firdaus in the Mussulman languages— the type of those gardens, like most of the details of the material civilization of the empires of Nineveh and Persia, derives its origin from the usages of the ancient monarchies of Babylon and Nineveh, as well as the relation of these artificial paradises with the data of the Edenic traditions. In Babylonia and Assyria the terms employed to designate the paradises or planted parks attached to the palaces were kirú and ginú. The first of these Assyrian words, which is invariably used to render the Accadian giš-sår, “ plantation of trees," is derived from the common Semitic root kur, " to dig" (the soil). The second is identical with the Hebrew gan, Orontes (Le Clercq, Père Abram, &c.); in Palestine, towards the sources of the Jordan (Heidegger, Lakemacher, &c.); in Southern Arabia (Jean Herbin and Père Hardouin, whose system has recently been revived with much learning and ingenuity by M. Joseph Halévy). * Gen. iii. S. gannáh, or ginnáh, which has yet other parallels in Aramaic, Arabic and Ghez, and which properly signifies an enclosed garden, in contradistinction to sadeh, "the open field," "the cultivated plain ;"* a garden of pot-herbs,† of sweet-smelling flowers and shrubs, and especially an orchard or park planted with trees.§ This word, however, is not derived, as has been hitherto supposed, from the Semitic root gánan,“ to cover, to protect;" it is a derivative of the old Accadian and non-Semitic term gana, "enclosed," which the influence of Babylonian agriculture has propagated throughout the Syro-Arabic world. The kings of Judah had their royal garden (gan-hammelech) || at Jerusalem, planned on the model of the kiri or gini of the Assyrian monarchs. We see that the Hebrew gan and the Assyrian ginú have their exact synonym in the Zend paraidaéza, which, however, was itself introduced among the Hebrews before the Captivity, for we not only find the word pardes in their books of the Persian epoch, like that of Nehemiah,¶ in which mention is made of the shomér-hapardés, "the keeper of the (king's) forest," but also in older books-like the Canticles,** which speaks of a pardés rimmonim," orchard of pomegranates ;" and Ecclesiastes,†† which associates the plantation of gannóth and pardesim. The LXX. were therefore most strictly correct in adopting the word wapádaσoç as a translation of the Hebrew gan or gannah, not only when the garden of 'Eden was meant but also in many other Biblical passages. Their example has been followed, in the designation of the garden of delight planted by the very hand of God, by Symmachus, the Græcus Venetus, the Peshito-Syriac version, and St. Jerome; and in this way the religious sense of the term "paradise” has become established among Christians, whilst among the Iranians pairidaéza is always a profane expression, and the term employed to designate the paradise of Yima is vara.‡‡ In the religious sense, in speaking of the earthly Paradise, or the garden of 'Eden, the Arabs frequently use the expression El-djannatun or djannat 'Ednin. The use of the word gan, employed in the Assyro-Babylonian civilization, instead of the word pardés, borrowed from the Iranians, is consequently a proof that the compilation of the narrative relating to the garden of 'Eden cannot have taken place so late as the Persian period of the Hebrew history, but dates from a considerably earlier time. Moreover, it is with good reason that M. Reaan observes that the second chapter of Genesis and the neighbouring chapters "were written previous to the intellectual contact of the Hebrews with the Aryan peoples, and differ widely in colour from the books conceived under Persian influence since the Captivity." It is important here to notice There is the same contrast in Assyrian between kirê and çeru, çiru. Cant. iv. 16; vi. 2. § Cant. vi. 11 gan. Is. i. 29, 30; lxi. 11 : gannák. || 2 Kings xxv. 4; Jer. xxxix. 4; lii. 7. Neh. iii. 15. ii. S. ++ ii. 5. ** iv. 13. + Deut. xi. 10. Nevertheless, firdas in Persian is always used in a religious acceptation, as a synonym of behesht, "paradises," and not of bagh, "gardens;" but the entirely Arabic form of this word gives rise to the suspicion that it has not been preserved in Mussulman Persia by a national tradition, but has, on the contrary, been reintroduced there with Islamism. 477 that the whole of the second chapter is taken from the Jehovistic document, the one which criticism is now unanimous in acknowledging as the oldest of the two made use of by the final editor of the Pentateuch, and the one which even those critics who are most inclined to assign too recent a date to the composition of the Biblical books and of the documents inserted therein accept as prior to the Captivity. The narrative of the garden of 'Eden and of the first sin is therefore, even in the state. in which we possess it, indisputably one of the most ancient portions of the Pentateuch, and that without prejudice to the probability of the Jehovistic editor having preserved a form of this narrative which had already become fixed and determined long before his time, and had been traditionally preserved from the times of the migration which brought the Tera'hites from Chaldea into Palestine. ** There are frequent allusions in the prophets to the garden of 'Eden (gan-'Éden),* to the garden of God (gan-Elohim),† to the garden of Yahveh (gan-Yahveh) —a term used also in Genesis by way of comparison in a passage emanating from the same source as the second chapter§-or else to the holy mountain of God (har godesh 'Elohim) || crowned by this garden. The Book of Proverbs on several occasions employs images of the tree of life ('eç-hayîm),¶ and the spring of life (meqór-'hayîm), which is evidently the spring of the paradisiac garden whence issue the four rivers, like the Gangâ of the Indian Mêru, and the Ardvî-Çûra of the This last conclusion appears to me to be Mazdean Hará-Berezaiti. rendered inevitable by the deliberately chosen words of Psalm xxxvi. 8, 9, and the way in which the spring of life (meqór-'hayîm) is there assimilated to a river of pleasures (na 'hal 'édánim)—an allusion to the river produced by the holy spring which "went out of 'Eden to water the garden": ++ "They are satisfied with the abundance of thy house, And thou makest them drink of the river of thy pleasures. In thy light we see light." Another proof, and a very decisive one in my opinion, of the high antiquity of the narrative of Genesis concerning 'Eden, and of the knowledge of it possessed by the Hebrews long before the Captivity, is the intention-so clearly proved by Ewald‡‡-to imitate the four Edenic rivers, which predominated in the works of Shelomoh and 'Hizqiyâhû for the distribution of the waters of Jerusalem, which in its turn was considered as the umbilicus of the earth,§§ in the double scuse of centre of the inhabited regions and source of the rivers. The four streams which watered the town and the foot of its ramparts-one of which was named! Gî'hôn,|||| like one of the paradisiac rivers-were, as Ewald has shown, reputed to issue, through subterranean communications, from the spring * Ezek. xxxvi. 35; Joel ii. 3. § Gen. xiii. 10. ¶ Prov. iii. 18; xi. 30; xiii. 12; xv. 4. + Gen. ii. 10. $$ Ezek. v. 5. ++ + Ezek. xxviii. 13; xxxi. 8, 9. ** Prov. x. 11; xiii. 14; xiv. 27; xvi. 22. "Geschichte des Volkes Israel," 2nd ed., t. iii. pp. 321-328. 1 Kings i. 33, 38; 2 Chron, xxxii. 30; xxxiii. 14. of fresh water situated beneath the Temple,* the sacred source of life and purity, to which the prophets attach a high symbolic value.† Mount Môriyâh, or the whole of Mount Çiyôn, of which it formed part, was thus for a double reason the holy mountain of God (har qodesh Elohim),‡ the har Yahveh or har háelohim,§ as the mountain of the Temple (har bêth Yahveh,|| har habbaîth¶), and as a reproduction of the paradisiac har godesh Elohim. Nevertheless I would not venture, as I have done elsewhere rather too boldly, following the lead of Wilford, to assimilate the name of Môriyâh to that of Mêru, although this latter name is not exclusively Indian, and the Greek myth of the Meropes connects it with the common Aryan source, which would allow us to recognise in it one of those names belonging to the legendary nomenclature of the primitive ages, the special nature of which we have, a little while ago, tried to define by saying that they may be found among peoples belonging to widely-different races with a significant form in the language of each of those peoples, because all the forms in question, which from a strictly philological point of view are radically irreducible, in reality constitute only more or less ingenious combinations intended to give a meaning to traditional appellations, the real origin and signification of which had long been forgotten. A systematic labour of false etymology has given to those names of prehistoric geography, preserved by a stupendously ancient tradition, the appearance of names of Aryan formation among the Aryans, Semitic among the Semites, and so on. Let us remark, however, that the Semitic etymology of the name of Môriyâh is singularly obscure; that its use in the history of the sacrifice of Yiçe'hâq** as the spot where the act took place, while it is not certain that in this case it originally applied to the same locality where the Temple was afterwards built, gives to it the character of an appellation denoting a place where Yahveh, by preference, establishes his residence and wishes to place the centre of his worship; and, lastly, that in the two Biblical passages in which this name appears it is explained only by a play upon words, which moreover differs in one place from the other, and not by an etymology which has any weight from a linguistic point of view. In Gen. xxii. 14 it is said: Vayiqrá Abráhám schém hammaqom hahû Yahveh yiréh-" And Abraham called the name of that place Yahveh-will-provide"++-which proves that the author assimilated móriyah to mare-Yáh. In 2 Chron. iii. 1 the text has Behar hammóriyah asher niráh le-David-" On Mount Môriyâh which had been shown to David"-whence results the explanation, "shown by Yahveh." FRANCOIS LENORMANT. (To be continued). Tacit. Hist., v. 12. Phil. ap. Euseb. Præpar. Evang., ix. 37. ↑ Joel iii. 18; Ezek. xlvii. 1-12; Zech. xiii. 1; xiv. 8; cf. Apoc. xxii. 1. Psalm ii. 6; xv. 1; xliii. 3; xlviii. 1. Is. xi. 9; lvi. 7; lvii. 13; lxv. 11. Jer. xxxi. 23. Joel iii. 17. Obad. 16. § Gen. xxii. 14, Psalm xxiv. 3. Is. ii. 3. Ezek. xxviii. 16. appellation is given to Mount Sinai or 'Horêb, Ex. iii. 1; iv. Num. x. 33. 1 Kings xix. S. Is. ii. 2. Jer. xxvi. 18; Mic. iii. 12. ++ Compare ver. 8 of the same chapter. Zech. viii. 3. The same 27; xviii. 5; xxiv. 13. ** Gen. xxii. 2. MR. BENCE JONES' ANSWER TO OPPONENTS EXAMINED. I PURPOSE in the following pages briefly to examine Mr. Bence Jones's "Answer to Opponents." I shall assume that the reader has followed the whole of this controversy, and has read my previous Paper* as well as Mr Bence Jones's reply.† I shall, therefore, deem it unnecessary to repeat here any of the numerous counts on which Mr. Bence Jones has refused to join issue, and on which, consequently, he has allowed judgment to go by default. I shall not enter on new ground. I shall not extend my remarks beyond the narrow limits which Mr. Bence Jones himself has marked out. Personal recriminations which are not to the point; vague statements which prove nothing; and mere assertions which are entirely worthless; I shall, as far as possible, eschew. Mr. Bence Jones has frequently stated that the Clonakilty Land League consists of only a few persons without character or influence. I have looked over the roll of its members, and find therein the names of five priests, five out of the nine Town Commissioners of Clonakilty, nearly all the elected Poor-law Guardians of the district, and over 900 other members, shopkeepers and farmers, Catholic, Protestant, and Presbyterian. Among the first to join the League were the tenants of Mr. Bence Jones, nor did they require any instigation to refuse paying their rack-rents. But did not Father Mulcahy and I draw away Mr. Bence Jones's labourers? I have already shown (page 147) the contradictory allegations made in this matter anent Father Mulcahy. I also gave, on his behalf and on his authority, a distinct denial to the further allegation that he held informal meetings of the labourers. Mr. Bence Jones adduces his proof in page 255. His son saw Father Mulcahy * See CONTEMPORARY REVIEW for July, 1881, p. 127. + See Ibid., for August, 1881, p. 246. |