Talk:Rivers of Paradise

Feedback from New Page Review process

I left the following feedback for the creator/future reviewers while reviewing this article: Nice work.

North8000 (talk) 15:55, 29 May 2022 (UTC)

Undid text addition in the Judaism section

I had to remove the following new text from the Judaism section, as the English is broken, and the meaning is unclear, so I cannot fix the text:

The commentaries learn it litteral look in Rashi {Genesis-2,11}learns that Pishon is the Nile river and other commentaries. The Midrash Rabbah just making a Homily but it is also Litteral.

Викидим (talk) 03:14, 11 October 2023 (UTC)

References

There are not Four Rivers OR Gold in Iraq

So, that can't be be the Biblical Tigris and Euphrates.

There is however one region where rivers flow as mentioned in the Bible, and there is gold, prime farmland etc. And, it's four rivers located in Southern Russia and Ukraine. This does of course mean that Mesopotamia/Assyria=Ashur=Rusha(Ashur backwards), and Biblical Ethiopia are not the locations shown on the maps today. 197.87.135.139 (talk) 20:15, 18 May 2024 (UTC)

All we need now is some research paper in a peer-reviewed magazine (a.k.a. WP:RS) aligning with this view. Викидим (talk) 20:44, 18 May 2024 (UTC)

Headwaters

"where an unnamed stream flowing out of the Garden of Eden splits into four branches"

That is a misleading translation. The idea is not that one river splits into four flowing downstream, but that the river that flows out of the Garden of Eden is the product of four headwaters that merge together. The Rivers are the Tigris and Euphrates, which we still recognize, plus two other rivers, a bit elusive today.

One is the Pishon, described as flowing through the land of Havilah, where there is gold, aromatic resin, and onyx. In central Saudi Arabia there is a city Ḥaʼil, capital of an ancient kingdom covering an area of central-western Saudi Arabia known historically for gold and other minerals. The Wadi Al-Rummah, blocked in places by sand dunes, runs from this region to the area where the Tigris & Euphrates merge, near Basra, Iraq, and Kuwait. The Wadi Al-Rummah may have been a year-round river as recently as 10,000 years ago.

The other elusive river listed in Genesis is the Gihon, from the land of Kus(h). A probable candidate for this, being the other major river that joins the Tigris & Euphrates and would have joined the Al-Rummah, is the River Karun, which flows through southwestern Iran. That area is known historically as the Kingdom of Khuz, which has become modern Ahvaz. It takes its name from Hûz, the Persian word for the Elamite people who lived there in antiquity. 2601:980:C000:DB60:DCD3:163E:7283:9028 (talk) 15:35, 4 October 2024 (UTC)

Dear anonymous colleague: we have a WP:V requirement: everything we write is just retelling of some other texts, the WP:RS. The current text is written using the sources cited. There are definitely multiple other geographic alignments of the four rivers suggested; they can be added to the text of the article if we can find good sources describing them. As-is, the article is based on the academic dictionaries and articles in research journals, so this is the level of source quality needed to add more geographic interpretations for the Rivers. Викидим (talk) 18:13, 4 October 2024 (UTC)

I’m not the anon you were replying to, but I found this article a cogent summation of the lines of evidence when I read it: https://www.asa3.org/ASA/PSCF/2000/PSCF3-00Hill.html

I don’t have access to read the original article it references about identifying the Pishon with Wadi al-Batir, but it seems to be considered a high-quality source from what I can tell. Lynn Ami (talk) 20:34, 7 December 2024 (UTC)

• al-Batin

Lynn Ami (talk) 20:35, 7 December 2024 (UTC)

Thank you! The article you quote is (1) definitely a piece of genuine (religious) scholarship, (2) published in a respectable Perspectives on Science and Christian Faith journal. (3) not authored by a recognized expert in the field of Bible studies (Carol A. Hill is a consulting geologist, see [1], her works, to the best of my knowledge, were not much quoted or critiqued by other scholars (note, however, a mention by Hosseinizadeh as one of the "enthusiastic scholars in various fields"). However, her statement that Wadi al-Batin is Pishon is indeed supported by Sauer (he speaks of the Kuwait River, see [2]). I would therefore have no problem adding this identification to the article quoting both articles, but in the (now-absent) wider context. Hosseinizadeh mentions as experts:

• Joseph. L. Anderson, The Four Rivers of Eden: A Biological Evidence of the Truth of the Bible
• Hunt (already in our article)
• Four rivers of Eden: Skogman, Will F ISBN 9780966382600 (I am not sure if it was published)

I have tried to avoid going into much more detail, thus the brief "the identification of Pishon and Gihon is ambiguous" in the current text with a link to Hosseinizadeh for details. Викидим (talk) 21:45, 7 December 2024 (UTC)

In the meantime, I see no problem copying here, to the end of the "Geography" section, a well-sourced Wadi al-Batin#Garden of Eden. Викидим (talk) 22:24, 7 December 2024 (UTC)