Underground Rivers - University of New Mexico

Chapter 4 -- The Cross
CHAPTER 4
THE CROSS
In this and the next two chapters we will chronicle
The first millennium. How the nature of underground rivers fell into the domain of Christian
theology.
The change of millennia. How Greek thought regarding such waters was preserved by the
Arabs.
The early second millennium. How the Church reinterpreted what flows beneath the earth.
To begin, we'll summarize the Christian interpretation's Hebrew formulation in an environment
where water and cultural destiny intertwine. The tribe controlling the water sources is the tribe
that survives.
The Book of Genesis
As would have most early Christians addressing the workings of nature, we’ll start with Creation,
The world’s water originated within the earth, as chronicled in Genesis 2:6.
But there went up a mist from the earth, and watered the whole face of the ground.
The "mist" is “ed” in Hebrew which also means flow, stream or spring. Etymology points to the
Sumerian/Akkadian “id,” the cosmic river, as in "from the mouth whence issues the waters of the
earth and brought her sweet water from the earth," in the Sumerian story of Enki and Nihursag.
Genesis 2:10-14 enumerates what have come to be known as the "Four Rivers of Life," the
Pison, Gihon, Hiddekel and Perath.
And a river went out of Eden to water the garden; and from thence it was parted, and became
into four heads.
The name of the first is Pison: that is it which compasseth the whole land of Havilah, where
there is gold;
And the gold of that land is good: there is bdellium and the onyx stone.
And the name of the second river is Gihon: the same is it that compasseth the whole land of
Havilah [Ethiopia].
And the name of the third river is Hiddekel: that is it which goeth toward the east of Assyria.
And the fourth river is the Perath.
The Hiddekel and the Perath are likely the Tigris and Euphrates. As "Havilah" means "stretch of
sand," the Gihon is associated with desert and thus might be the Nile. (Jerusalem's Gihon
Springs -- which we'll visit in Chapter 59, Subterranean Aqueducts -- was named from the
Genesis story, not the other way around.)
The modern identity of the Pison is disputed. The Ganges, the Araxes and the Uizhun have been
proposed as well as the now-dry Wadi Bisha in Kuwait. Early Syriac commentators endorsed the
Danube. The Jewish scholar Nahmanides thought the Pison to be the Indus.
While the Book of Genesis makes no assertion that any of the rivers flowed underground, the
logic for such a pathway would seem sound. How but by a subterranean route could the four
rivers get from the Garden of Eden to their respective surficial headwaters?
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