Underground Rivers - University of New Mexico

Chapter 4 -- The Cross
small portion of Plato’s writings, astrological charts and Latin comprehendi making minimal
distinction between myth and observation.
The scriptorium was generally situated near the monastery kitchen to prevent frozen fingers.
A Syrian, a Greek, a Spaniard, a Roman, a Celt and a Frank
We can catch the intellectual flavor of the era from a geographic spread of dutiful men of the
cloth.
Ephraem the Syrian (306-373), a theologian of the in the Syriac Orthodox
Church, had this to say in Commentary on Genesis.
The four rives, then, are these: the Pison, which is the Danube; the
Gihon, which is the Nile; and then the Tigris and the Euphrates,
between which we dwell. Although the places from which they flown
are known, the source of the spring is not [known]. Because Paradise
is set on a great height, the rivers are swallowed up again and they go
down to the sea as if rivers through a tall water duct and so they pass
through the earth which is under the sea into this land. The earth then
spits our each one of them; the Danube, which is the Pison, in the west;
the Gihon in the south; and the Euphrates and the Tigris in the north.
To Ephraem, hydrology is a sermon and all four Rivers of Life are subterranean.
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