Dr. Dylan Johnson

And then something called the Pishon, which we don't really understand.

It's associated with Cush.

So people think, well, the Nile.

The Nile, yeah.

Yes, but we have the word Nile in Hebrew.

So if they wanted to say Nile, they could have said Nile.

Number four could be significant.

This is typically...

The way that you understand the entirety of the world is the four quarters.

And so Tigris, Euphrates would be Assyria, Babylon.

Gihon connects it to Jerusalem and the temple.

And then that just leaves Pishon without a clear reference.

But I think what the text is getting at there is saying that the garden is the wellspring of the whole world, that all the important points of the world are connected to it.

It might not be.

And if it is, but usually mythic geography and real geography are connected.

And the fact that the other three are known...

leads me to think that the writers knew where this would have been.

It's like the cedar forest of Gilgamesh.

It's at once mythical, but it's also a real place.

It's Lebanon area.