PART I. same western channel as we do. To mention but

19. The river

Gihon how described

one writer more, Mons. Bochart, who designed to '
declare his mind more plainly and at large upon
this point, in his treatise concerning the earthly
Paradise, leaves us to guess at his opinion, when
he says by the bye, in his book concerning the
beasts of Holy Scripture, that the Pison is that
branch of the Euphrates, of which Teixeira, in the
book of his travels from the Indies into Italy, says,
that it runs into the Persian Gulf towards Catif
near Baharen. Now Catif is a town on the easterly
coast of Arabia, that gave to the Persian Gulf the
name of the Elcatif Sea, as it is now called by
some. And Baharen is an island of the same Gulf,
(as has been before hinted,) about ten leagues off
from Catif. So that it may be very probably sup-
posed, that Mons. Bochart looked on the same
westerly channel, as we do, to be the Pison. So
that there does not lie so much as the objection of
novelty against the truth of our opinion. And thus
much for the river Pison.

Proceed we now to the second river, concerning which Moses says thus: And the name of the second river is Gihon: the same is it that comLy Moses. passeth the whole land of Cush. Here it may be observed, that Moses has not affixed so many marks on the Gihon, as on the Pison; and that probably for this reason, because the Pison being known, the situation of the Gihon would be much more easily discovered. For the Pison being known to be the first river in respect to the place - where Moses was writing, it is but natural to suppose, that the Gihon, as being the second, was the river next to it, and consequently the easterly channel of the two, into which the Euphrates, after its conjunction with the Tigris, is again divided.

20. The land of Cush, said by Moses to be washed

And that it is so, we shall further make out, by shewing that the mark given by Moses to know the Gihon, does agree to this easterly channel. Moses then marks out the Gihon by telling us, that it is by the Gi- that river, which compasseth the whole land of Cush. hon, where If then it can be shewn, that the name of Cush did

situated.

formerly belong to the country washed by the fore-CHAP. I. mentioned easterly channel; it will (at least in conjunction with what is else offered) amount to a reasonable proof, that the said easterly channel is the very Gihon mentioned by Moses. To what other provinces the name of Cush did of old appertain, shall be shewn, when we come to speak of the peopling of the world by the three sons of Noah and their posterity: it will be sufficient to our present purpose, to make out that the country adjoining to the easterly mouth of Euphrates, and which by the Greeks and Latins was called Susiana, had formerly the name of Cush, and hath it still at present. All the journals of travellers do then inform us, that Susiana is now called Chuzestan, which carries in it plain footsteps of the original word Cush, or, as it is wrote by some, Chus or Chuz. Benjamin of Navarre says, that the great province of Elam, whereof Susa is the metropolis, and which the Tigris waters, is called so. That province of Elam is Elymais, which extends itself as far as the coast of the Persian Gulf, at the east of the mouth of the Euphrates. The Nubian geographer and some other Arabians call it Churestan : but it is probably an oversight of the copiers, who did not distinguish the letter r from z of the Arabians, which only differ by one point. The inhabi tants of the land call it absolutely or plainly Chus, if we will believe Marius Niger *. The same region is called Cuthah in the book of Kings, (2 Kings xvii. 24.) according to the variety of dialects; and it was partly from thence, that Salmanassar transported a colony into Samaria, to fill the room of its inhabitants and of the ten tribes, which he had turned out and sent into other places. This new colony, which was afterwards known under the name of Samaritans, kept also the name of its origin, and was called the Cutheans. The word Cuthah or Cuth undoubtedly came from the word Cush or Cus, the last letter of which is often

PART I. changed by the Chaldeans into a t or th, as Dion* hath observed. So they said Theor for Sor, Attyria for Assyria. There are yet many other marks of the word Cush found in the same province. We find there the Cosseans, neighbours to the Uxians, according to the position of Pliny, Ptolemy, and Arrian t. Some have imagined, that those Cosseans had given their name to the province of Chuzestan; but it is more true, that both the name of Chuzestan, and that of the Cosseans, come from the same root, to wit, from Cush, and not one from the other. The name of Cissia and of the Cissians came also from thence; being a little province of Susiana, and used sometimes to denote all the Susians. The poet Eschylus takes also notice of a city of that name situated in the same land; and, what is remarkable, he does distinguish it by its antiquity. He calls also Memnon's mother (that is to say, Aurora) Cissia; of which more when we come to speak of the city Shusan or Susa. It shall only be here observed, that when the Grecians feigned, that Memnon was the son of Aurora, they meant that he came from the East; according to a common expression of the Hebrew tongue, and very familiar to the Prophets, who call the people of the East, sons of the East. Not to add, that many interpreters think, that Nebuchadnezzar or Belshazzar is by Isaiah called, in the same sense, Lucifer, son of Aurora, or of the morning.

21. The river

Gihon dis covered by

the marks given by Moses.

Since then the easterly mouth of the Euphrates does thus agree to the description given by Moses of the Gihon; since it lies exactly the second in order, according to the method taken by Moses for mentioning the four rivers relating to the Garden of Eden; and since the province it washes or runs along the side of, was formerly called Cush; on these considerations we may rest very well sa

* Dion. Xiphil. Traj. p. 347. ex cdit. Sylburg.

+ Plin. lib. vi. c. 27. Ptol. lib. vi. c. 3. Tab. 5. Asiæ. Ar rian. Exped. Alex. lib. vii.

Aschyl. Pers. et Chocph. 421. et in Strab. lib. xv. p. 728. ex edit. Casaub.

tisfied, that the said easterly channel or mouth of CHAP. I. the Euphrates (or, which comes to the same, of the Tigris) is the very Gihon described by Moses.

Go we on then to the third river, of which Moses 22. writes thus: and the name of the third river is Moses' deHiddekel: that is it which goeth before Assyria. the river scription of Now the Hebrew word Hiddeke is by the Seventy Hiddekel. Interpreters rendered the Tigris; and that the river, called by Moses Hiddekel, is in truth no other than that river, which by the Greeks and Latins is commonly called Tigris, will appear from the following considerations.

23.

Hiddekel is the saine as

And first, the name of Hiddekel, which Moses gives this river, that of Diglath, which they give it The river in the Levant or East, aud that of Tigris, which the Europeans give it, are one and the same, varied by the river different nations. This may surprise those, who Tigris; are ignorant of the art of etymology, which is very useful, if not absolutely necessary in good litera ture. We shall not stand here to produce authori ties from other instances, for the change of the logy of the several letters of one of these words into those of word Ti

proved first

from the true etymo

the other. It will be sufficient to our purpose, to gris.
observe in short, that taking away the aspiration of
the word Hiddekel, the word Dekel remained,
which the Syrians disguised, and made Diklat out
of it: Josephus and the Chaldæan paraphrasts,
the Arabians and the Persians turned it into Dig-
lath; other modern orientals into Degil and De.
gola Pliny, or those who informed him, into
Diglito; and the Greeks, who gave to all strange
words the turn and genius of their own tongue, in-
stead of Diglis called it Tigris; induced probably
so to do, by the information they had received of
the swiftness of this river, which was aptly denoted}
by the name Tigris. And this is the more likely,
because we meet with other instances of the same
nature, as not only will appear by and bye in re-
ference to the name of the river Euphra1es, but has
also been formerly observed (in the first part of
my Geography of the New Testament) in refer-

PART I. turned by the Greeks into Hierosolyma. But that the Diglito and Tigris is but one and the same river, is clear from Pliny; only he is mistaken, when he says, that the Tigris is called Diglito at the beginning of its stream, when it runs slowly, but is called Tigris, when it becomes swifter. For it is called Tigris at the very head, as Strabo assures us; and the names of Tigris and Diglito are in reality but one and the same name, varied according to the diversity of dialects or languages, as has been shewn.

24.

ed to be the

Secondly, the method observed by Moses in The Hidde- reckoning up the four rivers further proves, that the kel is prov- Hiddekel is no other than the Tigris. For, as in Tigris, respect of the place where Moses was writing, the from the Pison was the nearest to him, and so in natural method ob- order was to be named first: and then the Gihon served by second, as being the channel that presented itself next: so having passed over this channel or river, and turning to the left hand, to come back to the place where Moses was writing, we meet with the Tigris in the third place; which therefore it was but natural for Moses to mention third, and which therefore we need not doubt but is the same with the Hiddekel mentioned third by the sacred historian.

Moses in reckoning up the four

rivers.

25. Lastly, the

same is

proved from this,

that the

Lastly, the mark, whereby Moses describes the situation of the Hiddekel, does plainly confirm, that it is the same with the Tigris. For Moses describes its situation thus: That is it which goes before Assyria. The word Assyria may be taken, mark given either properly to denote only that one province, by Moses to which was first so called, and whereof Nineveh was the Hiddekel does a- the capital city; or else in a larger sense, so as to gree to the comprehend many great provinces belonging to Tigris. the kings of Assyria, and which made up the Assyrian empire. The word was not taken in the latter or larger sense, till long after Moses, who therefore could understand by the name of Assyria, only a small province about Nineveh. Now the

*Plin. lib. vi. c. 27.