تويت
السلام عليكم ورحمة الله وبركاته ،، وبعد
كل التحية والتقدير لإدارة وأعضاء وزوار الجمعية الدولية لمترجمي العربية وأحمد الله على الصدفة التي ساقتني للتسجيل هنا وإن كانت الحاجة أكبر من الصدفة .
باختصار أنا صحفي سعودي ومهتم في التاريخ وخصوصاً تاريخ مدينتي التي أنتمي لها ( بيشة ) جنوب السعودية ،، ولفت نظري أحد المواقع المسيحية والذي أورد في موضوع عن مكان جنة عدن التي يزعمون أنها كانت في الأرض ورفعت للسمء الكثير من التأويلات وركز على إحداها وهي أنها تقع بين نهري بيشون وجيحون كما يزعمون ( هكذا فهمت لأن لغتي الانجليزية ليست جيدة) وأن وادي أو نهر بيشون المقصود به وادي بيشة في جنوب السعودية وأورد خرائط لمدنية بيشة وأن واديها يصب في اليمن في منطقة خولان وأشياء كثيرة وغريبة
المطلوب / أروجو إن كان بالإمكان ترجمة ما تستطيعون لما ورد في هذا الموقع حول مدينيي بيشة من مزاعم للعلم بالشيء فقط ،، ومعرفة من هو كاتب المقال لأنه تضمن أسماء العديد من الكتاب والباحثين في الأديان الأمريكيين وبعضهم مشهور مثل ديفيد نويل فريدمان ، ومرجعية الموقع الذي في الرابط وهل ما احتواه الموقع هو مقال أو دراسة أو ماذا بالتحديد وهل موقع رسمي أو شخصي
(مجمل ما فهمته) أن سفر التكوين تضمن نصاً عن جنة عدن وأنها كانت في الأرض قبل أن ترفع وهي محاطة بأربعة أنهار هي دجلة والفرات وبيشون وجيحون ، وأن كثيرين اجتهدوا لتحديد موقعي النهرين الأخيرين فبعضهم يقول في إيران وآخرين قالوا في سوريا ، لكن التفسير الذي حواه هذا الموقع غريب وظريف في نفس الوقت لأنه جعل من وادي بيشة ،، نهر بيشون !!
وهنا الروابط
من أبرز النصوص التي تحتاج ترجمة :
In Search of the Garden of Eden and the Rivers of Paradise
Where then is the Pishon and Gihon? I understand with other scholars it is probably a Wadi called Bishah (Bisha) in the province of Asir in present day Saudi Arabia, South West Arabia (cf. p. 374. Vol. 5. W. W. Muller. "Pishon." David Noel Freedman. Editor. The Anchor Bible Dictionary. New York. Doubleday. 1992) . This 300 mile wadi rises in the Asir mountains near the Red Sea and flows north. When heavy rains fall in the mountains this wadi can flow with torrential water. South of Wadi Bishah lies a terraced fertile mountain region called the Haulan (Khaulan or Khawlan) which some scholars have suggested might be the land of Havilah (Hebrew: Hawila, the Targum's Chavilah) associated with the Pishon. To its south lies San'a the capital of the Yemen (Another Haulan/Khaulan region or district lies to the ESE of San'a). The book of Genesis (10:26-31) stated that Joktan had several sons: Sheba, Hazarmaveth, Ophir and Havilah. South Arabian traditions claim Joktan is their ancestor Qahtan (cf. p. 935. Vol. 3. Richard S. Hess. "Joktan." David Noel Freedman. Editor. The Anchor Bible Dictionary. New York. Doubleday. 1992). Sheba is identified with Saba of the Classical Greek Geographers in SW Arabia (the Yemen), while Hazarmaveth is generally identified by some with a region called Hadramawt (In the east border of Yemen and near Dhofar). Thus Havilah and its Pishon river are to be found in SW Arabia, far away from the Tigris and Euphrates. The Gihon was identified in the Septuaginta Bible with the Nile in Ethiopia (the modern Sudan). How does a Gihon/Nile and Pishon/Bishah connect to the Hidekkel and Euphrates? They don't, except in myth. In Homeric myth (ca. 850 BC) freshwater River Ocean encircles the world and via subterranean streams is the source of all the world's rivers. In Mesopotamian myth, Enki at Eridu, residing in the apsu stream, is the source of all the world's rivers via subterranean channels. I suspect that the Hebrews employing an _inversion_ the Mesopotamian concept of all the world's rivers being fed by UNDERGROUND streams emanating from one source, the apsu stream at Eridu where dwells Enki have the edenic stream dividing ATOP the earth's surface
و
The archaic Sumerian "world" of the 4th-3rd millenniums BC was the land bordered by two rivers, the Tigris and Euphrates. I suspect that the Hebrews expanded this notion of a world bordered by rivers to include Cush in Africa and Southwest Arabia's Joktanic tribes, Sheba, Hazarmaveth, Ophir and Havilah with the Gihon/Nile and Bishah/Pishon.
I understand that the Jews before going into Exile (ca. 587 BC) may have been exposed to these Homeric Greek notions, and thus could have portrayed the Bishah of SW Arabia and the Gihon/Nile of Cush (Sudan) as streams of the Edenic river. The Jewish historian Flavius Josephus, who flourished in the 1st century AD stated that the river of Eden encircled the world and it gave rise to Eden's four streams. It would appear that Josephus is utilizing the Homeric Greek notion of River Ocean being the source of all the world's rivers as the Greeks understood River Ocean encircled the known world. How did a Jew in the Exile writing Genesis ca. 562-560 BC know of the Homeric River Ocean? Genesis mentions two Greek personages: Japheth (Greek: Iapetos) and Ionia (Hebrew and Neo-Assyrian: Iawan, derived from the Greek personage called Ion). In the 7th century BC Gyges of Lydia, (Genesis' Ludim or "Lydians" according to some scholars, cf. Ge 10:13) sent Greek mercenaries to Saitic Egypt to help them rebel against Assyria and re-establish their independence. These Pharaohs used "Greek" mercenaries (Lydians, Carians, and Ionians) in their forces which reoccupied Canaan and Judah after Assyria had withdrawn her troops ca. 640 BC from this area to combat rebellions in Media, Elam and Babylonia. It has been suggested by some scholars that King Josiah of Judah (ca. 640-609 BC) may have even hired Greek mercenaries to augment his troops as pottery shards in the Jewish fortress of Arad in the Negev bear inscriptions of Greek names in the 7th century BC. So, via either Greek mercenaries stationed in Judah by the Pharaohs to keep Judah in a state of subservience to Egypt or by Greek mercenaries hired by Josiah, the Jews may have come to know Homeric myths of one river that was the source of all the world's rivers. This notion then would have resurfaced in the Exile in Genesis (written ca. 562-560 BC) as Eden's four streams arising from one stream.
How did the Greek Titan called Iapetos/Iapetus regarded by the Greeks to be their ancestor via his son Prometheus and grandson Deucalion come to appear in a 562-560 BC Genesis account as Japheth on Noah's Ark? Perhaps the Ionian Greek mercenaries stationed in Judah either under the Saitic Pharaohs or Josiah related to the Jews stories of their ancestor Iapetos, whose descendants who were called Iapetidae, Iapetionidae or Iapetionis survived "Deucalion's Flood" in Greece, Iapetos' grandson Deucalion building an ark to withstand the Flood. The Jews -apparently in error- associated the Iapetidae Deucalion's flood with Noah's Flood, the latter flood being traced by Liberal Scholarship to the flood appearing in The Epic of Gilgamesh and documented by archaeologists as a flooding Euphrates river at Shuruppak in Lower Mesopotamia ca. 2900 BC. In the Greek myths Iapetos is not the son of a person called Noah, he is the son of Uranos/Uranus ("Heaven") who hates and abuses his sons. In revenge, one of Uranos' sons, Cronos (a younger brother of Iapetos), emasculates his father, cutting off his testicles with a knife when he arrives in a state of _nakedness_ "to bed" (or copulate with) his wife Gaea ("Earth"). I understand the Jews have transformed Cronos into Ham who violated a _naked_ Noah (The _naked_Uranos' violation becoming the _naked_ Noah's violation). Perhaps Iapetos the son of Uranos (Uranus) became Japheth, son of Noah in this Hebrew recast of a Greek myth. Deucalion, the Flood survivor has three children (two sons and a daughter: Hellen, the ancestor of the Hellenes, Amphictyon and Protogenia), Noah too has three children (Shem, Japheth, Ham).
Yahuda suggested that the Pishon and Gihon in Africa (both being the Lower and Upper Nile) was connected to the Tigris and Euphrates in Mesopotamia in the ancient imagination via underground streams. This notion of rivers being the earthly manifestation of underground streams is attested in Mesopotamian, Egyptian and Greek myths. It would explain a Gihon/Nile in Cush (Sudan), and a Pishon in SW Arabia (I favor the Pishon to be wadi Bishah in SW Arabia) and the Tigris and Euphrates in Mesopotamia, all fed from one underground stream, which would be the Apsu/Abzu stream at Eridu where dwelt the god of freshwaters, the Sumerian Enki (Akkadian Ea, meaning "House of Water" according to some scholars). As I have noted earlier, many modern Eden searchers are _unaware_ of ancient man's "wierd notions" regarding the "origins" of rivers from subterranean channels
Some scholars have suggested that Havilah, Hebrew Hawilah (rendered in the Targum as Chavilah) is modern Khaulan/Khawlan, a region lying to the northwest of Sana`a in the Yemen, and I concur. In the nearby mountains exists two wadies called Baish and Bishah. The former being a border between Saudi Arabia and the Yemen at one time. Some scholars have speculated that the Pishon is a conflation of these two wadies and I agree. The Baish is distinguished as a perennial stream, while the Bishah periodically flows with water after heavy rains in the mountians of Asir where lie its headwaters. Any stream with flowing water would be a remarkable geographical curiosity and amazement in Arabia ! The wadi Bishah is over 300 miles in length from its headwaters in the mountains of the province of Asir (present-day Saudi Arabia) and the main caravan route from Jerusalem to the lands of Khawlan, Sheba and Hadramaut crossed wadi Bishah near Qal'at Bishah (another great river enumerated in the Bible which is a seasonally wet/dry wadi is wadi el Arish understood by some scholars to be "the river of Egypt," Judah's southwesternmost border). Please click here for a map of Wadi Bishah
"The first of the four rivers into which the stream that springs from the Garden of Eden is divided (Gen 2:11). The Pishon surrounds the land of Havilah, where there is gold. Several proposals have been made to identify this country and its river. If, however, Havilah is to be equated with the large and old tribal federation of Khaulan in SW Arabia, the Pishon likewise is to be localized in that region...A. Springer (1875: 49) was the first who compared the biblical Pishon with the Wadi Baish in the SW of the Arabian peninsula. Al-Hamadi (1884:73) nevertheless writes that the Wadi Baish is fed from tributaries from the north of the land of Khaulan before it flows into the Red Sea. As was probable already in antiquity, in the 10th century the wadi Baish, abounding in water, formed the north boundary of the densely populated and terraced mountainous region of Khaulan (and until 1934 it was the border between the kingdom of Yemen and Saudi Arabia). Moreover, it is quite possible that the names of the rivers Baish and Bisha are contained in the name Pishon, since both rise not far from each other in the mountains of `Asir." (p.374, Vol. 5, W. W. Muller, "Pishon," Anchor Bible Dictionary)
Muller notes that there is disagreement amongst scholars over the linguistic equation of Baish and Bisha (Bishah) with Hebrew Pishon. It may be that the Hebrews did not "hear correctly" the sound of an Arabic word ? Thus Bisha/Bishah became to their ears Pishon (-on being a Hebrew sufformative). The Arabs for their part have difficulty pronouncing Greek P, rendering it sometimes as B, as in the Classical Greek site of Paneas at the head of the Jordan river becoming Baniyas in Arabic.
Wadi Bishah from its headwaters (near Jebal Abu Hasan to the south of Abha in the Asir mountains) to its empting into the sands of Nafud ad Dahy is approximately 300 miles in length. When one considers that the Jordan river is only 100 miles in length from Baniyas to the Dead Sea, one can see why Wadi Bishah, _if it is the Pishon_, was described as a "great" river ! Several caravan tracks heading north from Sheba in the Yemen would cross the Khaulan region and Wadi Bishah, it would a "well-known" river, or "landmark" to the caravans bringing GOLD, PRECIOUS STONES, INCENSE and SPICES from SHEBA to Solomon's court at Jerusalem. If traveling south from Jerusalem, the Jews would encounter Wadi Bishah (the Pishon ?) before the Khawalan region which lies NW of San'a in the Yemen. So, in reality the Bishah/Pishon does not really "encompass" Havilah/Khawlan," it, however, must be "crossed" before the latter area is reached as one heads south for the kigdom of Sheba and its Queen who presented Solomon GOLD, INCENSE (resins), SPICES AND PRECIOUS STONES, items Havilah was famed for in Genesis. If the Pishon is a conflation of Wadi Baish with the Bishah the formers' location is somewhat closer to the Khawlan than Wadi Bishah
So, to sum all this up in a nutshell (07 June 2006):
The garden_in_Eden was _ORIGINALLY_ derived from Mesopotamian myths. Man in these myths is made _contradictorily_ at three different locations: (1) At Nippur by Enki to serve in Enlil's city-garden relieving the Igigi gods of their toil _and_ (2) man is made at Eridu by Enki to relieve the Igigi gods of their toil in his city-garden; (3) Man is made at Babylon by the god Marduk to relieve the gods of earthly toil. All three cities lie in edin, the Sumerian word for a desert-like plain or steppe, usually uncultivated land where herds are grazed between the Tigris and Euphrates rivers. But when irrigated this desert-like steppe/plain environment becomes the city-gardens of the gods.
Apparently the Hasmoneans in the 2d century BCE in their Book of Jubilees, transferred Eden's location to Southwest Arabia and the Yemen, the land of Sheba and the region called the Khawlan (Havilah/Chavilah of the Targums), the wadies Bishah and or Baish being possibly identified with the Pishon. Perhaps they settled on this region BECAUSE THE FIRST RIVER mentioned in association with the garden in Eden IS THE PISHON; the Khawlan (Havilah) was here, so too the gold, bdellium and precious stones. So then, the Hasmoneans, using "clues from Genesis" and their knowledge (or traditions) of trade relations between the Queen of Sheba and Solomon (her bringing him gold, spices and precious stones), concluded that the garden of Eden's location was somewhere in Southwest Arabia. These Hasmonean traditions were apparently maintained by the Yemeni Jews down through the ages to the present day.
As noted by a number of Jewish scholars (A. S. Yahudah and Nahum Sarna), the Jews may have wanted to set a "boundary" to THEIR WORLD, that boundary would be rivers. Their world in the east would be bounded by the Euphrates and Hiddekel (Tigris), while the western boundary was Cush (the modern Sudan) and SW Arabia (the modern Yemen) and their rivers the Gihon/Nile and Pishon/Bishah/Baish. The Bishah as the Pishon in SW Arabia would be associated with Genesis 10:26-30 descendants of Joktan (Arabic Kahtan), Sheba, Havilah and Hazarmaveth/Hadrawmaut. Beyond the Yemen lies the Indian ocean, an appropriate border for Judah's world ca. 560 BCE when I understand Genesis was composed. My research suggests that Abraham was of Ur of the Chaldees (Tel Muqqayar between Nippur and Eridu) and that Sumerian motifs underlie many of Genesis' concepts. The Sumerian world bounded by rivers, the Tigris and Euphrates was recast as rivers demarking Judah's world-knowledge, SW Arabia and Cush in the west and the Tigris and Euphrates in the east
والرابط الثاني يتحدث بشكل مباشر عن مدينة بيشة
ومما احتواه :
Wadi Bishah is some 300 miles in length and it begins in the coastal mountains of Asir, the headwaters beginning near Khamis Mushayt east of Abha and draining northwards to Qal'at Bishah (cf. the below map for these two locations), emptying into the desert sands of the Nafud Ad Dahy to the ENE of Qal'at Bishah. Sayce's Tihamah Khaulan in Asir lies south of Abha near which are the headwaters of Wadi Bishah. If Bishah is the Pishon River, then the FOUR Khaualan Tribal Areas all lie to the south of the Bishah. In other words to get to the Khaulans, Wadi Bishah must first be crossed, perhaps this is why the Pishon encircles the land of Havilah in Genesis? The Bible takes note of another great river that served as a border to a region (Judah), the "river of Egypt" a wadi like Bishah, today called Wadi el Arish in the midst of the Sinai peninsula. The Septuaginta Bible written in Greek at Alexandria, Egypt in the 3rd century BCE by Jews for Jews identified the Nile with the Gihon that flows through Cush (Ethiopia of the Septuaginta). Like the Bishah, the Nile drains "northward" too.
As regards the possibility of Wadi Bishah being the Pishon, and Arabic "b" possibly preserving "p", cf. the late professor Yohanan Aharoni's remarks on "p" becoming "b" in Arabic and the loss of the Hebrew sufformative
"-on":
والكثير الكثير على هذا الرابط
آمل ألا أكون أثقلت عليكم وآمل أن تزيلوا عني حيرتي
ودمتم إلى الله أقرب
كل التحية والتقدير لإدارة وأعضاء وزوار الجمعية الدولية لمترجمي العربية وأحمد الله على الصدفة التي ساقتني للتسجيل هنا وإن كانت الحاجة أكبر من الصدفة .
باختصار أنا صحفي سعودي ومهتم في التاريخ وخصوصاً تاريخ مدينتي التي أنتمي لها ( بيشة ) جنوب السعودية ،، ولفت نظري أحد المواقع المسيحية والذي أورد في موضوع عن مكان جنة عدن التي يزعمون أنها كانت في الأرض ورفعت للسمء الكثير من التأويلات وركز على إحداها وهي أنها تقع بين نهري بيشون وجيحون كما يزعمون ( هكذا فهمت لأن لغتي الانجليزية ليست جيدة) وأن وادي أو نهر بيشون المقصود به وادي بيشة في جنوب السعودية وأورد خرائط لمدنية بيشة وأن واديها يصب في اليمن في منطقة خولان وأشياء كثيرة وغريبة
المطلوب / أروجو إن كان بالإمكان ترجمة ما تستطيعون لما ورد في هذا الموقع حول مدينيي بيشة من مزاعم للعلم بالشيء فقط ،، ومعرفة من هو كاتب المقال لأنه تضمن أسماء العديد من الكتاب والباحثين في الأديان الأمريكيين وبعضهم مشهور مثل ديفيد نويل فريدمان ، ومرجعية الموقع الذي في الرابط وهل ما احتواه الموقع هو مقال أو دراسة أو ماذا بالتحديد وهل موقع رسمي أو شخصي
(مجمل ما فهمته) أن سفر التكوين تضمن نصاً عن جنة عدن وأنها كانت في الأرض قبل أن ترفع وهي محاطة بأربعة أنهار هي دجلة والفرات وبيشون وجيحون ، وأن كثيرين اجتهدوا لتحديد موقعي النهرين الأخيرين فبعضهم يقول في إيران وآخرين قالوا في سوريا ، لكن التفسير الذي حواه هذا الموقع غريب وظريف في نفس الوقت لأنه جعل من وادي بيشة ،، نهر بيشون !!
وهنا الروابط
من أبرز النصوص التي تحتاج ترجمة :
In Search of the Garden of Eden and the Rivers of Paradise
Where then is the Pishon and Gihon? I understand with other scholars it is probably a Wadi called Bishah (Bisha) in the province of Asir in present day Saudi Arabia, South West Arabia (cf. p. 374. Vol. 5. W. W. Muller. "Pishon." David Noel Freedman. Editor. The Anchor Bible Dictionary. New York. Doubleday. 1992) . This 300 mile wadi rises in the Asir mountains near the Red Sea and flows north. When heavy rains fall in the mountains this wadi can flow with torrential water. South of Wadi Bishah lies a terraced fertile mountain region called the Haulan (Khaulan or Khawlan) which some scholars have suggested might be the land of Havilah (Hebrew: Hawila, the Targum's Chavilah) associated with the Pishon. To its south lies San'a the capital of the Yemen (Another Haulan/Khaulan region or district lies to the ESE of San'a). The book of Genesis (10:26-31) stated that Joktan had several sons: Sheba, Hazarmaveth, Ophir and Havilah. South Arabian traditions claim Joktan is their ancestor Qahtan (cf. p. 935. Vol. 3. Richard S. Hess. "Joktan." David Noel Freedman. Editor. The Anchor Bible Dictionary. New York. Doubleday. 1992). Sheba is identified with Saba of the Classical Greek Geographers in SW Arabia (the Yemen), while Hazarmaveth is generally identified by some with a region called Hadramawt (In the east border of Yemen and near Dhofar). Thus Havilah and its Pishon river are to be found in SW Arabia, far away from the Tigris and Euphrates. The Gihon was identified in the Septuaginta Bible with the Nile in Ethiopia (the modern Sudan). How does a Gihon/Nile and Pishon/Bishah connect to the Hidekkel and Euphrates? They don't, except in myth. In Homeric myth (ca. 850 BC) freshwater River Ocean encircles the world and via subterranean streams is the source of all the world's rivers. In Mesopotamian myth, Enki at Eridu, residing in the apsu stream, is the source of all the world's rivers via subterranean channels. I suspect that the Hebrews employing an _inversion_ the Mesopotamian concept of all the world's rivers being fed by UNDERGROUND streams emanating from one source, the apsu stream at Eridu where dwells Enki have the edenic stream dividing ATOP the earth's surface
و
The archaic Sumerian "world" of the 4th-3rd millenniums BC was the land bordered by two rivers, the Tigris and Euphrates. I suspect that the Hebrews expanded this notion of a world bordered by rivers to include Cush in Africa and Southwest Arabia's Joktanic tribes, Sheba, Hazarmaveth, Ophir and Havilah with the Gihon/Nile and Bishah/Pishon.
I understand that the Jews before going into Exile (ca. 587 BC) may have been exposed to these Homeric Greek notions, and thus could have portrayed the Bishah of SW Arabia and the Gihon/Nile of Cush (Sudan) as streams of the Edenic river. The Jewish historian Flavius Josephus, who flourished in the 1st century AD stated that the river of Eden encircled the world and it gave rise to Eden's four streams. It would appear that Josephus is utilizing the Homeric Greek notion of River Ocean being the source of all the world's rivers as the Greeks understood River Ocean encircled the known world. How did a Jew in the Exile writing Genesis ca. 562-560 BC know of the Homeric River Ocean? Genesis mentions two Greek personages: Japheth (Greek: Iapetos) and Ionia (Hebrew and Neo-Assyrian: Iawan, derived from the Greek personage called Ion). In the 7th century BC Gyges of Lydia, (Genesis' Ludim or "Lydians" according to some scholars, cf. Ge 10:13) sent Greek mercenaries to Saitic Egypt to help them rebel against Assyria and re-establish their independence. These Pharaohs used "Greek" mercenaries (Lydians, Carians, and Ionians) in their forces which reoccupied Canaan and Judah after Assyria had withdrawn her troops ca. 640 BC from this area to combat rebellions in Media, Elam and Babylonia. It has been suggested by some scholars that King Josiah of Judah (ca. 640-609 BC) may have even hired Greek mercenaries to augment his troops as pottery shards in the Jewish fortress of Arad in the Negev bear inscriptions of Greek names in the 7th century BC. So, via either Greek mercenaries stationed in Judah by the Pharaohs to keep Judah in a state of subservience to Egypt or by Greek mercenaries hired by Josiah, the Jews may have come to know Homeric myths of one river that was the source of all the world's rivers. This notion then would have resurfaced in the Exile in Genesis (written ca. 562-560 BC) as Eden's four streams arising from one stream.
How did the Greek Titan called Iapetos/Iapetus regarded by the Greeks to be their ancestor via his son Prometheus and grandson Deucalion come to appear in a 562-560 BC Genesis account as Japheth on Noah's Ark? Perhaps the Ionian Greek mercenaries stationed in Judah either under the Saitic Pharaohs or Josiah related to the Jews stories of their ancestor Iapetos, whose descendants who were called Iapetidae, Iapetionidae or Iapetionis survived "Deucalion's Flood" in Greece, Iapetos' grandson Deucalion building an ark to withstand the Flood. The Jews -apparently in error- associated the Iapetidae Deucalion's flood with Noah's Flood, the latter flood being traced by Liberal Scholarship to the flood appearing in The Epic of Gilgamesh and documented by archaeologists as a flooding Euphrates river at Shuruppak in Lower Mesopotamia ca. 2900 BC. In the Greek myths Iapetos is not the son of a person called Noah, he is the son of Uranos/Uranus ("Heaven") who hates and abuses his sons. In revenge, one of Uranos' sons, Cronos (a younger brother of Iapetos), emasculates his father, cutting off his testicles with a knife when he arrives in a state of _nakedness_ "to bed" (or copulate with) his wife Gaea ("Earth"). I understand the Jews have transformed Cronos into Ham who violated a _naked_ Noah (The _naked_Uranos' violation becoming the _naked_ Noah's violation). Perhaps Iapetos the son of Uranos (Uranus) became Japheth, son of Noah in this Hebrew recast of a Greek myth. Deucalion, the Flood survivor has three children (two sons and a daughter: Hellen, the ancestor of the Hellenes, Amphictyon and Protogenia), Noah too has three children (Shem, Japheth, Ham).
Yahuda suggested that the Pishon and Gihon in Africa (both being the Lower and Upper Nile) was connected to the Tigris and Euphrates in Mesopotamia in the ancient imagination via underground streams. This notion of rivers being the earthly manifestation of underground streams is attested in Mesopotamian, Egyptian and Greek myths. It would explain a Gihon/Nile in Cush (Sudan), and a Pishon in SW Arabia (I favor the Pishon to be wadi Bishah in SW Arabia) and the Tigris and Euphrates in Mesopotamia, all fed from one underground stream, which would be the Apsu/Abzu stream at Eridu where dwelt the god of freshwaters, the Sumerian Enki (Akkadian Ea, meaning "House of Water" according to some scholars). As I have noted earlier, many modern Eden searchers are _unaware_ of ancient man's "wierd notions" regarding the "origins" of rivers from subterranean channels
Some scholars have suggested that Havilah, Hebrew Hawilah (rendered in the Targum as Chavilah) is modern Khaulan/Khawlan, a region lying to the northwest of Sana`a in the Yemen, and I concur. In the nearby mountains exists two wadies called Baish and Bishah. The former being a border between Saudi Arabia and the Yemen at one time. Some scholars have speculated that the Pishon is a conflation of these two wadies and I agree. The Baish is distinguished as a perennial stream, while the Bishah periodically flows with water after heavy rains in the mountians of Asir where lie its headwaters. Any stream with flowing water would be a remarkable geographical curiosity and amazement in Arabia ! The wadi Bishah is over 300 miles in length from its headwaters in the mountains of the province of Asir (present-day Saudi Arabia) and the main caravan route from Jerusalem to the lands of Khawlan, Sheba and Hadramaut crossed wadi Bishah near Qal'at Bishah (another great river enumerated in the Bible which is a seasonally wet/dry wadi is wadi el Arish understood by some scholars to be "the river of Egypt," Judah's southwesternmost border). Please click here for a map of Wadi Bishah
"The first of the four rivers into which the stream that springs from the Garden of Eden is divided (Gen 2:11). The Pishon surrounds the land of Havilah, where there is gold. Several proposals have been made to identify this country and its river. If, however, Havilah is to be equated with the large and old tribal federation of Khaulan in SW Arabia, the Pishon likewise is to be localized in that region...A. Springer (1875: 49) was the first who compared the biblical Pishon with the Wadi Baish in the SW of the Arabian peninsula. Al-Hamadi (1884:73) nevertheless writes that the Wadi Baish is fed from tributaries from the north of the land of Khaulan before it flows into the Red Sea. As was probable already in antiquity, in the 10th century the wadi Baish, abounding in water, formed the north boundary of the densely populated and terraced mountainous region of Khaulan (and until 1934 it was the border between the kingdom of Yemen and Saudi Arabia). Moreover, it is quite possible that the names of the rivers Baish and Bisha are contained in the name Pishon, since both rise not far from each other in the mountains of `Asir." (p.374, Vol. 5, W. W. Muller, "Pishon," Anchor Bible Dictionary)
Muller notes that there is disagreement amongst scholars over the linguistic equation of Baish and Bisha (Bishah) with Hebrew Pishon. It may be that the Hebrews did not "hear correctly" the sound of an Arabic word ? Thus Bisha/Bishah became to their ears Pishon (-on being a Hebrew sufformative). The Arabs for their part have difficulty pronouncing Greek P, rendering it sometimes as B, as in the Classical Greek site of Paneas at the head of the Jordan river becoming Baniyas in Arabic.
Wadi Bishah from its headwaters (near Jebal Abu Hasan to the south of Abha in the Asir mountains) to its empting into the sands of Nafud ad Dahy is approximately 300 miles in length. When one considers that the Jordan river is only 100 miles in length from Baniyas to the Dead Sea, one can see why Wadi Bishah, _if it is the Pishon_, was described as a "great" river ! Several caravan tracks heading north from Sheba in the Yemen would cross the Khaulan region and Wadi Bishah, it would a "well-known" river, or "landmark" to the caravans bringing GOLD, PRECIOUS STONES, INCENSE and SPICES from SHEBA to Solomon's court at Jerusalem. If traveling south from Jerusalem, the Jews would encounter Wadi Bishah (the Pishon ?) before the Khawalan region which lies NW of San'a in the Yemen. So, in reality the Bishah/Pishon does not really "encompass" Havilah/Khawlan," it, however, must be "crossed" before the latter area is reached as one heads south for the kigdom of Sheba and its Queen who presented Solomon GOLD, INCENSE (resins), SPICES AND PRECIOUS STONES, items Havilah was famed for in Genesis. If the Pishon is a conflation of Wadi Baish with the Bishah the formers' location is somewhat closer to the Khawlan than Wadi Bishah
So, to sum all this up in a nutshell (07 June 2006):
The garden_in_Eden was _ORIGINALLY_ derived from Mesopotamian myths. Man in these myths is made _contradictorily_ at three different locations: (1) At Nippur by Enki to serve in Enlil's city-garden relieving the Igigi gods of their toil _and_ (2) man is made at Eridu by Enki to relieve the Igigi gods of their toil in his city-garden; (3) Man is made at Babylon by the god Marduk to relieve the gods of earthly toil. All three cities lie in edin, the Sumerian word for a desert-like plain or steppe, usually uncultivated land where herds are grazed between the Tigris and Euphrates rivers. But when irrigated this desert-like steppe/plain environment becomes the city-gardens of the gods.
Apparently the Hasmoneans in the 2d century BCE in their Book of Jubilees, transferred Eden's location to Southwest Arabia and the Yemen, the land of Sheba and the region called the Khawlan (Havilah/Chavilah of the Targums), the wadies Bishah and or Baish being possibly identified with the Pishon. Perhaps they settled on this region BECAUSE THE FIRST RIVER mentioned in association with the garden in Eden IS THE PISHON; the Khawlan (Havilah) was here, so too the gold, bdellium and precious stones. So then, the Hasmoneans, using "clues from Genesis" and their knowledge (or traditions) of trade relations between the Queen of Sheba and Solomon (her bringing him gold, spices and precious stones), concluded that the garden of Eden's location was somewhere in Southwest Arabia. These Hasmonean traditions were apparently maintained by the Yemeni Jews down through the ages to the present day.
As noted by a number of Jewish scholars (A. S. Yahudah and Nahum Sarna), the Jews may have wanted to set a "boundary" to THEIR WORLD, that boundary would be rivers. Their world in the east would be bounded by the Euphrates and Hiddekel (Tigris), while the western boundary was Cush (the modern Sudan) and SW Arabia (the modern Yemen) and their rivers the Gihon/Nile and Pishon/Bishah/Baish. The Bishah as the Pishon in SW Arabia would be associated with Genesis 10:26-30 descendants of Joktan (Arabic Kahtan), Sheba, Havilah and Hazarmaveth/Hadrawmaut. Beyond the Yemen lies the Indian ocean, an appropriate border for Judah's world ca. 560 BCE when I understand Genesis was composed. My research suggests that Abraham was of Ur of the Chaldees (Tel Muqqayar between Nippur and Eridu) and that Sumerian motifs underlie many of Genesis' concepts. The Sumerian world bounded by rivers, the Tigris and Euphrates was recast as rivers demarking Judah's world-knowledge, SW Arabia and Cush in the west and the Tigris and Euphrates in the east
والرابط الثاني يتحدث بشكل مباشر عن مدينة بيشة
ومما احتواه :
Wadi Bishah is some 300 miles in length and it begins in the coastal mountains of Asir, the headwaters beginning near Khamis Mushayt east of Abha and draining northwards to Qal'at Bishah (cf. the below map for these two locations), emptying into the desert sands of the Nafud Ad Dahy to the ENE of Qal'at Bishah. Sayce's Tihamah Khaulan in Asir lies south of Abha near which are the headwaters of Wadi Bishah. If Bishah is the Pishon River, then the FOUR Khaualan Tribal Areas all lie to the south of the Bishah. In other words to get to the Khaulans, Wadi Bishah must first be crossed, perhaps this is why the Pishon encircles the land of Havilah in Genesis? The Bible takes note of another great river that served as a border to a region (Judah), the "river of Egypt" a wadi like Bishah, today called Wadi el Arish in the midst of the Sinai peninsula. The Septuaginta Bible written in Greek at Alexandria, Egypt in the 3rd century BCE by Jews for Jews identified the Nile with the Gihon that flows through Cush (Ethiopia of the Septuaginta). Like the Bishah, the Nile drains "northward" too.
As regards the possibility of Wadi Bishah being the Pishon, and Arabic "b" possibly preserving "p", cf. the late professor Yohanan Aharoni's remarks on "p" becoming "b" in Arabic and the loss of the Hebrew sufformative
"-on":
والكثير الكثير على هذا الرابط
آمل ألا أكون أثقلت عليكم وآمل أن تزيلوا عني حيرتي
ودمتم إلى الله أقرب
تعليق