Gihon is the name of the second river mentioned in the second chapter of the

biblical The Bible (from Koine Greek , , 'the books') is a collection of religious texts or scriptures that are held to be sacred in Christianity, Judaism, Samaritanism, and many other religions. The Bible is an anthologya compilation of texts of a ...

Book of Genesis. The Gihon is mentioned as one of four rivers (along with the Tigris,

Euphrates The Euphrates () is the longest and one of the most historically important rivers of Western Asia. Tigris–Euphrates river system, Together with the Tigris, it is one of the two defining rivers of Mesopotamia ( ''the land between the rivers'') ...

, and Pishon) issuing out of the

Garden of Eden In Abrahamic religions, the Garden of Eden ( he, גַּן־עֵדֶן, ) or Garden of God (, and גַן־אֱלֹהִים ''gan-Elohim''), also called the Terrestrial Paradise, is the Bible, biblical paradise described in Book of Genesis, Genes ...

that branched from a single river within the garden.

Overview

The name ( Hebrew ''Gīḥōn'' גיחון) may be interpreted as "bursting forth, gushing". The author of Genesis describes Gihon as "encircling the entire land of Cush", a name associated with Ethiopia elsewhere in the Bible. This is the reason that Ethiopians have long identified the Gihon (''Giyon'') with the Abay River ( Blue Nile), which encircles the former kingdom of Gojjam. From a geographic standpoint this would seem impossible, since two of the other rivers said to issue out of Eden, the Tigris and the Euphrates, are in Mesopotamia. However, the scholar Edward Ullendorff has argued in support of this identification. Blue Nile Falls Ethiopia III

Some scholars identify Cush in this context as the ancient Kassite kingdom, which encompassed a Mesopotamian area that is repeatedly flooded by the Tigris and Euphrates rivers. This view has some support from Herodotus, who thought there were both an African Ethiopia (Cush) and a northern (Asiatic) Ethiopia. Nineteenth century, modern, and Arabic scholars have sought to identify the "land of Cush" with Hindu Kush, and Gihon with Amu Darya (Jihon/Jayhon of the Islamic texts). Amu Darya was known in the medieval Islamic writers as Jayhun or Ceyhun in

Turkish Turkish may refer to: *a Turkic language spoken by the Turks * of or about Turkey ** Turkish language *** Turkish alphabet ** Turkish people, a Turkic ethnic group and nation *** Turkish citizen, a citizen of Turkey *** Turkish communities and mi ...

. This was a derivative of Jihon, or Zhihon as it is still known by the Persians. First-century Jewish historian Josephus associated the Gihon river with the Nile. Gihon has also been associated with the Araxes (modern Aras) river which flows through Turkey, Armenia, Azerbaijan, and Iran.

Juris Zarins Juris Zarins (Zariņš) (born 1945, in Germany) is an American-Latvian archaeologist and professor at Missouri State University, who specializes in the Middle East. Biography Zarins is ethnically Latvian, but was born in Germany at the end of ...

identified the Gihon with the Karun River in Iran and Kush with the land of the

Kassites The Kassites () were people of the ancient Near East, who controlled Babylonia after the fall of the Old Babylonian Empire c. 1531 BC and until c. 1155 BC (short chronology). They gained control of Babylonia after the Hittite sack of Babylon ...

. The Sefer haYashar, a medieval Hebrew midrash, asserts that in the time of Enos, grandson of

Adam Adam; el, Ἀδάμ, Adám; la, Adam is the name given in Genesis 1-5 to the first human. Beyond its use as the name of the first man, ''adam'' is also used in the Bible as a pronoun, individually as "a human" and in a collective sense as " ...

, the river Gihon was subject to a catastrophic flood due to the wickedness of man. Book of Jasher/the Upright, Chapter 2:6.

References

{{Authority control Torah places Mythological rivers Bereshit (parashah) Hebrew Bible rivers Book of Genesis Nile Blue Nile

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