Atlantis: The Antedeluvian WorldDonnelly, Ignatius
History
Atlantis: The Antedeluvian World
Donnelly, Ignatius
Atlantis (Legendary place); Deluge; Ethnology
"And the Lord God planted a garden eastward in Eden; and there he put
the man whom he had formed. And out of the ground made the Lord God to
grow every tree that is pleasant to the sight, and good for food; the
tree of life also in the midst of the garden, and the tree of knowledge
of good and evil. And a river went out of Eden to water the garden; and
from thence it was parted, and became into four heads. The name of the
first is Pison; that is it which compasseth the whole land of Havilah,
where there is gold; and the gold of that land is good: there is
bdellium and the onyx stone. And the name of the second river is Gihon:
the same is it that compasseth the whole land of Ethiopia. And the name
of the third river is Hiddekel: that is it which goeth toward the east
of Assyria. And the fourth river is Euphrates. And the Lord God took the
man and put him into the Garden of Eden to dress it and to keep it."
(Gen. ii., 8-1-5.)
As the four rivers named in Genesis are not branches of any one stream,
and head in very different regions, it is evident that there was an
attempt, on the part of the writer of the Book, to adapt an ancient
tradition concerning another country to the known features of the region
in which he dwelt.
Josephus tells us (chap. i., p. 41), "Now the garden (of Eden) was
watered by one river, which ran round about the whole earth, and was
parted into four parts." Here in the four parts we see the origin of the
Cross, while in the river running around the whole earth we have the
wonderful canal of Atlantis, described by Plato, which was "carried
around the whole of the plain," and received the streams which came down
from the mountains. The streams named by Josephus would seem to
represent the migrations of people from Atlantis to its colonies.
"Phison," he tells us, "denotes a multitude; it ran into India; the
Euphrates and Tigris go down into the Red Sea while the Geon runs
through Egypt."
We are further told (chap. ii., p. 42) that when Cain, after the murder
of Abel, left the land of Adam, "he travelled over many countries"
before he reached the land of Nod; and the land of Nod was to the
eastward of Adam's home. In other words, the original seat of mankind
was in the West, that is to say, in the direction of Atlantis. Wilson
tells us that the Aryans of India believed that they originally came
"from the West." Thus the nations on the west of the Atlantic look to
the east for their place of origin; while on the east of the Atlantic
they look to the west: thus all the lines of tradition converge upon
Atlantis.
But here is the same testimony that in the Garden of Eden there were
four rivers radiating from one parent stream. And these four rivers, as
we have seen, we find in the Scandinavian traditions, and in the legends
of the Chinese, the Tartars, the Singhalese, the Thibetians, the
Buddhists, the Hebrews, and the Brahmans.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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