How then and in what manner, he says, did God form man in Paradise? For this is his opinion. Let, he says, Paradise be the womb, and that this is true the Scripture teaches when it says: “I am he who fashioned thee in thy mother’s womb.”[42] For this also he wishes to be thus [Sidenote: p. 254.] written. Moses, he says, speaking in allegory, calls Paradise the womb if we are to believe the word. But if God fashions man in the womb of his mother, that is, in Paradise, as I have said, let Paradise be the womb and Edem the placenta: “And a river went forth from Edem and watered Paradise”[43] (this is) the navel-string. The navel-string, he says, separates into four heads. For on each side of the navel are set two arteries, conduits of breath, and two veins, conduits of blood. But when he says, the navel-string goes forth from the placenta it takes root in the infant by the epigastrium which all men commonly call the navel. And the two veins it is through which flows and is borne from Edem (the placenta) the blood to the so-called gates of the liver whence the child is fed. But the arteries as we have said, are the conduits of the breath[44] which pass behind on either side of the bladder round the pelvis and make connection with the great artery by the spine called the aorta, and thus through the ventricles the breath flows upon the heart and causes [Sidenote: p. 255.] movement of the embryo. For the embryo in course of formation in Paradise neither takes food by the mouth, nor breathes through the nostrils. For, as it exists amid waters, death is at its feet if it should breathe. For it would then draw in the waters and die. But it is girt about almost wholly by the envelope called the amnion and is fed through the navel, and through the aorta which is by the spine, it receives, as I have said[45] the substance of the breath.