The two mystical trees of the Biblical paradise find their common counterpart in the sacred cedar of the Chaldaeans, which, besides being essentially a tree of life, employed in magic rites to restore strength and life to the body, was also “the revealer of the oracles of earth and heaven.” Upon its core the name of Ea, the god of wisdom, was supposed to be written,[300] just as the name of Ormuzd was first disclosed to man by appearing carved in the wood of his sacred cypress. The tree of life also finds a parallel in the divine soma, the giver of eternal youth and immortality, a drink reserved only for the celestial gods or the souls of the blessed. The third conception of paradise, as the dwelling-place of the righteous dead, is met with in the earliest Greek literature,[301] but there is no definite trace of it amongst the Semitic nations until much later. It did not, apparently, find recognition amongst the Jews until after the exile, but references to it are frequent in their later apocalyptic literature.[302] In the second book of Esdras, the Lord tells His people that He will bring them out of the tombs, and that He has sanctified and prepared for them “twelve trees, laden with divers fruits, and as many fountains flowing with milk and honey, and seven mighty mountains, whereupon there grow roses and lilies.”[303] “They shall have the tree of life for an ointment of sweet savour; they shall neither labour nor be weary.”[304] In the Rabbinical writings, and still more in the Koran, this conception of paradise is embroidered with many fanciful extravagances. The Talmud even invents two paradises. “There is an upper paradise and a lower paradise. And between them is fixed a pillar, by which they are joined together, and which is called ‘The strength of the Hill of Sion.’ And by this pillar on every Sabbath and festival the souls of the righteous ascend from the lower to the upper paradise, and there enjoy the light of the Divine Majesty till the end of the Sabbath or festival, when they descend and return into the lower paradise.”[305] This pillar is no doubt a survival of the old tradition of the world-tree, a tradition still more obviously traceable in the Mahometan belief. According to the Koran paradise is situated in the seventh heaven. In the centre of it stands the marvellous tree called _Tooba_, which is so large that a man mounted on the fleetest horse could not ride round its branches in a hundred years. This tree not only affords the most grateful shade over the whole extent of the Mussulman paradise, but its boughs, laden with delicious fruits of a size and taste unknown to mortals, bend themselves to be plucked at the wish of the happy denizens of that blissful abode. The rivers of paradise take their rise from the tree, flowing some with water, some with milk, and some with honey; while others are filled with wine, the use of which is not forbidden to the blessed.[306]