Genesis 2:10-14

"And a river went out of Eden to water the garden; and from thence it was parted and became four heads. The name of the first is Pishon; 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 Cush. And the name of the third river is Hiddekel that is it which goeth in front of Assyria. And the fourth river is Euphrates."

"It was parted and became four heads ..." "Heads" here does not mean "mouths"; and thus there is a progression upstream to tributaries, making the rivers of the Tigris, the Euphrates and their two largest tributaries originating in the mountains, hence, the mention of gold, etc. "In Hebrew, the mouth of the river is called `end'; hence, the plural of `heads' must refer to the upper course. This usage is well attested."[20]

Difficulty in identifying two such large tributaries could very well be due to vast geological changes in the whole area since the days of the garden of Eden. It appears to be certain enough that the location of that Paradise was somewhere in the Tigris-Euphrates valley.

"And the name of the third river is Hiddekel: that is it which goeth in front of Assyria..." Hiddekel is the ancient name for the Tigris, as many have noted. It is most interesting here that it is represented as going "in front of" Assyria, that is, Nineveh, the great capital of Assyria. Skinner admitted that "practically all commentators"[21] view this as a statement that the river ran east of Nineveh, which it did, of course, until about 1300 B.C., when the city was moved east of the river. This is a positive indication that the author of Genesis wrote before 1300 B.C., a conclusion that cannot be successfully denied. "The Asshur, or Assyria, referred to must be the ancient city of that name which actually once lay on the west bank of the Tigris."[22] Speiser also affirms that, "Here, the Tigris flows east of the city."[23] There is powerful evidence of the antiquity of the Book of Genesis in this.

The critical allegation that this part of Genesis was written by one who lived in an arid, desert region is denied by these abundant rivers in Eden. The reference to the fact that God had not yet caused it to rain upon the earth (Genesis 2:5), spoke of conditions in the creation on the third day of creation.

"The Euphrates ..." This is the river, more than any other, which is almost synonymous with the garden of Eden, that being the use of it that appears in Revelation 16:12.

Any exact location is impossible of being assigned to Eden; but our text makes it clear that it was a most desirable and beautiful home for mankind. It is likely that the universal traditions, myths, and legends regarding a fantastic "Golden Age" are distorted echoes of man's primeval home during an indeterminate period of his innocence.