Gihon

Gihôn (in Hebrew: גִּיחוֹן, Gi' hon ) is a river mentioned in the second chapter of the biblical book of the Genèse 2-12. In Hebrew, Gi' hôn' could mean " impétueux".

This river would water the garden of Eden and would be divided with the outside in four other rivers:

Pishon which crosses the country of Havilah " where one finds gold of the Bdellium and Onyx " hones it; ;

the Tiger ( " who passes to the East of Assur " );

the Euphrate which runs right in the middle of the area of Mésopotamie and which currently crosses the Turkey, the Syria and the Iraq;

the fourth, Gihon, crosses the country of Koush , a name related to the Ethiopia elsewhere in the Bible.

Ethiopian themselves identified a long time the Gihôn with the Fleuve of Abay, which encircles the old kingdom of Godjam. Nevertheless, from a geographical point of view, that seems impossible: the Tiger and Euphrate are in Mésopotamie.
Une locality located in territory " mésopotamien" could correspond to description: Kish, a sumérienne city, is localized in an area of plains ( edin in sumérien) and is regularly watered by the Tiger and Euphrate.

The biblists " fondamentalistes" also other localizations of the Gihon river and consequently of the " sought; ground of Koush" ; some advance that it was associated with the river Araxes (Araks) in Turkey. Another assumption suggested is that the river of Gihon does not exist any more insofar as the Topographie sector were upset by the flood of the Déluge describes in Noa' H.

The secular exégètes (i.e. critical biblists) just like estimate that the river of Gihon remains not identified, the Pishon, since the geographical reference marks of the author of the Genesis cannot be reconstituted confomément with the current geography: in Genesis 2, Euphrate, the Tiger, Gihon and Pishon come from the same source, whereas the two only identifiable rivers nowadays, the Tiger and Euphrate, do not have the same origin.

The Jewish historian Flavius Josèphe associated the river of Gihon with the the Nile (Antiquities, I Jews, 39). However, in the Bible, a completely different Hebrew word is employed to locate the Nile. Moreover, even in this time, one suspected that the Nile could have the same source only the Tiger and Euphrate. It will be noted all the same that the river of Abay constitutes the higher portion of the Blue Nile.

The source of Gihon

Gihon is also the name of the only natural source in the area of Jerusalem. It nourishes the Bassin of Silwan (close which a ossuary supposed was discovered to be that of Jacques the brother of Jesus).

See too

External references

Texte of the Genesis
Bereshit on Mechon Mamre
the accounts of Creation in the Old Testament Delivers Genesis chapters 1 & 2

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