Gihon: The River of Paradise
Hespeler, 6 November, 2016 ©
Scott McAndless
Genesis 2:8-17, John 5:1-9, Psalm 46
T
|
he second chapter of the Book of
Genesis describes a garden – a place of idyllic existence where, the Bible
says, humanity first came into being. This garden was perfect – the only place
where all life (human and animal alike) lived together in peace and harmony.
But the story goes on from there to tell us that
the garden was lost and that humanity will never be able to enter it
again as long as this world exists.
The loss of
the garden has been a powerful idea that has possessed many people down through
the ages who have sought for a way to get back to it. Some have sought to do it
by questing after the tree of knowledge of good and evil – seeking to reclaim
the garden by expanding human understanding. But they have not got us there yet
by that route and sometimes have led us far astray.
But what if we
could find it in another way – what if it were a place on the map? I mean not a
literal location that you could just punch into your GPS and drive to, but what
if the geographical description in Genesis was meant to point us to a
metaphorical place where we can find
it in this world. The garden is said to be in a very particular (if unusual)
place: “A river flows out of Eden to
water the garden,” it says, “and
from there it divides and becomes four branches.” The four branches are
given names, some of which seem familiar. They are, Pishon, Gihon, Tigris and
Euphrates.
Now, half of
those rivers are immediately recognizable. Tigris and Euphrates are the two
great rivers that flow through the land of Mesopotamia, which means the land
between the two rivers. They flow today through the country of Iraq and they
mark the place where archeologists tell us that human civilization first came
into being at a place called Sumer.
The other two
rivers are harder to recognize. Since half of the rivers would have been well
known to the people who first heard this story, the assumption is that the other
half would have been as well. The first river called Pishon – a name totally
unknown otherwise – and we’re told that it flows in a land called Havilah which
is also unknown. But then it says that, in the place the Pishon flows, there is
gold, bdellium and onyx stone. Since bdellium (a precious resin) is only found
in sub-Saharan Africa and onyx was a precious stone commonly used in Ancient
Egypt, some have suggest that Pishon must be another name for the River Nile
which starts its course in sub-Saharan Africa and flows through the rich
valleys of Egypt. The Nile would fit well in the company of the Tigris and the
Euphrates as Egypt was the second great civilization of the ancient world.
In fact, when
you think about it that way, it suggests a very powerful symbolic meaning for
this description of the Garden of Eden. The passage states that, out of the
original garden and the things that happened there, there flowed the three of
the great rivers of the ancient world – Tigris, Euphrates and Nile. And these
three rivers were the cradle of human civilization itself in Mesopotamia and
Egypt. This suggests to me that maybe the story of the garden was not intended
to explain the origin of the human species so much as it was intended to
explain the origin of human civilization.
Think of the
symbolism of the story of Eden. The humans are expelled from the garden, an
idyllic rural existence, by their choice to pursue the tree of knowledge.
Civilization is marked by the quest for knowledge and calls on people to move
from a rural lifestyle into the city.
Civilization
has brought so many blessings, of course, but that relentless search for
knowledge has also created many problems (nuclear proliferation and climate
change are two that come to mind) that may destroy us in the long run. In many
ways the loss of the garden, that loss of connection with the land has also
been very costly. These three rivers may give us an angle on the story of the
Garden of Eden that can help us to explore those very issues which are still
important today as we still search for the garden that we have lost.
But that
brings us to the fourth river, the Gihon. It has long proven the hardest to
identify. There has been a lot of speculation about the identity of the Gihon
down through the centuries. Some have also associated it with the Nile River
(or a branch of the Nile) as well because it is said to have flowed through the
land of Cush and Cush is an ancient name for the land that we call Ethiopia.
But there is another possibility that comes from the name of the river itself.
The name comes from a Hebrew root that means “to burst forth,” which doesn’t
sound like a good name for a river so much as for a spring which might be the
source of a river.
And it just so
happens that there was a spring that fed a river that was called Gihon – a
spring that was very well known to the people who first heard this story in the
Book of Genesis. It was a small spring that flowed from a spot very close to a
mountain called Zion. This spring was extremely important to the ancient
Israelites because it made that mountain into a good and defensible spot where
you might build a fortress and a city. The city that they built there was
called Jerusalem, the city of David and his capital.
The spring
mattered because a decent water supply was so hard to come by in that part of
the world. It made it possible, for example, for the city of Jerusalem to
withstand many attacks and sieges over the centuries, something that is
celebrated in the Psalm we read this morning (which was likely written as a
national celebration when the city had survived an attack): “There is a
river whose streams make glad the city of God, the holy habitation of the Most
High. God is in the midst of the city; it shall not be moved.” The river
celebrated in that Psalm is none other than the Gihon and it describes the
river as a sign of the presence of God in the city.
Now,
traditionally, interpreters have hesitated to identify the river Gihon that is
said to flow from Eden in Genesis with the Gihon that flowed in the city of
Jerusalem. In fact, I cannot find any commentary that even suggests that they
are intended to be the same river. You can probably guess why. People have had
a hard time seeing how this tiny stream in Jerusalem belongs in the same league
as mighty and historically significant rivers like Nile, Tigris and Euphrates.
Jerusalem, as a centre of civilization, is also hard to compare with the much
larger ancient cities of Mesopotamia and the Nile valley. If the Gihon is just a
small stream in Jerusalem, it doesn’t seem to belong in the company of the
other rivers of Eden.
But here is
the thing: the description of the rivers of Eden never really made sense
geographically speaking. Rivers simply do not work like they are described in
this passage – especially with several rivers dividing off from one original
river and then somehow flowing to various far-flung corners of the world. But
that is okay because I don’t think that this description was ever meant to be
taken as pointing to a literal geographical location.
The people who
first heard and repeated this story did not hear it as a story about something
that happened a long time ago in a remote geographical location. It was a story
that was part of their daily lives and, if they could look over and see a
stream, flowing by the streets of Jerusalem, and recognize that stream as a
river that once flowed from Eden, that would have said some significant things
to them about the world that God created and their place in it.
For one thing,
it gave them a sense that they had a place among the great nations and empires
of the earth. They looked at the great powers of the world such as Babylon
(which lay between the Tigris and the Euphrates) and Egypt along the Nile and
they could say, “Yeah, but look at us! We’ve got a river of Eden that flows through
our city too. We too are one of the world’s great civilizations.” It was a
matter of national pride and identity.
But the
connection between the Gihon River that they knew and the Gihon River of Eden
was about more than that. They saw it as a point of connection between their
daily lives and the ideal world promised in the original story of the garden.
Here is the
thing that I have noticed. The Gihon River of Jerusalem is rarely named in the
Bible but there are many passages and stories about this river. The river flows
right through the whole Bible though you may have never noticed it. In fact,
the very last chapter of the Book of Revelations – of the whole Bible –
includes a description of a river that flows from the throne of God in the new
heavenly city of Jerusalem – a new Gihon. It is the final comforting image of
the Bible. Isn’t it interesting to think that the Bible both begins and ends on
the banks of the River Gihon?
In our reading
from the Gospel of John this morning, we find ourselves at the Pool of
Beth-zatha – a pool in Jerusalem that was fed, in the time of Jesus, by the
spring of the River Gihon. In this story we learn that, by the time of Jesus,
the people of Jerusalem had come to believe that the waters of that stream had
healing and restorative powers when the spring burst forth and stirred the
water. Did they come to that belief because somewhere in their ancient
traditions they connected this stream in Jerusalem to the ancient waters of
Eden and the wholeness that humanity had known there? Did they believe that
those waters had a healing power because of that connection?
Of course,
maybe that doesn’t matter because in the story in the Gospel of John, the Gihon
waters prove unnecessary and Jesus himself is able to heal the invalid. Perhaps
that tells us that Jesus himself is a stronger connection to the wholeness of
Eden than any stream could be.
I don’t know
if Eden in the Book of Genesis was ever intended to be understood as a literal
place that once existed. I don’t know if the events that we are told took place
there were meant to be taken literally or symbolically. But I do know this: the
story of Eden is true because it tells me so much about what it means to be
human in this world. One thing it speaks to me about is that sense of what we
have lost as humans on this planet. I believe that we should be able to live
together in peace and harmony. I believe that there is no good reason why
everyone in this world should not have enough to get by. I know that war and
all of the destruction it brings shouldn’t happen – it doesn’t make sense. And
there is this disconnect between how I think the world should be and how it
actually is. I long for Eden – that perfect picture of what it should be – and
I do not find it. I’ve never seen the garden and yet I miss it.
Traditionally,
Christians have thought of Eden as totally cut off from the present world. It
is a garden found in the remote past at the beginning of the world or in a
remote future (a garden restored) at the end. But I am beginning to suspect
that the Israelites didn’t see it that way. They walked through the streets of
Jerusalem and saw, right there, a stream that was, for them, a river of Eden.
The garden wasn’t remote for them, it was right there.
What might
change, do you think, if we began to think in the same way? What if we could
look out the door here, at the Speed River that flows just over there, and see
it as a river of Eden. It might give us some hope that the dysfunction of this
world isn’t fated to be, that Eden is just over there.
What if every
river is a river of Eden? What if we all could find our way there by following
them back? It is an intriguing idea and one that I hope to continue to explore
as we continue this journey to the biblical Gihon next Sunday.
#140CharacterSermon Gihon River means #Paradise isn’t remote in
time or place. It is near if we choose to believe in #peace &
understanding.
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