Pishon

The Pishon river is mentioned in the Biblical book of Genesis (2:11) as one of four rivers taking their rise in the Garden of Eden, branching off from a single river within Eden. The river is described as encircling "the entire land of Havilah", which however remains as unidentified as the river Pishon itself. Since two of the other rivers said to issue forth from Eden -- the Tigris (Hiddekel) and the Euphrates -- do not actually take their rise in the same place, it must either be assumed that the topography of the area has changed, or that the geographical notions of the writer of Genesis were inaccurate. Fundamentalists, who by definition cannot accept the latter idea, have sometimes appealed to the effects of the Noachian Flood to explain the seeming disappearance of the Pishon river and the "change" in the upper courses of the Tigris and the Euphrates. The last of the four rivers mentioned in Genesis 2, the Gihon, is likewise unidentified. Secular researchers, who do not feel obliged to reconcile the Biblical description with actual geography as known today, have put forward the idea that the Pishon may represent the writer's vague ideas of the Ganges or Indus river of India. It is of course out of the question that such a "Pishon" could ever have taken its rise in the same place as the Tigris and the Euphrates, even if dramatic topographic upheavals are assumed to have taken place. Together with the Tigris, the river Pishon is briefly mentioned in the apocryphal work of Ecclesiasticus (24:25), but this reference throws no more light on the identity of the river.