Hebrew Myths by Robert Graves Page A

spirit by conjuration, it always appears upside-down; unless summoned by order of a king—as the witch of En-Dor summoned Samuel at Saul’s demand—whereupon it stands on its feet to show respect for royalty. 127
    (
i
) When Adam was expelled from Eden, God let him take away certain spices, namely saffron, nard, sweet calamus and cinnamon; also a few Paradisal seeds and cuttings of fruit trees, for his own use. 128
    Moses built the Tabernacle with wood fetched by Adam out of Paradise. 129
    ***
    1
. For the origin of the Paradise concept common to Europe, the Orient, Central and North America, and Polynesia—see Chapter 12.
    2.
Adam’s terrestrial Paradise, the Garden of Eden, was speculatively located first on the ‘Mountain of God’, Mount Saphon in Syria; next at Hebron, once the most fertile valley of Southern Palestine and famous for its oracular shrine; then at Jerusalem, after King David had moved his capital there from Hebron; and during the Babylonian captivity, at thehead of the Persian Gulf—a delta watered by four main streams: Tigris, Euphrates, Choaspes, and the Pallakopas Canal. The wording of
Genesis
II. 8, ‘God planted a garden eastward
in
Eden,’ and 10, ‘a river went out of Eden to water the garden,’ made for geographical confusion. Some understood ‘Eden’ as the central part of the garden; others, as the region enclosing the garden. Further confusion persuaded some Babylonian Jews to identify Eden with Beth Eden (
Amos
I. 5;
Ezekiel
XXVII. 23), the Bit Adini of Assyrian inscriptions, which flourished in the tenth and ninth centuries B.C. Beth Eden lay in Armenia, the presumed source not only of the Tigris and Euphrates, but of the Nile—Alexander the Great held this view—and of the Orontes (Pishon?), which is the main river of Havilah (Northern Syria?), as the Nile is of Egypt (Cush). Josephus and the Septuagint (
Jeremiah
II. 18) equate the Gihor with the Nile. Some read Havilah as Central Arabia, though it lacks rivers; since Havilah appears in
Genesis
X. 7 as a son of Cush, and a descendant of Shem through Yoqtan.
    3
. Homer makes the same association of Paradise with rewards and punishments in the
Odyssey
(iv. 561), describing the Elysian Fields and ‘the verge of the world where fair-haired Rhadamanthus rules, and life is easiest for man; no snow falls there, nor any violent storms, nor rain at any time, but Oceanus ever sends forth the clear, shrill blast of the West Wind to refresh mankind.’ Rhadamanthus was one of the Infernal Judges. According to Josephus, the Essenes of the Dead Sea coast also believed that after death the righteous went to a Western region where they were untroubled by rain, frost or heat, but enjoyed continuous cool sea breezes. The wicked, however, were confined to a dark, chilly Hell, and there suffered endless punishment—as in the Greek Tartarus.
    For the absence of all Esau’s descendants from Paradise, see 38.
5
and 40.
3
.
    4
. ‘Mount Lebiah’ means ‘Mountain of the Lioness’. Its location is unknown. The two cherubim who guarded Eden with their whirling swords were probably swastikas (fire-wheels) painted on the gate as a warning to mankind that the garden lay under taboo.
    5
. Jehoshua ben Levi was head of the Lydda Rabbinic School during the early third century A.D. , and hero of many edifying anecdotes.
    6
. The upside-down appearance of the dead is probably deduced from a view that ghosts assume a pre-natal posture in hope of re-birth (see 36.
a
, end).
    7
. A reference to what seems an older version of the
Genesis
Paradise myth occurs in
Job
XV. 7–8:
    Art thou the first man that was born?
    Wast thou brought forth before the hills?
    Dost thou hearken in the council of Eloah?
    And hast thou stolen wisdom for thyself?
    According to this passage, Adam was born before the hills were formed, attended the Divine Assembly and, ambitious for still greater glory, stole wisdom—thereby doing of his own accord what, in the
Genesis
version, Eve