August 27, 2023
Boy, has the last month been a wild ride. I am in a more stable position now.
What is an archetype? Years ago, when I was immersed in biblical exegesis, one of the more profound personal discoveries I made was that Eden could not be a literal, physical place. In wanting to see the Bible as literal, historical truth, I was at odds with my own interpretive scheme. In the Book of Genesis, Eden exists at the headwaters of four major rivers: the Tigris (Hiddekel), the Euphrates (Perat), the Blue Nile (Gihon, which flows from the Ethiopian highlands, the origin of coffee), and a mysterious fourth river named Pihon (which some commentators have alternatively interpreted as the White Nile for etymological relationships between “Pihon” and the concepts of “seasonal overflowing” and “flax,” both of which ancient Egypt was known for, or as the Indus or Ganges Rivers in India; the ancient scholar Josephus believed that Pihon referred to the Indus River, in the west of the Indian subcontinent, which is very telling, since he was much more contemporary with the actual writing of the Bible and the surrounding cultures.) If Eden is at the headwaters of the Tigris, the Euphrates, the Nile, and the Indus rivers, then either the Bible was referring to a time in the geologically recent past when the Earth’s topography was ridiculously different, or the Bible was saying something else.