is authentic (see the writer’s “The Rivers of Paradise,” Festschrift Johannes Friedrich, pp. 473–85). All four streams once converged, or were believed to have done so, near the head of the Persian Gulf, to create a rich garden land to which local religion and literature alike looked back as the land of the blessed. And while the Pishon and the Gihon stand for lesser streams, which have been Hebraized into something like “the Gusher” and “the Bubbler” respectively, the Tigris and the Euphrates leave