The Literal Meaning of Genesis (continued)
BOOK EIGHT 43
In discussing these rivers, need I make any further effort to establish the fact that they are true rivers, not just figurative expressions without a corresponding reality in the literal sense, as if the names would signify something else and not rivers at all, in spite of the fact that they are well known in the lands through which they flow and are spoken of in nearly all the world?4° As a matter of fact, it is evident that the four rivers are precisely those named. In the case of two of them, their names were changed in ancient times, as happened also to the Tiber, which was once called the Albula.*!
The Geon is the river which is now called the Nile, and Phison was once the name of the river which they call the Ganges today.*? The other two, the Tigris and the Euphrates, have kept their ancient names. These facts should persuade us to take the first meaning of the other details of this narrative in the literal sense and not to assume that the account is allegorical, but that the facts narrated really exist and that they also have some figurative meaning.*?
This is not to say that a parable cannot take a detail from reality although the parable itself is obviously not intended to describe reality in the literal sense. An example is the parable told by our Lord about the man who was going down from Jerusalem to Jericho and fell among robbers.*4# One senses and clearly sees that this is a parable and that the whole account is figurative. Nevertheless, the two cities named in the parable are found even today existing in the same places. We would take the four rivers also in this way if we were under any compulsion to interpret the other details of the narrative about Paradise not literally but figuratively. But no good reason prohibits us from understanding things first in the literal sense. We can, therefore, follow with simplicity the authority of Scripture in the narration of these historical realities, taking them first as true historical realities and then searching for any further meaning they may have.
14. Are we hesitant to admit this because it is said that the source of some of these rivers is known and of others is completely unknown, and therefore we cannot take the account lit-