ps
mistake him when we suppose he literally means those four rivers;
especially as to Geon or Nile, which arises from the east, while he very
well knew the literal Nile arises from the south; though what further
allegorical sense he had in view, is now, I fear, impossible to be
determined.

[4] By the Red Sea is not here meant the Arabian Gulf, which alone we
now call by that name, but all that South Sea, which included the Red
Sea, and the Persian Gulf, as far as the East Indies; as Reland and
Hudson here truly note, from the old geographers.

[5] Hence it appears, that Josephus thought several, at least, of the
brute animals, particularly the serpent, could speak before the fall.
And I think few of the more perfect kinds of those animals want the
organs of speech at this day. Many inducements there are also to a
notion, that the present state they are in, is not their original state;
and that their capacities have been once much greater than we now see
them, and are capable of being restored to their former condition. But
as to this most ancient, and authentic, and probably allegorical account
of that grand affair of the fall of our first parents, I have somewhat
more to say in way of conjecture, but being only a conjecture, I omit
it: only thus far, that the imputation of the sin of our first parents
to their posterity, any further than as some way the cause or occasion
of man's mortality, seems almost entirely groundless; and that both man,
and the other subordinate creatures, are hereafter to be delivered from
the curse then brought upon them, and at last to be delivered from that
bondage of corruption, Romans 8:19-22.

[6] St. John's account of the reason why God accepted the sacrifice of
Abel, and rejected that of Cain; as also why Cain slew Abel, on account
of that his acceptance with God, is much better than this of Josephus:
I mean, because "Cain was of the evil one, and slew his brother.
And wherefore slew he him? Because his own works were evil, and his
brother's righteous," 1 John 3:12. Josephus's reason seems to be no
better than a pharisaical notion or tradition.

[7] From this Jubal, not improbably, came Jobel, the trumpet of jobel or
jubilee; that large and loud musical instrument, used in proclaiming the
liberty at the year of jubilee.

[8] The number of Adam's children, as says the old tradition was
thirty-three sons, and twenty-three daughters.

[9] What is here said of Seth and his posterity,