The Pishon is mentioned in the Biblical Genesis (2:11) as one of four rivers branching off from a single river within the Eden. The river is described as encircling "the entire land of Havilah", which remains as unidentified as Pishon itself.

Since two of the other rivers said to issue forth from Eden, the Tigris (Hiddekel, from Genesis 2:14) and the Euphrates, do not rise in the same place, it can be assumed that either the topography of the area has changed or the geographical notions of the Genesis writer or writers were inaccurate.

Christian fundamentalists have sometimes appealed to the effects of the Noachian Flood to explain the seeming disappearance of the Pishon river and the change in the upper courses of the Tigris and the Euphrates.

Together with the Tigris, the river Pishon is briefly mentioned in the apocryphal work of Ecclesiasticus (24:25), but this reference throws no more light on the location of the river.