Paradise
In religion and folklore, paradise is a place of everlasting happiness, delight, and bliss. Paradisiacal notions are often laden with pastoral imagery, and may be cosmogonical, eschatological, or both, often contrasted with the miseries of human civilization: in paradise there is only peace, prosperity, and happiness. Paradise is a place of contentment, a land of luxury and fulfillment containing ever-lasting bliss and delight. Paradise is often described as a "higher place", the holiest place, in contrast to this world, or underworlds such as hell.
The use of the word 'paradise' to describe such a place originates from the Vulgate's use of the Latin word paradisus in its translation of Genesis 2:8: "And the Lord God had planted a paradise of pleasure", this word in turn being borrowed from the Septuagint's use of the Greek word παράδεισος meaning 'garden' or 'orchard'. Although Jerome translated from the original Hebrew, he borrowed the Greek translation's terminology, paradeisos, and added the "pleasure" qualification by making explicit the word play in the original Hebrew verse: the garden is located in a place with the name Eden, from a root meaning 'pleasure'.
In eschatological contexts, paradise is imagined as an abode of the virtuous dead. In Judaism, Christianity, and Islam, heaven is a paradisiacal belief. In Hinduism and Buddhism, paradise and heaven are synonymous, with higher levels available to beings who have achieved special attainments of virtue and meditation. In old Egyptian beliefs, the underworld is Aaru, the reed-fields of ideal hunting and fishing grounds where the dead lived after judgment. For the Celts, it was the Fortunate Isle of Mag Mell. For the classical Greeks, the Elysian fields was a paradisiacal land of plenty where adherents hoped the heroic and righteous dead would spend eternity. In the Zoroastrian Avesta, the "Best Existence" and the "House of Song" are places of the righteous dead. On the other hand, in cosmogonical contexts 'paradise' describes the world before it was tainted by evil.
The concept is a theme in art and literature, particularly of the pre-Enlightenment era. John Milton's Paradise Lost is an example of such usage.
Etymology and concept history
The word "paradise" entered English from the French paradis, inherited from the Latin paradisus, from Greek parádeisos, from an Old Iranian form, from Proto-Iranian*parādaiĵah- "walled enclosure", whence Old Persian ??????? p-r-d-y-d-a-m /paridaidam/, Avestan ?????⸱????? pairi-daêza-. The literal meaning of this Old Iranian language word is "walled ", from pairi- 'around' and -diz "to make, form, build". The word's etymology is ultimately derived from a PIE root *dheigʷ "to stick and set up ", and *per "around".By the 6th/5th century BCE, the Old Iranian word had been borrowed into Assyrian pardesu "domain". It subsequently came to indicate the expansive walled gardens of the First Persian Empire, and was subsequently borrowed into Greek as παράδεισος parádeisos "park for animals" in the Anabasis of the early 4th century BCE Athenian Xenophon, Aramaic as pardaysa "royal park", and Hebrew as פַּרְדֵּס pardes, "orchard", Ecclesiastes and Nehemiah ). In the Septuagint, Greek παράδεισος parádeisos was used to translate both Hebrew פרדס pardes and Hebrew גן gan, "garden" : it is from this usage that the use of "paradise" to refer to the Garden of Eden derives. The same usage also appears in Arabic and in the Quran as firdaws فردوس.
The idea of a walled enclosure was not preserved in most Iranian usage, and generally came to refer to a plantation or other cultivated area, not necessarily walled. For example, the Old Iranian word survives as Pardis in New Persian as well as its derivative pālīz, which denotes a vegetable patch.
Biblical
Hebrew Bible
The Hebrew word pardes appears only in the post-Exilic period ; it occurs in the Song of Songs 4:13, Ecclesiastes 2:5, and Nehemiah 2:8, in each case meaning "park" or "garden", the original Persian meaning of the word, where it describes the royal parks of Cyrus the Great by Xenophon in Anabasis.In Second Temple era Judaism, "paradise" came to be associated with the Garden of Eden and prophecies of restoration of Eden, and transferred to heaven.
In the apocryphal Apocalypse of Moses, Adam and Eve are expelled from paradise after the Fall of man, having been tricked by the serpent. After the death of Adam, the Archangel Michael carries Adam's body to be buried in Paradise, in the Third Heaven.
New Testament
The Greek word παράδεισος appears three times in the New Testament:- Luke 23:43 – by Jesus on the cross, in response to the thief's request that Jesus remember him when he came into his kingdom.
- 2 Cor. 12:4 – in Paul's description of a third heaven paradise.
- Rev. 2:7 – alluding to the tree of life mentioned at Gen.2:8.
Judaism
Rabbinic Judaism
In modern Jewish eschatology it is believed that history will complete itself and the ultimate destination will be when all mankind returns to the Garden of Eden.In the Talmud and the Jewish Kabbalah, the scholars agree that there are two types of spiritual places called "Garden in Eden". The first is rather terrestrial, of abundant fertility and luxuriant vegetation, known as the "lower Gan Eden". The second is envisioned as being celestial, the habitation of righteous, Jewish and non-Jewish, immortal souls, known as the "higher Gan Eden". The rabbis differentiate between Gan and Eden. Adam is said to have dwelt only in the Gan, whereas Eden is said never to be witnessed by any mortal eye. In Rabbinic Judaism, the word 'Pardes' recurs, but less often in the Second Temple context of Eden or restored Eden. A well-known reference is in the Pardes story, where the word may allude to mystic philosophy.
The Zohar gives the word a mystical interpretation, and associates it with the four kinds of Biblical exegesis: peshat, remez, derash, and sod. The initial letters of those four words then form פַּרְדֵּס – prds, which was in turn felt to represent the fourfold interpretation of the Torah.
Christianity
In the 2nd century AD, Irenaeus distinguished paradise from heaven. In Against Heresies, he wrote that only those deemed worthy would inherit a home in heaven, while others would enjoy paradise, and the rest live in the restored Jerusalem. Origen likewise distinguished paradise from heaven, describing paradise as the earthly "school" for souls of the righteous dead, preparing them for their ascent through the celestial spheres to heaven.Many early Christians identified Abraham's bosom with paradise, where the souls of the righteous go until the resurrection of the dead; others were inconsistent in their identification of paradise, such as St. Augustine, whose views varied.
In Luke 23:43, Jesus has a conversation with one of those crucified with him, who asks, "Jesus, remember me when you come into your kingdom". Jesus answers him, "Truly I tell you, today you will be with me in paradise". This has often been interpreted to mean that on that same day the thief and Jesus would enter the intermediate resting place of the dead who were waiting for the Resurrection. Divergent views on paradise, and when one enters it, may have been responsible for a punctuation difference in Luke; for example, the two early Syriac versions translate Luke 23:43 differently. The Curetonian Gospels read "Today I tell you that you will be with me in paradise", whereas the Sinaitic Palimpsest reads "I tell you, today you will be with me in paradise". Likewise the two earliest Greek codices with punctuation disagree: Codex Vaticanus has a pause mark in the original ink equidistant between 'today' and the following word, whereas Codex Alexandrinus has the "today in paradise" reading. In addition, an adverb of time is never used in the nearly 100 other places in the Gospels where Jesus uses the phrase, "Truly I say to you".
In Christian art, Fra Angelico's Last Judgement painting shows Paradise on its left side. There is a tree of life and a circle dance of liberated souls. In the middle is a hole. In Muslim art it similarly indicates the presence of the Prophet or divine beings. It visually says, "Those here cannot be depicted".
Jehovah's Witnesses
believe, from their interpretation of the Book of Genesis, that God's original purpose was, and is, to have the earth filled with the offspring of Adam and Eve as caretakers of a global paradise. However, Adam and Eve rebelled against God's sovereignty and were banished from the Garden of Eden, driven out of paradise into toil and misery.Jehovah's Witnesses believe that disobedient and wicked people will be destroyed by Christ at Armageddon and those obedient to Christ will live eternally in a restored earthly paradise. Joining the survivors will be the resurrected righteous and unrighteous people who died prior to Armageddon. The latter are brought back because they paid for their sins by their death and/or because they lacked opportunity to learn of Jehovah's requirements before dying. These will be judged on the basis of their post-resurrection obedience to instructions revealed in new "scrolls". They believe that resurrection of the dead to paradise earth is made possible by Christ's blood and the ransom sacrifice. This provision does not apply to those whom Christ as Judge deems to have sinned against God's holy spirit.
The earthly paradise believed by Jehovah's Witnesses emphasizes the removal of all sin and suffering, by the restoration of the people to their perfect state often referencing Revelation 21:4 "He will wipe every tear from their eyes. There will be no more death or mourning or crying or pain, for the old order of things has passed away." and Psalms 37:29 "The righteous will possess the earth, and they will live forever in it."