Paradise

Paradise is but an Anglicized form of the Greek word παράδεισος, which is identical with the Sanscrit paradesa, Persian pardes, and appears also in the Hebrew pardes, פִּרדֵּס, and the Arabic firdarus. In all these languages it has essentially the same meaning, a park. It does not occur in the Old Testament, in the English version, but is used in the Sept. to translate the Hebrew gân, גָּן, a garden (Genesis 2:8 sq.), and thence found its way into the New Testament, where it is applied figuratively to the celestial dwelling of the righteous, in allusion to the Garden of Eden (2 Corinthians 12:4; Revelation 2:7). It has thus come into familiar use to denote both that garden and the heaven of the just. SEE EDEN.

I. Literal Application of the Name (Scriptural and profane). — Of this word (παράδεισος) the earliest instance that we have is in the Cyropaedia and other writings of Xenophon, nearly 400 years before Christ; but his use of it has that appearance of ease and familiarity which leads us to suppose that it was current among his countrymen. A wide, open park, enclosed against injury, yet with its natural beauty unspoiled, with stately forest-trees, many of them bearing fruit, watered by clear streams, on whose banks roved large herds of antelopes or sheep — this was the scenery which connected itself in the mind of the Greek traveler with the word: παράδεισος, and for which his own language supplied no precise equivalent (comp. Anab. 1:2, § 7; 4, § 9; 2:4, § 14; Hellen. 4:1, § 15; Cyrop. 1:3, § 14; (Econom. 4, § 13). We find it also used by Plutarch, who lived in the 1st and 2d century of our aera. It was by these authors evidently employed to signify an extensive plot of ground, enclosed with a strong fence or wall, abounding in trees, shrubs, plants, and garden culture, and in which choice animals were kept in different ways of restraint or freedom, according as they were ferocious or peaceable; thus answering very closely to the English word park, with the addition of gardens, a menagerie, and an aviary. The circumstance which has given this term its extensive and popular use is its having been taken by the Greek translators of the Pentateuch, in the 3d century B.C., and, following them, in the ancient Syriac version, and by Jerome in the Latin Vulgate, as the translation of the garden (גָּן, gan) which the benignant providence of the Creator prepared for the abode of innocent and happy man. The translators also use it, not only in the twelve places of Genesis 2; 3, but in eight others, and two in which the feminine form (גִּנָּה) occurs; whereas, in other instances of those two words, they employ κῆπος, the usual Greek word for a garden or an enclosure of fruit-trees. But there are three places in which the Hebrew text itself has the very word, giving it the form פִּרדֵּס, pardes. These are, “the keeper of the king’s forest, that he may give me timber” (Nehemiah 2:8); orchards (Ecclesiastes 2:5); “an orchard of pomegranates” (Song of Solomon, 4:13). Through the writings of Xenophon, and through the general admixture of Orientalisms in the later Greek after the conquests of Alexander, the word gained a recognized place, and the Sept. writers chose it for a new use, which gave it a higher worth and secured for it a more perennial life. The Garden of Eden became ὁ παράδεισος τῆς τρυφῆς (Genesis 2:15,23; Joel 2:3). They used the same word whenever there was any allusion, however remote, to the fair region which had been the first blissful home of man. The valley of the Jordan, in their version, is the paradise of God (Genesis 13:10). There is no tree in the paradise of God equal to that which in the prophet’s vision symbolizes the glory of Assyria (Ezekiel 31:1-9). The imagery of this chapter furnishes a more vivid picture of the scenery of a παράδεισος than we find elsewhere. The prophet to whom “the word of the Lord came” by the river of Chebar may well have seen what he describes so clearly. Elsewhere, however, as in the translation of the three passages in which pardes occurs in the Hebrew it is used in a more general sense (comp. Isaiah 1:30; Numbers 24:6; Jeremiah 29:5). In the apocryphal book of Susanna (a moral tale or little novel, possibly founded on some genuine tradition) the word paradise is constantly used for the garden. It occurs also in three passages of the Son of Sirach, the first of which is in the description of Wisdom: “I came forth as a canal dug from a river, and as a water-pipe into a paradise” (24:30). In the other two it is the objective term of comparisons: “Kindness is as a paradise in blessings, and mercifulness abideth forever — the fear of the Lord is as a paradise of blessing, and it adorns above all pomp” (40:17, 27). Josephus calls the gardens of Solomon, in the plural number, “paradises” (Ant. 8:7, 3). Berosus (B.C. cent. 4), quoted by Josephus (c. Apion, 1:20), says that the lofty garden-platforms erected at Babylon by Nebuchadnezzar were called the Suspended Paradise.

The word itself, though it appears in the above form in the Song of Solomon 4:13; Ecclesiastes 2:5; Nehemiah 2:8, may be classed, with hardly a doubt, as of Aryan rather than of Shemitic origin. It first appears in Greek as coming straight from Persia (Xenoph. ut sup.). Greek lexicographers classify it as a Persian word (Julius Pollux. Onomast. 9:3). Modern philologists accept the same conclusion with hardly a dissentient voice (Renan, Langues Semitiques, 2:1, p. 153). “The word is regarded by most learned men as Persian, of the same signification as the Hebrew gan. Certainly it was used by the Persians in this sense, corresponding to their darchen; but that it is an Armenian word is shown both from its constant use in that language and from its formation, it being compounded of two Armenian simple words, part and ses, meaning necessary grains or edible herbs. The Armenians apply this word, pardes, to denote a garden adjoining the dwelling, and replenished with the different sorts of grain, herbs, and flowers for use and ornament” (Schroederi Thesaur. Ling. Armen. Dissert. p. 56 Amsterd. 1711). With this E. F. C. Rosenmüller accords (Bibl. Alterthumsk. vol. i, pt. i, p. 174): “It corresponds to the Greek παράδεισος, a word appropriated to the pleasure-gardens and parks with wild animals around the palace of the Persian monarchs. The origin of the word, however, is to be sought with neither the Greeks nor the Hebrews, but in the languages of Eastern Asia. We find it in Sanscrit paradesha, a region of surpassing beauty; and the Armenian pardes, a park or garden adjoining the house, planted with trees for use and ornament.” “A paradise, i.e. an orchard, an arboretum, particularly of pomegranates, a park, a fruit-garden; a name common to several Oriental languages, and especially current among the Persians, as we learn from Xenophon and Julius Pollux: Sanscrit, pardesha; Armenian, pardezo; Arabic, firdaus; Syriac, fardaiso; Chaldee of the Targums, pardesa” (First, Concord. V. T. p. 920, Leipsic, 1840). Gesenius (s.v.) traces it a step farther, and connects it with the Sanscrit paradanae, high, well-tilled land, as applied to an ornamental garden attached to a house. Other Sanscrit scholars, however, assert that the meaning of pardefa in classical Sanscrit is “foreign- country;” and although they admit that it may also mean “the best or most excellent country,” they look on this as an instance of casual coincidence rather than derivation. Other etymologies, more fanciful and far-fetched, have been suggested: (1) from παρά and δεύω, giving as a meaning the “well-watered ground” (Suidas, s.v.); (2) from παρά and δεῖσα, a barbarous word, supposed to signify a plant, or collection of plants (Joann. Damasc. in Suidas, l.c.); (3) from פרה דשא, to bring forth herbs; (4) פרה הרס, to bring forth myrrh (Ludwig, De raptu Pauli in Parad. in Menthei’s Thesaur. Theolog. 1702).

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Author: McClintock and Strong Cyclopedia

Keywords: Paradise, Eden, Garden of Eden, Paradise restored

Bible reference(s): 1 Peter 3:19, 1 Samuel 15:7, 2 Corinthians 12:4, Ecclesiastes 2:5, Ezekiel 28:13, Ezekiel 31:1, Genesis 13:10, Genesis 2:8, Genesis 3:15, Genesis 4:16, Isaiah 1:30, Jeremiah 29:5, Joel 2:3, Luke 16:23, Luke 23:43, Nahum 3:9, Nehemiah 2:8, Numbers 24:6, Psalms 68:31, Psalms 90:17, Revelation 2:7, Sirach/Ecclesiasticus 24:25, Song of Solomon 4:13, Genesis 2:10, Joel 2:3, Ezekiel 31:9, Ezekiel 31:18, Ezekiel 36:35, Luke 23:43, 2 Corinthians 12:4, Revelation 2:7, 2 Esdras 3:6, 2 Esdras 4:7, 2 Esdras 6:2, 2 Esdras 7:53, 2 Esdras 8:52

Source: John McClintock and James Strong, Cyclopedia of Biblical, Theological, and Ecclesiastical Literature.

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