Paradise (Hastings' Dictionary)

A word used in different applications in Scripture, and having an interesting history, both before and after its appearance in the Bible. In all proba- bility it is of Median or Persian origin. Other explanations indeed have been given of it. Some fanciful etymologies have been proposed for it; 6.0. from 775 and xw7, as if the root idea was ‘ bringing forth herbs’; from παρά and διύω, as if ‘well watered’; from σαρά and ἃ supposi- titious δῦσα with the sense of ‘plant’ or ‘plants,’ etc. (cf.

Suidas and Suicer, s.v.) It has been taken by some from an Armenian source, pardez being Armenian for ‘garden.’ It has been held to have Sanskrit connexions. But the term para- dega, with which it is thought to be in affinity, or from which it is supposed to come, means a ‘foreign country’ (from para =distant, and dega=country), and the likeness is only acci- dental (cf. Benfey, s.v.) A Semitic origin has been claimed for it by some scholars of repute. Fried. Delitzsch, ¢.g.

, suggests a Babylono-Assyrian source (cf. Wo lag das Paradies? pp. 95-97). But there is no evidence that the Assyrian people had the thing which was called by this name among the Persians ; while, on the other hand, they expressed the idea of ‘ garden’ or ‘wood’ by other words (cf. Schrader, COT ii. 71f.)

The attempt to find for the term a Semito-Assyrian or an Akkado- Sumerian etymology, therefore, is now generally given up, and most scholars are of opinion that the word comes from the Zend pairidaéza (cf. modern Persian and Arabic firdaus=‘ garden,’ eee pl. faradis), meaning a wall enclosing something, and then the means enclosed, a park, a pleasure-ground, or hunting- und (Ges. Thes. ii. 1124; Max Miller, Chips, iv. 22; τιν Langues Sémiti , I. i. 153; Justi, rea 180; rde, Ges. Abh. p.

75; Haug in Ewald’s Jahrb. v. 162; Spiegel in Delitzsch’s Hoheslied under ch. 413 ; Néldeke, ZDMG xxxvi. 182; Skeat, Etymol. Dict. of Eng. Lang. 8.v.) The old Greek etymologists also explained the word as of Persian origin. So Pollux (Onom. ix. ch. 8) expresses himself thus: οἱ δὲ παράδεισοι, βαρβαρικὸν ναι τοὔνομα, ἥκει καὶ μετὰ συνήθμαν εἰς χρῆσιν ἱλληνικῆν, ὡς χαὶ ἄλλα πόλλὰ τῶν «ερσικῶν. The word came very early into use in English, ¢.g. in Laya- mon, 1. 24,122.

It was adopted by Wyclif in his rendering of Rev 27; ‘ To hym that overcometh Y Schal ve to ete of the tre of lijf that is in the paradis of my ’ The different forms in which it has appeared, and the different things for which it has served as a name, make a curious story. It has been used to designate the magnificent parks of Persian monarchs, the original abode of man in his integrity and happiness, the residence of righteous souls in the intermediate state, and the heaven of the future.

It has been employed asa figure of the Word of God by some of the Fathers (e.g. Chrys. om. I. ad pop. Antioch. t. vi. p. 448; Hom., Quod Scriptu- rarum lectio utilis sit, t. viii. p. 111); and from these higher uses it has descended to be the name of humbler things— courts, porches, altars, berths, etc.

The word parvis, de- noting the outer court of a great house or palace, and more pean the porch of a church, is supposed to be paradise the Low Latin form paravisus, a Neapolitan paraviso being iso as a variety of the Italian paradiso(Skeat, Etym. Dict. of ng. Lang. 8.v.) The church-porch is said to have been taken to represent paradise when the old mystery-plays were enacted in the yard. (Of. Littré, s.v., and Tyrwhitt’s ed. Cant. Tales, y. 183).

The word (paruis, parvis, parvys) occurs in Chaucer— There was no wight in all Parys Before our ladie at parvys That he ne mighte bye the book To copy, if him talent took.’ —(Rom. of Rose, 7108). Cf. ‘demon’ of RV for AV ‘ devil’ (δαιμόνιον). PARADISE PARADISE 669 Among the Persians the term meant a royal park, the enclosed pleasure-ground of king or of noble, richly wooded, well watered, and amply stocked with game, comprehending at once the vivarium and the viridarium of the Romans.

Classical Latin did not possess the word, and Roman writers of the classical period had to ex- press the thing in a roundabout way (οἵ. Cicero, de Senect. 17). From Persia it passed over into later Hebrew and into Greek. It appears to have been introduced into the latter by Xenophon, and it occurs frequently in Greek writers from his period onwards. In these it is applied mostly to the great parks of the Persian kings.

Numerous references are made to these, and large descrip- tions are given of them (cf. Xen. Anab. i. 2. 7, iii. 4. 14, Cyr. i. 3. 14, viil. 1. 38, @c. iv. 13, 14, Hell. iv. 1. 15; Diodor. Sic. xvi. 41; Plut. Artaz. 25; Theophr. Hist. Plant. v. 8.1; Lucian, Ver. Hist. ii. 23; lian, Var. Hist. i. 33, etc.) The word seems to have been used sometimes also of smaller gesdens or enclosures (Inscript. Car. in C/G 26946).

the sense of ‘ park’ it occurs also in Josephus and some of the Apocryphal books (Jos. Ant. vil. xiv. 4, VIII. vii. 8, Ix. x. 4, X. iii. 2, etc., Bell. Jud. Vi. i. 1; Sus v.‘ etc. ; Sir 24). It is ex- usina! to the same effect by Hesychius, Olympio- orus (Eccles. ch. ii. p. 611), Greg. Nyss. (Hom. IX. in Cantic. t. i. p. 611), ete. It was taken over into the OT in the Hebrew form omp (LXX παράδεισος), and with the literal sense. It occurs thus in Ca 4!

(RV ‘orchard,’ with marginal note, ‘or, a paradise’); Ee 2° (AV ‘gardens and orchards, RV ‘gardens and parks’); Neh 28 (‘keeper of the king’s forest,’ Where the reference is explicitly to the royal Persian park, in the primary sense. But the OT occurrences (in the Greek form) are not con- fined to these three cases. The word is exalted to a higher use, the Seventy having adopted it as their translation of the 1πὼ 1} in which man was pce at first by his Creator.

The 71} is sometimes eft as a proper name “Edeu ; sometimes it is repro- duced in its etymological sense as τῆς τρυφῆς. So in the LXX (and a similar form is used in the Peshitta) παράδεισος, παράδεισος τῆς τρυφῆς, is the Garden of Eden (Gn 2° 10. 16. 33. 8. 33.) Outside the record of man’s creation and fall it was also used by the LXX where the Heb. has ‘ garden,’ especi y in figurative passages, or when the idea of the glory of man’s first abode was in any way in view. In Gn 13", e.g.

, the plain of Jordan is said to be ‘as the paradise of God’ (ὡς ὁ παρά- δεισος τοῦ θεοῦ); Nu 24° Balaam describes the tents of Jacob and the tabernacles of Israel (ὡς νάπαι σκιάζουσαι καὶ ὡσεὶ παράδεισος ἐπὶ ποταμῶν). See also Is 139. Jl] 23, Jer 29°, and especially Ezk 315", where it is said of the Assyrian under the figure of a great cedar tree in Lebanon that ‘the cedars in the garden of God could not hide him’. .

‘nor any tree in the garden of God (ἐν τῷ παραδείσῳ τοῦ θεοῦ) was like unto him in his beauty,’ and that he was made so fair that ‘all the trees of Eden that were in the garden of God (ra ξύλα τοῦ παραδείσου τῆς τρυφῆς τοῦ θεοῦ) envied him.’ In the NT it is raised to still higher uses.

The primeval Eden gives place to a ‘garden of God’ that is not of earth, the thought of the Paradise of the past is lost in the hope of a Paradise of the future, and the word becomes a name for the scene of rest and recompense for the righteous after death. Only the most s aring use, however, is made of it in the NT. While the idea which it expresses appears more frequently, the word itself occurs only in three passages—once in the Gospels (Lk 23%), once in the Epp.

(2 Co 12‘), and once in the Apoc. (27). The history of the term suggests reasons for this remarkable abstention in the case ? of the NT writings. To understand the place which it has in these writings, and to define ite precise meaning in these few passages, it is neces- a Ὁ look into the course which Hebrew thought took on the subject of Sheol and a future existence after the close of OT prophecy, and into the con- dition of popular ΚΕ ΣῈ: belief in the times of Christ and the Apostles.

It is of the greatest importance to know the ideas which had become connected with the term ‘ Paradise’ and its cog- nates in the various sections of Judaism. In some cases ‘ Paradise,’ the ‘garden of Eden,’ and such terms, lost their objective meaning, and were made symbols of spiritual things. The tend- ency to idealize is seen, ¢.g.

, in Sirach, where the rivers of Eden become symbols of the streams of true wisdom (Sir 24*-), It appears, too, in the Psalms of Solomon, where we have the ‘garden οἱ the Lord’ and the ‘trees of life’ introduced as figures of the saints in their blessedness—é rapd- δεισος κυρίου, τὰ ξύλα τῆς ζωῆς ὅσιοι αὐτοῦ (143). Itis seen in its absoluteness in the philosophizing Judaism of Alexandria. To Philo himself ‘ Para- dise’ was a symbol of ἀρετή, or spiritual excellence.

The spiritualizing method of interpretation, how- ever, was limited for the most part to that school, and was not of a kind to aflect popular Jewish thought to any great extent. The prevailing tendency was in the opposite direction. To what extremes of literalism and curious circumstan- tial definition it ran, and in what extravagant and incongruous speculation it indulged, can be gathered from the Rabbinical literature and from the Apocryphal and Pseudepigraphical writings.

Fancy ran riot in the Rabbinical schools on the subject of Paradise, its location, its extent, its glories, ete. The Rabbinical theology as it has come down to us exhibits an extraordinary medley of ideas on these questions, and in the case of many of them it is ditlicult to determine the dates to which they should be assigned. In some Rab- binical books omp is used for Paradise ; which has, however, the sense of ‘park’ in the Mishna and Targums. But the more frequent term is the OT 1}.

The primeval garden of Eden was held by some to exist still, ee to lie in the distant east. Paradise was regarded as created before the world. In later Jewish theology it had seven names, and copious rhetorical Pree jean of its blessedness abounded. Two gates of rubies were said to lead into it. Beside them stand sixty myriads of holy angels, with countenances shining like the light of heaven.

When a righteous man enters, the ves- tures of death are taken off him; he is clad in eight robes of the clouds of glory ; two crowns are placed upon his head—one of pearls and precious stones, another of gold of Parvaim ; eight myrtles are put into his hand; he is lauded and hailed with words of welcome, ete. (Jalkut Schim., Beresch. 20). It was believed also that in Paradise there are degrees of blessedness (Baba bathra 75a).

Seven ranks or orders of the righteous were said to exist within it, and definitions were given both of those to whom these different positions belonged and of the glories belonging to each.

Taking the literature as it is, it might appear that Paradise was regarded by some as on earth itself, by others as forming part of Sheol, by others still as neither on earth nor under earth, but in heaven ; while some also held that there were two Paradises —one in heaven, for those who are perfect in holi- ness, and one on earth, for those who come short of that. But there is some doubt as respects, at least, part of this. These various conceptions are found indeed in later Judaism.

They appear most precisely and most in detail in the medieval | Cabbalistic Judaism; in which also extravagant | descriptions are given of the relations of the earthly 670 PARADISE PARADISE Paradise and the heavenly, the latter being de- clared to be sixty times as large as the lower earth (Eisenmenger, Lntd. Jud. ii. 297). But it is uncer- tain how far back these things can be carried.

The older Jewish theology at least, as it is repre- sented in the Rabbinical literature, seems to give little or no place to the idea of an intermediate Paradise. It speaks of a Gehinnom for the wicked, and a Gan Eden, or garden of Eden, for the just. | It is questionable whether it goes beyond these conceptions and aflirms a Paradise in Sheol (cf Weber, Jiid. Theol. 244, etc.) Of more importance, however, is the witness cf the Apocryphal and Pseudepigraphical writings.

These books reflect a remarkable variety of opinions, which it is impossible to harmonize, and many of which were extremely fantastic. In the later Jewish belief Sheol appears to be regarded as a place of moral issues, with preliminary rewards and punishments, and with different divisions in it for different classes of the departed.

The more prevalent view seems to have been that the world of the dead had two sections separated by a wall or a chasm—one for the righteous, and one for the unrighteous. But the opinion also was held that Sheol had four divisions—one for the righteous who on earth suffered death for their righteousness’ sake; one for sinners who on earth suffered penalty for their sins ; one for others of the just ; and one for sinners who were not punished on earth (Znoch 20, 102").

But in addition to these, which were no doubt the prevalent beliefs and were held especially by the Pharisees, there was also the opinion, favoured especially by Jews influenced by Alexandrian thought, that the separation of the righteous from the unrighteous took place immediately after death, and that the souls of the just were received by God into heaven (Wisdom 3 410 5°17; cf. Jos. Ant. XVII. i. 3, Bell. Jud. τι. viii. 14).

The Essenes, again, are reported to have held the abode of the departed just to be neither in the under-world nor in eaven, but in a Paradise belonging to earth itself; and this idea also appears elsewhere (e.g. Enoch 32°-* ete.) There is reason to say that by our Lord’s time various ideas of Paradise had become current among the Jewish people. So that sometimes it was thought of as an earthly place or scene, sometimes as a heavenly, sometimes as a thing of the distant future.

Sometimes it was supposed to be hid in heaven and to be destined to reveal itself on earth, and sometimes it was sup- posed to be destined to realize itself in the perfected theocracy, and to be transported to Sion. This idea of a Paradise somewhere on earth appears frequently in the Book of Enoch, in the 500k of Jubilees (ch. 4), and elsewhere. It per- sisted into Christian times, and on even to the Middle Ages (cf. Thilo, Cod. Apoc. ete.)

In 4 Ezr we find also the idea that the Paradise which formed the dwelling-place of man in his integ- rity was made before the earth (17). It is im- plied in this that the original Paradise was not of the earth, and so the book speaks elsewhere of a heavenly Paradise (6-7). And this upper Para- dise is practically a Paradise of the future. Select souls, such as Enoch, Elijah, Moses, are indeed received into it immediately, and Ezra himself was to be so received.

But it is not exhibited as the present dwelling-place of the righteous generally. ie pass into preliminary abodes in the under- world, | A special interest belongs here to the Book of Enoch, although the composite nature of its contents and the different ideas which are expressed in its different sections make it difficult to define the precise force of its testimony asa whole.

In its more recent parts and in the Noshic fragments the primeval Paradise is in view, and it is described repeatedly as on earth itself (207), among the more mysterious parts of earth (652 1068), in the east | | heavenly abodes (394 411. 2481 7 of the earth. It is visited by Enoch in his journey (82). Enoch and Elijah are taken up into it (608 875-4 8982), and other righteous souls are understood to be included “608.

33), The veneral idea of the under-world as the gathering place of all the Seat: with different sections in it for the evil and the good, seems at the same time to subsist (82. 10212 1037).

In the older parts of the book, again, the Messianic kingdom is represented as one hid in heaven at present, and to be revealed on earth hereafter ; and in these parts the dwellings of the righteous appear to be 711437), The passages bearing more directly on Paradise itself are these :—824, which speaks of the ‘garden of justice,’ with its varieties of trees, and refers to the earthly Paradise ; 60-23, which also speaks of the ‘garden where the chosen and holy ones shall dwell’—*‘ the en of the Just’; 61!

2, which refers to the ‘chosen who dwell in the garden of life’; 708-4, in which the seer is said to have seen the ‘ place for the chosen and the just,’ and in it ‘ the first fathers and the just, who dwell in the place from the beginning’; and 773 where the ‘ fourth quarter called the north’ is said to be divided into three parts—one for the dwelling of men, one for the seas, the valleys, the winds, and the streams, and the third for ‘the garden of justice.

’ The ideas which are expressed in these passages, therefore, are far from consistent, and the same is stil’ more obviously the case with the book as a whole. In 87-7 and in the Noahic fragments the garden is the abode of th departed just; but in 1-37 the righteous dead dwell in a special division of Sheol. The garden in view in 323 ete. is the earthly Paradise; but in 37-70 it is the heavenly. The locality of Paradise varies in different sections.

In 3228 the garden lies in the east ; in 7024 between north and west ; in 773 in the north. The accounts of those who ἜΡΡΕΙ it alsodiffer. In 828 itappears to be empty ; in 605. 3 6112 it is the abode of the righteous and elect in Enoch and Noah's time ; in 7024 the fathers are found in it; in 8952 it is described as receiving Enoch and Elijah.

(See the ae of the Book of Enoch by Dillmann, Schodde, and Charles Among other writings of this class a special value belon; also to the Apocalypse of Baruch. The idea that the earthly tabernacle and its contents were copies of antitypes or originals in heaven (Ex 389. 40, He 8°) is applied in this book to the holy city. In B!(ch.

69)Jerusalem, the centre of the new theocracy, is described as destined to be restored and established for ever; in which case it is the Jerusalem of earth thatisinview. But else- where (48 3024) it is the heavenly Jerusalem that a) the city that is preserved in heaven and is to come from heaven. In this connexion the book speaks also of Paradise, of the counsel which the Lord took to make it, and of its preservation with the Lord in heaven. In ch.

488 (in a passage, however, which is suspected of being an interpolation) God is represented as speaking of the city as that which ‘will be revealed’ with Him ; which was ‘ prepared beforehand’ from the time when He ‘ took counsel to make Paradise, and showed it to Adam before he sinned’; which was removed from Adam, ‘as also Paradise,’ when he transgressed ; which was shown afterwards to ‘ Abra- ham by night among the portions of the victims,’ and again to Moses on Mount Sinai; of which also the Lord says, ‘ And now, behold, it is preserved with me, as also Paradise.

’ Inch. 598, too, we are told how the Lord showed to Moses ‘the height of the air and the greatness of Paradise, and the consummation of the ages, and the beginning of the day of judgment’; as in the Book of Enoch (611-4 703-4) the angels are said to take the measures of Paradise for Enoch. The ideas, therefore, which had become con- nected with the terms ]1y }3, παράδεισος, and the like, were of a very mixed kind—crude, fantastic, and inconsistent.

They impressed themselves in their sensuousness, extravagance, and confusion on the popular Jewish sentiment and belief. There was much in the history and associations of the word παράδεισος that made it a doubtful vehicle for the communication of spiritual truths, but a very ready instrument of fanciful and overdriven speculation. Much is made of it in the Apocry- pa Gospels and Apocalypses. In the Gospel of icodemus, in particular, a considerable place is iven it.

In the section on the ‘ Descent of Christ into Hell’ the story is told in large and swelling terms of the Saviour’s victory over Satan—how He sprang out of Hades and set out to Paradise, taking Adam and all the just and delivering them to the archangel Michael; how, as they were entering the door of Paradise, they were met by Enoch and Elijah ; how there came to them also a lowly man carrying a cross upon his shoulders, who declared himself to be the thief who was crucified with Christ and received the promise of Paradise; how the robber described himself te have come to Paradise bearing his cross, and to have been received by Michael ; how the flaming sword, seeing the sign of the cross, opened to him, so that he went in, and so forth (ch.

ii. 25, 26, PARADISE PARADISE Greek form). In sharpest contrast with all this is the NT way of dealing with the subject and with theterm. The general reticence of the NT writings on the question of Paradise, and their extreme sparingness in the use of the word, are remark- able. Neither in Gospel nor in Epistle is the word selected for the UE esse of direct instruction.

1 speaking of the blessedness of the future, our Lord makes use of itd of speech taken from marriage feasts, the drinking of wine, and the like. But He never eaploye the term ‘ Paradise,’ so far as the Gospels show, either in His public discourses or in words addressed more privately to His disciples. Nor does St. Paul use it any- where in the argument of his Epp.

The one occasion on which it occurs in his writings is in his account of a singular experience of his own belonging to the region of rapture or ecstasy, and expre in apocalyptic terms. t has been asked what view of ‘Paradise’ is expressed by our Lord Himself in His words from the cross (Lk 23%).

Some have argued strongly that His promise to the robber was a promise of entrance with Himself into the happy side of Sheol; others that it meant that the penitent thief would be taken with Himself, as it was believed had been the case with Enoch, Elijah, and Moses, immediately into heaven. It is certain that the belief in a lower Paradise prevailed among the Jews, as well as the belief in an upper or heavenly Paradise.

But it is not clear that the lower Paradise was ever conceived to be in the ander-world, or that the happy side of Hades was called by that name. The probability, looking at the witness of the Jewish literature, is on the side of the second antexprete tion, that Christ referred to the Paradise of heaven. But it is difficult to say what sense the robber would attach to the word. It would give him the solace which he needed—the hope of rest and happiness associated with the idea of Eden.

It is questionable whether iu van be pet beyond that large and general idea. To bring it into the service of the dogma of the Descensus ad inferos, in the Lutheran sense or any other, seems to the present writer to be beyond the mark. Some have even identified it with the φυλακή of 1 P 3 (e.g. Horsley), and have drawn remarkable inferences from it with regard to Christ’s reaching to the spiritsin prison. But this is surely in defiance of the Greek usage.

It has been held, too, that the ‘ Paradise’ of Lk 23 is identical with the ‘Abraham’s bosom’ of Lk 1655. 5, both being designations of a par- ticular division of the under-world. But in the Parable it is only the rich man that is described as in Hades, while of Lazarus it is said simply that dying he was carried into ‘ Abraham’s bosom.

’ Even granting that the Parable is meant to repre- sent the rich man and the beggar as both in Hades, the one in the division οὗ retribution and the other in that of reward, it would not follow that ‘Paradise’ and ‘Abraham’s bosom’ are synonymous. The point would be, that being in aradise the beggar is received into the fellowship of Abraham (see Meyer on Lk 16”; also art. ABRAHAM’s Bosom). In 2 Co 19 it is the heavenly Paradise, not the lower or earthly, obviously, that is in view.

It is impossible to understand it, in this case of rapture, of the intermediate state or any place in Hades. Neither does it satisfy the terms to say that παράδεισος here is pee more than an abstraction or a figure of speech for ‘the present communion of the blessed pad with God as it is on this side of the end of things’ (Hofm. Schrift- deweis, It. i. p. 489). It denotes the heaven that is the dwelling- place of God. The question of the relation in which the ‘ Paradise’ of v.

* stands to the ‘third heaven’ of v.?, however, is much debated. It has been supposed that St. Paul ha the doctrine of a threefold heaven in view here, and identifies Paradise with the third or highest heaven. There is abundant evidence indeed that the belief in a plurality of heavens prevailed among the Jews. But it is doubtful a8 ees it was a belief in a threefold heaven.

The doctrine of a threefold division of heaven, it is true, ob- tained at one time a considerable place in the Christian Church (Suicer, Thes. ii. p. 520, ete.) and it has been asserted by some even to be the doctrine of the Bible (Estius, le Clere, ete.), But the evidence is rather to the effect that the pre- vailing, if not the only, conception among the Jews of our Lord’s time was that of a sevenfold heaven. (See articleon HEAVEN). It is improb- able, therefore, that St.

Paul speaks with reference to a triple order of heavens. The main reason for questioning whether in this passage he identilies ‘Paradise’ with the ‘third heaven’ is that he seems rather to be indicating distinct stages in his rapture—up to the third heaven, and even to Para- dise. The chief argument in favour of the identi- fication is the fact that in the Pseudepigraphical literature Paradise is sometimes ned in the third heaven. In the Slavonic Enoch, ¢.g.

, it is said that in the third heaven the seer beheld, in the midst thereof, ‘the tree of life, in that place on which God rests, when He comes into Paradise ’ (ch. 8)—a passage in which an attempt seems to made to reduce to one the older idea of an poder | Paradise and the later idea of a heavenly (cf. Morfill and Charles, Book 4 the Secrets of Enoch, p. xxxvii and pp. 7, 8). The words of St. Paul do not themselves define how the ‘third heaven’ and ‘ Paradise’ are related.

In Rev 2’, where the reading ‘in the Paradise of God’ is to be preferred, it is the heavenly Paradise that is in view. The imagery is taken again from the picture of Eden in Genesis. The terms recall Ezk 28%. In briefer form they ex- press what is given with greater fulness of descrip- tion in 22)%, The promise being to him that overcometh, is a promise of the final recompense and blessedness under the figure of a restored Eden. Some, however (e.g.

Bleek), have taken it to be founded on the idea that the primeval Para- dise of Adam still exists somewhere. The idea expressed by the word Paradise has revailed widely. Many different peoples have 1ad the conception of a Paradise in the sense of a home of innocence and peace and blessedness on earth or its confines. The Hindus have had their visions of Meru, the mountain of the gods, whence flow the great streams into all the world.

The Arabs have dreamt of the garden of bliss on the summit of the hill of jacinth, in the East. Tranian thought has dwelt upon the stream Arvanda, that went out of the throne of Ahura- mazda to water the earth, and on Airyanavaejo, the land in the extreme East, among the sources of the Oxus and Jaxartes—in later Persian ideas a fabulous land.

The term Pardésu is reported to have been found on some Babylonian cuneiform tablets, coupled with the land of Bit-Napsanu as the name of a country, apparently mythological ; and the resemblance to the word Paradise o™9 is noticed. (See art. EDEN, vol. i. p. 644). The Chinese and many ruder races have also had the same idea, and have clothed it in many strange forms. Theologinns have also piven the rein to fancy and speculation on the subject.

They have often overlooked the restraint ot Scripture, and have gone in the way of Rabbinical definition and refine ments. The Patristic writings give much attention to Paradise. Some of the Fathers spoke of it asa resting-place or refrigerium, in which the righteous PARADISE 672 dead have visions of Christ and His saints and angels (Just. Martyr, Resp. ad Orthod. 75, 85). $= ὋμὌὑ Some distinguished between Paradise and heaven.

Irenreus refers to what the presbyters said of a distinction between awards,—how some shall go to heaven, some to Paradise, and some to the splen- dour of the city; those who produce an hundred- fold being taken up into the heavens, those who roduce sixtyfold being destined to dwell in Para- ise, and those who produce thirtyfold being to inhabit the city (adv. Her. v. 1, 2).

Some, descending to more detail, taught that no one enters at once into the presence of the Lord in Paradise except by the prerogative of martyrdom, but that all pass into Hades. Tertullian dwells at length upon the Christian idea of Hades and the blessedness of Paradise immediately after death.

He explains the Christian belief to that Hades is ‘a very deep space in the interior of the earth’ ; that the souls of the faithful pass into it; and that heaven shall be opened only after earth has passed away. ‘Shall we then have to sleep,’ he asks, ‘high up in ether, with the boy, loving worthies of Plato; or in the air with Arius; or around the moon with the Endymions of the Stoics?

No, but in Paradise, you tell me, whither already the patriarchs and prophets have removed from Hades in the retinue of the Lord’s resurrection. How is it, then, that the region of Paradise, which, as revealed to John in the Spirit, lay under the altar, dis- plays no other souls as in it besides the souls of the martyred ?’ (de Anima, ch. xliii., and espec. ch. ly.; Clark’s ‘ Ante-Nicene Lib.’). Origen held it to be somewhere on earth, and to be a kind of schoolroom for souls.

‘I think, therefore,’ he says, ‘ that all the saints who depart from this life will remain in some place situated on the earth, which holy Scripture calls Paradise, as in some place of instruction, and, so to speak, classroom or school of souls, in which they are to be in- structed regarding all the things which they had seen on earth, and are to receive also some infor- mation respecting things that are to follow in the future.

’ And he adds that ‘if any one indeed be pure in heart, and holy in mind, and more practised in perception, he will, by making more rapid pro- gress, quickly ascend to a place in the air, and reach the kingdom of heaven through these mansions, so to speak, to the various places which the Greeks have termed spheres, i.e. globes, but which holy Scripture has called heavens’ (de Prine. bk. ii. ch. ix. 6; Clark’s ‘Ante, Nicene Lib.’).

Augustine, too, in his great treatise on the City of God, discoursed of the primeval Paradise as both physical and spiritual, and went into curious discussions on the conditions of life in it.

The leading theologian of the Greek Church gave a chapter to it in his great dogmatic work, de- scribing the ‘divine Paradise’ as planted in Eden by the hands of God, on a site ‘higher in the East than all the earth,’ flooded with light and tran- scending imagination ‘in sensuous freshness and beauty’ (John of Damase. de Fide Orth. ch. xi.) Medieval Latin Theology and Roman Catholic Dogmaties have dealt largely with it in connexion with the doctrine of the Intermediate State.

In these systems Paradise has been identified with the Limbus Patrum, and some notable divines of the Roman Catholic Church have taught further that Christ, in His Descent to Hell, preached to those in Paradise on the fringe of Hades, as well as to the souls in Purgatory (so Estius).

And in some modern theologies, Lutheran and Anglican no less than Tridentine, much has been made of it in connexion with the Doctrines of a Middle State, the position of the righteous dead before Christ’s Advent, and the like. But all this is in the most PARAN singular contrast with the silence and reserve of Scripture, and is of little profit. Lrrerators.—The articles in the t Dictionaries, especi: those in Hamburger, ἜΟΡΈΝΕΝ Has Bibel und Talmud, He , Real-Encycl.

; Riehm, Handworterbuch des biblischen Alterthums (those on ‘ Eden’ and ‘ Hélle’); Schenkel, Bibel- lexicon (Dillmann on Sete ΟΣ Cremer, Biblisch, theolo gisches Worterbuch; Weber, ‘idische Theo! Critical History of a Future Life; A. Kliefoth, Zs: te Atzberger, Eachat.; Delitzsch, Bibl. Henoch; Charles, of Enoch on Lk 284; Schulthess, Paradies das irdische und seater ou , Test. mmor- tality, 346 ff.