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