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.
PARAH (722; B Φαρά, A ’Addp).—A city in Ben- jamin, near Ophrah, Jos 18%. Now the ruin Farah, near the head of the Valley of Michmash, See SWP vol. iii. sheet xvii.; Guerin, Judée, iii, 71f.; ZDPV iii. 7f.
PARALYSIS, PARALYTIC.—See MEDICINE, p. 326.
PARAN (xp, Φαράν) occurs in Gn 145 217, Nu 1013 1216 13% 28, Dt 11 333,1 S 251, 1 K 1118, Hab 3°. Note the insertion in Nu 33 by LXX after the word ‘Zin,’ ‘and they removed from the wilder- ness of Zin and pitched in the wilderness of Paran.’ Paran is here introduced into the itinerary of Nu 33 and identified with Kadesh as in Nu 13% (‘and they went and came to Moses and to Aaron... unto the wilderness of Paran, to Kadesh’). κατα- σκίου δασέος in LXX of Hab 3° should not be passed by unnoticed.