PARADISE
PAROUSIA
122
2. History of the conception.— A full discussion of the growth of the conception does not fall witliin the scope of this article. For this tlie reader is referred to the artt. mentioned above, and to the list of literature there appended. It is necessary liere to notice the main lines of development, in order to understand the place which the conception of Paradise has in the Apostolic Age.
(a) Primitive com-epfions. — Paradise, or the Garden of Eden, belongs to one important group of motifs which comparative religion shows to be present in nearly all primitive religions, tlie group of ideas associated with a Golden Age, a time of supernatural fertility and prosperity, lost in the ])ast and to be restored in the future. This with other groups of fundamental motifs existed in ])rimitive Hebrew religion, possibly in a form derived from Babylonian religion, but was taken up and used by the prophets as the form into wliich their visions of the coming Kingdom of God were cast.
(b) Later spiritualization. — In the development of later Judaism, the conceptions of Paradise and the Tree of Life became spiritualized, and they were used as symbols of spiritual felicity and moral excellence, especially in Alexandrian Judaism.
(c) Mystic realism. — In Palestinian Judaism, Rabbinical theology developed these symbols along the line of a naive realism. The term ' paradise,' apart from a few passages in which it means ' garden ' or ' park,' as in late Hebrew, always has the technical sense of mystic theology or specula- tion, including trance and other ecstatic experi- ences. On the other hand, the Hebrew phrase ' Garden of Eden ' is kept to describe the earthly or the heavenly place of bliss commonly denoted by the name ' Paradise.' The Rabbis developed a transcendental doctrine of Paradise, holding that it was one of the seven things (sometimes six), created before the world (Ber. Rabba, 20). There was also some doubt as to whether the earthly and the heavenly Paradise were to be identified or not.
(d) Special apocalyptic development. — In the Jewish apocalyptic literature Paradise, by a com- bination of elements from (a) and (c), came to be conceived of as one of the abodes of the righteous after death. It was in the third heaven (see art. Hkaven), where God's throne was situated. The references are not always consistent, as there was no clear-cut consistent scheme of the future life in Jewish eschatology. The principal references for our period occur in the Apocalypse of Moses, more correctly known as the Books of Adam and Eve, in 4 Ezra and 2 Baruch ; there is also one reference in the Testaments of the Twelve Patriarclis (' Levi,' xviii. 10).
The most important passages in the Books of Adam and Eve and the parallel Apocalypse of Moses are : Ad. et Ev. xxv. 3 : ' the Paradise of righteousness,' where God is seen sitting encom- passed by angels; xxviii. 4: 'the paradise of "vision " and of God's command ' ; xlii. 5 : ' Christ, descending on earth shall lead thy father Adam to Paradise to the tree of mercy ' (this passage is an interpolation from the Christian apocryphal Gospel of Nicodemiis) ; Apoc. Mos. xxxvii. 5: 'Lift him up into Paradise unto the third Heaven, and leave him there until that fearful day of my reckoning,' etc. ; here Paradise in the third heaven is con- trasted with Paradise on earth where Adam's body is lying (xxxviii. 5 ; so also xl. 2). While there is apparently some confusion of thought, the central idea is that, in the Resurrection, Adam will be restored to Paradise, and tiiivt meanwhile his spirit (aj)parently) is in the heavenly Paradise, in the tlnrd heaven. Hence the conception of Paradi.se as an intermediate abode appears here.
There are several important passages in 4 Ezra, especially iii. 6, Paradi.se created before the world ; iv. 8, Paradise in heaven ; vii. 36, the Paradise of delight manifested in the last day over against Gehenna (so also vii. 123). In viii. 52, ' for you is opened Paradise, planted the Tree of life, the future Age prepared,' the conception of Paradise is parallel with that of Rev 2' 22^. The reader may be referred to G. H. Box, 'The Ezra Apoca- lypse, London, 1912, p. 195 f.
There are several imi>ortant passages in S Enoch : viii. and ix., wliere Paradise is described as in the third heaven, the place where God rests, with all kinds of sensuous delights, and reserved for the eternal .abode of the righteous ; Ixv. 8, 10, at the completion of the Age, the righteous are collected and Paradise becomes their eternal dwelling-place ; cf. also xlii. 3 and S Bar. li. 11, lix. 8.
(e) Ar.^Thus we find the background of the conceptions which appear in the three passages in which the word occurs in the NT —
(1) In Lk 23", as in the Books of Adam and Eve, Paradise is conceived of as a place of intermediate abode, though whether in heaven or in Sheol is not clear.
(2) In 2 Co 12* we have a combination of the Rabbinical conception of Paradise as denoting mystic contemplation and the trance-state, with the conception of Paradise as in the third heaven and the abode of God.