Paradise is but an Anglicized form of the Greek word TrapdSttaog, which is identical with the Sanscrit paradesa, Persian pat-des, and appears also in the He- brew pardh, CI"! 3, and the Arabic firdaus. 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 </«/?, "5, a (jarden (Gen. ii, 8 sq.), and thence found its way into the New Testament, where it is ap- plied figuratively to the celestial dwelling of the right- eous, in allusion to the Garden of Eden (2 Cor. xii, 4 ; Rev. ii. 7). It has thus come into familiar use to de- note both that garden and the heaven of the just. See Eden.
I. Literal Application of the Name (from Kitto and Smith). — Of this word (irapa^iiaor) the earliest in- stance that we have is in the Ci/ropwdin and other writings of Xenophon, nearly 400 years ^before Christ ; but his use of it has that appearance of ease and famil- iarity 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 traveller with the word Trapdceiirog, and for which his own language supplied no precise equivalent (comp. A nab. i, 2, § 7 ; 4, § 9; ii, 4, § 14; Ilellen. iv, 1, § 15; Cyrop. i, 3, § 14; CEconom. 4, § 13). We find it also used by Plutarch, who lived in the 1st and 2d century of our sera. It was by these authors evidently emi)loyed to signify an ex- tensive 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 dif- ferent ways of restraint or freedom, according as they were ferocious or peaceable; thus answering very closely to the English word/io?-^-, with the addition of f/a7-dens, a nie?iafferie, 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 Pen- tateuch, 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 ijarden ("5, 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 Gen. ii and iii, but in eight others, and two in which the femi- nine form (riiii) occurs ; whereas, in other instances of those two words, they employ KtJTroc, 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 verj^ word, giving it the form C'}')'S, pardes. These are, " the keeper of the k'mg^s fo}-e$t, that he may give me timber" (Neh. ii, 8) ; " orchards" (Eccles. ii, 5) ; " an orchai'd of pomegranates" (Song of Solomon, iv, 13). Through th<: writings of Xenophon, and through the general admixture of Orientalisms in the later Greek after the conquests of Alexander, the word gained a recognised place, and the Sept. writers chose it for a new use, which gave it a higher worth and secured for it a more pereimial life. The Garden of Eden became (J Trap iSftuor Ti}Q -pv(p>](; (Gen. ii, 15; ii, 23; Joel ii, 3). They used the same word whenever there was an\' allu- sion, however remote, to the fair region which had been the first blissful home of man. The valley of tlie Jor- dan, in their version, is the paradise of God (Gen. xiii, 10). There is no tree in the paradise of God equal to that which in the prophet's vision symbolizes the glory of Ass3-ria (Ezek. xxxi, 1-9). The imagery of this chapter furnishes a more vivid picture of the scenery of a TrapciSetaoQ 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 pardh occurs in the Hebrew it is used in a more general sense (comp. Isa. i, 30 ; Numb, xxiv, 6; Jer. xxix, 5). In the apocryphal book of Su- sanna (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 descrip- tion of Wisdom : "I came forth as a canal dug from a river, and as a water-pipe into a paradise" (xxiv, 30). In the other two it is the objective term of comparisons : " Kindness is as a paradise in blessings, and merciful- ness abideth forever — the fear of the Lord is as a.para- dise of blessing, and it adorns above all pomp" (xl, 17, 27). Josephus calls the gardens of Solomon, in the ]du- ral number, "paradises" (.1?;^ viii, 7, 3). Berosus (B.C. cent. 4), quoted by Josephus (c. Apion, i, 20), says that the lofty garden-platforms erected at Babylon by Nebu- chadnezzar were called the Suspended Paradise.