# Is Paradise in Luke 23:43 a Persian loan into Hebrew?



## mojobadshah

Is the word Paradise in Luke 23:43 a Persian loan from Hebrew or Aramaic or Greek?  In other words did would Jesus or the Apostles be using the word Paradise because they spoke Jewish and paradise was a loan into Hebrew or is paradise in the Luke 23:43 merely a Greek and Roman translation of another word?


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## Wolverine9

No one "spoke" Jewish, since that refers to a religion and not a language.  That aside, the word 'paradise' has its origins in an Iranian language (e.g. Avestan: _pairidaēza_ "enclosed area").  It was loaned into Greek, which subsequently loaned it to Latin and English.


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## berndf

In addition, the word _paradise_ has no cognate in Hebrew. The Hebrew expression that is conceptually identified with _Paradise _is _gan eden_ (_garden of Eden_).


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## Wolverine9

^ It was, however, also loaned from Iranian into Hebrew, Aramaic, Akkadian, and several other languages of the Near East.  It's used in parts of the Hebrew Bible, too.  The usage in Luke is likely based on its Greek perception, since that is the original language of the scripture.  Indeed, in Greek usage Paradise was equated with the Garden of Eden.


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## berndf

Wolverine9 said:


> It's used in parts of the Hebrew Bible, too.


Where and how is it spelled in Hebrew?


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## Wolverine9

In the Tanakh - Hebrew: פרדס


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## berndf

Wolverine9 said:


> In the Tanakh


You said that before (_in parts of the Hebrew Bible_). My question was where in the Tanakh because the claim sounds strange to me. The word פרדס appears in the song of Salomon 4:13 and there it has the literal meaning _fruit garden_. I am not aware of any part in the Tanakh where פרדס could be understood as גן עדן.


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## Wolverine9

I only meant that פרדס, which is an Iranian loanword and etymologically related to paradise, is used in the Tanakh.  The meaning of פרדס and paradise/גן עדן is of course different.  Equating paradise with גן עדן is likely a Greek concept.


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## berndf

Wolverine9 said:


> I only meant that פרדס, which is an Iranian loanword and etymologically related to paradise, is used in the Tanakh.  The meaning of פרדס and paradise/גן עדן is of course different.  Equating paradise with גן עדן is likely a Greek concept.


That I agree with.


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## fdb

As Wolverine correctly says, pairi-daēza- “enclosure” occurs once in the Avesta, and it has a transparent Iranian etymology (pari “around” and daiza- “wall", cognate with English “dyke” etc.). It was borrowed from Old Persian or Median into all the languages of the Eastern Mediterranean, including Hebrew and Greek, specifically in the meaning “pleasure garden of the Persian king”, in Greek already in Xenophon. In the Greek translation of Gen. 2:8 it designates the garden of Eden. The first clear use in the meaning “abode of the blessed dead” is in the New Testament (Luke 23:43 and 2 Cor. 12:4), so it is not a “Greek” (pagan) concept, but presumably a usage that originated among Hellenized Jews.


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## Wolverine9

^ So in other words, the use of paradise to mean the Garden of Eden and ~heaven was first illustrated in the Greek language but in a Jewish cultural context.


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## Perseas

fdb said:


> so it is not a “Greek” (pagan) concept, but presumably a usage that originated among Hellenized Jews.


Neither is the term "pagan" accurate to describe the Ancient Greek religion.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Religion_in_ancient_Greece


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## berndf

Perseas said:


> Neither is the term "pagan" accurate to describe the Ancient Greek religion.
> http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Religion_in_ancient_Greece


By this definition it is: _a member of a group professing a polytheistic religion or any religion other than Christianity, Judaism, or Islam _and that's obviously how fdb used the term. Whether or not this is "PC" is not really the problem here.


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## Perseas

berndf said:


> By this definition it is: _a member of a group professing a polytheistic religion or any religion other than Christianity, Judaism, or Islam _and that's obviously how fdb used the term.


Ok, thanks. There are however other approaches of paganism:


> It was historically used as one of several pejorative Christian counterparts to "gentile" (גוי / נכרי) as used in the Hebrew Bible - comparable to "infidel" or "heretic". Modern ethnologists often avoid this broad usage in favour of more specific and less potentially offensive terms such as "polytheism", "shamanism", "pantheism", or "animism" when referring to traditional or historical faiths.


Source: Wikipedia


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## berndf

I understand. That's why I said: "Whether or not this is "PC" is not really the problem here".


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## sotos

I fournd this reasonable hypothesis in some anonymous sources:
The 70 Greco-Jews knew well the Bible and the Greek literature and were certainly aware that the biblic paradise was not enclosed in walls. Instead, the Paradise had many rivers (Gen. 2) and according to tradition was between Tigris and Euphrates. If there was a Middle-Eastern tradition about a primordial garden surrounded by walls known with the above mentioned Avestan word, they possibly took the middle way to create a word that would preserve this word and at the same time sound familiar to the Greek-speaking Jews of their time. Thus, they kept the _para_- which is the same with the Gr. _peri_ (around) and used the Gr. v. δεύω (to wet, to flood etc, http://www.perseus.tufts.edu/hopper...habetic+letter=*d:entry+group=23:entry=deu/w1) to make a word that gives the sense of an area with plenty of what is most valuable in Middle-East: water. At the same time, this word has an acoustic and semantic relation to "God", since a *Greek* variant of Zeus is Deus (Δευς, http://www.perseus.tufts.edu/hopper...habetic+letter=*d:entry+group=22:entry=*deu/s) which is assumed to come from the v. δεύω (because God is "watering" the Earth, with all the meanings of the word).


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## fdb

Wolverine9 said:


> ^ So in other words, the use of paradise to mean the Garden of Eden and ~heaven was first illustrated in the Greek language but in a Jewish cultural context.



Exactly.

By the way, in the New Testament Ἕλλην actually means “pagan” or "gentile". This is why the Christian Greeks of the Byzantine period did not call themselves “Hellenes” but “Romans”. Anyway, I would not be offended if anyone called me a "pagan". I would be in good company.


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## Ben Jamin

Perseas said:


> Ok, thanks. There are however other approaches of paganism:
> 
> Source: Wikipedia



Both the Germanic and Slavic nations use the name "pagan" about their ancestors and don't find the word non PC. Scandinavians are even proud of them.


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## mojobadshah

Correct me if I'm wrong here: So what happened was the Persian form of paradise was loaned into both Hebrew and Greek.  In the Septuagint Koine Greek NT the word was substituted for garden of Eden.  Hebrew had become a dead language around the 1st century CE.  The Jews who wrote the NT were Greek speakers.  Hence paradise must have come from Persian via the Greeks and not the Jews.


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## Wolverine9

mojobadshah said:


> Correct me if I'm wrong here: So what happened was the Persian form of paradise was loaned into both Hebrew and Greek.



It was borrowed from an Iranian language (not necessarily Persian) into Greek, Hebrew, and many other languages of the Near East.



> Hence paradise must have come from Persian via the Greeks and not the Jews.



No, 'paradise' was borrowed from an Iranian language and used in its current sense by Greek speaking Jews.


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## mojobadshah

Wolverine9 said:


> No, 'paradise' was borrowed from an Iranian language and used in its current sense by Greek speaking Jews.



So did the Jews borrow it from the Greeks or was it derived through the Hebrew speakers?


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## Wolverine9

^ The word used was Greek, which was the lingua franca of the region, but the meaning was a Jewish innovation.  Read posts 10 and 11.


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## mojobadshah

I get it now.  According to the website "Jesus was a Zoroastrian" the meaning took on the meaning of the garden after death.  I recall another website that discussed how Jamsheed's (Av. Yima Khaesheta) Var was this paradise.  This probably makes more sense.  Var literally means enclosure.  What is interesting is that this paradise in the Persian sense or Var which was built by Jamsheed was a place where men and women lived forever. If I'm not mistaken there were two rivers that passed through this var if that's any constellation.  And I have notions the Hom tree or Zoroastrian tree of life grew there too.  What do you think?


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## Ali Smith

καὶ εἶπεν αὐτῷ Ἀμήν σοι λέγω, σήμερον μετ’ ἐμοῦ ἔσῃ ἐν τῷ Παραδείσῳ.
Luke 23:43

עָשִׂ֣יתִי לִ֔י גַּנּ֖וֹת וּפַרְדֵּסִ֑ים וְנָטַ֥עְתִּי בָהֶ֖ם עֵ֥ץ כׇּל־פֶּֽרִי׃
(קהלת ב ה)

I made gardens and wooded parks for myself and planted in them every kind of fruit tree.

I believe that at least in Hebrew it means something more like "wooded park". If it had meant "garden", it would not have been used in contrast with גִּנָּה.

It was borrowed into classical Arabic, where it became فِرْدَوْس and simply meant "garden".


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## JAN SHAR

Where did you get the translation "wood parks"?


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## fdb

pairi-daēza- means "enclosure" (see no. 10), not "wooded park".


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## raamez

fdb said:


> By the way, in the New Testament Ἕλλην actually means “pagan” or "gentile". This is why the Christian Greeks of the Byzantine period did not call themselves “Hellenes” but “Romans”. .


So christian Greeks stoped to call themselves hellenes, right? if this was so, what did they call their language?
I know modern Greeks quit to call themselves Roman so when did this start again?
By the way this reminds of the Arameans who supposedly did the same thing and started to call themselves Syrians after adopting christianity.


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## fdb

raamez said:


> So christian Greeks stoped to call themselves hellenes, right? if this was so, what did they call their language?
> I know modern Greeks quit to call themselves Roman so when did this start again?


At the time of the rebellion against the Turks.


raamez said:


> BTW this reminds of the Arameans who supposedly did the same thing and started to call themselves Syrians after adopting christianity.


Yes, exactly.


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