Paradise

Lore & Background

The use of the word 'paradise' originates from the Vulgate's use of the Latin word paradisus in its translation of Genesis 2:8. The word entered English from the French paradis, inherited from the Latin paradisus, from Greek parádeisos, from an Old Iranian form meaning 'walled enclosure'. In the Septuagint, Greek parádeisos was used to translate both Hebrew pardes and Hebrew gan, 'garden', from which the use of 'paradise' to refer to the Garden of Eden derives.

In eschatological contexts, paradise is imagined as an abode of the virtuous dead. In Judaism, Christianity, and Islam, heaven is a paradisiacal belief. In Hinduism and Buddhism, paradise and heaven are synonymous. In old Egyptian beliefs, the underworld is Aaru.

For the Celts, it was the Fortunate Isle of Mag Mell. For the classical Greeks, the Elysian fields. In the Zoroastrian Avesta, the 'Best Existence' and the 'House of Song' are places of the righteous dead. In cosmogonical contexts, 'paradise' describes the world before it was tainted by evil.

Did You Know?

• In Luke 23:43, Jesus tells the thief on the cross, 'Truly I tell you, today you will be with me in paradise'.
• In the apocryphal Apocalypse of Moses, Adam and Eve are expelled from paradise after the Fall of man.