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paradise Summary and Overview

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paradise in Easton's Bible Dictionary

a Persian word (pardes), properly meaning a "pleasure-ground" or "park" or "king's garden." (See EDEN T0001127.) It came in course of time to be used as a name for the world of happiness and rest hereafter (Luke 23:43; 2 Cor. 12:4; Rev. 2:7). For "garden" in Gen. 2:8 the LXX. has "paradise."

paradise in Smith's Bible Dictionary

This is a word of Persian origin, and is used in the Septuagint as the translation of Eden. It means "an orchard of pleasure and fruits," a "garden" or "pleasure ground," something like an English park. It is applied figuratively to the celestial dwelling of the righteous, in allusion to the garden of Eden. #2Co 12:4; Re 2:7| It has thus come into familiar use to denote both that garden and the heaven of the just.

paradise in Schaff's Bible Dictionary

PAR'ADISE , a word of Persian origin, meaning a "garden." "orchard," or other enclosed place, filled with beauty and delight. Hence it is used figuratively for any place of peculiar happiness, and particularly for the kingdom of perfect happiness, which is the abode of the blessed beyond the grave. Luke 23:43; 2 Cor 12:4; Rev 2:7. See Eden.

paradise in Fausset's Bible Dictionary

((See EDEN.) From Sanskrit paradesa, "a foreign ornamental garden" attached to a mansion (Nehemiah 2:8; Ecclesiastes 2:5 "gardens," Song of Solomon 4:13 "orchard," pardes). An earthly paradise can never make up for losing a heavenly paradise (Revelation 2:7; Revelation 22:1-2; Revelation 22:14). Compare the Holy Land turned from a garden of Eden into a wilderness, with Israel's wilderness made like Eden the garden of Jehovah (Numbers 24:6; Joel 2:3; Isaiah 51:3; Ezekiel 36:35; contrast Ezekiel 28:13). Paradise is the blessed resting place with Jesus to which the penitent thief's soul was received until the resurrection of the body (Luke 23:43). Paul in a trance was caught up even to the third heaven, into paradise (2 Corinthians 12:2; 2 Corinthians 12:4). In Eden Adam and Eve lived solitary, exhibiting the perfection of the individual. The heavenly home shall be not merely a garden, but a city, the perfect communion of saints (Hebrews 12:22; Revelation 21; 22). Earthly cities, Nineveh, Babylon, and Thebes, rested on mere force; Athens and Corinth on intellect, art, and refinement, divorced from morality; Tyre on gain; even Jerusalem on religious privileges more than on love, truth, righteousness, and holiness of heart before God. But the coming city shall combine all that was excellent of the first Eden, with the perfect polity that rests on Christ the chief corner stone, in which symmetry, grace, power, and the beauty of holiness shall shine for ever.