Looking for Paradise

Pardes is a Sephardic (Jewish) surname with a connection to the English word "paradise". Related derivations of the name are Paredes and Paradiso.

In Spanish, "paredes" are "walls", and "paraiso" (without a "d") means "paradise". The surname Pardes is Hebrew. The similar sounding Spanish words are descended from the Latin adoption of the Greek adaptation of one man's translation of Persian.

Pardes was originally associated with the huge, often walled (hunting) parks and/or gardens of ancient Persian kings and nobles. The word "pardesu" was borrowed from Old Persian by Late Babylonian (and Akkadian), and then entered Biblical Hebrew as "pardes". The general meaning or interpretation is of a (walled) enclosure, preserve, (cultivated) garden, grove, orchard, forest, plantation, or (royal) park with (fruit) trees (and animals for hunting), or what might be considered as "Paradise".

In the oldest Eastern Iranian language of Avestan, "pairidaêza" means "walled" or an "enclosure". The word (form) is not clear in other Old Iranian languages, but may, however, be hypothetically reconstructed, for example, as Old Persian "paridayda" - adopted in Elamite as "partetas" ("domain"). "Pairidaêza" is a compound of "pairi" (meaning "around") and "daêza" (meaning "walled"). Incidentally, the Greek prefix "peri" also means "around", "about", and/or "enclosing". The English word "dough" is related to the Avestic base "dheih" ("to form, build"). In modern Persian (Farsi) and Arabic, "firdaws" ("garden", "paradise") is a compound of "pairi" ("around") and "diz" ("to make" or "form" - a wall).

The Avestan "pairidaêza" came to indicate walled estates, especially the carefully tended royal parks and menageries, but the idea of a walled enclosure was not preserved in most Iranian usage, and generally came to refer to a plantation or other cultivated area, not necessarily walled. For example, the Old Iranian word survives in New Persian as "p%u0101l%u012Bz", which denotes a vegetable patch. The concept seems to have fared better in Sanskrit, as "a place enclosed with a wall", and in Armenian as "a pleasure ground with flowers and shrubs near the king's house, or castle."

In Greek, "pairidaêza" became "parádeisos", probably first appearing in the early 4th century BCE as "ho parádeisos" ("park for animals"). Avestan was the language used to compose Zoroastrian hymns. Zoroastrian religion encouraged maintaining arbors, orchards, and gardens. Even the kings of austere Sparta were edified by seeing the Great King of Persia planting and maintaining his own trees in his own garden. Xenophon, a Greek mercenary soldier (sometimes credited as being the original "horse whisper") spent some time in the Persian army before becoming a writer.

In his Anabasis, Xerophon recorded the "pairidaêza" surrounding cultivated gardens and orchards as "parádeisos", referring not to the wall itself, but to the huge parks that Persian nobles loved to build and hunt in. The Aramaic word "pardesa" similarly reflects "royal park". The English word "paradise" came from the Old French "paradis", inherited from the Latin "paradisus" which was also of Greek origin. The Septuagint used "parádeisos" to translate both "pardes" and "gan", the more classic Hebrew word for "garden".

This word "parádeisos" was used in the Greek Septuagint translation of Genesis to refer to the Garden of Eden. Old English eventually borrowed the word and meaning around 1200. English translations of New Testament Luke xxiii 43 have it mean "heaven" ("a place like or compared to Paradise").

The word "Pardes" appears three times in the Tanach (or Hebrew Bible): Shir HaShirim (Song of Songs) 4:13, Kohelet (Ecclesiastes) 2:5, and Nechemiah 2:8. The meaning is generally understood as "an orchard with many types of fruits".

This may be from its use in Kohelet 2:5:
"I made me gardens and orchards, and I planted trees in them of all kind of fruits"
["I made gardens and parks for myself and I planted in them all kinds of fruit trees"]

But in Shir HaShirim 4:13 it says:
"Thy plants are an orchard of pomegranates, with pleasant fruits; camphire, with spikenard" ["Your shoots are an orchard of pomegranates With choice fruits, henna with nard plants"]

Ibn Ezra thought that "a 'gan' has many types of trees, and a 'pardes' has only one type", but the Biblical use and/or later Rabbinic interpretation of the word "pardes" may have evolved over time - from being specifically a pomegranate orchard (as some think in Shir HaShirim), to an orchard with many types of trees [Vayikra Rabba 13], to finally an orchard where people would go to relax and play.

While "pardes" in Modern Hebrew can still refer to an orchard

From ancient days, the rabbis have understood that there are four levels of Biblical/Torah meaning/interpretation: P'shat, Remez, D'rash, and Sod. Each is a normal approach for interpreting scripture/text, where each layer of meaning is deeper and more intense than the previous. As an analogy, think of peeling layers of an onion. The fourfold method of textual interpretation [hermeneutics] in Judaism is implicit in the Mishnah, the Baraitot [the external tractates] and the Talmud.

The Hebrew mnemonic/anagram PaRDeS (or "PaRaDiSe", if you prefer English) is used to remember/refer to the four levels. The first letter of each Hebrew word (Peh, Resh , Dalet and Samekh: P-R-D-S) is taken, and vowels are added for pronunciation [Hebrew is written without vowels], giving the word PARDES ( meaning "walled garden", "orchard" - or through the wonders of transliterative translation, "Paradise").

The wall around the garden is what Kabbalists have referred to as the "malbush" or "garments" of the text, almost always in reference to the Torah.

P'shat means "simple". The P'shat is the plain, simplest, literal meaning based on the text and context. It is the understanding of what is written in its natural, normal sense using the customary meanings of the word's being used, literary style, historical and cultural setting, and context. The p'shat is the keystone of understanding. If we discard the p'shat we lose any real chance of an accurate understanding and we are no longer objectively deriving meaning from the Scriptures (exegesis), but subjectively reading meaning into the scriptures (eisogesis). The Talmud states that no passage ever loses its p'shat: A verse cannot depart from its plain meaning. Within the p'shat you can find several types of language, including figurative, symbolic and allegorical.

Remez is an additional "hint". This is where another (implied) or extended meaning, association or metaphor alluded to in the text, usually revealing a deeper meaning.

D'rash [also called a "Midrash" refers to "searching" for the "concept" and the allegories and homilies that can be derived from it. A d'rash is a teaching, exposition or application of the p'shat and/or remez. A midrash is a type of eisegesis, reading one's own thoughts into the text, as opposed to exegesis, which is extracting from the text what it actually says. Other materials or texts are often brought in as commentary to illuminate the story. For instance, taking two or more unrelated verses and combine them to create a verse(s) with a third meaning. The contextual, non-contextual, moral and/or philosophical explanations could be considered comparable to a "sermon."

There are three rules to consider when utilizing the d'rash interpretation of a text:

1. A d'rash understanding cannot be used to strip a passage of its p'shat meaning, nor may any such understanding contradict the p'shat meaning of any other scripture passage. As the Talmud states, "No passage loses its p'shat."
2. Let scripture interpret scripture. Look for the scriptures themselves to define the components of an allegory.
3. The primary components of an allegory represent specific realities. We should limit ourselves to these primary components when understanding the text.

Sod means: "hidden"/"secret". This understanding is the hidden, secret or mystical meaning of a text. Sometimes it deals with meanings arrived at by considering numerical values of Hebrew letters, alternative spellings, meanings of names, significant numbers, etc. Therefore, understanding the Bible at the sod level is facilitated by knowledge of Hebrew. One rabbi said that sod is the story as if God whispered it in your ear.

The four levels of PaRDeS meaning are directly linked to the four universes of creation, the so-called AYBA:

1. P'shat, the literal meaning and the contextual, philological level, is related to the World of Assiah, the World of Actions, in which we live.
2. Remez, the allegorical meaning, cross-reference to other texts; rational or philosophical level, is related to the World of Yetzirah, the World of Formation, the angelic realm.
3. D'rash, the moral or homiletic meaning and aggadic/midrashic [interpretation via d'rash] level, is related to the World of Briah, the World of Creation, the archangelic realm.
4. Sod, the mystical or anagogic meaning, is related to the World of Atzilut, the World of Archetypes or Emanations, the realm of the Divine Names.

Paradise means different things to different people, yet it most commonly refers to a (perfect) place (either on Earth, after death, or only in one's imagination) and an ideal time, relationship, feeling, or state of mind when and where existence is positive, harmonious, and timeless. Many modern people today often associate idyllic islands, beautiful beaches, or majestic mountains with paradise. This was not always the case.

Although it eventually became associated with both the Biblical "Garden of Eden" and (a celestial) heaven, "paradise" is an extreme example of "amelioration", the process by which a word comes to refer to something better than what it used to refer to. The word "paradise" originally referred to a (sometimes vast) walled estate or enclosure.

The recently "civilized" indigenous peoples of the Amazon still remember and speak of "Forest Time" - when they lived at home in nature. Many people today do not realize that 96% of the trees that once covered the earth are now gone! In place of where many trees once stood are deserts, farmers' fields, sprawling cities, and busy roads.

In desert regions of the world, many an oasis has been carefully cultivated, nurtured, maintained, and preserved. So, too, were once many ancient Persian royal gardens, orchards, and (forest) parks - often filled with animals (to hunt). These (pleasure) preserves became known by the walls that enclosed and protected them: Paradise.

Notions of Paradise are cross-cultural, often laden with pastoral imagery, and may be cosmogonical, eschatological, or both. In eschatological contexts, paradise is imagined as an abode of the virtuous dead. In Christian and Islamic understanding, heaven is a paradisaical relief, evident, for example, in the Gospel of Luke, when Jesus tells a penitent criminal crucified alongside him they will be together in "paradise" that day.

In Native American beliefs, the other-world is an eternal (happy) hunting ground. In old Egyptian beliefs, the other-world is Aaru, the reed-fields of ideal hunting and fishing grounds - where the dead lived after judgment. For the Celts, it was the Fortunate Isle of Mag Mell. For the classical Greeks, the Elysian fields was a paradisaical land of plenty where the heroic and righteous dead hoped to spend eternity. The Vedic Indians held that the physical body was destroyed by fire but recreated and reunited in the Third Heaven in a state of bliss. In the Zoroastrian Avesta, "Best Existence" and "House of Song" are places of the righteous dead.

On the other hand, in cosmological contexts, "paradise" describes the world before it was tainted by evil. So. for example, the Abrahamic faiths associate paradise with the Garden of Eden, as the perfect state of the world prior to the "fall from grace".

The concept is a "topos" in art and literature, particularly of the pre-Enlightenment era, a well-known representative of which is John Milton's Paradise Lost. A paradise is conceptually a counter-image of the miseries of human civilization; in paradise there is only peace, prosperity, and happiness. Paradise is a place of contentment , but it is not necessarily a land of luxury and idleness. Paradise is often used in the same context as utopia - although utopia tends to be associated with an ideal alternative society as much as just a place.

Semasiology
The word "paradise" entered English from the French "paradis", which inherited it from the Latin "paradisus", which was an adaption from the Greek "parádeisos", and ultimately from an Old Iranian root, attested in Avestan as "pairi.daêza". The literal meaning of this Eastern Old Iranian language word is "walled (enclosure)", from "pairi" (around) + "diz" (to create, make).

By the 6th/5th century BCE, the Old Iranian word had been adopted as Akkadian "pardesu" and Elamite "partetas" ("domain"). It subsequently came to indicate walled estates, especially the carefully tended royal parks and menageries. The term eventually appeared in Greek as "ho parádeisos" ("park for animals") in the Anabasis of the early 4th century BCE Athenian gentleman-scholar Xenophon. Aramaic "pardaysa" similarly reflects "royal park".

Hebrew "pardes" appears thrice in the Tanakh; in the Song of Solomon 4:13, Ecclesiastes 2:5 and Nehemiah 2:8. In those contexts it could be interpreted as a park, a garden, or an orchard. In the 3rd-1st century BCE Septuagint, the Greek "parádeisos" was used to translate both Hebrew "pardes" and "gan" (garden): it is from this usage that the use of "paradise" to refer to the Garden of Eden derives. This usage also appears in Arabic "firdaws".

The Zohar gives the word a mystical interpretation, and associates it with the four kinds of Biblical exegesis: peshat (literal), remez (allusion), derash (anagogical), and sod (mystic) meanings. The initial letters of those four words then form PaRDeS - which was in turn felt to represent the fourfold interpretation of the Torah (in which sod - the mystical interpretation - ranks highest).

Modern secular use
Sociology:
The word Paradise entered European languages from the Persian root word "Pairidiz", which was the name of a beautiful garden enclosed between walls. In this sense, paradise existed on earth and was a place that uplifted the human spirit. Through history, paradise started to mean heaven which implied a non-earthly place that could only be reached by the common person after death. Some philosophers have interpreted human paradise as a humanly escape method from reality. Paradise has been described as a idealistic perfect place, tailored by individuals and societies.

The original Pairidiz gardens could be enjoyed fully by live humans with no need for a physical death of the body - implying that happiness and peace can be obtaine

Christianity

In the New Testament, paradise refers to a paradise restored on Earth (Matthew chapter 5, verse 5 - the meek shall inherit the earth), similar to what the Garden of Eden was meant to be. However, certain sects actually attempted to recreate the garden of Eden, e.g. the nudist Adamites. On the torture stake, Jesus told Dismas that he would be with him in paradeisos (Luke 23:43). There are two other references to Paradise in NT: 2 Cor. 12:4 (there are things beyond human expression), and Rev. 2:7 (there is a tree of life).

In the 2nd century AD, Irenaeus distinguished paradise from heaven. In Against Heresies, he wrote that only those deemed worthy would inherit a home in heaven, while others would enjoy paradise, and the rest live in the restored Jerusalem. Origen likewise distinguished paradise from heaven, describing paradise as the earthly "school" for souls of the righteous dead, preparing them for their ascent through the celestial spheres to heaven.

Fra Angelico's Last Judgement painting shows Paradise on its left side. There is a tree of life (and another tree) and a circle dance of liberated souls. In the middle is a hole. In Muslim art it similarly indicates the presence of the Prophet or divine beings. It visually says, 'Those here cannot be depicted.'

Jehovah's Witnesses

Jehovah's Witnesses believe that God's purpose from the start, was and is, to have the earth filled with the offspring of Adam and Eve as caretakers of a global paradise. After God had magnificently designed this earth for human habitation, however, Adam and Eve rebelled against Jehovah and so they were banished from the Garden of Eden, or Paradise. Jehovah's Witnesses also believe that the wicked people will be destroyed at Armageddon and that many of the righteous (those faithful and obedient to Jehovah) will live eternally in an earthly Paradise. (Psalms 37:9, 10, 29; Prov. 2:21, 22John 5:28, 29; Acts 24:15). The latter are brought back because they paid for their sins by their death, and/or also because they lacked opportunity to learn of Jehovah's requirements prior to dying (Rom. 6:23). These will be judged on the basis of their post-resurrection obedience to instructions revealed in new "scrolls" (Rev. 20:12). This provision does not apply to those that Jehovah deems to have sinned against his holy spirit (Matt. 12:31, Luke 12:5). [4][5] One of Jesus' last recorded statements before he died were the words to an evildoer hanging alongside him on a torture stake: "Truly I tell you today, You will be with me in Paradise."- Luke 23:43. Notice the placement of the comma is after the word 'today', indicating that there are two separate phrases, 1. 'I tell you today' and 2. 'You will be with me in Paradise'. This distinction differs from other Christian understanding of this verse where they read it as 1. 'I tell you' and 2. 'Today you will be with me in Paradise'. Some scriptures that Jehovah's Witnesses use to support their belief are (John 3:13-15); (Acts 24:15)

Mormonism

In Latter Day Saint theology, paradise usually refers to the spirit world. That is, the place where spirits dwell following death and awaiting the resurrection. In that context, "paradise" is the state of the righteous after death. In contrast, the wicked and those who have not yet learned the gospel of Jesus Christ await the resurrection in spirit prison. After the universal resurrection, all persons will be assigned to a particular kingdom or degree of glory. This may also be termed "paradise".

Islam

In the Qur'an, Paradise is denoted as "Jannat" or Garden, with the highest level being called "Firdous", the etymologically equivalent word derived from the original Avestan counterpart, and used instead of Heaven to describe the ultimate pleasurable place after death, accessible by those who pray, donate to charity, and read the Qur'an. Heaven in Islam is used to describe the Universe. It is also used in the Qur'an to describe skies in the literal sense, i.e., above earth.

The Urantia Book

The Urantia Book portrays Paradise as the beginning of all things and the dwelling place of God.