Paradise

Paradise is a Persian loanword (pardes) originally meaning a pleasure-ground, park, or enclosed garden. It enters biblical usage as a designation for the Garden of Eden in the Septuagint translation of Genesis 2–3, where the garden God planted for Adam and Eve is rendered paradeisos. In later Jewish and Christian thought, paradise became a term for the abode of the righteous dead and ultimately for the renewed creation of the final age.

In the New Testament, paradise appears three times. Jesus promised the repentant thief on the cross, Today shalt thou be with me in paradise (Luke 23:43), locating paradise as the immediate destination of the righteous after death. Paul describes being caught up to the third heaven, equating it with paradise (2 Corinthians 12:4). In Revelation 2:7, the risen Christ promises the overcomer the right to eat from the tree of life in the paradise of God — an image that evokes the restoration of Eden and the healing of creation's original wound.