Paradise in Jewish and Christian thought and where it is located

Paradise in Jewish and Christian thought and where it is located? By Mordechay Lewy Since the Fall of Mankind, Paradise was Lost. The search for regaining a perfect world, be it paradise on Earth or No- place [Utopia] marked the human aspirations and thinking since then. All religions that believe in afterlife believe in heaven of any kind. This is a cultural common denominator among almost all religious systems. Paradise is for that matter among many, also for Jews, synonymous to heavenly paradise. Alessandro Scafi is asking in his seminal book “Mapping Paradise – A History of Heaven on Earth”- where is no-where? Origin of the word paradise The term paradise derives from old Persian pairi [around] daeza [wall brick or shape]. Composed in one word it means walled- in garden or compound. It was introduced in European languages through Greek when Xenophon translated it to paradeisos. The Persian tradition of building enclosed gardens with rectangular water basin and odorous plants stems from the royal Achmenide tradition of the enclosed hunting grounds of lions which was a ritual practice enforcing their divine –royal authority. Later the paradisiac garden tradition was expanded to Moghul India (Taj Mahal) and under Islam in the Middle Eastern until Andalusia (Alhambra, Granada) and later to Europe. The Hebrew word pardes, derives from Greek or Persian and means garden, grove or orchard. The biblical paradise is termed in Hebrew gan eden which was translated to Latin hortus deliciarum. Medieval Latin used more often the term paradisus. The description of Paradise in Genesis 2:8-15 (King James Version). 8 And the LORD God planted a garden eastward in Eden; and there he put the man whom he had formed. 9 And out of the ground made the LORD God to grow every tree that is pleasant to the sight, and good for food; the tree of life also in the midst of the garden, and the tree of knowledge of good and evil. 10 And a river went out of Eden to water the garden; and from thence it was parted and became into four heads. 11 The name of the first is Pison: that is, it which compasseth the whole land of Havilah, where there is gold; 12 And the gold of that land is good: there is bdellium and the onyx stone. 13 And the name of the second river is Gihon: the same is it that compasseth the whole land of Ethiopia. 14 And the name of the third river is Hiddekel: that is, it which goeth toward the east of Assyria. And the fourth river is Euphrates. 15 And the LORD God took the man and put him into the garden of Eden to dress it and to keep it. Paradise in Jewish thought. In Judaism the concept of returning to paradise is different from Christianity. The redemption, individually and collectively, depends on the believer's free will to chose 1 between good and evil. Since he is responsible for his choice, God will reward or punish him in Heaven (sometimes also the term Gan Eden i. e. paradise is used) or Hell. The Talmud mentions in the context of a debate on free will Rabbi Akiba, who is a great protagonist of it, who said in Tractate Hagiga:15a as follows: God created righteous and evil men. He created paradise and hell accordingly. The Righteous will be rewarded with a place in Paradise, the evil will get his punishment in hell. There is no remission of the original sin because there is no intervention of an intermediate like Jesus as God's son who, according to Christianity, redeemed humanity through his crucifixion. The location of paradise is considered next to God. Book of Jubilees, which was written in Hebrew ca. 150 BC, consecrated in Chapter 8:19 three places as holy places, all of them in the part of the world, which is allocated to Shem, son of Noa, namely Asia. And he should know that the paradise is the Holy of the Holiest where God dwells, and Mount Sinai in the desert and Mount Zion in the nave of the world, all of them three, facing each other, were created to be holy. Since the book was written when worship on the Temple Mount (Moriah) was still performed, the paradise (Gan Eden) may have been understood as identical with the Holy of the Holiest. The paradise is not in the east but in the most western part of Shem's Asian territory, i.e. the Land of Israel. In his journey through earth and hell the Ethiopian version of Enoch located in Book I Enoch, 26:1-4 a blessed garden in what obviously fits a topographic description of Jerusalem. “And I went from thence to the navel of the earth [i.e. Mt. Zion], and I saw a blessed place in which there were trees with branches abiding and blooming [of a dismembered tree]. And there I saw a holy mountain, [i.e. Mt. Zion] ⌈and⌉ underneath the mountain to the east there was a stream [i.e. Hinnom valley] and it flowed towards the south. And I saw towards the east another mountain [i.e. Mt. Olive] higher than this, and between them a deep and narrow ravine [i.e. Kidron valley] …” Early Jewish traditions did not imply the East as location of the paradise, although the etymological derivative from the term Kedem could mean "before" or "first" or later "East" where the sun rises first. Jewish tradition placed the paradise on Temple mount (Mt. Moriah) or later along the Jordan valley, be it in Jericho or Bet Shean (in Greek Skytopolis). According to Genesis 2:8 paradise was created before man was created. There are however rabbinic traditions in Bereshit Rabba 15 b, which says that garden of delight (Gan Eden) was created before time. 'Mikedem' means not before creation but before man was created. A similar view is reflected in an apocryphal source IV. Esdrae 1:6. Accordingly: paradise was created in the third day of creation and before the land was created "And you brought him [Adam] to paradise which your right [hand] has planted before the land became [was created]." But in I Enoch 32:2-6 Enoch locates the biblical story of eating from the tree of knowledge and of the expulsion from the garden, in the extreme East. "And thence I went over the summits of ⌈all⌉ these mountains, far towards the east ⌈of the earth⌉, and passed above the 2 Erythraean sea [i.e. Red Sea] and went far from it and passed over ⌈the angel⌉ Zotîêl. And I came to the Garden of Righteousness and saw beyond those trees many large trees growing there and of goodly fragrance, large, very beautiful and glorious, and the tree of wisdom whereof they eat and know great wisdom. ⌈That tree is in height like the fir, and its leaves are⌉ like (those of) the Carob tree: and its fruit is like the clusters of the vine, very beautiful: and the fragrance of the tree penetrates afar. Then I said: '⌈How⌉ beautiful is the tree, and how attractive is its look!’. Then Raphael the holy angel, who was with me, answered me ⌈and said⌉: 'This is the tree of wisdom, of which thy father old (in years) and thy aged mother, who were before thee, have eaten, and they learnt wisdom and their eyes were opened, and they knew that they were naked and they were driven out of the garden." Early Christian thought: Ephrem the Syrian and Augustinus Ephrem the Syrian's concept of paradise on earth on the top of the highest mountain derives from a symbolist approach in which his exact location is of less concern. His paradise which is equated to heaven and to God's dwelling is described as huge mountain which surrounds the created land and sea. The mountain is structured in hierarchy. It may be remembered that Jewish traditions placed also the paradise on top of a mountain, be it Mount Moriah or Mount Zion. Distinction between Heavenly and Terrestrial Paradise [on earth but not of earth] is not dichotomist according to Augustine: De Genesi ad litteram, XII.28, 56: "And yet more thoughtful consideration of the matter might possibly suggest that the corporeal paradise in which Adam lived his corporeal life was a sign both of this life of the saints now existing in the church and of that eternal life which will be when this life is done". The concept of a three staged sequence of history of human salvation identifies first Adam as living in paradise which was lost to humanity because of the original sin. The second Adam is Jesus while being crucified in Jerusalem (Golgotha), made the return to paradise possible. The third stage is the second coming of Christ. Jerusalem is shown in most medieval world maps in the center as navel of the world according to Ezekiel 5:5: I have set Jerusalem in the midst of the nations and countries that are around her. This central location of Jerusalem gained popularity in maps especially after it was lost to Christianity in 1187. According to Augustine before the second coming of Christ the perfect life is possible where saints live in a terrestrial paradise. This is the theological basis to search for life of perfection on this earth. It is achievable only within the church and according to medieval thought preferably within clerical order. It should be noted that since Carolinian period the narthex and monastic church yard [cloister] was called paradise. Paulus Diaconus in his History of Langobards, Book V:31, wrote Ecclesiae locum qui paradisus dicitur ante basilicam b. apostoli Petri. With the second coming of Jesus a universal redemption will be possible so that the heavenly paradise can be reached. This heavenly paradise is what St. Paul means according to Augustine as the vision of third 3 heaven. In II Letter to the Corinthians, 12: 2-4. Paul's vision equates tertium caelum with paradisum. The search of paradise was a real one as it remained a place on earth with geographical coordination which could be drawn on a map. Only few medieval thinkers imagined the paradise, terrestrial and heavenly alike, in a spiritual sense as a church. One of them was Petrus Lombardus in his Sententiae II, dist. 17, c.5:4. Thomas Aquinas represented the dominant realistic approach as veritas rerum gestarum in his Summa Theologiae I, quest.102 a.1. Therefore, it was also possible for Elias and Enoch to dwell in paradise. The direction of the place of paradise was diverse. Glossa Ordinaria (MPL 113:86C) indicated "in the East". "On a height" was Bonaventura's suggestion in his Sententiae II, d.17. dub. III. "On the Equator" was the answer of Ulrich of Straßburg. The orientation of paradise: The Byzantine tradition of Cosmas Indicopleustes [literally: Cosmas the traveler to Indian sea] was based on the flat shape of the tabernacle (Exodus 25) and not on the Hellenic spherical shape of the Globus. Cosmas adopted however the West- East direction of the known Ptolemean world. His fixation of the Paradise in the east was according to an interpretation of Gan Eden mikedem, indicating the biblical location to the east which is synonymous to before in place and in time. The navigable seas were only those who were indicated by his map as Roman Sea, Arab Sea, Persian Sea and Caspian Sea. Nobody can cross the dangerous ocean which separated paradise from the world. Human beings are offspring of Noah's ark which succeeded to cross the ocean as a unique event. The Greek merchant from Alexandria(?) Indicopleustes included not only the pre- deluge paradise, but also another trait in his map. He located the happy people who lived in tramontane or hyperborean [beyond the mountains] zone in the far north, where the deluge supposedly never has reached them. Latin tradition of Isidor of Sevilla continued placing paradise in the East but adopted a circular and nor a rectangular delineation of the world maps. In this manner he oriented the map to the east. This coincided also with the etymology of the Latin term oriens = versus quod sol oritur. It derives from the Latin verb orior, oriturus. The westernisation of paradise: In spite the dominating orientation of the medieval paradise in the east, according to Christian cartography, there was also a classical and Celtic tradition of placing paradise in the western ocean. The late and unfinished dialogue of Plato Kritias placed the ideal country Atlantis west of Mediterranean in an island in the ocean which has vanished in an earthquake. The Greek classical tradition of the Island of the blessed (makaron nesos, pl. nesoi) also known as Fortunate Islands was well established in Antiquity. It is mentioned in Flavius Philostratus "Life of Apolonius", in Plutarch's "Life of Sertorius". Also, Plinius, in his "Natural History", Book III, placed them in the Atlantic Ocean. The Greek geographer Ptolemais made reference to the Fortunate Islands by naming the first meridian of his map (from west to east) as Makaronesia. Today the name Makaronesia applies to the group of Islands from the 4 Azores, Canarias Islands, Cape Verde and Madeira. The classical tradition of locating ideal paradisiac places in the western ocean facing the coast of Mauritania, forced Isidor (Etymologies, Book XIV :6, 8) a polemic against the fallacy of the pagans and secular authors who considered Fortunate islands being the paradise. The navigation of St. Brendan to the promised land of the saints belongs to the genre of Christianized Irish- Celtic maritime tales of the early middle ages. It is an effort to find the heavenly paradise. Beyond the fact that the monks started to sail westwards, they did not navigate, but lead God to direct their adventurous sail. What they found was something like earthly paradise but located precisely in the west. The tale was disseminated widely in 120 surviving Latin manuscripts. Nevertheless, it is difficult to trace St. Brendan islands in medieval maps, just because the tale was not indicating where they were located. Depicting paradise through its four rivers Josephus Flavius in his first book of Jewish Antiquities wrote (section 37-38): Now the garden was watered by one river, which ran round about the whole earth[in Hebrew Eretz =Land], and was parted into four parts. And Phison, which denotes a multitude, running into India, makes its exit into the sea, and is by the Greeks called Ganges. Euphrates also, as well as Tigris, goes down into the Red Sea [meaning Persian Gulf]. Now the name Euphrates, or Phrath, denotes either a dispersion, or a flower: by Tigris, or Diglath, is signified what is swift, with narrowness; and Geon runs through Egypt, and denotes what arises [i.e. emerges suddenly] from the opposite side of us [i.e. from the west], which the Greeks call Nile. Josephus harmonized here the geographical knowledge of the Graeco-Roman world with the biblical four rivers of paradise. This identification had a vast impact on the delineation of Christian world maps, as those rivers were the main characteristics of depicting on maps the location of paradise. Pishon = Ganges; Prath = Euphrat; Hidekel = Diglath [Babylonian name for Hidekel, transformed to Greek in Tigris]; Gichon or Geon = Nile. The inhabitants of earthly paradise: Enoch and Elias and others In the Hereford map, which was prepared by Henry de Bello (ca. 1300), the Earthly paradise was located somewhere in the East (according to Isidor Etymologies, XIV:3,2-4 in the extreme East). It was surrounded by walls and fire flames and watched by Cherubim in order to prevent illicit entrance after the original sin and the expulsion of Adam and Eve from paradise. Still the terrestrial paradise has few inhabitants. Enoch and Elijah are the most famous ones living there. They belonged to the few human beings who were chosen to live in paradise on earth. See Exodus 5:14 " And Enoch walked with God; and he was not, for God took him." For Elijah (Elias) see II Kings:2,11 " there appeared a chariot of fire and horses of fire and parted them both asunder; and Elias went up by a whirlwind into heaven. Book I Enoch was popular among the Jewish Apocrypha in the first century BC and the first century AD. At least 15 text remnants of I Enoch have been found in different caves in Qumran. 5 Once it became subject to Early Christian – Jewish polemics, as Christians equated Enoch to Christ's ascension to heaven, Jews lost their appreciation of the book. The Talmud does not mention Enoch even once. In Medieval Jewish exegesis Rashi (Rabbi Shlomo [Salomon] Yitzchak) wrote in his exegesis to Genesis 5:24 that Enoch was a just but light in his thoughts [unclever] and could commit sin again. Therefore, God killed him before his time. Also, other medieval sages interpreted the words God has taken him, that Enoch died. Elias rise to heaven became since John Chrysosthomos (4th century) a prefiguration of Jesus ascension to heaven. The wooden doors displayed Santa Sabina church on Aventine in Rome (430 AD) follow this prefiguration. In medieval Jewish exegesis we find an interesting passage by Radak (Rabbi David Kimchi). In his interpretation of Elias rise to heaven in II Kings, 2: 1, Radak favored the idea that Elias has died as he rose with a chariot in flames to heaven. His flesh was burnt but his spirit turned to God. Radak mentioned however what common people and sages believed, namely, that God has introduced Elias with his body [which means alive] to paradise as God has introduced to paradise Adam before he sinned. Similarly, was also the case of Enoch. Radak rightly alluded in this context a Jewish interpretation, shared by the common people and sages alike, according to which ten persons entered alive the paradise. Indeed, the earliest list appears in the Babylonian Talmud in Tractate Kala (the bride). As Professor Avigdor Shanan has shown recently, the list is mentioning only Jews and Gentiles who appear marginally in the bible. Shanan asked why important biblical persons like Moses, Isaac and Jonas do not appear in the list. His answer is illuminating. Due to the early Jewish- Christian polemics on the possibility of resurrection, all persons who entered alive to paradise according to Christian claims, were deleted from Jewish lists. The first Jewish list seems to ridicule the qualification of being entitled to live in paradise. It serves as a polemical parody to Christian claims to prefigure personalities from OT as predecessors of Resurrection. Enoch and Elias have been added much later to the list when this polemic lost its momentum. Already in the Jewish apocryphal Book of Jubilees (4:23), which was written around 150 BC, we learned that Enoch was taken to the paradise by God. He was the first man to learn how to write. Sitting in paradise he introduced chronological order in events which happened but also wrote about events to come. This is the content of Book of Jubilees itself. Enoch witnessed many prophecies. In early Christian traditions the Coptic Apocalypse of Elias and the Ethiopian I Enoch (Vision of the Animals in chapter 90), Enoch and Elias were interpreted as acting persons in the apocalyptic vision of Revelation 11. Also, Bruno d'Asti [ of Segni] interpreted both Enoch and Elias in his treatise Expositio in Apocalypsym (MPL 165:662), written ca. 1107-1111, as witnesses of the Revelation as the two olive trees and two candles mentioned at the beginning of John's apocalyptic vision. "Hi enim duo testes litteram Henoch et Elias intelligentur; spiritualiter autem omnes Ecclesiae doctores, qui duorum testamentorum testimoniis roboratur testes Dei rite vocantur." Bruno refers to Revelation 11: 3-4 „And I will give power unto my two witnesses …these are the two olive trees and the two candlesticks standing before the God of Earth." Elias and Enoch were welcomed by 6 Christian sources but banned from Jewish memory as having entered the paradise alive. Dante's paradise in the southern Hemisphere as prelude to the new discoveries From the third Canto Paradiso in the Divine Comedy modern scholars tried to infer the location of Dante’s earthly paradise. It is, on top of the extremely high mountain of the purgatory. A vast ocean separated this mountain from the physical world. The paradise is located as an antipode of Jerusalem which means in the southern hemisphere, which was not yet discovered during Dante's time. When Dante met Ulysses in Hell, the Greek king told him that he once left Gibraltar for the Atlantic on a south westerly course sailing towards paradise. After sailing for five months, he saw the high mountain of paradise, but a storm prevented him to cross the ocean. Nobody can cross it. This story is a reminiscence of the early verdict of Indicopleustes not to try to cross the ocean in order to look for paradise which is lost for humanity. Nonplus ultra was written next to Hercules columns in Gades (Cadiz), which were since Antiquity regarded as the end of the world. It is not a surprise that because of crossing the ocean with the discovery of the American continent, a cycle of geographic lore was closed. The natives were considered as noble savages who lived in an innocent primordial manner before the original sin. With crossing the ocean, the natives fulfilled the expectation of being the pre-deluging Hyperborean who lived according to early medieval maps in a paradise lost far beyond the mountains and seas. The Patagonians and Amazons who were sidelined to inhabitable margins of medieval world maps, became now the population whom the discoverers in the new continent America were facing. Even Macaronesia became Micronesia when the search for western Ocean turned to be known as the Pacific Ocean. Hence, it was not unexpected that the classical motto of nonplus ultra was changed to plus ultra by the Emperor Charles V in whose empire the sun never sets. 7