Sárospataki Füzetek 15. (2011)

2011 / 4. szám - TANULMÁNYOK

The Greek word TiagáSsiaog was first used by the historian Xenophon, around 400 BC. It is a loan word, borrowed from the Persians and Medes. Its original meaning is not disputed: pari = around; dae^a — wall; paridae^a — a walled enclosure, such as the private parks of rulers and nobles. The Greeks, however, understood the word to mean what was contained within the wall, that is the royal gardens. When in Alexandria the Hebrew Bible was translated into Greek, its translators knew all about the pleasure-gardens of the ruling Ptolemies. Besides, Hebrew had borrowed a similar word from the Persian: pardes, a royal preserve. It occurs three times in the Old Testament (Neh. 2:8; Eccl. 2:5; Song 4:13). That explains why the translators of the Septuagint in Genesis 2, where the Hebrew word IU indicates a fenced garden, used TrapáÖstaoc rather than the simpler xvjjioc (garden: an open space, not enclosed, where ordinary plants and trees grow) to describe the garden of Eden.7

In this way, the garden of Eden was rightly described as a pleasure garden. The Hebrew ]7V p could be translated as ‘land of joy’ or ‘happy land’. Strictly speaking, however, this ‘garden’ and ‘Eden’ are not identical, for Genesis 2:8 tells us that the LORD God planted a ‘garden in Eden’ (]73?2-p). This pleasure garden was located ‘in the east’ (the local and most commonly understood meaning of the Hebrew DTpQ in Gen. 2:8) or perhaps ‘in the beginning’ (the temporal sense used by the Vulgate, which may be preferable).8 God himself planted a garden in Eden, trees and all. A fitting name for this garden is indeed Q7~’7R p, ‘the garden of God’ (as in Ezek. 28:13 and 31:8-9). This pleasure garden, the very opposite of a barren wilderness, truly belongs to the invisible dwelling-place of God. Hence the other Biblical reference to ‘the garden of YHWH’.9 The second chapter of Genesis calls to mind a palace garden, complete with fruit trees, with the man God created placed in it as his custodian. YHWH appears as the lord of the manor, walking through his garden in the pleasant cool of the evening (Gen. 3:8).

Against this etymological background of the word notQxSsiooq, it is striking that Revelation 2:7 places the promised tree of life ‘in the paradise of God’ (év t&S TiapaSetaCü toii 0soti). In their Lexicon, Louw and Nida note the following: “the reference may reflect somewhat more closely the historical background of this term. It is appropriate to translate: ‘the garden of God’, especially since in the context the reference is to the fruit of the tree of life”.10 Therefore, the promise contained in

paradise motifs in the Book of Revelation

7 Jan N. Bremmer, “Paradise: From Persia, via Greece, into the Septuagint.” In Paradise Interpreted.

Representations of biblical Paradise in Judaism and Christianity, ed. Gerard P. Lutdkhuizen (Leiden: Brill, 1999), 1-20. In Luke 23:43 and 2 Cor. 12:4, 7iocgá8eiaog denotes the heavenly paradise, the abode of believers after death.

8 The argument for this reading can be found in T. Stordalen, Echoes of Eden. Genesis 2-3 and Symbolism

of the Eden Garden in biblical Hebrew Literature (Leuven: Peeters, 2000), 261-270. The temporal meaning of D7pb is undisputed in eg. Mic. 5:1. The Vulgate has ‘a principio’, an allusion to ‘in principio’ in Gen. 1:1. Hence, the garden of Eden is typified as something from a bygone era; paradise is far in the past, and no longer to be found in the present.

9 Gen. 13:10; Isa. 51:3. A survey of all Old Testament references to Eden can be found in T. Stordalen, “Heaven on Earth - Or Not? Jerusalem as Eden in Biblical Literature.” In Beyond Eden, eds. Konrad Schmid and Christoph Riedweg (Tübingen: Mohr Siebeck, 2008), 28-57 [31-36].

10 Johannes P. Louw and Eugene A. Nida (eds.), Greek-Eng/ish Lexicon of the New Testament based on Semantic Domains. Volume 1 (Cape Town: Bible Society of South Africa, 1989), 5.

2011/4 Sárospataki Füzetek 13