Background

Reading about Creed because of a future post I want to write about the Nicene creed vs Sermon on the mount led me to the Islamic ‘tie’ Aqidah (as close as it gets to creed).

thus the Islamic concept of ʿaqīdah (literally “bond, tie”) is often rendered as “creed”.

— Creed, Wikipedia

Then with in Aqidah, there are the six articles:

1. Belief in God and tawhid (monotheism)
2. Belief in the angels
3. Belief in the Islamic holy book[11]
4. Belief in the prophets and messengers
5. Belief in the Last Judgment and Resurrection
6. Belief in predestination

Then the Hadith of Gabriel ‘The first and most holy aqida’. This contains the 5 pillars of Islam and then also sometimes Jihad and Dawah.

It then moves on to Eschatology which I guess is talking about the ‘Last Judgement and Resurrection’.

The places for the believers in the hereafter are known as Paradise and for the non-believers as Hell.

This led me to Islam referring to ‘Paradise’, I guess I’ve known about this, the 70 odd virgins, but I always had it in my head as there being 70 virgins in heaven. The Islamic God is the same as the Christian God, but they disagree about the prophets on earth, so I always pictured heaven for the Islamic after life.

The good stuff

Now I’ve never thought of paradise as a holy place. Heaven is the high and holy place, paradise is something on earth. Paradise is nice and all, but is missing angels and stuff. Paradise is a very interesting concept because heaven was only talked about by the Christians, paradise is talked about by every faith.

The word “paradise” entered English from the French paradis, inherited from the Latin paradisus, from Greek parádeisos (παράδεισος), from an Old Iranian form, from Proto-Iranian*parādaiĵah- “walled enclosure”, whence Old Persian 𐎱𐎼𐎭𐎹𐎭𐎠𐎶 p-r-d-y-d-a-m /paridaidam/, Avestan 𐬞𐬀𐬌𐬭𐬌⸱𐬛𐬀𐬉𐬰𐬀 pairi-daêza-. The literal meaning of this Eastern Old Iranian language word is “walled (enclosure)”, from pairi- ‘around’ (cognate with Greek περί, English peri- of identical meaning) and -diz “to make, form (a wall), build” (cognate with Greek τεῖχος ‘wall’). The word’s etymology is ultimately derived from a PIE root *dheigʷ “to stick and set up (a wall)”, and *per “around”.

By the 6th/5th century BCE, the Old Iranian word had been borrowed into Assyrian pardesu “domain”. It subsequently came to indicate the expansive walled gardens of the First Persian Empire, and was subsequently borrowed into Greek as παράδεισος parádeisos “park for animals” in the Anabasis of the early 4th century BCE Athenian Xenophon, Aramaic as pardaysa “royal park”, and Hebrew as פַּרְדֵּס pardes, “orchard” (appearing thrice in the Tanakh; in the Song of Solomon (Song of Songs 4:13), Ecclesiastes (Ecclesiastes 2:5) and Nehemiah (Nehemiah 2:8)). In the Septuagint (3rd–1st centuries BCE), Greek παράδεισος parádeisos was used to translate both Hebrew פרדס pardes and Hebrew גן gan, “garden” (e.g. (Genesis 2:8, Ezekiel 28:13): it is from this usage that the use of “paradise” to refer to the Garden of Eden derives. The same usage also appears in Arabic and in the Quran as firdaws فردوس.

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 as Pardis in New Persian as well as its derivative pālīz (or “jālīz”), which denotes a vegetable patch.

— Paradise, Wikipedia

Slight digression… amongst the above section I spotted this:

pardes, “orchard” (appearing thrice in the Tanakh; in the Song of Solomon (Song of Songs 4:13), Ecclesiastes (Ecclesiastes 2:5)

Richard Dawkins in ‘The God Delusion’ 2006, p383 referred to the ‘Song of Songs’ and Ecclesiastes as one of the parts of the Bible that he thinks has outstanding literary merit. I’m sure that’s not relevant, but interesting connection nevertheless.

What I’m interested in is these related terms:

• A walled enclosure
• Walled gardens
• Royal park (Aramaic)
• Orchard
• Garden (hence Garden of Eden)
• Plantation / cultivated area
• Vegetable patch

Heaven (paradise) isn’t in the fucking sky, it’s in your garden. Those fairies singing at the bottom of the garden are the bloody angels.

Jesus didn’t float off into the sky, he went round the back, sat in his garden and munched an apple. Maybe he made some cider with the leftover apples.

Afterthought: Hmmm… paradise… plantations, vegetable patches, gardens… agriculture. So maybe because agriculture gave us our way of life we believed it was our paradise. But clearly according to these translations paradise is not in the woods. This damages my theory of the trees being the angels and the forest being paradise.