One of the criminals who were hanged railed at him, saying, “Are you not the Christ? Save yourself and us!” But the other rebuked him, saying, “Do you not fear God, since you are under the same sentence of condemnation? And we indeed justly, for we are receiving the due reward of our deeds; but this man has done nothing wrong.” And he said, “Jesus, remember me when you come into your kingdom.” And he said to him, “Truly, I say to you, today you will be with me in paradise.”
Luke 23:39-43
The greek word for paradise is, well, not-so-surprisingly paradeisos (παραδεισος). It’s used in two other New Testament passages: 2 Corinthians 12:3 where Paul describes a man “caught up into paradise,” and Revelation 2:7 where John has Jesus say, “To the one who conquers I will grant to eat of the tree of life, which is in the paradise of God.” In older bible versions, that 2 Corinthians passage may say the “third heaven” like this example in the NET, NIV, and ESV as found on Bible Gateway (follow the links), at least until these texts are updated there.
Here is a current screenshot of the 2 Corinthians passage in the ESV:
The Greeks borrowed paradeisos from the Persians in which language it meant a park surrounded by a wall. By the time of the writing of the Septuagint, paradeisos is used to name the garden of God in the creation story as distinct from secular parks. 1
The obvious connection, then, to God’s garden is Eden. But to get there using a modern English bible, you’d really have to know your Greek. The nuance is easily lost in most modern bibles because their source is the Hebrew documents. In Genesis 2:8 in most English bibles God “planted a garden in Eden.” The natural connection to Jesus’ paradise in Luke isn’t clear.
The bible of Paul, John, and the New Testament writers generally, was the Greek Septuagint. And in the Septuagint the connection is explicit: “God planted paradise in Eden.“
Once Luke makes the explicit connection to Eden through Jesus’ use of paradise, the rich interconnection of the garden as the explicit space where heaven and earth overlap at the dwelling place of God is brought to bear on Jesus’ relationship with the thief on the cross. They will both be together in the presence of God.
- Jeremias, J. (1964–). παράδεισος. In G. Kittel, G. W. Bromiley, & G. Friedrich (Eds.), Theological dictionary of the New Testament (electronic ed., Vol. 5, p. 766). Eerdmans.