Hell and Heaven

HEAVEN AND HELL: IN CHRIST SHALL ALL BE MADE ALIVE: PROF.M.M.NINAN
We find it also used by Plutarch, who lived in the 1st and 2d century of AD. It was by these
authors evidently employed to signify an extensive plot of ground, enclosed with a strong fence or
wall, abounding in trees, shrubs, plants, and garden culture, and in which choice animals were
kept in different ways of restraint or freedom, according as they were ferocious or peaceable; thus
answering very closely to the English word park, with the addition of gardens, a menagerie, and an
aviary.
The circumstance which has given this term its extensive and popular use is its having been taken
by the Greek translators of the Pentateuch, in the 3d century B.C., and, following them, in the
‏,,גָּן ( garden ancient Syriac version, and by Jerome in the Latin Vulgate, as the translation of the
gan) which the benignant providence of the Creator prepared for the abode of innocent and
happy man. The translators also use it, not only in the twelve places of Ge 2; Ge 3, but in eight
others, and two in which the feminine form ‏(גִּנָּה)‏ occurs; whereas, in other instances of those two
words, they employ κῆπος (Kypos) , the usual Greek word for a garden or an enclosure of
fruit-trees. But there are three places in which the Hebrew text itself has the very word, giving it
the form pardes. These are, "the keeper of the king's forest, that he may give me timber" (Ne 2:8);
orchards (Ec 2:5); "an orchard of pomegranates" (Song of Solomon, 4:13).
Through the writings of Xenophon, and through the general admixture of Orientalisms in the later
Greek after the conquests of Alexander of Macedonia, the Garden of Eden became 'The Paradise
of Delight' ὁ παράδεισος τῆς τρυφῆς (Ge 2:15,23; Joe 2:3). They used the same word
whenever there was any allusion, however remote, to the garden of Eden
Josephus calls the gardens of Solomon, in the plural number, "Paradises" (Ant. 8:7, 3). Berosus
(B.C. cent. 4), quoted by Josephus (c. Apion, 1:20), says that the lofty garden-platforms erected at
Babylon by Nebuchadnezzar were called the Suspended Paradise.
Hanging Gardens of Babylon
The Hanging Gardens of Babylon were one of the Seven Wonders of the Ancient World, and is called suspended
Paradise.
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