Paradise

In religion and folklore, paradise is a place of everlasting happiness, delight, and bliss. Paradisiacal notions are often laden with pastoral imagery, and may be cosmogonical, eschatological, or both, often contrasted with the miseries of human civilization: in paradise there is only peace, prosperity, and happiness. Paradise is a place of contentment, a land of luxury and fulfillment containing ever-lasting bliss and delight. Paradise is often described as a "higher place", the holiest place, in contrast to this world, or underworlds such as hell. The use of the word 'paradise' to describe such a place originates from the Vulgate's use of the Latin word paradisus in its translation of Genesis 2:8: "And the Lord God had planted a paradise of pleasure" (Latin: "plantaverat autem Dominus Deus paradisum voluptatis"), this word in turn being borrowed from the Septuagint's use of the Greek word παράδεισος (paradeisos) meaning 'garden' or 'orchard'. Although Jerome translated from the original Hebrew, he borrowed the Greek translation's terminology, paradeisos, and added the "pleasure" qualification (voluptatis) by making explicit the word play in the original Hebrew verse: the garden is located in a place with the name Eden (עֵדֶן), from a root meaning 'pleasure' (as in עָדִין (adin) 'voluptuous'). In eschatological contexts, paradise is imagined as an abode of the virtuous dead. In Judaism, Christianity, and Islam, heaven is a paradisiacal belief. In Hinduism and Buddhism, paradise and heaven are synonymous, with higher levels available to beings who have achieved special attainments of virtue and meditation. In old Egyptian beliefs, the underworld is Aaru, the reed-fields of ideal hunting and fishing grounds where the dead lived after judgment. For the Celts, it was the Fortunate Isle of Mag Mell. For the classical Greeks, the Elysian fields was a paradisiacal land of plenty where adherents hoped the heroic and righteous dead would spend eternity. In the Zoroastrian Avesta, the "Best Existence" and the "House of Song" are places of the righteous dead. On the other hand, in cosmogonical contexts 'paradise' describes the world before it was tainted by evil. The concept is a theme in art and literature, particularly of the pre-Enlightenment era. John Milton's Paradise Lost is an example of such usage.