The PaRDeS story has fascinated me since I first discovered it a few years ago. It seems to have a life of its own as I did reams of research on the story, the interpretations, opinions about it, etc. But alas, my hard drive crashed and I lost all the reference files related to it.
So I am starting over again. New hard drive (multiply backed up!)
Thanks for the recent references you've posted.
Glad you enjoyed it. If you remember anything new, let me know...
For what it's worth, HALOT mentions the following about פַּרְדֵס.
Avestan pairidaēza rampart; a domain of the king in the Achaemenid period (Hinz Zeitschrift für Assyriologie 61 (1971) 295) > παράδεισος > paradise (Lokotsch Etym. Wb. 1631; Littmann Morgenländische Wörter 16): Middle Hebrew פַּרְדֵּס, Jewish Aramaic פַּרְדֵּיסָא; Late Babylonian pardēsu (von Soden, AHw. 833a and 1582a) a marvellous garden; Samaritan פרדיס; Syriac pardaisā, Christian Palestinian Aramaic, Mandaean (Drower-Macuch Dictionary 363a) pardisa; Arabic al-firdaus.
I. Cornelius, in NIDOTTE, writes the following:
Akkadian pardēsu (AHw, 833); Persian paridaiḏa, pairidaêza (enclosed garden; cf. E. B. Moynihan, Paradise as a Garden in Persia and Mughal India, 1979, 1); taken over by Greek (Xenophon).
R. Laird Harris mentions in TWOT:
The word from which comes (through the Greek) the word “paradise.” This is a loan word into Hebrew as well as into Greek from the Zend Avestan. It is never in the Hebrew OT applied to the Garden of Eden, although the LXX uses it to translate “garden” (גַּן) in Gen 2:8. Used only three times (Neh 2:8; Song 4:13 and Eccl 2:5),.... The Zend Avesta, a holy book of Zoroaster, is indeed from 600 B.C. (or later), but its language is a branch of old Indo-Iranian and the word may easily have been borrowed by Solomon’s wide-ranging traders. Just as the few Greek words in Dan may have been borrowed before the Greek age of Alexander so this word may have been borrowed before the Persian age of Cyrus. Extensive Persian borrowing came later. It is of interest that the several Persian loan words in the Hebrew OT are found in Ezra, Neh, Est, Dan, Song, and Chr. None occur in the Pentateuch.
Referring to παράδεισος (PARADEISOS), BDAG writes:
Old Persian pairidaêza [Avestan form; see WHinz, Altiranisches Sprachgut der Nebenüberlieferungen, ’75, 179]=‘enclosure’; Hebr. פַּרְדֵּס. In Greek Xenophon and later; generally ‘garden’; frequently in papyri, see also New Docs 2, 201
Hans Bietenhard & Colin Brown in NIDNTT write of παράδεισος:
1 paradeisos is a loan-word from the Middle Iranian pardez (Avestan pairidaêza, an encircling wall, circular enclosure, garden), and means a garden, park or paradise. Xenophon uses the word of the public gardens of the Persian kings and nobles (Anabasis 1, 2, 7; 2, 4, 14; Cyropaedia 1, 3, 14; Hellenica 4, 1, 15).
2 Myths from many nations speak of a land or a place of blessedness in primeval times or (in the present) on the edge of the known world, where gods live and whither heroes or particularly distinguished mortals were carried away or went after death. Within the world of the OT there were the paradise myths of the Mesopotamian or Iranian culture, and also the conceptions of the Phoenicians (cf. Ezek. 28:13 ff.). In Greece people were aquainted with the picture of the Elysian fields and the Isles of the Blessed.
In the LXX the word is found 47 times, predominantly as trans. of Hebrew גַּן or גַּנָּה, a garden. Of these passages 13 belong to Gen. 2 and 3, 4 to Ezek., and 3 to Isa. In each case the reference is to the garden of God, either as the Yahwistic narrative describes it or as it is expected to be again. In Neh. 2:8; Eccl. 2:5; Cant. 4:13 paradeisos/i is a translation of the loan-word pardēs deriving from the Iranian, meaning orchard, forest. In Isa. 51:3 it renders Hebrew עֵדֶן.
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Again, interesting, Arne.
How many of those sources are available online?
And if you have access to the LXX, a question. In Shir HaShirim (Cant.) 4:12-13, and Kohelet (Ecc.) 2:5 we find both the words gan and pardes. How does the LXX translate those words when they are in such proximity?
Thanks for the great information...although it's a bit more scholarly than I know what to do with it.
I do have another question relating to the four who went to Pardes. I have a reference that is quite good and I'm quoting three paragraphs from it where the terminology threw me for a loop. I don't have a clue what it means. It's the middle paragraph in the quote below.
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Rabbeynu HaAri'zal relates what was the error made by these four Holy Sages. It is written in Sha'ar Ma'amrei Razal (Hagigah), that the four Sages each attempted to rectify 1/4 of the blemish in the collective soul of Adam, and thus jointly, together, rectify the whole thing.
In kabbalistic language, this then was their mistake. The rectification must be in all four of the "Mohin of Abba," which are Hokhma, Binah, Hasadim, and Gevurot. All four must jointly descend together into Z.A. Only in such a way, can His Keter be
expanded, and the light of A.K. (Adam Kadmon) shine through Z.A. onto the earth plane, neutralizing the klipot, and restoring all things to the way they should have been in the first place.
The assault cannot be a concerted effort of individuals jointly working together, each performing a different task. The assault must be comprehensive. Each individual must be completely integrated within oneself. Each individual must
attempt the entire rectification by oneself. Every individual must be able to perform the rectification completely, by oneself. It must first be accomplished within oneself. Only then can it manifest externally, and multiply.
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Keter? klipot? Hokhma, Binah, Hasadim, and Gevurot? Oh my, my head is spinning!
"How many of those sources are available online?"
I don't believe any of them are online legally. (There is a site that would illegally copy Logos software material and post it online but I would not want to mention that URL and perpetrate that illegal activity.)
"In Shir HaShirim (Cant.) 4:12-13, and Kohelet (Ecc.) 2:5 we find both the words gan and pardes. How does the LXX translate those words when they are in such proximity?"
In Cant 4:12-13, it is translated in the LXX as: 4:12 κῆπος κεκλεισμένος ἀδελφή μου νύμφη κῆπος κεκλεισμένος πηγὴ ἐσφραγισμένη 13 ἀποστολαί σου παράδεισος ῥοῶν μετὰ καρποῦ ἀκροδρύων κύπροι μετὰ νάρδων
גַּן is rendered as κῆπος both times, which is what I would expect.
פַּרְדֵּס is rendered as παράδεισος.
In Koh. 2:5, the LXX is ἐποίησά μοι κήπους καὶ παραδείσους καὶ ἐφύτευσα ἐν αὐτοῖς ξύλον πᾶν καρποῦ.
Similarly גַּנּוֹת is rendered as κήπους and פַרְדֵּסִים is rendered as παραδείσους.
I did not check for variants with other Greek translations of the Bible.
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Rabbeynu HaAri'zal, otherwise Isaac Luria, was a major (redefining; repopularising) kabbalist of the 16th century. The middle paragraph refers in detail to concepts of the sephirot in Lurianic kabbalah.
I am hardly knowledgeable in this area, but might help give a little idea of what's going on.
- Mohin of Abba - not sure what this is; maybe "minds of the Father"
- Hokhma, Binah, Hasadim (Chesed), and Gevurot are described at http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sephirot; they are the upper four sephirot other than Keter (crown, the highest sephira)
- Z.A. = Zeir Anpin = "small face" refers to the six central sephirot from chesed to yesod, and relates to emotion. (See http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Zeir_Anpin)
- klipot (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Qliphoth) are the "primeval husks of impurity"; an evil shell that bars the holy from the earthly.
- adam kadmon = first/early man
What that second paragraph said (in not-sufficiently-mystical language) is that rather than these four correcting the blemish using all four of those upper sephirot/characteristics, they each did their own. But the four sephirot have to descend towards the earth together, allowing the Holy Crown above to expand, shining through to earth and breaking through its evil boundaries.
Or something.
On a different topic: Dave, those of us not only interested in language would like to know what exactly your indexing task involved; where and how have you stored an index? What have you indexed? Etc. Just write a few words; I'm fascinated.
The basic concept of the index wasn't that complicated. It just took a long time to do it.
I started by looking at my books, many of which have no index of their own. I wrote down every word or root (in Hebrew or in English) that looked like it could make an interesting post. I did pretty much all my books except the major dictionaries (Klein, Kaddari, Ben-Yehuda, Even Shoshan)and the commentaries on the Bible (I did mark down all of Steinsaltz's interesting language notes.)
Then I did the same thing with all of the emails and web sites I had saved.
The whole thing is in an Excel file, sorted alphabetically. I'm pretty much done, except for Avineri's Yad HaLashon, which will take a long time to go through (but it will be worth it!). And of course any new sources I come across...
wow.
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