g$he WATCHTOWER ANNOUNCING JEHOVAR’S KINGDOM Vou. LXX June 15, 1949 No. 12 PARADISE “And the Lord God had planted a paradise of pleasure from the beginning: wherein he placed man whom he had formed.”—Gen, 2:8, Douay. perfect man and woman, planting it upon our earth, After six thousand years of human history and with mankind now numbering about two and a half billion persons the earth is no paradise. All the facts testify that paradise has disappeared and that all mankind together will not be able to restore it to earth. The electronic age, or, more pointedly said, the “atomic-bomb age”, promises to help the ‘destroyers of the earth’ to produce even greater devastation on the surface of our globe. If anyone is to restore paradise to earth, it must be Jehovah God alone. Despite the awful prospects that the atomic age has conjured up before man’s eyes, it is no idle talk for us to speak about the restoration of paradise, because the Producer of the original has promised to recreate it here, on the same earth, to flourish here forever. Hundreds of thousands of informed men and women now living look forward to inhabiting this paradise earth forever. *>Great confusion exists in the minds of men, whether Jews or professing Christians or Mohammedans, ete., as to what paradise is. They are familiar with the name, but due to their mental confusion they entertain false hopes concerning it. Now that we are at the portals of a paradise recreated by Almighty God’s power, it is well for honest persons to disabuse their minds of deceptive hopes and to fill their hearts with the sure, superior hopes based on the inspired truth. The name is understood by some scholars to be drawn from the ancient Persian language; by others, from the Armenian language. We first find it in Bible literature in the oldest translation of the Holy Scriptures, namely, in the Greek Septuagint Version, which began to be made in the third century before our common era. The Greek Septuagint (ZX) was a translation of the inspired Hebrew Scriptures. It was from the Septuagint that the name parddetsos was picked up by the writers of the Christian Greek Seriptures, the apostles and disciples of Jesus Christ. In their inspired writings it occurs three times, and in the Greek Septuagint it occurs twenty-six times, or twenty-nine times in all. J perfect God created the first paradise for 1 Why is restoration of paradise no matter of {dle talk? 2, 3. Bow was the name derived, and what does {¢ really mean? 179 A study of all these occurrences of the name proves very interesting and enlightening, leading to the forming of correct hopes. *Turning now to the account of creation, in the Roman Catholic translation known as the Douay Version, we read: “And the Lord God had planted a paradise of pleasure from the beginning: wherein he placed man whom he had formed.” (Gen. 2:8) This Douay Version was made, not from the original Hebrew Scriptures, but from a Latin translation of them known as the Latin Vulgate. In every case where it occurs in the Greek Septuagint, except two,* the Latin Vulgate renders the word “paradise”. The plain meaning of the word is garden, and it translates the Hebrew word (gan) which means just that.t In support of this, the version of 1948 by the Roman Catholic Confraternity of religious doctrine translates Genesis 2:8 from the original Hebrew as follows: “The Lory God planted a garden in Eden, to the east, and he put there the man he had formed.” The Hebrew word (gan) in itself means an enclosed place, that is, a place hedged or walled about to keep out persons or things that had no right there. The account in Genesis shows that the paradise was no mere orchard, but a large park, in which man lived as well as every kind of animal lived and roamed. It was in truth a garden of Eden, for the Hebrew word Eden means “pleasure; delight”. For a description of the place we quote from the Roman Catholic Douay Version: *“And the Lord God had planted a paradise of pleasure from the beginning: wherein he placed man whom he had formed. And the Lord God brought forth of the ground all manner of trees, fair to behold, and pleasant to eat of: the tree of life also in the midst of paradise: and the tree of knowledge of good and evil. And a river went out of the place of pleasure to water paradise, which from thence is divided into four heads. The name of the one is "Isaiah 51:3 and Joel 2:3. There the Vulgate renders it hortus, or “garden”. + The Authorized Version Bible renders the Hebrew word gan as “garden” all 41 times of its occurrence, and the related word gannah as “garden” all 11 times of its occurrence. 4, 5. From the Genesis description of it, what was the place?
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