I have discussed Luke 23:43 before, with respect to (1) baptism and (2)
Mortalism:
In this post, I wish to briefly discuss the term “paradise” in this
verse (παραδεισος).
In his 11 June 1843 diary entry, Wilford Woodruff (1807-1898) recorded the
following statement of the Prophet Joseph Smith:
I will say something about the spirits in
prision. Theire has been much said about the sayings of Jesus on the cross to the
thief saying this day thou shalt be with me in paradise. The commentators or
translators make it out to say Paradise. But what is Paradise? It is a modern
word. It does not answer at all to the original that Jesus made use of. Their
is nothing in the original in any language that signifies Paradise. But it was
this day I will be with thee in the world of spirits & will teach thee or
answer thy inquiries. The thief on the Cross was to be with Jesus Christ in the
world of spirits. He did not say Paradise or heaven. (Wilford Woodruff's Journal, volume 2: 1841-1845 [ed. Scott G.
Kenny; Salt Lake City: Signature Books, 1985], 240)
With respect to other biblical evidence, Joseph's comments are
correct--the thief did not go to heaven the day he died, as Christ did not go
to heaven on that day, too. In John 20:17, after revealing himself to Mary
Magdelene the day he was resurrected, he read that:
Jesus saith unto her, Touch me not; for I
am not yet ascended to my Father: but go to my brethren, and day unto them, I
ascend unto my Father, and your Father; and to my God, and your God.
Where Jesus spent the three days between his death and triumphant
resurrection was the “spirit world,” as seen in 1 Pet 3:18-20 (cf. D&C
138):
For Christ also hath once suffered for
sins, the just for the unjust, that he might bring us to God, being put to
death in the flesh, but quickened by the Spirit. By which also he went and
preached unto the spirits in prison; which sometime were disobedient, when once
the longsuffering of God waited in the days of Noah, while the ark was a
preparing, wherein few, that is eight, souls were saved by water.
Furthermore, with respect to lexical evidence, Joseph’s comments are
correct. In BDAG, the leading Koine Greek lexicon on the market, we read the
following definition of παραδεισος:
5565 παράδεισος
• παράδεισος, ου, ὁ (Old Persian pairidaêza
[Avestan form; s. WHinz, Altiranisches Sprachgut der Nebenüberlieferungen, ’75,
179[=‘enclosure’;
Hebr. פַּרְדֵּס. In Gk. X.+;
gener. ‘garden’; freq. pap., s. also New Docs 2, 201) in our lit., except GJs
2:4, not of any formal garden (as also TestAbr A 4 p. 80, 23 [Stone p. 8, 23]
ApcrEzk fgm. a) or park, but only
1. the garden of Eden, paradise (Gen 2f; Philo; Jos., Ant. 1, 37; SibOr 1, 24; 26;
30; Iren. 5, 5, 1 [Harv. II 331, 3]; Orig., C. Cels. 7, 50, 31; Hippol., Did.,
Theoph. Ant. 2, 22 [p. 154, 21]), lit. Dg 12:3, and in the same connection
fig., of those who love God, οἱ γενόμενοι παράδεισος τρυφῆς who prove to be a luscious paradise, in so far as they allow fruit-laden trees to grow
up within them 12:1 (cp. PsSol 14:3).
2. a transcendent place of blessedness, paradise (ὁ παράδεισος τῆς δικαιοσύνης appears as such En 32:3; cp. 20:7; TestLevi 18:10; SibOr
fgm. 3, 48 and other passages in the OT pseudepigrapha not preserved in Gk., as
well as other sources in the lit. given below.—Dssm., B 146 [BS 148]) Lk
23:43 (JWeisengoff, EcclRev 103, ’40, 163-67). ὡς ἐν π. AcPl Ha 3, 23. More fully ὁ π. τοῦ θεοῦ (Gen 13:10; Ez 28:13; 31:8; PGM 4, 3027 ἐν τῷ ἁγίῳ ἑαυτοῦ [=τ. θεοῦ] παραδείσῳ) Rv 2:7. ἁρπάζεσθαι εἰς τὸν π. be caught up into Paradise 2 Cor 12:4.—S.
on οὐρανός 1e and τρίτος 1a. Further, Bousset, Rel.3 282ff; 488ff; PVolz, D. Eschatologie der jüd. Gemeinde im
ntl. Zeitalter ’34, 417f; Billerb. IV 1118-65; Windisch on 2 Cor 12:4;
AWabnitz, Le Paradis du Hadès: RTQR 19, 1910, 328-31; 410-14; 20, 1911,
130-38.—DELG. M-M. TW.
