home in heaven. Similarly the Zoroastrians speak of their Paradise-mountain Alburz both as heavenly and as earthly (Bundahish, xx. i, with West’s note). It appears that originally the Hebrew Paradise-mountain was placed in heaven, but that afterwards it was transferred to earth. It was of stupendous size; indeed, properly it was the earth itself.[1] Later on each Semitic people may have chosen its own mountain, recognizing, however, perhaps, that in primeval times it was of vaster dimensions than at present, just as the Jews believed that in the next age the “mountain of Yahweh’s house” would become far larger (Isa. ii. 2＝Mic. iv. i; Ezek. xl. 2; Zech. xiv. 10; Rev. xxi. 10); compare the idealization of the earthly Alburz of the Iranians “in revelation” (Bund. v. 3, viii. 2, xii. 1–8).
We now return to the accounts in Ezek. xxviii. and Gen. ii. The references in the former to the precious stones and to the “stones of fire” may be grouped with the references in Enoch (xviii. 6-8, xxiv.) to seven supernatural mountains each composed of a different beautiful stone, and with the throne of God on the seventh. These mountains are to be connected with the seven planets, each of which was symbolized by a different metal, or at least colour.[2] Ezekiel’s mountain therefore has come to earth from heaven. And a similar result follows if we group the four rivers of Paradise in Gen. ii. with the phrase so often applied to Canaan, “flowing with milk and honey” (Exod. iii. 8; Num. xiii. 27, &c.). For this descriptive phrase is evidently mythical,[3] and refers to the belief in the four rivers of the heavenly Paradise which “poured honey and milk, oil and wine” (Slavonic Enoch, viii. 5; cf. Vision of Paul, xxiii.). In fact, the four rivers originally flowed in heavenly soil, and only when the mountain of Elohim was transferred to this lower earth could mythological geographers think of determining their earthly course, and whether Havilah, or Cush, or Canaan, or Babylonia, was irrigated by one or another of them. But what happened to Paradise when the affrighted human pair left it? One view (see Eth. Enoch, xxxii. 2, 3, Ix. 8, Ixxvii. 3, 4, &c.) was that its site was in some nameless, inaccessible region, still guarded by “the serpents and the cherubim” (Eth. Enoch, xx. 7), and that in the next age its gates would be opened, and the threatening sword (Gen. iii. 24) put away by the Messianic priest-king (Testaments of the Twelve Patriarchs, Levi, 18). This agrees with the story in Gen. ii., iii., except that the original narrator knew the site of the garden. It is a sufficiently reasonable view, for if Paradise lay in some definite earthly region, and if no one knows “the paths of Paradise” (4 Esdras iv. 7), it would seem that it must have ceased to exist visibly. This idea appears to be implied by those Jewish writers, who, especially after the fall of Jerusalem (A.D. 70), dwelt so much on the hope of the heavenly Paradise, reviving, partly under emotional pressure and partly as the result of a fresh influx of mythology, the old myth of a celestial garden of God. To notice only a few leading passages. In Apoc. Bar. iv. 3 it appears to be stated that when Adam transgressed, the vision of the city of God and the possession of Paradise were removed from him, and similarly the stress laid in 4 Esdras iv. 7, vi. 2, vii. (36), 53, viii. 52, on the heavenly Paradise seems to show that no earthly one was supposed to exist.[4] Beautiful, indeed, is the use made of that form of belief in these passages, with which we may group Rev. xxi. i, xxii. 5, where, as in 4 Esdras viii. 52, Paradise and the city of God are combined.
Some strange disclosures on this subject are made by the Slavonic Enoch (c. viii.; cf. xlii. 3), according to which there are two Paradises. The former is in the third heaven, which explains the well-known saying of St Paul in 2 Cor. xii. 2, 4; the latter is conventionally called the Paradise of Eden. In fact, the belief in an earthly Paradise never wholly died. Medieval writers loved it. The mountain of Purgatory in Dante’s poem is “crowned by the delicious shades of the terrestrial Paradise.”
See further The Apocalypse of Baruch and The Ethiopic and the Slavonic Enoch, both edited by R. H. Charles; also Kautzsch’s Apocrypha, and Volz, Jüdische Eschatologie (1903), pp. 374–8, whose full references are most useful. On the Biblical references, cf. Gunkel, Genesis (2), pp. 21-35; Cheyne, Ency. Bib., “Paradise”; and on Babylonian views, Jeremias, “Holle und Paradies” (in Der alte Orient). The Mahommedan’s Paradise is a sensuous transformation of the Jewish; see especially Koran, Sura lv., and note the phrase “gardens of Firdaus,” Koran, xviii. 107. For the Koran and the Zoroastrian books see the Sacred Books of the East (Oxford Series). The doorkeeper of the mountain-Paradise of the Parsees is the Amshaspand Vohu-manō (Vendidad, xix. 31). (T. K. C.)
PARADOS (Fr.＝back cover), a term used in fortification, expressing a work the purpose of which is to cover the defenders of a line of trenches or parapet from reverse fire, i.e. fire from the rear.
PARADOX (Gr. παρά, beyond, contrary to, δóξα, opinion),
a proposition or statement which appears to be at variance with
generally-received opinion, or which apparently is self-contradictory,
absurd or untrue, but either contains a concealed truth
or may on examination be proved to be true. A “paradox”
has been compared with a “paralogism” (παρά, λογός, reason),
as that which is contrary to opinion only and not contrary
to reason, but it is frequently used in the sense of that which is
really absurd or untrue.
PARAFFIN, the name given to a mineral wax and oil, and also used as a generic name of a particular series of hydrocarbons.
Commercial Paraffin.—Refined commercial paraffin is a white or bluish-white, translucent, waxy solid substance, of lamino-crystalline structure, devoid of taste and smell, and characterized by chemical indifference. It consists of about 85% of carbon and 15% of hydrogen. Although the credit of having first (in 1830) investigated the properties of solid paraffin, obtained from wood-tar, belongs to Karl Reichenbach, the existence of paraffin in petroleum had been more or less hazily known for some time previous. In 1809 Fuchs found solid hydrocarbons in the Tegernsee oils, and in 1819 Buchner separated them from these oils in comparative purity. By the latter they were described as “mountain-fats,” and they were identified with paraffin in 1835 by von Kobel. Reichenbach described the results of a series of experiments on the reactions between various substances and paraffin, and on account of the inert nature of the material gave to it its present name (from the Lat. parum, too little, and affinitas, affinity); he expressly stated that the accent should fall on the second “a,” but usage has transferred it to the first.
Paraffin was obtained by Laurent in 1830 by the distillation of bituminous schist, and in 1835 by Dumas from coal-tar; but the product appears to have been regarded only as a curiosity, and Lord Playfair has stated that prior to 1850 he never saw a piece of more than one ounce in weight. Paraffin is asserted to have been made for sale by Reichenbach’s process from wood-tar by John Thom, of Birkacre, before 1835. In 1833 Laurent suggested the working of the Autun shale, and products manufactured from this material were exhibited by Selligue in 1839.
According to F. H. Storer, the credit of having first placed the manufacture of paraffin on a commercial basis is deservedly given to Selligue, whose patent specifications, both in France and England, sufficiently clearly show that his processes of distilling bituminous schist, &c., and of purifying the distillate, had reached considerable perfection prior to 1845. In its present form, however, the paraffin or shale-oil industry owes its existence to Dr James Young. In 1850 he applied for his celebrated patent (No. 13,292) “for obtaining paraffine oil, or an oil containing paraffine, and paraffine from bituminous coals” by slow distillation. The process was extensively carried out in the United States under licence from Young,
- ↑ It was the Babylonian “mountain of the lands,” which meant not only mother earth, but the earth imagined to exist within the heaven; cf. Jeremias, Atao, pp. 11, 12, 28, and Jastrow, Religion of Bab. and Ass., p. 558.
- ↑ See Zimmern, K.A.T. (3), pp. 616 sqq.
- ↑ See also I Esdras ii. 19. This explains Joel iv. 18; Isa. Iv. i (wine and milk). See also Yasna, xlix. 5 (Zendavesta); and cf. Cheyne, Ency. Bib., col. 2104, and especially Usener, Rheinisches Museum, Ivii. 177–192.
- ↑ The statement in Gen. iii. 24 comes from a form of the story in which the “garden” was not geographically localized.
