Did The Thief On The Cross Go To Heaven? (Pt 2) Paradise In Hades

Alright, part 2 of looking at the story of the thief on the cross.

If you haven’t read part 1, I recommend you read that post first, there’s a lot of key information in there that you need for understanding this story.

Here’s a quick recap: There are 3 keys to interpreting the story of the thief on the cross – paradise, today, and kingdom. The most common interpretation of this story – that Jesus was telling the thief that he would join him in heaven that very day – doesn’t do a very good job with any of those 3 key concepts, and in my view is the least credible interpretation.

In this post we’re going to look at a second interpretation: that “Paradise” refers to a place of waiting for the righteous dead in the underworld.

This interpretation, in my opinion, is much better than the first one. But as we’ll see it still doesn’t quite get us there with lining up all 3 of paradise, today and kingdom.

So we’ve looked at the meaning of paradise, that the word itself means a “royal, enclosed garden”, and that in the Bible and other Jewish literature this frequently refers specifically to the Garden Of Eden. But there was also possibly another use for the word paradise in 1st Century Judaism – the resting place for the righteous dead before resurrection.

If we go back a bit further in history first, the ancient Israelites (along with many other ancient nations) thought of the created world as having three parts – the earth, which was the realm of mortal humans and animals; the heavens up above, which was the realm of God and the angels; and the underworld down below, which was the realm of the dead. 

In the Old Testament, the realm of the dead was known by the Hebrew name Sheol, and was a place where the dead resided, but the dead were like shadows, without any real substance or consciousness. A lot of Bible translations translate Sheol as “the grave”, because going to Sheol really just meant that you were dead.

Later, in the time of the New Testament, which was written in Greek not Hebrew, the underworld was known by it’s Greek name – Hades. And by the time of Jesus, views of the underworld had changed. Because of the strong influence throughout many centuries from the Persian, Greek and Roman empires, many Jews had adopted the view that Hades – the realm of the dead – was a place for conscious souls, and that it was divided into 2 or more separate compartments where the dead received either punishment or reward BEFORE resurrection and the final judgement. 

The story of the rich man and Lazarus in Luke 16 is a good example of this idea of separate places in Hades. The place in Hades of punishment for the wicked dead was often referred to as “torments”. The place for the righteous dead may possibly have been referred to as “paradise”. 

I say “possibly”, because there is there definitely evidence in Jewish writings about the idea of these different compartments in Hades, but even though A LOT of commentators say that the section for the righteous was called paradise, I couldn’t find ANY evidence for it being called that. And I looked pretty hard. If you know where such a reference is to be found, please let me know in the comments.

Anyway, I’m including this idea as a possible interpretation, because even though I couldn’t find firm evidence for it, it’s a pretty popular idea, and maybe there is some evidence out there that I just wasn’t able to find.

If it’s true though, this idea of Paradise makes a lot more sense of the story of Jesus and the thief on the cross than the first interpretation. If there is a place in Hades for the righteous dead, called paradise, you can guarantee that Jesus would be going there when he died, not the other place. It also makes sense of “today”, since Jesus and the thief would have descended to the realm of the dead on the same day that they died.

Where this interpretation falls short though, is in making sense of “kingdom”. Descending into Hades, even if it was into the righteous section, couldn’t in any way be classified as Jesus “coming into his kingdom.”

Some say, though, that Jesus wasn’t responding to the thief’s comment about coming into his kingdom, that because they were both on the brink of death Jesus just wanted to give the thief some hope for his immediate future.

I don’t find that argument at all convincing.

I remember in my senior year of high school, I had a maths teacher who was obsessed with fishing. A couple of the guys used to play off it as a way to waste time in class. All they had to do was bring up something about fishing and the teacher would stop teaching the class for 10 or 15 minutes straight to tell fishing stories.

Jesus was like that with the kingdom of God. It was his favourite topic by far, nothing else even comes close. You could say he was obsessed. Yet to go with this second interpretation we’d have to believe that when given a massive opening to his favourite subject, Jesus diverts to something else instead.

That when the thief said, “Jesus, remember me when you come into your kingdom,” that Jesus responded by essentially saying, “Shhhh. Let’s not talk about the kingdom, or where this whole story is ultimately going, or what it means for me to be the Messiah. That doesn’t matter. I just want you to know that short term, like straight after you die, you’re coming with me to the nicer waiting place among the dead, not the bad one. And sure, I’ll only be there for a couple of days but we can hang out while I’m there.”

No. No, I don’t think so. 

The thief brings up Jesus’ favourite topic of the kingdom – Jesus would have been all over that, for sure.

So this second interpretation, if it’s even a valid one, is better than the first one, but it still falls short. It potentially makes sense of paradise and today, but not of kingdom.

In the next post we’ll look at a third way to interpret this story of the thief on the cross, one that DOES line up paradise, today and kingdom quite nicely.