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Re: orion Bible quotes in the Temple scroll?
>Judith,
>I am a little uncertain about your Sky\Paradise statement. There is the very
>famous story in Rabbinic literature of the famous Rabbis who went to vist
>Paradise. and only one comes out alive and in good mental condition. Did
>they take a trip in the sky?
>Steve.
I'm not sure what exactly you are uncertain about. All I said was that in
Gen. 1:1 shamayim means "sky" and not "heaven" in the popular misusage of
that word in the phrase "he/she died and went to heaven" as a synonym
"paradise" where people experience the afterlife!
The passage to which you refer is Tosephta Hagigah 2:3, but again I'm not
sure what you are getting at. The term used there for "Paradise" is simply
gan (garden) -- a common usage, as we see also from the Qur'an where janna
is the standard term. There's no mention of sky or shamayim!
Judith Romney Wegner
jrw@brown.edu