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Journey of a Passage

Nehemiah 2:8

The keeper of the king's pardes

Asaph keeps the king's pardes, a Persian word for a walled park or reserve. The Hebrew uses the loanword; the Greek tradition uses paradeisos (Giguet: "garden"); the Vulgate saltus (forest); the KJV "forest." Paradeisos is the Greek Bible's word for Eden, and later for paradise.

Same letters, different readings: the consonants agree, but ancient readers vocalized or interpreted them differently

The family tree

Each row is a language or text tradition. Witnesses in the same row may share ancestry, revise one another, or have an uncertain relationship; the line under each box says which. A solid arrow appears only where direct copying or a documented revised edition is established. Order by date never implies copying. Scroll sideways on a phone.

✓ contains it · ✕ does not · ❝ quotes part of it · ⓘ reports on manuscripts · ▢ pages lost · – no copy survives

  • Same line, through lost copies
  • Translation
Hebrew
  1. Original Ezra–NehemiahMemoir c. 430 BC; book compiled c. 400–300 BC (debated)
  2. Masoretic Text (Leningrad Codex)AD 1008Descends, through lost copies, from Original Ezra–Nehemiah
Greek
  1. Greek 2 Esdras 11–23 (library text: Giguet's French)Translated c. 2nd century BC or laterTranslated from a Hebrew text of Ezra–Nehemiah
Latin
  1. Jerome's Vulgate (2 Esdras = Nehemiah)c. AD 400Translated from Hebrew texts of Jerome's day
English
  1. King James Bible1611Translated from printed Masoretic Hebrew

Every witness, in order

  1. Memoir c. 430 BC; book compiled c. 400–300 BC (debated)

    Original Ezra–Nehemiah

    – No copy survives

    No original survives. No Qumran fragment of Nehemiah has been identified.

  2. Translated c. 2nd century BC or later

    Greek 2 Esdras 11–23 (library text: Giguet's French)

    ✓ Contains this passageTranslated from a Hebrew text of Ezra–Nehemiah

    How the site knows this: Known here only through a translation.

    une lettre adressée à Asaph, le garde du jardin qui appartient au roi

    the keeper of the garden which belongs to the king

    Greek 2 Esdras via Giguet's French; not checked against a critical Greek edition.

  3. c. AD 400

    Jerome's Vulgate (2 Esdras = Nehemiah)

    ✓ Contains this passageTranslated from Hebrew texts of Jerome's day

    How the site knows this: Read in the site's library text: Clementine Vulgate (1592 edition).

    epistolam ad Asaph custodem saltus regis

    keeper of the king's forest

  4. AD 1008

    Masoretic Text (Leningrad Codex)

    ✓ Contains this passageDescends, through lost copies, from Original Ezra–Nehemiah

    How the site knows this: Read in the site's library text: Westminster Leningrad Codex, a digital transcription of the Leningrad Codex.

    אָסָף שֹׁמֵר הַפַּרְדֵּס אֲשֶׁר לַמֶּלֶךְ

    Asaph, keeper of the pardes that belongs to the king

    Also in Ecclesiastes 2:5 and Song of Songs 4:13.

  5. 1611

    King James Bible

    ✓ Contains this passageTranslated from printed Masoretic Hebrew

    How the site knows this: Read in the site's library text: King James Version (1769 text).

    Asaph the keeper of the king's forest

What changed, and why

Old Persian *paridaida, "walled around," named the parks of kings and satraps; Xenophon describes them as paradeisoi full of trees and game. Asaph's pardes supplied timber. The word's later religious meaning ("paradise") is reception, not what Nehemiah meant.

What the evidence shows

  • Independently documentedPardes is a Persian loanword.
  • Strongly supportedNehemiah's pardes was a royal timber reserve.

Sources

    Related lessons

    • A Persian Commission and a Midnight Survey →In Nisan the king notices Nehemiah's sad face. Nehemiah, "very sore afraid," asks to be sent to rebuild the city of his fathers' tombs. He receives letters for the governors Beyond-the-River and for Asaph, keeper of the king's park, for timber, and an escort of officers and horsemen. Sanballat the Horonite and Tobiah the Ammonite servant are grieved. Nehemiah inspects the walls by night and calls the leaders to build; Geshem the Arab joins the mockery.