The story of the repen­tant crim­i­nal cru­ci­fied on Jesus’ side gives way to var­i­ous inter­pre­ta­tions. The debate is over where the comma should be placed in Jesus’ answer. Since in the ancient Greek text there were no point­ings, we may expect that it is the the­ol­ogy of the trans­la­tors that deter­mine the cor­rect ren­der­ing, or is it? What if we the con­text gives us a clue?
Let us con­sider the fol­low­ing passage:

Luke 23:41 “And he said, “Jesus, remem­ber me when you come into your king­dom.””

Here the crim­i­nal not only recog­nises Jesus as the future king in the mes­sianic King­dom, but also reveals his con­vic­tion in his res­ur­rec­tion. In effect he asks for his own res­ur­rec­tion; “Please, don’t for­get me when you usher in your Kingdom”.

Now let us exam­ine Jesus’ answer:

Luke 23:42 “And he said to him, “Truly, I say to you, today you will be with me in Par­adise.””

Since there were no point­ings in the ancient Greek, we find no com­mas in the above sen­tence. Point­ings were invented later on. There­fore, it is purely the the­ol­ogy of the trans­la­tors that deter­mines the place of the comma in the English.

We shall note that Par­adise was syn­ony­mous with the King­dom. In the Gar­den of Eden the Par­adise was lost and taken from man, in the King­dom Par­adise is restored. In the LXX [Sep­tu­agint, the Greek trans­la­tion of the Tanakh (OT)] the Greek term is trans­lated as “garden”:

Ezek. 31:8 “The cedars in the gar­den of God could not rival it, nor the fir trees equal its boughs; the plane trees were as noth­ing com­pared with its branches; no tree in the gar­den of God was like it in beauty. 9 I made it beau­ti­ful in the mass of its branches, and all the trees of Eden envied it, that were in the gar­den of God.”

Since Par­adise was to be restored to man, in Jew­ish thought it tem­porar­ily existed with God. Any­thing God promised, to the Jew­ish mind it existed with God in heaven — not lit­er­ally or phys­i­cally, but in the coun­sels of God. When God promised some­thing, to the Jews it was as good as done.

Con­sid­er­ing the above, two inter­pre­ta­tions can be offered, how­ever only one is correct.

1. Luke 23:42 And he said to him, “Truly, I say to you, today you will be with me in Paradise.”

This is how we find it in our bibles. How­ever, this would mean Jesus was refer­ring to Par­adise that was hid­den with God until the times of restora­tion of all things. This inter­pre­ta­tion must explain why only Jesus was risen and not the repen­tant criminal.

Other ques­tions that need to be answered are these:

a.) How could the soul of the thief be with the risen Christ in heaven? What fel­low­ship exist between imma­te­r­ial souls and peo­ple in a phys­i­cal body.

b.) The Gar­den of Eden was a phys­i­cal place in a boun­ti­ful, pleas­ant con­di­tion. It was lost, so what really exist with God? Did God take up the trees, plants and ani­mals, and will he bring them back (restore them) to mankind? Or per­haps only the pur­pose to restore it to mankind exists with him, but then it is not a place to be .

Indeed, if we take that souls are really tor­tured by thirst and fire as we find it in the para­ble of the rich man and Lazarus, then we may need to explain what sort of fire can cause pain to the imma­te­r­ial soul, and what kind of pain recep­tors it has. How can such a soul thirst and what sort of water can quench the thirst of such souls.

You see, there are dif­fi­cul­ties with this view, unless we take that the story is sym­bolic of the bless­ings of the King­dom and the pun­ish­ment of those who miss out — after the resurrection.

Now let us look at the sec­ond option, which I hold to be correct:

2. Luke 23:42 “And he said to him, “Truly, I say to you today, you will be with me in Paradise.””

Remem­ber, the thief asks for the res­ur­rec­tion at the ush­er­ing in of the King­dom. Accord­ing to this ver­sion Jesus sim­ply grants his promise.

Indeed, the con­struct sounds some­what strange to our ears. “I tell you today”. How­ever, it was not so in the first cen­tury, as we find Paul using a sim­i­lar construct:

Acts 20:26 “There­fore I tes­tify to you this day that I am inno­cent of the blood of all of you…”

Don’t we also use sim­i­lar lan­guage? I tell you right now… which we use to give empha­sis to what we have to say.