The word paradise is derived from the Avestan word pairidaeza (a walled enclosure), which is a compound of pairi- (around), a cognate of the Greek peri-, and -diz (to create, make), a cognate of the English dough. An associated word is the Sanskrit word paradesha which literally means supreme country.

Sources as early as Xenophon in his Anabasis report the famed Persian "paradise" garden. The form of the word that is now understood as "heaven or any environment that is ultimately pleasurable" is derived from the Greek paradeisos used in the Septuagint Bible translation to mean the Garden of Eden. In the New Testament, paradise meant a paradise restored on Earth (Matthew chapter 5, verse 5 - the meek shall inherit the earth), though no reference is made to what condition (paradisaical or otherwise) the Earth would or should be in. However, certain sects actually attempted to recreate the garden of Eden, e.g. the nudist Adamites.

In Achaemenid Persia, possibly earlier (in Mesopotamia?), the term was not just applied to 'landscaped' gardens but especially to royal hunting grounds, the earliest form of wildlife reserve, destined for hunting as a sport; in various cultures in contact with nature, paradise is portrayed as eternal hunting ground, not just in relatively primitive cultures (e.g. native American) but also in more advanced, essentially agricultural civilisations, e.g. the Egyptian Reed fields and the Greek Elysian fields.