Dismas is a Greek name probably derived from the Greek word for "sunset" or "west" and invneted by the Greek Church. There is nothing to indicate he was Greek or that this was his real name. Just something the Church invented at a later date.
Jews and Gentiles did not even eat together let alone discuss their rleigions. If he was Greek he would not have been fmailair with the Jewish faith because it was forbidden to teach Gentiles the Torah. And even if he was taught by one of his criminal buddies, I doubt that would have been a very "orthodox" version of it.
At any rate, no one would have told him that Adam and Eve fell from grace in Eden. Jews don't believe in the human Fall or in the need for man to be "saved." Judaism is a works-based religion based on 613 God's commandments that does not teach or have a word or a concept for "paradise".
The Jewish kingodm of God is Israel liberated by the messiah, wariror-king. It is known as God heavenly kingdom on earth. That the apsotles did not expect Jesus to take them to heaven is obvious even from the very first verses of the Book of Acts when Jesus is asked "So when they had come together, they were asking Him, saying, "Lord, is it at this time You are restoring the kingdom to Israel?" (Act 1:6), belieiving him to be the Jewish messiah.
The account narrated by Luke about the "good thief" is a story that makes sense to a Christian mind, but not to a Greek pagan or Jewish minds. Therefore neither Greek nor paradise would have come into play or be confused with the word kingdom. >[? The thief did nto ask Jesus for a 'blissful place' but merely to remember him in his kingdom. Jesus could have replied "today you will be with me in my kindgom." That would have made more sense vis a vis the request.
Trouble is, what Jesus told him wasn't even true according to what the Church teaches. Christ did nto go to 'his kingdom' but to hell to free the Old Testament righeous. And after three days in hell he came back to earth for another 40 days.
So, linguistically, culturally and theologically the story is obviosuly false. That much is glairngly obvious. What would drive someone to claim otherwise is an engima to me.
As for Luke conferring with Mary, that is yet another legend that grew bigger and bigger as the time went on but no less full of holes.
Trouble is, you leave out a lot. Christ said, "Today, thou wilt be with me in paradise.". Many Christians understand that before Christ's death on the cross there was one place that was the abode of the souls of the dead. This place was called "hades". Hades was divided into two compartments, Sheol and Paradise also called "Abraham's Bosom". The condemned went to Sheol and the redeemed went to Paradise. The story Jesus told of the beggar, Lazarus, and the rich man spoke of these two places. They were in the same area but had "a great gulf fixed between them" that wasn't cross able.
When Christ died he was buried and he went to Hades to "lead captivity captive". That is, he went to Paradise and lead the redeemed from there to heaven. He never went to Sheol. There would have been no reason, for once a person dies there is no more chance to choose the Lord.
Heaven, the abode of God, was unreachable to anyone until the sacrifice of Jesus, which cleansed the sins of those who were waiting for the Messiah to redeem them. Jesus DID return to earth, but he took the redeemed to heaven, which included the thief on the cross, first. He did not lie and his words were not misquoted.
Sheol the part of Hades where the damned reside still exists. After the Millennial rule of Christ, then Hell will be created for the Devil, the Anti-Christ and the False Prophet according to Revelation 20:10-15. Those who are in Hades will also be judged and cast into Hell. This is called The Great White Throne Judgment.
People who die today either go to Heaven or Hades/Sheol.
That is not what I find when I look at the etymology of the word, "paradise". It is used in the Septuagint, and it had entered the Hebrew and Aramaic:
Paradise is a Persian word that is generally identified with the Garden of Eden or with Heaven. Originally meaning a walled garden or royal hunting grounds, the term entered Jewish (and eventually Christian) beliefs as a Greek translation for the Garden of Eden in the Septuagint. It is sometimes also identified with the bosom of Abraham, the abode of the righteous dead awaiting Judgment Day. In the Gospel of Luke, Jesus tells a penitent criminal crucified alongside him that they will be together when the Earth is restored to paradise.
Etymology
The word "paradise" entered English from the French "paradis", inherited from the Latin "paradisus", which came from Greek παραδεισος (royal garden).[1] The Greek word came from the Persian Avestan word "pairidaêza-" (an Eastern Old Iranian language) = "walled enclosure",[2] which is a compound of pairi- (= "around") (a cognate of Greek περί peri-) and -diz (= "to create, make"), a cognate of English "dough".
An associated word is the Sanskrit word paradēsha = "foreign country" or "supreme country" from Sanskrit para = "beyond" (Greek περα perā) and dēsha = "land, country".
The word also entered Semitic languages: Akkadian pardesu, Arabic firdaws (فردوس), Aramaic pardaysa פרדס, פרדסא, and Hebrew pardes.
http://www.worldlingo.com/ma/enwiki/en/Paradise__________________
The Encyclopedia Mikrait lists pardes as one of the Persian words that entered into Biblical Hebrew. It appears three times in the Tanach: Shir HaShirim 4:13, Kohelet 2:5, and Nechemiah 2:8. In these cases it has the general meaning of "orchard", compared to the specific sense in Greek of fenced off areas belonging to the king.
Kutscher points out that most of the Persian words that entered Hebrew at that time were related to governance, and therefore pardes probably originally was borrowed from the word referring to the parks or gardens of the king.
On the other hand, Ben Yehuda mentions that the word pardesu was borrowed from Persian to Late Babylonian (Kaddari also mentions Akkadian), and perhaps from here pardes entered Biblical Hebrew
http://www.balashon.com/2007/12/pardes-and-paradise.html
To suppose that Jesus should have answered the thief's plea with some sort of extended theolgolical lecture on Heaven and Hell, the intermediate state, the resurrection of he dead, the Kingdom of God, etc., especially when enormous effort was required just to breathe while being crucified doesn't make any sense. Whatever the extent of the thief's knowledge and/or beliefs about these topics he did understand enough to say, "remember me", which shows that he believed that Jesus would live and rule. Maybe he saw the sign over Jesus' head and believed it. Who knows what the extent of his theological knowledge was?
Even though we don't know in which language it was uttered, there is nothing implausible about Jesus' use of this particular word in Luke's account of it. I think it takes a leap of faith greater than that of the thief's to conclude that the whole thing never happened and is a ficticious story based on a word you think would not have been acceptable or plausible for Jesus to use, because the word was in use at the time.
Cordially,
Christ taught St. dismas that he, Dismas, will be back to the state of his original parents prior to the fall. That would be instantly understandable to anyone in 1c Palestine; but apparently it takes a 21c you, infected with modernist trash-thought about the Bible, much longer.