No, but they still had names known to someone. To us the Good Thief is known as Dismas. Legends don't grow from nothing, so the reasonable way to name the man -- he is, after all, a saint and therefore a legitimate source of Christian names today -- is to follow the tradition. I recognize the possibility that he did in fact go by some other name that we will never know this side of heaven. There is a similar possibility that St. George did not use the princess's garter to tame the dragon, or that the Balaam's donkey did not talk. Still, the reasonable assumption is with the tradition, doctrinal or not, or in the donkey's case, with the Holy Scripture.
Where do you get that [St. Luke interviewing Mary] from?
From reason. He describes a lot of things in his first chapter that he could not know from anyone but Mary herself, and surely as a chronicler of the events in the life of the Church his primary source aside from Jesus Himself would be His Blessed Mother -- and she was available to the Early Church (Acts 1:14).
Now to the main topic, the hellenism of "paradise". I gave it some more thought and I now think that while the two hypotheses I advanced earlier: (1) that it is an inadvertent hellenism by St. Luke and (2) that Jesus used Greek and used the common word because Dismas was Greek, -- are valid as hypotheses, there is a much simpler explanation that does not involve any imprecision in speech. Here it is.
St. Dismas was not Jesus' disciple; he was not even, most likely, an educated man. His wordlview clerly contained some understanding of sin, -- since he spoke of it, -- but not much more. Since he lived in Jewish lands, let us make a simple assumption that he knew a little bit of the story of the Fall. Unlike the assumption (2) that he only understood Greek, that is a natural assumption to make, as the story of the Fall only requires a rudimentary knowledge of the Jewish faith. Well, now Jesus has a difficult under the circumstance task, to convey to the dying man that his sin has been forgiven and that he gained everlasting life for his just completed work of charity and faith. Ordinarily, it took Jesus parabolic discourses to speak of the Heavenly Kingdom. This was not an option at the time. So instead, Christ reduced the promise of heaven to the simple thing the Thief did know: you will be with me in a state of supernatural happiness, like your parents Adam and Eve prior to the Fall. for that, there is a word. The word is "Paradise". So Jesus, the master teacher, taught as he always does, with precision: Today you will be with me in Paradise.
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.