wade-w

What I have never understood is where they get the "There was no death in the garden" idea. If Adam and Eve were immortal before the fall, why would it matter if they ate from the Tree of Life?

GunnerJ

As an interesting side note, the reason A&E got the boot was not because the ate from the Tree of the Knowledge of Good and Evil, but because, having eaten from the Tree of... err, the TKGE, they were know knowledgable about what is right and wrong, and all they'd have to do was eat from the tree of life and they'd become immortal, which would make them as gods.

It's all in Genesis. Thus, Yaweh didn't eject A&E from Eden as a punishment, but rather, as a form of self-protection! After all, things could get dicey for his power base if he had a bunch of fast-multiplying gods to contend with.

SOURCE: Genesis, Chapter 3, Verses 22-24. (The entire second and third chapters are useful for context, however.)

Jimmy Higgins

Well this is the hint that this comes from a more ancient version of the srory where god and the serpents are part of a polytheistic group of gods. Then man comes, but God doesn't want them to become gods, so he lies to them about dying after eating the fruit. The serpent, the aid to the protagonist tells them the truth, but God throws them out because he doesn't see them worthy. Oh, and the garden of eden was on top of a mountain at one time.

PJPSYCO

I've been aware that the bible specifically states that plants aren't alive for a long time. The Holy Spirit is refered to as the breath of life. God is constantly kissing things and breathing into them to make them alive. It is clear that everything alive has been breathed into. I love to laugh at the bible(ooo we can't see things respire so they can't be alive...hahahaha). Don't get me started on the complete lack of microorganisms either.

wade-w

Those were the verses I was referring to. God ejects Adam and Eve from the garden to prevent them from becoming immortal. This obviously means they were mortal while in the garden. Thus, there WAS death in the garden.

Celsus

Or another understanding is that the tree of life required one to regularly eat from it in order to have eternal life.

GunnerJ

Except that this "understanding" doesn't fit with what god purportedly said:

The italicized portion implies that they'd just have to eat it just once in order to be granted immortality. I mean, if they'd been eating it all along, they why does god say "lest he... take also from the tree of life..."? If your proposed "understanding" was correct, wouldn't god have said, "now, to make sure that they can no longer eat from the tree of life..."?

Warcraft3

If they were not eating from it before the fall, and were prevented from eating from it after the fall, then why was it even there in the first place?

I believe your argument fails because when God said, "lest he...take also from the tree of life..." he was now speaking of sinful, fallen humans. That is why He said, "lest". Man was now in a different state of relationship to God, not to mention the fact that man had also acquired new knowledge. So something was fundamentally different after the fall, which is why them eating of the tree of life was prevented. This does not necessarily imply that they had not eaten of it before.


Russ

Celsus

And you got the Hebrew tense where? Both interpretations are acceptable--indeed the one I suggest is more probable considering the etiological motifs at work here.

Compare it with the Gilgamesh epic--The Episode of the Special Plant--Here the serpent takes away the plant and hence Gilgamesh's access to eternal life, although he has already partaken the fruit. Here is a fairly good article on the connection between the Gilgamesh epic and the Genesis (Yahwist/J) creation account (which traditionally runs from Genesis 2:4b-3:24). The serpent, with its ability to shed its skin was seen as an animal with the ability to renew its youth, and hence, had access to eternal life.

Blenkinsopp points this out in his discussion:

• Commentators have also found the mention of two special trees problematic, since familiar mythic structures and the corresponding iconography demand one tree only. ... The final statement of YHWH Elohim (3:22), and the description of the ensuing expulsion (3:24), could be interpreted to imply that they had not yet eaten of the tree of life, though not forbidden to do so. But it is also possible, indeed more probable, that the immunity from death which it conferred required periodic partaking of its fruit, as seems to be the case in the Gilgamesh poem. [my emphasis] Once denied access to the tree of life, they were therefore doomed sooner or later to die. Whatever the correct solution, these special trees represent two stages intermediate between the human and divine spheres. The tree of knowledge of good and evil represents a wisdom which, ostensibly godlike, leads to the miseries of the human condition and eventually to death. The tree of life stands for immunity from death, which, paradoxically, is put beyond human reach by striving for a wisdom which is full of deadly ambiguity. If this is the correct reading, the two trees are a requirement of the narrative logic of the story, and it becomes unnecessary to postulate the somewhat inept intervention of a later editor.
  
  Blenkinsopp, J. The Pentateuch, Anchor Doubleday, p. 64

Steadale's rhetorical question is broadly correct--the ancient writers did not have to write story in which inevitable questions like yours would be raised. The reason this theory is strong is because of its clear Gilgamesh source.

Joel

GunnerJ

Considering that the TKGE was in the garden, and they were specifically forbidden to eat from it, this doesn't seem a very potent counter. God seems to have a problem of putting things that he doesn't want messed with near the people who can mess with it. In other words: why was the TKGE there, too?

Edit: Also, there isn't even any mention of the Tree of Life before Adam and Eve get kicked out, much less of them eating from it. I don't know about you, but if a story doesn't talk about its characters doing a certain thing, and then talks about how they have to be prevented from doing it in the future after a certain point, it doesn't seem reasonable to me to assume they've been doing it all along.

An example: a story is told about a mild mannered boy who one day goes into a fit of rage and beats another boy almost to death, and afterwards is very violent. Someone remarks that he has to be kept away from guns, lest he go on a shooting spree. Is there any reason to assume that this boy did any sport shooting, say, prior to beating that one boy up? No mentions of guns are made until someone thinks about how dnagerous the kid could be with a pistol or a shotgun in his hands. What do you think?

Celsus:

Sure, if you're willing to grant inspiration from the Epic of Gilgamesh, this is a working explanation. But this whole tangent was started because of someone asking a question to challenge a fundamentalist interpretation of the Bible (no death before the fall). Thus, the explanation you cite, while in the real world is quite fine, in fundie-land is verbotten. Given this, the issue of inspiration from Gilgamesh isn't relevent to this discussion. The fundie position isn't concerned with what "ancient writers" wanted to do with Biblical mythology; to them, the Bible is a perfect and inerrent message from God. Only the literal meaning of the words count. If you accept and ambiguity in the text, then the idea of the Bible being a perfect communication is blown to hell, because ambiguity leaves things too open to interpretation for a strict literalist view, of the sort that would propose that "before the fall" no death occured.