> Even God appeared to be aware that a fallen man could live forever.
> God said in Genesis
> 3:22: "The man has now become like one of us, knowing good and evil.
> He must not be allowed to reach out his hand and take also from the
> tree of life and eat, and live forever."
I have to agree with Glenn on this one.
This is a verse that has puzzled me for a long time. God is revealing
to us that, Man - At This Point - would not live forever; he would
eventually die. Did this situation come into existance as a result of
the fall? Is this the death that Adam was told would occur if he ate
the fruit of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil?
Or was this "not living forever" the situation before the fall as well?
If Man's "not living forever" indicated here is the result of the fall,
this verse seems to imply that unless God himself took explicit action,
Adam could circumvent the curse himself by simply eating of the tree of
life. So we have here a fallen, SINFUL Adam, with the potential of
living forever.
How literal do we get here? I have not read anywhere in the bible that
Eden no longer exists; only that it is guarded by a cherubim to prevent
man's entrance. It is a real, tangible place with geologic and
biological characteristics. Is there, in this place called Eden, a
real tree with fruit that contains within its substance the means of
living forever? Does the fruit of this tree possess some quality, or
contain some substance that would grant imortality to anyone who ate
it? Would this quality or substance be of a biochemical nature.
something that could potentially, with the proper instruments, be
investigated by a biologist. or biochemist? Or is it simply a "magic
apple?"
And what about Eden?
23 So the LORD God banished him from the Garden of Eden to work the
ground from which he had been taken. 24 After he drove the man out, he
placed on the east side of the Garden of Eden cherubim and a flaming
sword flashing back and forth to guard the way to the tree of life.
I assume that Eden is a place that exists on earth, some tangible place
that biolgists and geologists could investigate. It is popularly
considered to be somewhere in the region of the middle east. I have
read nowhere in the bible that God removed it from the face of the
earth. Literally, does Eden still exist, and is there still a real
angel (cherubim) with a real flaming sword guarding the entrance?
I believe that Adam was a real person, the entire New Testament falls
apart if he ws not, (The geneologies of Jesus are meaningless if they
do not point to real people.) I also believe that Eden was a real
place. In terms of Genre, I do not believe the early chapters of
Genesis are myth, or analogy or metaphor. I believe ALL the events
mentioned in Genesis are history. But---I have some serious questions
about what I would have seen if I had been there as the events were
taking place. And I believe God has no problem with my questions.
I have tried for quite some time to make sense of the early chapters of
Genesis. The words used refer to real places and real people and real
events - but when those people and events are "fleshed out' - is the
situation as simple as the strict literalist would have it be?
Last fall as my daughter was sudying *the discovery of the new world*, I
recalled the old doggeral "in fourteen hundred and ninety two, Columbus
sailed the ocean blue." In the course of her studies, I searched web
pages, looked at childrens books and massive scholarly works on Columbus
and his voyages. The simple little doggeral serves as a simple reminder
of a much vaster and complex reality.
This is of course a highly imperfect way of describing my own method of
reading Genesis. It does point out however, that behind the written
words, there is a vast complex reality, the kind you can go out and stub
your toe on. The literalist view reads more like a fairy tale, or comic
book. The people and events as they describe them are unreal.
Blaine