Death occured before the fall?

Concerning your questions of post #97, ask them in relation to Jesus Christ after he rose from the dead, and ate fish with Peter and the disciples. As he ate then, he has the same body now.
Before the fall, had Adam and Eve ate of the Tree of Life, they would have lived forever. Thus to speculate on those questions is just that--speculation. I don't believe we can come to any dogmatic answer.

 

:BangHead::BangHead:
I took time to explain that the reading here is clearly poetic. As you know, often in Hebrew poetry things can be said in different ways. The verse does not say that anything other than the seeds/fruit were eaten.

In the KJV, The verse says 'every herb bearing seed...and every tree, in the which is the fruit of a tree yielding seed;' Our present definition of herb is based upon the seasons which may or may not have existed before the fall; but generally, the leaf of the herb is taken (not killing the plant), and the trees with fruit containing seeds obviously does not kill the plant either.

BTW, this translation seems to omit things like roots (carrots, potatoes, beets; I cannot wait to share this with my wife!).


You cannot build a case for death before sin based upon these verses. Period.

 

I've only read part of this thread so forgive me if this has been covered, but....

If there were no animal/plant death before the fall then how do you suppose Adam/Eve would have understood the coming consequences of eating the fruit. It's plain they heeded God's commands for however long. Did they obey just out of the good of their hearts or were they motivated because they had understanding of the consequence and didn't want that to befall them?

Have fun, I may not be back today or tommorrow.

 

God was speaking of spiritual death, not physical death when He said "Thou shalt surely die." Had they seen physical death, they would have feared that happening to them knowing they would cease to exist if they chose to eat of the tree. The threat of physical death, knowing what physical death was, would have been a preventive.

There was no physical death before the fall of man.

 

Is that where the fossils came from? :laugh:

 

Okay, I have one minute before I disapear again.

Standingfirm you appear to be contradicting yourself, or I'm confused(likely).

How do you suppose that Adam/Eve would have understood spiritual death any more than physical if neither existed before the fall?

When God gives us a consequence to sin, does He give us one we don't understand and can't comprehend? Is there any other place in scripture where such a consequence is given?

And about warnings(and the part of your post I highlighted): isn't a warning supposed to be a preventative?? Why give a warning if not to stop or prevent someone from a certain action?

Somehow, I have to believe, Adam and Eve knew what the word death meant, whether or not they understood it to be physical or spiritual. I also don't believe one can understand the meaning of spiritual death without first understanding physical death.

 

I'm probably kinda slow on this, but where did we get the idea there was no death in the world until the Fall? I know Paul talks about death coming to men because of Adam, etc. but isn't that spiritual death, limited to mankind. That doesn't say anything about what was going on in the animal world, or about physical death.

 

yer right, menageriekeeper, yer confused.

More than likely, God told them what death was. Not everything He said to them was written in the Word at the time He said it.

I have pointed this out before. Eve would have been lying when she said '...neither shall ye touch it,...' had God not said it. She said God said it, yet we do not find it written previously that He did. I do not believe she lied. I believe God said it but it was not written previously.

 

Adam and Eve did see death before they were cast out of the garden, but it was after the fall.


Gen 3:21 Unto Adam also and to his wife did the LORD God make coats of skins, and clothed them.

 

I don't know Amy. Several reptiles shed their old skins, for all we know God used such as that to make those coats.

 

The poetic reference was only a suggestion, a reason why you cannot be dogmatic about the inferrence of death. And Poetry should be taken literally, it just takes a second look sometimes to understand its meaning.



MenagerieKeeper, You have a good point about whether Adam could understand 'death' if he had never seen it, but he walked with God, so undoubtedly the concept was known to him--all he had to do was ask anyway; that's what I would have done ).

 

Have you ever seen a shed snake skin? Why, the fig leaf would have been a better covering.
drop jaw

 

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But it wouldn't have lasted as long.

The point being, that we can't really argue one way or the other in the absence of scripture AND we really need to pay attention to places like this where we are reading into scripture an interpretation that is not clear from the context, but rather from our own limited point of view.

God doesn't tell us He slaughtered an animal to obtain the skins. He may have or He may have used a skin from an already dead animal or He may have used the skin from a reptile that doesn't turn translucent when it sheds. We just don't know. But most of us assume He slaughtered an animal as a way to teach blood sacrifice. This idea is undoubtably based upon the much later scripture that tells us "without the shedding of blood there can be no remission of sin.

Same with the idea of how Adam knew what death was. WE know what death is and we apply our own perspective to what Adam knew or didn't know. What I see as important in this passage is that whether or not Adam understood "death" in the same manner as we, he understood that there would be a dire consequence for disobedience and still choose to disobey.