Did they eat from the Tree of Life?

reply to post by DISRAELI


I've been looking into the Pseudepigrapha because of some books I have been reading which link them to the Book of Revelation, so I just bumped into this and thought it would be of interest to the topic.

In terms of "one-off theory"...

Something that has become increasingly apparent in the last 50 years (er... not that I've been alive for all of that, being only 30) is that the Church has, by and large, utterly missed the point as far as Israel is concerned. Replacement Theology (look it up!) has caused the church to consider Israel as being redundant, abandoned by God, and hence the church has also rejected or largely ignored the contribution that Jewish scholars can and have made to Old Testament textual commentary and interpretation.

When you begin looking at the books of Genesis and Revelation, you run into real issues in this respect; the Protestant Church, having inherited Replacement Theology from their Reformer heritage, has no idea how to interpret the book of Revelation (and often bluntly refuses to study it or even attempt to interpret it) and allegorises much of the Old Testament (particularly passages relating to the Messianic Kingdom). This approach is entirely at odds with much of Jewish Scriptural interpretation over the centuries.

This again affects how the Tree of Life is viewed, as Revelation becomes a non-literal book whose text has largely been fulfilled prior to 70ad; reconciling the place of the Tree of Life in an amillenial context becomes a complex enterprise. The amillenial view that Christians will be "whisked away" at the Second Coming and spend eternity in heaven thus creates an issue where the church feels that they can't reconcile eternity in heaven with the need for the tree of life. They lose the significance of the Tree, along with the understanding that heaven is not the eternal home of man (then what would be the point of a new heaven and new earth?), and so many other important aspects of the future age.

Excuse the rant... but it drives me insane that so many abandon the simple, self-evident literal truth of Scripture in order to feed their own agendas!

Originally posted by DISRAELI

Originally posted by lonewolf19792000
The Tree of Life was the good tree, the Tree of Knowledge was the evil tree. This can be represented as a metaphor or allegory of choosing between Jesus Christ or choosing Lucifer (Satan).

Revelation certainly makes clear that from a Christian standpoint the Tree of Life is inseparable from Jesus;
"To him who conquers I will grant to eat of the Tree of Life..."- Revelation ch2 v7

edit on 24-1-2012 by DISRAELI because: (no reason given)

Yeah, that right there also tells you who the Master of eternal life is and that Jesus is God.

The most intriguiging Tree of Life interpretation I've ever come across was neither literal nor metaphorical but rather, visceral.

The interpretation was given by a child psychologist who had done some research in perinatal psychology. His interpretation/hypothosis was that the Tree of Life referred to memories of the placenta, umbilical cord and the individual's blood circulation network. He produced a photo that looked much like the root, trunk and branch network of an oak tree and said that actually, the photo was of the circulatory system of an unborn child and how it attaches to the mother's body, the source of the child's life within the womb. He also produced pics of children's paintings and pointed to a similarity, regardless of the child's cultural references, in all the paintings that he interpreted as being the child depicting it's perinatal memories.

The guy said that his research had including looking at how the Tree features in most world religions and how religious interpretations for Trees always include allegorical or metaphorical references to Life or the Lifeforce.

In answer to your question Disreali, I shall pose another; If the first people had truly tasted the fruit of the Tree of Life, would Abba have had to send Jesus?

Originally posted by teapot
In answer to your question Disreali, I shall pose another; If the first people had truly tasted the fruit of the Tree of Life, would Abba have had to send Jesus?

Your question is only a poser on the assumption that the effect of eating from the Tree of Life would be permanent, which is the assumption that I'm questioning.
I'm offering the suggestion that the effect lasted only as long as they continued eating, it was interrupted when they were removed from the Garden, and that the purpose of sending Jesus was (in effect) that access to the Tree of Life should be restored.

reply to post by DISRAELI

. . . that access to the Tree of Life should be restored.

I pulled out my copy of Barry Bandstra's book, Genesis 1-11, a handbook on the Hebrew text and it seems the correct understanding is "the tree of the living". So you could theorize that people once upon a time were connected to the tree of the living, then they weren't, so they could be connected in a non-literal sort of way to life through being written into a figurative Book of the Living, that one day gets pulled out and those found there (figuratively, by having their name found written in it) get reconnected to the tree of the living, meaning they are alive in a literal sense, after all this odd sort of way to explain something otherwise not understandable has been gotten past.

reply to post by jmdewey60

At first glance, that seems to work rather well, as a way of linking the "Tree of Life" and "Book of Life" images.

Originally posted by DISRAELI

Originally posted by teapot
In answer to your question Disreali, I shall pose another; If the first people had truly tasted the fruit of the Tree of Life, would Abba have had to send Jesus?

Your question is only a poser on the assumption that the effect of eating from the Tree of Life would be permanent, which is the assumption that I'm questioning.
I'm offering the suggestion that the effect lasted only as long as they continued eating, it was interrupted when they were removed from the Garden, and that the purpose of sending Jesus was (in effect) that access to the Tree of Life should be restored.

Born again in Spirit will take you to the top of the mountain but then life, with all it's temptations and distractions, is still to be lived and the sinful self remains. So, we must come time and time again, to have our cups refilled.

I would suggest that the entire allegory of the Fall refers to our broken relationship with God and that the Resurrection is how God ensured that the relationship was restored. But this does not mean we become perfect and no longer require manna from Heaven to restore our flagging spirits and broken hearts. I defy any Christian to say that they've never had doubts, never questioned God's love, never experienced despair over how God's enemies rampage over the Earth. Yet we are asked to put our Trust and Faith in God's omni-love, even as we witness death and destruction. Us, flawed humanity, cannot carry that alone and need Love to restore us to the Light.

Originally posted by teapot
I would suggest that the entire allegory of the Fall refers to our broken relationship with God and that the Resurrection is how God ensured that the relationship was restored.

I've got no quarrel with this way of putting it.

reply to post by DISRAELI

At first glance, that seems to work rather well, as a way of linking the "Tree of Life" and "Book of Life" images

What I failed to include is that the book of life comes from a book of the living, which is like a census. So metaphorically you could have this book where the people with their names in it are something you could term "the potentially living" which would also explain this inexplicable saying by Jesus that those who believed in him would never die.

This thread is a pendant (as they say in artistic circles) to the more recent thread;

The tree of what knowledge?

The discussion is further continued in;

With knowledge comes death?