I don't want anyone to think I'm being blasphemous so let me make a couple clarifications of my own. My little scenario of events is far from what I believe to be true but just possible. I'm quite familiar with the accounts in Genesis as well as of Jesus' life. I accept the accounts at face value and believe them as they stand. However, I also recognize the fact that the accounts in Genesis give few details and to fill in the details by means of science or reason is pure speculation on our part. In that regard I find it fascinating to muse about what might have been.
Regarding the physical status of Adam and Eve, I am not suggesting that they were nebulous beings devoid of physical qualities and dimensions as we think of "spirits" today. It is quite obvious that God created Adam from actual matter and we will assume from that detail that he had an actual body but that doesn't mean his body shared the same properties as our post-fall bodies. Like dby, I am suggesting that Adam and Eve originally had bodies similar to that with which Jesus manifested himself after the resurrection. Of course he ate, as did Adam, but his body was incorruptible, and was not of the same properties of we are made. Our bodies, like all other known beasts, are inevitably corruptible by their very nature. Jesus' post-res. body and possibly Adam and Eve's bodies were of a different property which were not subject to the laws of nature as we understand them but were fully able to interact with the natural world as we know it. So, in that respect, my proposition is in line with natman and dby. However, I propose that those bodies are still of this world and are subject to the natural law that God set in place at the beginning of time. Despite our puffed up pride in our understanding of the natural world and the laws that govern it, our understanding is feeble. We only know what we can observe, but there are a great many things which we cannot.
However, my suggestion includes the possibility of other living things of God's creation who's bodies possess the same properties of Adam and Eve's pre-sin and Jesus' post-res. bodies. So, in light of that what if the tree of knowledge was not a tree known to us but a tree of different properties. The forbidden tree could have even been a driad. Granted it may have been a "normal" kind of tree of and, only being one, was unable to reproduce itself (no tree of the opposite sex with which to cross pollinate) and thus became extinct upon its death. However, I find it odd (and using my own reason is a flaw in my logic) that we know no means by which an organic organism can produce a fruit capable of creating knowledge or inserting anything into our minds. Of course, they can alter chemical concentrations making it easier or harder to manipulate our minds ourselves but they can't insert knowledge. So, whose to say that other natural incorruptible beasts were created along with all the beasts? Why not faeries, and nymphs, and driads, and other creatures that show up in folklore around the world with which we no longer interact? We couldn't know for sure if we tried but it's an interesting notion!
One more quick note about the physicality of bodies. My use of the word "physical" is to describe a body which has all the physical properties that we can expect in a body. My use of the word "spirit" in describing Adam and Eve in their original state is to say that they may have had bodies (actual bodies) which do not share the same properties as our own. However, a spirit (made) of this world is still only of this world and confined to it. God is not a spirit of this world and is far from confined to it. Thus, we may assume that Jesus' resurrected body was not, in fact, the actual body and dimensions of God but the same earthly body Jesus had before but with the properties once possessed by Adam and Eve. In fact that may be exactly what we have in store for us upon our physical death, the same old body as before only incorruptible. Kinda makes you want to lose weight, eh?
I don't want anyone to take this or any of this discussion too seriously. We simply can't know more than what we're told. But I do think it a great deal of fun to hypothesize.
In Christ,
td
