Getting Back to the Garden of Eden - The BAS Library
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Home > Magazines > Bible Review > December 1998

Getting Back to the Garden of Eden

The Hebrew Bible suggests three possible ways to attain immortality

By Ronald S. Hendel

The main problem with the Garden of Eden is that we’re no longer in it. According to Genesis 3:22–24, the first humans were banished from paradise by God, and he stationed fierce creatures at its entrance to bar any future entry. The humans are banished so that they won’t be able to eat the fruit of the Tree of Life and live forever. The exile from Eden guarantees that people will be subject to death. The path to immortality is sealed off, and there’s no obvious way back to the Garden. Or is there? One of my favorite blues […]

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Endnotes

1.

For a thorough treatment of this issue, see James Barr, The Garden of Eden and the Hope of Immortality (Minneapolis: Fortress, 1992).

2.

Hermann Gunkel, Genesis, trans. M. Biddle (Macon, GA: Mercer Univ. Press, 1997), p. 36; and most extensively, Jon D. Levenson, Sinai and Zion: An Entry into the Jewish Bible (Minneapolis: Winston, 1985), pp. 132–133 and passim.

3.

From Hermann Gunkel derives the formula for this apocalyptic principle, Urzeit wird Endzeit “primeval time becomes the endtime.” His classic work on the subject is Schöpfung und Chaos in Urzeit und Endzeit (Göttingen: Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht, 1895).