The location of the Tree of Life

I think it is commonly agreed that the Garden of Eden was a real physical place, located on earth. Biblical support comes from genesis 2:13

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And the name of the second river [is] Gihon: the same [is] it that compasseth the whole land of Ethiopia.

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This site has a nice little article on the fate of eden...it was destroyed by the flood.It is the creationists position that Genesis is a literal history of events. So the question is, what happened to the Tree of Life? Surely that was not destroyed by the flood too?God clearly did not want man to eat of the Tree of Life so he set up a guard around it and kicked man out of Eden.

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And the LORD God said, Behold, the man is become as one of us, to know good and evil: and now, lest he put forth his hand, and take also of the tree of life, and eat, and live for ever

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So he drove out the man; and he placed at the east of the garden of Eden Cherubims, and a flaming sword which turned every way, to keep the way of the tree of life.

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Genesis 3:22 and 24It seems clear that destroying the Tree of Life was not an viable option. Ascending it unto a spriritual plane to keep it safe was also rejected by God. He chose to guard it with a literal flaming sword and some Cherubims.The scenario leads us to the following:1. God decided later to destroy the Tree of Life in the flood.
2. The flood did not destroy the Tree of Life.If 1) why? Why set up a guard around the Tree of Life to protect it? Surely God was able to just keep man from it? Why would you protect something with a real flaming sword, and then destroy the thing you were protecting? Why not destroy it in the first place?If 2) Where is it?So 1) seems the most logical answer...but I find it a bit of an odd thing for God to do.****I Assume this word probably work best in the Inerrancy forum, but of course, faith and belief might work too****

Thread moved here from the Proposed New Topics forum.

Hi ModulousI hate to be the one to tell you this... Remember when your parents told you Santa Claus never existed? This is going to be one of those moments.The tree of life is just a fairy story! It's not reality! If you really believe the tree of life, the flaming sword, the serpent, the apple, etc. you might end up believing in all kinds of nonsense! It's just a story for kids!Mick

Hey Mick... if I'm not mistaken, Modulous is asking a rhetorical question in an attempt to generate an interesting discussion. This guess is especially well supported by the use of phrases such as "it is the creationists' position" and other such language. If you answer by floccipaucinihilipilificating the story in question (and denying a whole slough of others in the process), the thread either dies or derails into tangents as we bicker over whether all those other fairy tales are, in fact, fairy tales. Let's just play with the idea for a while.I'd also like to point out that "cherubim" is already inherently plural. No need to slap an "s" on the end to signify many of them. A cherub is part of a group of cherubim.(Edited for clarity)This message has been edited by zephyr, 06-07-2005 09:47 PM

silly me! sorry for floccipaucinihilipilificating Modulous.It's late and I'm tired, and I no longer recognize irony...Mick

Oh, g'damn! It is indeed late where you are. I'm in US Central and even my supposed bedtime draws ever nigh.Well, I expect work to go ballistic for the next two days so if the thread takes off I'll be way behind. So it goes.

I tend to think that the "Tree of Life" was a metaphor for Christ (and the church itself in some regards) in some way.Edit -- Note the Scriptural references: This message has been edited by Mr. Ex Nihilo, 06-07-2005 10:11 PM

He changed his mind. You hadn't noticed that the god of the Bible is very human? He regrets things he does, he reverses course, he completely changes his idea of how to save his creation from the fate he assigned it... he's rather short on consistency. Just like the people who thought him up. Why do you think he has gender? Because it's easier to worship a glorified human than a really unique god, and the ultimate human was always a man in the cultural context of the author(s). Most of his qualities are just exaggerated human virtues that vary from tale to tale, depending on the human inventor of the particular story in question.Obviously, it would be better if one could simply choose the character of one's deity from the get-go and make up only stories that fit it to the tee. However, since religious traditions spring from sheer speculation, warp over time, and are kluged together as social groups assimilate, this is virtually impossible to do with genuine beliefs. Logical believers do their best to piece it all together, but we still have points of tenuous connection and transition, and this is a great example. We have a story where God places fiery guardians around a physical paradise that the humans vacated at his command (which alone is funny since he didn't need cherubim to enforce the eviction order), and then a story where he flushes the whole earth down the toilet anyway. The only explanation that makes sense to me is that the two stories were concocted separately and the deity's vacillation (couched in different terms, but nonetheless recognizable as such) casually inserted to link them together.And man created God in his image. Male they created him, because men ruled their world and they could not imagine it any other way....

Are you saying it didn't have a physical location? Then what of the angels set to keep man from eating it? Genesis sure as hell says that God claimed they'd live forever on the Earth if they did. Then again, he had already misstated the effects of the other fruit. Maybe the tree of life was just a really big Psilocybe cubensis, and he had decided Adam and Eve were giggly enough without the influence of hallucinogens....

Maybe it did. Maybe it didn't. I dunno.The Scriptures in the beginning passages of Genesis certainly seem to indicate that it was something real. I tend to see it as a metaphor for something real -- and that could include a physical tree (but I'm not about to make any definitive statement regarding its physical nature). From my own point of view this is symbolic of someone becoming a believer in order to inheret its social benefits -- but not actually believing in God at all.In other words, I think God protects people from becoming too aware of their responsibility before they can actually handle it. The Scriptures also say that one will live forever if we believe in Christ -- yet we Christian people are still dying physically. Do you mean that they didn't physically die on that "exact" day that they ate from the fruit?In God's time-frame they did physically die on that "exact" day -- according to the thinking, "A day with the Lord is as a thousand years". Well...if we're going to seriously conjecture about what kind of tree the tree of life might have been, I tend to think your above description more precisely mirrors some of the attributes of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil. Their eyes were certainly "openned" after having partaken in it.Are you seriously asking what these trees might have been if they were real?

in tha qabala of course. two of the other rivers mentioned are the tigris and the euphrates.This message has been edited by arachnophilia, 06-07-2005 11:04 PM

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אָרַח

If "we Christian people" are still dying, maybe they aren't as Christian as they think they are.
But God was speaking to Adam and Eve. Why would He refer to His time-frame instead of theirs? If I tell you to call me at 10 PM, I mean in your time zone, don't I? After all, you don't even know what time zone I'm in.

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People who think they have all the answers usually don't understand the questions.

not neccessarily. people make all sort of requests on a purely self-centered basis, and this frequently is one of them. people tend to only operate within their own time frame.but god is not people.

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אָרַח

Yeah - I couldn't stop thinking about that when I was writing this all up. The link I posted, mentioned the Tigris/Euphrates link (and even provided a nice little map too...bless 'em.

You means fishes isn't a real word? What about sheeps? hehe, thanks for that...but you can blame the KJV - they got it wrong too