The Problem of Food in the Garden of Eden
There are three essential needs for life – air, water and food. Without air we die in minutes. At most we can live only a few days without water and without food a few weeks. Take the need to breathe. Both plants and animals need air. But instead of competing with each other for air to breathe, plants and animals complement and benefit one another. Plants breathe in carbon dioxide and breathe out oxygen. Animals breathe in oxygen and breathe out carbon dioxide. In using air, each one produces what the other needs. The relationship between plants and animals is symbiotic – each party complements the other in a relationship that benefits both.
Now consider the need for water. Unlike air, water has only one ingredient and both plants and animals need water itself. Yet the demand for this vital resource is still a model of cooperation. Plants and animals do not compete against each other for water. Plants take water from under the ground where it is not usually available for use by animals. Animals take water from the surface of lakes and streams that are not generally sources for plants. Also, the use of water by plants benefits animals by influencing the climate to produce rain. And the use of water by animals benefits plants by adding nutrients to the soil.
The third need for life is food. Here it would seem natural for the cooperation seen in air and water to continue. Nothing has to die for us to breathe and nothing must die for us to drink water. But here the cooperation in the natural world breaks down. Food is different. Here something must die for us to eat. This most people accept as normal, after all we live in a dog eat dog world.
But why is food different from air and water? A piece of bread is food. How is bread different in this regard to air and water? Bread is made from seeds produced by plants. Plants need food too but their food comes from light produced by the sun. The “food’ that plants use is without cost. Light is a good example of food being like water and air but things soon change.
Meat is food too. One animal may eat another. But at some point, the animal that is eaten is one that eats plants. Without plants as food the animal kingdom would soon starve. The plant kingdom feeds the animal kingdom and light from the sun feed the plant kingdom.
Light is the source of all food. So awesome is this process that it seems we cannot have direct knowledge of it. Light flows to the green plants, which use light to make the food that flows to the animals. It would be an advantage for an animal to be able to make food from light the way that plants do. But there are no animals that can make food from light the way plants do.
Plants that receive their food from this ultimate source are unconscious and unseeing. There are no plants with eyes that can see or minds that can know. Life, it seems, is shielded from ever coming face to face and knowing where its life comes from. Life is divided in two. The living things that receive their “food†as light are unconscious and unseeing. And the animals that can see and think receive the “light as food†only indirectly from the food that the plants produce for them.
We have seen that the plants feed the animal kingdom but not all animals eat plants. Some animals eat plants while some animals eat other animals. While it is possible for all animals to eat food from plants they don’t. The beneficial relationship that exists between plants and animals in regard to air and water breaks down at the level of food. It would appear that life was designed to be co-operative and mutually beneficial. But for some reason this has changed at the food level and become competitive and life destroying.
The book of Genesis in the Bible tells the story that deals with this very issue: the story of the Garden of Eden. For some this story is only a myth. Clearly this garden is an impossible situation in the world we know. But for a story to remain in circulation for thousands of years there must be something to it.
The Garden of Eden is a story about food, though tradition has taught us to ignore this aspect. If one rereads carefully the Garden of Eden story an outline can be found of how life was meant to be. A world without death in which all life lives in perfect harmony.
In Genesis we are told that in the Garden all animals ate fruit and leaves, that is, the plant kingdom provided food for the animal kingdom.
And God said, “I give you every seed-bearing plant on the face of the whole earth and every tree that has fruit with seed in it. They will be yours for food. And to all the beasts of the earth and all the birds of the air and all the creatures that move on the ground - everything that has the breath of life in it - I give every green plant for food.†And it was so.
Genesis 1:29
This then would put the provision of food in harmony with the overall symbiotic design for life. According to Genesis, the plant kingdom provided food for the animal kingdom and in return Adam “tended the gardenâ€. Here then is a beneficial and complementary relationship whereby the plant kingdom provides for the needs of the animal kingdom and humanity provides for the needs of the plants.
If we look again at Genesis 1:29-30 we must conclude that the exact diet that was given here consisted only of fruit and leaves. In Genesis 3:18 we find this fact reinforced, as when leaving the Garden God tells Adam and Eve that they will now eat the plants themselves:
“and you shall eat the plants of the field†Genesis 3:18
This verse implies that before this, whole plants were not eaten. The point here to remember is that in the Garden death did not exist. If animals had eaten the plants themselves, then death would have been present.
The dietary restriction to only fruit and leaves meant that death was not present in the Garden. For example if one eats a leaf from a plant the plant need not die. Nor is the leaf itself a living entity but can be taken without the loss of life of the plant. The same is true if one eats fruit from a tree. Later in Genesis, when Adam and Eve had left the Garden of Eden, we find that plants themselves were not eaten; rather mankind was given meat as food.
“The fear and dread of you will fall upon all the beasts of the earth and all the birds of the air, upon every creature that moves along the ground, and upon the fish of the sea, they are given into your hands. Everything that lives and moves will be food for you. Just as I gave you the green plants, I now give you everything.†Genesis 9:2-3
In the Garden of Eden no living thing died for anything else to breathe. Nothing had to die for anything to drink water. And nothing had to die for anything to eat – a perfect world without death. But we have only just touched upon what this story has to say to us. There are other issues and we have questions we have to ask. For example how did this perfect world change and become the one we live in?
How did all of this change and food become the entry point of death into our world? Let us look again at Genesis 1-29-30:
“I give you every seed-bearing plant†and “every tree that has fruit with seed in it.â€
Adam and Eve were given fruit with seed in it but at the same time there was one fruit that they were forbidden to eat:
“Of every tree of the garden you may freely eat; but of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil you shall not eat, for in that day that you eat of it you shall surely die.†Genesis 2:16-17
Here we have two cases. In the first case God gives Adam and Eve every fruit with seed. In the second case God gives Adam and Eve every fruit except the fruit of the knowledge of good and evil. For both of these cases to be true then the fruit of the knowledge of good and evil could not have had a seed - perhaps like such fruits as oranges and grapes that can be seedless. And as we will see a seedless fruit does in fact represent the “knowledge of good and evil.â€
Today we are governed by countless rules that cover almost every aspect of our daily lives. In the time of Moses when God gave the Ten Commandments, life may have been simpler. Rules are meant to keep order and in a simpler world perhaps fewer are needed. But what many people don’t really grasp about the Garden of Eden is that there was only one rule. There were no other rules, just the one. In the Garden, just one rule was needed to keep order.
In the Garden, plants and fruit with seeds were given as food and fruit without seeds was forbidden. That was the only rule. A fruit without seeds is both good and evil. It is good because it is nourishing and good to eat. It is evil because it becomes scarce when it is consumed. When something is scarce it becomes a source of conflict between competing parties. Eating the forbidden fruit would lead to disorder and the need for more and more rules.
On the other hand consuming a fruit with seeds will lead to an abundance of what is being consumed because the seeds can be planted to produce more of what is being consumed. The more abundant something is, the less need there is for rules to govern its use. Once there were no rules for the use of air because it is in such great abundance. That was then, and now, of course, things are different.
With the economy of just a few words we have an amazing insight into how life could actually be perfect. It stuns one to realize that this story is thousands of years old. After all, these are issues that mankind only now has recognized as being paramount. How could people living in a primitive world write with such keen insight unless they were writing about something that had been real?