Just this morning I was reading from the books of Adam and Eve in the OT pseudepigrapha. I first heard about these books when Hugh Nibley quoted from them, and I have since kept them on my bookshelf. In this one, Adam and Eve are distraught, having transgressed, having lost their light and their glory where they lived in the garden. They are so overcome with grief that they fast and pray for forty days, and several times Adam dies by jumping to his death or beating upon his chest, and God must send the “Word” to raise him from death.
When Adam and Eve finally become overcome with hunger (a feeling which they had not known in the garden) they pray to God to take away their hunger. But the Word of God explains that they have become as the beasts in this strange land, and now they must eat. Then Adam requests fruit from the tree of Life, but the Word of God informs him that he cannot give it to him yet — not until 5500 years have passed. At that time, God will give them the fruit of the Tree of Life and they and their righteous seed shall live forever.
However, God knows that they are hungry now and must eat, so He commands the cherub in the garden to give Adam and Eve some figs from the garden fig tree (where they had previously hid.) The cherub picks two figs and throws them from the garden to Adam and Eve. But they don’t want to eat the figs — they well remember what had happened when they ate the fruit of the tree of knowledge. So they set the figs aside,
And the weight of each fig was that of a water-melon; for the fruit of the garden was much larger than the fruit of this land. (Chap XLI, verse 2, Adam and Eve)
Then I recalled Spencer’s account of his near death experience wherein he visits the future city of Zion:
…the fruit grew to enormous size. I once saw two men carrying a bunch of grapes attached to a pole between them. Each grape was the size of a watermelon. (Visions of Glory: One Man’s Astonishing Account of the Last Days,
p. 206)
p. 206)Zion and the Garden of Eden are of the same glory — a terrestrial glory or paradisiacal glory. If you read about the life in the garden, you will get a sense of the city of Zion. And if you read about Zion, you will get a sense of the garden of Eden. But definitely, for sure, this is the strange land, the one Adam and Eve found dark and dreary. I think it must have been a greater burden for them to carry, having known the glory of the life in the garden of Eden — the Zion life.
