I had a question/comment relating to the Garden of Eden. You usually don’t think about there being death in the garden until after Adam and Eve have sinned, yet God tells them not to eat from the Tree of Knowledge…you shall surely die. Then Satan says you surely shall not die. I was just wondering what reference or example did they have of death at this point. They must have understood the concept, did animals die at this point before the fall?
It’s logical to assume that God would have explained the concept of death to Adam and Eve because if they didn’t understand it then both God’s warning and Satan’s denial would have had no meaning to them. I imagine if I was Adam and God said, “If you eat the fruit of this tree you will die,” I would have responded, “what does that mean, I will die?”
In Romans 5:12 Paul said that sin entered the world through one man (Adam) and death came from sin. Therefore Adam could not have had an example of death before he sinned. It had to have been explained in the context of warning them.