Its my understanding that the concept of all animals, including man,
being herbiverous before the fall comes primarily from the following
scriptures. (Anyone know of others?)
In Genesis 1:29-30, the first humans (male and female) are told:
"And God said, Behold, I have given you every herb bearing
seed, which is upon the face of all the earth, and every tree,
in the which is the fruit of a tree yielding seed; to you it
shall be for meat."
"And to every beast of the earth, and to every fowl of the air,
and to every thing that creepeth upon the earth, wherein there
is life, I have given every green herb for meat: and it was so."
Also there is the passage in Isaiah (?:??) that talks about a future
paradise when the "lion shall lay down with the lamb" and carnivores
will eat straw. [Sorry, I don't have the exact verses handy]
>When I was a child, my Sunday school teachers told me that thorns on
>roses were caused by Adam's fall. I never found this in the Bible, so I
>abandoned the idea. Roses have thorns because that's the way God made
>them--however and whenever he did so.
>
>As far as I am concerned, the primary result of the fall was spiritual
>death. The banishment from the Garden drove man away from the tree of
>life. The implication here is that man would not have lived forever
>physically until he had eaten from the tree of life regardless of his
>spiritual state.
Actually, I closely agree with what you say here. But there are many
who insist that the fall brought about physical death as well.
Incidentally, the flip side of having no physical death before the fall
would be that there could be no reproduction! :-( ... in spite of the
command to "Be fruitful and multiply"! Any reproduction without the
check of death would eventually overwhelm the ecosystem of paradise. I
would also suggest that there might be "waste disposal" problem in
paradise without the benefit of decay!
>The secondary result of the fall is that man eventually became meat
>eaters. I do not believe this means that non-Adamic men did not eat
>meat. The Adamic line of Homo Sapiens did not eat meat at first, but
>this changed following the Flood.
I will concede that this is a possible explanation. But I feel that it
is rather cruel to insist that Adam couldn't enjoy a good medium-rare
steak now and then. (with apologies to vegetarians and makers of soy
burgers!)
>I think too much is read into the story and dogmatic positions are held
>in which scripture is stretched far beyond its natural meaning.
Exactly! I believe that the scenarios proposed by John Morris to explain
away carnivores in Eden illustrate this point. When all of the scientific
evidence for an old earth (with death and suffering existing long before the
appearance of humans) is forced to agree with ICR's YEC (or "literal
creationist") version of a literal Genesis, then both the scriptures and the
scientific evidence must be stretched to a point approaching absurdity.
Steve Smith
[The opinions expressed here are my own
and should not be attributed to my employer]
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