I’m not sure that’s correct. Gen 1:30 says, “And to all the beasts of the earth and all the birds in the sky and all the creatures that move along the ground – everything that has the breath of life in it – I give every green plant for food.’ And it was so.”
According to this verse, there was not as single living creature that was not a plant eater, including lions, spiders, sharks and eagles, no matter where you looked.
And yet Genesis 1 doesn’t mention the Tree of Life, nor does it mention the Tree of Good/Evil.
Yes, true, both trees are mentioned. Although, since chapter and verse numbers are not inspired, I’m not quite sure why the fact that it’s not mentioned in Gen 1 is of great relevance. Perhaps you can expand on what it is you are try to say?
First, I dont think you get anywhere by excluding chapter and verse. Yes… these distinctions were inserted by latter day editors, but they merely help make a text more intelligible.
Genesis 1 makes no specification regarding the tree of Good/Evil … presumably because the tree had not yet been created. Genesis 2 talks about a NEW area on Earth… since it clearly spells out the NEW issue of a tree that is NOT good for man to eat from!
AND there is Proof! 
Whoa! Zombie thread. I should have left it alone.
I wasn’t aware that I was trying to get anywhere by excluding chapter and verses. I was just trying to engage with this:
But if you are talking about a NEW area then it would work exactly the wrong way to for AllenWitmerMilller wouldn’t it? For it would be the herbivorous creatures that are outside “in the wilderness which typifies the rest of creation” - since that is in Genesis 1, and it will have to be the carnivorous ones inside the “specially-planted garden reserve”, or the “NEW area”, as you put it which is Genesis 2.
@raych, be aware the comment you quoted is over a year old. It might be better to start a new thread, rather than ask people to recall their thoughts of a year ago. Let me know if you want me to move comments to a new thread.
/fnord
Right. Thanks. I’m new to the forum and just working through this thread and found AllenWitmerMiller’s comment interesting. Please do feel free to move the comment to a new thread. I’m finding my way around still. Thanks.
No. It is does not call them “plant eaters”. The text says that plants are given to various creatures as food. Today we word it somewhat differently by calling green plants the foundation of most food chains. When a lion eats a gazelle, it is consuming nutrients from soil and air which were assembled by photosynthetic plants (i.e., grasses in the case of gazelles.) Green plants certainly do provide food for the categories of animals listed in the Biblical text, including the carnivores. The ancients had no difficulty understanding that a meadow of grass eventually becomes next spring’s new lambs, which were at risk for predation by carnivorous lions.
Sorry. I read that sentence and the rest of the paragraph twice but don’t follow your logic on this. Not sure what you mean. And gardens typically are not known for hosting herbivorous animals or carnivorous animals except as such creatures may manage to find their way in. Gardens are primarily designed and planted to favor plant growth, typically for human benefit.
Furthermore, the Bible says nothing about a “second creation” of some sort where God totally transformed food chains and changed the digestive systems of what became carnivorous animals.
I do understand where you are most likely coming from as I was raised in a northern Bible Belt fundamentalist church which promoted many of these popular traditions—and I was a big fan of The Genesis Flood (1962, Henry Morris & John Whitcomb Jr.) in my younger years. I got to know Dr. Whitcomb from his preaching engagements in various churches and in my career as an academic. I had great respect for the late Dr. Whitcomb but eventually recognized the gaps in his hermeneutics.
Thanks for the welcome! To be honest, I’m not sure what I class myself as. I wasn’t raised in a fundamentalist environment. I was one of those typical mockers of Christianity really. But like probably many here, just read, loved and trusted in God’s word post-conversion.
No, I don’t believe in a “second creation” either. This was part of a conversation with George which is not repeated on this thread. I was just taking his argument. It’s probably not worth pursuing that as neither of us believe in a second creation.
Gen 1:30 reads, “And to all the beasts of the earth and all the birds in the sky and all the creatures that move along the ground – everything that has the breath of life in it – I give every green plant for food.’ And it was so.”
I don’t feel it’s necessary to interpret that verse as referring to a food chain; only if we want to introduce animal death before the fall.
Maybe I can put it like this. I invite a bunch of friends round and say to them, “Guys, if you’re hungry, all fruit and salad in the fridge yours, the veg in the garden too!” If I later find them grilling my juicy steak, frying my sausages, and roasting my pet dog in the oven, I’d be screaming, “What the heck! Why are you eating my steak and sausages, and roasting my dog?!” I wouldn’t be happy if they said, “What’s the matter with you? Don’t you know that the cow ate your grass, and your dog ate the pet rabbit that ate your carrots? We are just eating your salad and veg as you said!”
I do not really understand how it is possible to get from “originally no death or carnivory” to the familiar carnivorous ecology post fall, without an extensive second act of (re)creation, be it by God or Devil. The children of Adam can get from gardening to sinning and killing without any change in morphology essential; only a bad attitude required. Animals, though, must feed as they are adapted to do, it is not just a change of appetite involved. For so much of the animal kingdom, nearly everything about them revolves around feeding to stay alive, or not becoming a meal. Their camouflage (often extraordinarily eleborate), stealth and appearance, vision and placement of their eyes - forward, sideways, on top of head to hide in water, dentation, venom and poison, speed, claw and talon, digestive tracts, social behavior, defenses of ink and quill, on and on - their role in the food chain largely defines the animal. Would a pre-fall lion look rather like an antelope? Would not even a child intuit that a T-Rex is bad news?
BTW, this thread delved more into death and the fall:
Very very rapid evolution, comparable to a second Creation, seems necessary. This inconvenience is generally overlooked.
Also, Dan_Eastwood: “Very very rapid evolution, comparable to a second Creation, seems necessary. This inconvenience is generally overlooked.”
It’s really interesting. I honestly don’t see any problem at all – unless you do not believe in God and that God does miracles (apologies if I wrongly presumed that you are Christians). He is more than capable of pronouncing judgement on his own creation because of the fall. I’m just speaking as a Bible believing Christian; after all, he did curse a fig tree and it did wither. He calls down fire, hail and thunder. He turns water into wine. He restores sight to the blind, restores the paralysed and raises the dead. He calms a storm. He splits the sea. And it’s not a matter of scale either, because as Christians, we absolutely depend on it. He, says in a twinkling of an eye we will all be change, he’ll wrap up this universe and bring in a new heaven and a new earth. Just imagine if we insist on him doing this be gradual natural processes. We’ll be waiting for a few billion years for our new imperishable body to evolve. I trust that that is not your hope, if you are Christians, because it most certainly is not mine. I really see him as a big God, and I expect him to do just as he says he would.
Agreed, but is that not really the argument I made, that if there was not predation before fall, that nature had to undergo wholesale re-creation to the point animals were unrecognizable from their prior selves? That certainly constitutes a miracle of immense scale, granted; but the pervasive extent of this is, as Dan stated, generally overlooked. I was responding to your previous statement that you do not believe in a “second creation” - how do you distinguish the broad scale miracle incurred by the fall from a what is effectively a second creation?
If there is a well articulated theology which addresses how, say, a Portuguese man-of-war came to paralyze and eat fish, I have yet to see it. Descriptions of the fall I have seen deal only with natural impulses and not anatomy or morphology, and seem to envision the pre-fall animals looking as the predators with which we are familiar. Case in point, this AiG Eden diorama:
Certainly God is able to perform a second miraculous creation if he desired to. The problem is that this second miraculous creation is not attested to anywhere in Scripture. Do you see it in Genesis 3? All I see is that God expelled them from the Garden and placed it under guard. Perhaps I can see someone arguing that snakes were transformed. But there is nothing there about the transformation of all other animals.
Before I forget, how do I delete my membership to this forum? This is far too good a site! And I can see myself spending far too much time reading and engaging with such a great bunch of folks, and I’m already feeling guilty!
To answer your question, I think you have to read into it, just like freewill, or the Trinity. I think I’ve demonstrated at the beginning of this thread, in answer to AllenWitmerMiller, that you just can’t get around Gen 1:30: Were there carnivores before the Fall?. So, something must have happened.
May be I can put it another way. Joshua argued that animal death is very good here: Animal Death is Very Good, quoting Job 38:39–41, 39:29–30, Ps. 104:21, 29.
Consider this, you take your wife and toddler son to a safari holiday, and one day, as you’re out walking in the wilds, a lion pounces on your toddler boy, drags him away before you can do anything about it. Will you really praise God and say, praise the Lord, what a mighty and majestic lion! And look how wonderfully the Lord provided food for the lion and his cubs today? The next day, you go for a swim with your wife, and before you know it, a shark comes up and drags your wife down to the depths. Will you really say, Hallelujah, the hungry shark got fed today? This is not an unfamiliar scenario - it happens, and you’ll have to say, according to the interpretation that Animal Death is Very Good, had Adam and Eve had children and grandchildren before the fall, this would have been a perfectly reasonable scenario. I grant that post-fall, this is how animals survive, and that, in God’s providence, it is the best that can be salvaged from a fallen world. However, I struggle to agree with Joshua that it is a picture of very good and what God intended all along. If that were the case, he would have to shout hallelujah for the above.
There’s a reason why Isaiah 11:6-9 reads:
“The wolf will live with the lamb, the leopard will lie down with the goat,
the calf and the lion and the yearling together; and a little child will lead them. 7 The cow will feed with the bear, their young will lie down together, and the lion will eat straw like the ox. 8 The infant will play near the cobra’s den, and the young child will put its hand into the viper’s nest. 9 They will neither harm nor destroy on all my holy mountain, for the earth will be filled with the knowledge of the Lord as the waters cover the sea.”
These verses seem to me to be thoroughly compatible with Gen 1:30, and how God intended creation.
Apologies for this, I’d love to have this friendly back and forth, but, as I said, I just get that sense it’s not right for me. Hopefully, someone else will pick up the conversation. But I think I’d better resist the temptation! Many thanks to all who engaged with me. Really appreciated it.
If that’s what you really want to do, contact any moderator for assistance. There are other options:
But really, we aim to engage with people of diverse beliefs, and appreciate your contributions. You shouldn’t feel guilty about that!
I am either agnostic or an extremely lapsed Presbyterian. I also don’t know exactly what your beliefs are, but my educated guess it that the following will not offend you (apologies if I get it wrong). 
It is not my intent to argue about your beliefs; you seems happy about them and I have no cause to interfere. I agree an omnipotent God can do anything and we would be none-the-wiser. We can adjust beliefs in this way and find a happy acceptance of faith and science, no troubles there. Take this one step farther, and we see that faith really doesn’t depend on science at all - faith is something that can be valued independently (and should be, IMO).
Now compare this sort of belief to those who angrily insist that science must be wrong, denying even the basic laws of physics? They make the same sort of argument about an omnipotent God, but fail to see harmony between faith and the science we know works perfectly well. To these people any acceptance of science destroys their faith.
