THE TREE OF LIFE: WHAT IS IT?

And out of the ground made the Lord God to grow every tree that is pleasant to the sight, and good for food; the tree of life also in the midst of the garden, and the tree of knowledge of good and evil. (Gen 2:9) 

Out (from) the ground (adama)

 The word “kind” in scripture refers to taxonomy. The creation was the order of things. God did not create life first but firm things from which life is generated. The “gen” in generated refers to genetics. The Book of Genesis is about the beginning and spread of genetics. 

Adama is the source of the kind or “family” of man. The chosen family (the elect) is mankind who had dominion over the other families. 

 

Figure 1:Ranks of biological classifications

 

God created life (Gen 1:20) bringing “forth abundantly the moving creature that has life," 

The domain was the Garden of Eden (Gen 2:8) and the Garden consisted, not of just trees, but all things. 

It is thought that the Garden was like one that we would plant. A “domain” is a region controlled by one person or organization. The Garden was the domain of the One True God and in the domain, or Garden, was put life. 

Of all the life in the Garden Adam had some dominion. The domain was for his family…. “Let us make man in our image, after our likeness: and let them have dominion over the fish of the sea, and over the fowl of the air, and over the cattle, and over all the earth, and over every creeping thing that creeps upon the earth.” (Gen 1:26). 

Hence, our family — the family of Adam — were the elect among all the other creatures. 

We should ask, “What creeping things?” Anything that is animated throughout the (‘eres) “firmament.” Thus the “domain” is the firmament, or cosmos (Gen 1:6). 

The family of man was superior to any other beings in the cosmos. The only other known creatures in the cosmos are the angels. We were elected to have dominion over even them. 

According to the II Enoch, rebellious angels are imprisoned in the second heaven, immortal souls both the good and evil, in the third heaven, and angels in the fifth heaven with God outside all the heavens. All the heavens combined are the cosmos and all of them are “firm” things; some of which can be seen and others that cannot be seen with the human eye. 

The family of Adam was created with bright eyes to see both God above and into the heavens. Mankind had special features and us alone in our kingdom. 

A “kingdom” in taxonomy is a monarchial state; “the Spirit of God moved upon the face of the waters” (Gen 1:2) for Him (the Light) “to rule over the day and over the night” (Gen 1:18). Hence, God is the monarch of a kingdom, and that kingdom He is ruler of all. 

Next in taxonomy come “phylum” comes from “race” or “stock,” to include plants and animals. God clearly made mankind in the animal phylum because they were mobile (anthropoidal). Man was the only animal that walked upright without a tale to balance themselves while walking. Other primates were creeping things that balanced using their tails and arms. 

The taxonomical rank of “order” comes next. Orders are generally capitalized. The last of the order was man. We are of the highest rank in the creation. All things before are ranks. The beginning (Gen 1:1) was the first rank as the “beginning” literally means in the Hebrew. All things were made for the last rank that God called “Adam” (not the man, but his kind). 

Next on the taxonomy “tree” comes “family” — things that are related by consanguinity or affinity — by blood or relationships. By blood is of the same genetics. Human beings are all of the family of Adam, hence we are “mankind.” 

The woman was of the family of Adam; God created mankind male and female and the female He took from the male’s anatomy; “The rib, which the Lord God had taken from man, made he a woman” (Gen 2:22). 

Sin changed the genetics of the woman. After sin, Adam renamed the woman, “Adam called his wife's name Eve; because she was the mother of all living” (Gen 3:20). 

She was not the biological mother of but the source of our genetics. Through Eve, we have guile in us (Gen 3:13). The “Serpent” led her astray. The “Serpent’ was of a very different image (nahas) than that of God (Selem). She was beguiled by receiving the cunningness of another being of a different family from a different domain. Her “nature” had changed — she had guile in her blood. Original sin means genetic sin and Eve is the mother of all; all mankind has the genetics of Eve in us. (X chromosome?) 

The genetics from God through Adam had mutated. No longer was our family glorious but inglorious with evil within our natures. 

The set of our DNA, all of them combined, is our genome. The Image of God was the glorious Genome of God (Selem), meaning a shadow or phantom. The male Adam received the Genome of God. 

Perhaps the human “soul” is the whole of the chromosomal sacks within the human genome. All the genome of Adam would have contained the glorious DNA (Image)m of God (Y-chromosome?), so that Adam’s kind and his alone was glorious like God and had the nature of God in him. 

DNA is a carbon chain with two helical chains with alike but opposite characteristics. Everything about us is encoded in that carbon chain, even all who came before us, our natures, our biological characteristics, and even that we are living creatures. All life has DNA. If something is not alive, it contains no DNA. Hence, life is defined by our DNA and God encoded us with His Identity before the creation of the cosmos. 

East of Eden was not directional, but in ancient times, it meant before time. Adam may have lived for eons before time ever began, and hence time began with sin, The translators got that right: “In the process of time” (Gen 4:3), occurring after sin. Hence, life in the Garden was meant to be eternal, and “death” was not necessarily the loss of animation, but miscegenation wherein the races are mixed. (“Races” if you remember are “phylum”). 

Now consider “genus” in the rankings. Adam’s kind was a taxon before sin. After sin, the woman Eve was a different taxon with slightly different genetics that her husband. She remained of the family of man, but her gen changed, and indeed females and males have slightly different DNA chains. In addition, a female alone can pass down her DNA that is located, not in chromosomal sacks but in the mitochondrial vessels. Hence, Eve is the “mother of all living” since only the female can pass along mitochondrial DNA! 

Men and women are technically, but not scientifically, a different phylum in the same family; their genus is the same with a few differences. 

Of the last rank is “species.”

A species is a population of organisms in which any two individuals of the appropriate sexes or mating types can produce fertile offspring, typically by sexual reproduction (Zimmer, Carl (19 February 2024). "What Is a Species, Anyway? - Some of the best known species on Earth may not be what they seem". The New York Times). 

Wikipedia used that source; humans are a species because the male and female genders can mate. The problem with human beings is that we are not the species we think we are! We believe ourselves to be “sons of God” but that is only partly true; Jesus said, “You are of your father the devil, and the lusts of your father you will do” (John 8:44). 

That does not mean that the Devil, Lucifer, is our ‘father’ but we are of His kind, or family by nature since original (genetic) sin from Eve through Cain… “Cain, who was of that wicked one” (1 John 3:12). We are not truly Adam’s kind but Kenites and of the family of Cain. 

From the source, “Some of the best known species on Earth may not be what they seem,” that includes human beings. We are humane but we are not godly! No wonder works do not regenerate us for we cannot change our genetics. 

I admittedly took the liberty because of scripture, for the human species alone, to divided it into two phylum. That would not be the case in general because animals did not sin; hence only our kind is not what we seem to be! 

So, what might the “Tree of Life” be? Perhaps the genetics of the species. The word, genesis, sort of gives it away. 

(To be continued about biogenetics)