The tree of life and the turning sword: Jewish biblical interpretation, symbols, and theological patterns and their Christian counterparts

And the Lord God said: “Behold, the man has become like one of us, knowing good and evil; and now, lest he put forth his hand and take also of the tree of life, and eat, and live forever”… He drove out the man; and at the east of the garden of Eden he placed the cherubim, and a flaming turning sword, to guard [lit.: keep] the path of the tree of life. The plain sense of the text is that God barred Adam from the Garden of Eden in order to prevent him (and presumably his posterity as well) from approaching the tree of life. Will humankind be forever denied access to the Garden of Eden and the tree of life? This question, which is not asked in Genesis at all, is very much on the mind of Jews and Christians, for whom the biblical “Garden of Eden” has become the eschatological “Paradise.” “Tree of life” is mentioned four times in Proverbs (3.18, 11.30, 13.12, 15.4); one of the occurrences (3.18) is in the sentence “She [i.e. wisdom] is a tree of life to those who lay hold of her.” In the other occurrences in the Book of Proverbs, it should be noted, the “tree of life” does not refer to wisdom; in Prov. 13.12, for instance, the “tree of life” is “a fulfilled desire.”