The Garden of Eden and the Hope of Immortality

The Read-Tuckwell Lectures that James Barr gave at the University of Bristol in 1990, published by SCM Press in London in 1992 and by Fortress Press in Minneapolis in 1993, in five chapters. Barr reads the story of the Garden of Eden in Genesis 2-3 not chiefly as an account of the origin of sin and death but as the story of a brief chance of immortality that humanity lost. He argues that the tree of life offered immortality, that death was part of human life before the disobedience, and that Genesis itself does not teach a doctrine of original sin. He also argues that the idea of immortality is more present in the Hebrew Bible than is usually allowed, and that resurrection and immortality can be seen as complementary rather than opposed. Reviewers, among them Richard Hess in Themelios, valued the learning and noted that as a lecture series it makes broad claims that need close exegesis. A French translation, Eden et la quête de l'immortalité, appeared in 1995.