Was Adam mortal before he partook of the tree of knowledge of good and evil?

(Just sharing a different idea based on the pseudepigraphical book "The Conflict of Adam and Eve with Satan")

Adam had immortal body before the fall

Adam and Eve had a perfect immortal body before they eat the fruit from the tree of knowledge of good and evil. After eating the fruit, their body was altered and became mortal, which will ultimately return to dust, though their soul(or spirit) is still immortal.

And, indeed, when Adam looked at his flesh, that was altered, he wept bitterly, he and Eve, over what they had done (Chapter IV, verse 2)

Adam had a bright nature before the fall.

THEN Adam wept and said, "O God, when we dwelt in the garden, and our hearts were lifted up, we saw the angels that sang praises in heaven, but now we do not see as we were used to do; nay, when we entered the cave, all creation became hidden from us." Then God the Lord said unto Adam, "When thou wast under subjection to Me, thou hadst a bright nature within thee, and for that reason couldst thou see things afar off. But after thy transgression thy bright nature was withdrawn from thee; and it was not left to thee to see things afar off, but only near at hand; after the ability of the flesh; for it is brutish." (Chapter VIII)

Adam did not need food and water before the fall.

"And of Thy goodwill, O Lord, Thou madest us both with bodies of a bright nature, and Thou madest us two, one; and Thou gavest us Thy grace, and didst fill us with praises of the Holy Spirit; that we should be neither hungry nor thirsty, nor know what sorrow is, nor yet faintness of heart; neither suffering, fasting, nor weariness. "But now, O God, since we transgressed Thy commandment and broke Thy law, Thou hast brought us out into a strange land, and has caused suffering, and faintness, hunger and thirst to come upon us. (Chapter XXXIV)

Adam and Eve will go to Hell after they die and will be tortured with fire by Satan. They will be delivered from Hell only when God shed His blood for them.

God said also to Adam, "See this fire kindled by Satan around thy cave; see this wonder that surrounds thee; and know that it will encompass about both thee and thy seed, when ye hearken to his behest; that he will plague you with fire; and that ye shall go down into hell after ye are dead. "Then shall ye see the burning of his fire, that will thus be burning around you and your seed. There shall be no deliverance from it for you, but at My coming; in like manner as thou canst not now go into thy cave, by reason of the great fire around it; not until My Word shall come that will make a way for thee on the day My covenant is fulfilled. (Chapter XLV, verse 9,10)

And, again, as regards the Water of Life thou seekest, it will not be granted thee this day; but on the day that I shall shed My blood upon thy head in the land of Golgotha. "For My blood shall be the Water of Life unto thee, at that time, and not to thee alone, but unto all those of thy seed who shall believe in Me; that it be unto them for rest for ever." (Chapter XLII, verse 7,8)

Mortality (one among the changes) was injected into humans by the consuming of the fruits by Adam and Eve. Jesus Christ repaid that debt for humanity to be reaped by whoever believes in Him [1Corinthians 15:21+].

[Romans 5:12+]

Life is determined by our relationship to God.

Mortality is being susceptible to death, Adam was always susceptible to death and God warned Adam of his susceptibility:

Genesis 2:16,17 And the LORD God commanded the man, saying, Of every tree of the garden thou mayest freely eat: But of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil, thou shalt not eat of it: for in the day that thou eatest thereof thou shalt surely die.

We were intentioned for life:

2 Corinthians 5:1-4 For we know that if our earthly house of this tabernacle were dissolved, we have a building of God, an house not made with hands, eternal in the heavens. For in this we groan, earnestly desiring to be clothed upon with our house which is from heaven: If so be that being clothed we shall not be found naked. For we that are in this tabernacle do groan, being burdened: not for that we would be unclothed, but clothed upon, that mortality might be swallowed up of life.

We look forward to life eternal:

John 17:3 And this is life eternal, that they might know thee the only true God, and Jesus Christ, whom thou hast sent. John 20:31 But these are written, that ye might believe that Jesus is the Christ, the Son of God; and that believing ye might have life through his name. Romans 6:23 For the wages of sin is death; but the gift of God is eternal life through Jesus Christ our Lord. Romans 8:2 For the law of the Spirit of life in Christ Jesus hath made me free from the law of sin and death.

Eternal life is subject to our relationship with God:

Galatians 2:20 I am crucified with Christ: nevertheless I live; yet not I, but Christ liveth in me: and the life which I now live in the flesh I live by the faith of the Son of God, who loved me, and gave himself for me.

Therefore, man was created mortal, susceptible to death but the new birth assures eternal life, life eternal in Christ!

H3br3wHamm3r81's answer is good, but it is maybe too well argued, and I think perhaps s/he is missing the forest for the trees.

God told our first parents

". . . for in the day that you eat from [the tree of the knowledge of good and evil] you will surely die" (Genesis2:17b).

I'll leave the Hebrew-to-English translation job to those who are well-versed in that valuable process. Assuming the translators of the NIV have done the heavy lifting for us already in that regard, I'll provide what I believe is a fair, albeit very liberal, paraphrase of God's instruction to the first man:

"Adam, in the garden I've designed for you to cultivate and keep, there are many fruit-bearing trees. Feel free, my son, to eat the fruit of any tree. There is, however, one tree, and one tree only, from which you are not allowed to eat, and that is the tree of the knowledge of good and evil. If you choose to eat of that one tree, from the moment you eat of it you will begin to die, both physically and spiritually."

I've paraphrased vv.15-17 in the way I have because I think it makes at least one thing clear: Adam would retain the gift of immortality if and only if he were to refrain from eating of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil. ("Good and evil," by the way, is a Hebrew merism which today we might translate whimsically "the whole kit and caboodle," or "from soup to nuts." In other words, "the whole ball of wax.")

I assume, for the time being, that the only insight into evil Adam had prior to his disobedience was that disobedience was the wrong thing to do. In other words, it was bad, and it had a bad consequence (viz., death). How much Adam and his soulmate understood about death, we do not know. Had they already partaken of the tree of life prior to their disobedience? Probably. After all, if you already have the gift of immortality, you cannot become more immortal than immortal!

What God makes eminently clear in the text is that His preventing them from eating from the tree of LIFE came AFTER they had sinned. To have allowed our first parents to partake of the tree of life as sinners would have been unthinkable for a loving God. Imagine living forever with no prospect of redemption. Personally, I shudder at the thought.

Now I realize my use of the word redemption, above, has anachronism written all over it, but think on it for a moment. In light of what we know today about our physical bodies, how that virtually every kind of cell in our bodies (save for brain cells) is replaced with a new cell on a regular basis, who is to say the process could NOT continue forever? Were it not for the "death gene" (again, another anachronism) being passed via Adam to the next generation and to each successive generation thereafter, there is no physical reason why the human species could not be immortal.

For as in Adam all die , even so in Christ shall all be made alive (1 Corinthians 15:22 KJV).

However, the last Adam--Jesus, the Son of God--did not receive the "death gene" from an earthly father. His genetic code came from His heavenly Father, even though the egg came from the ovaries of a mortal woman (who herself HAD inherited the death gene from an earthly father and was thus destined to die, according to Protestant theology, that is).

And so it is written , The first man Adam was made a living soul; the last Adam was made a quickening spirit (1 Corinthians 15:45 KJV).

In conclusion, my analysis of the text in Genesis 2 may be flawed by its inclusion of anachronisms, but if there is a flaw in my interpretation, it is not in the anachronisms; rather, it may be in my logic and reasoning (and here is where you might disagree with me):

Were it not for the first sin of disobedience, there would have been no death. Only in disobeying would our first parents die, and if they did not die, then they must of necessity have been given immortality when God breathed into their nostrils the breath of life. Immortal life. (rhetorician)

BONUS MATERIAL: Interestingly, in Revelation 22 we read of another tree of life.

"Then [the angel] showed me a river of the water of life, clear as crystal, coming from the throne of God and of the Lamb, [and] in the middle of its street on either side of the river was the tree of life, bearing twelve kinds of fruit, yielding its fruit every month; and the leaves of the tree were for the healing of the nations" (22:1,2).

So here we have bookends; we have come full circle. What started as a second, forbidden tree, of which our first parents could not partake once they had sinned, ended up as an eternally fruit-bearing tree of which all God's children may partake.

As for how and why the leaves of this eternal tree serve to heal the nations, I'll leave that for another OP to question!

First, we must understand that only God is inherently immortal. The apostle Paulos states that God "alone has immortality" (ὁ μόνος ἔχων ἀθανασίαν) (1 Tim. 6:16), for He alone is uncreated. Everything else that is not God is a creature, and thus, not inherently immortal. Now, although many creatures are not inherently immortal, God gives them immortality as He wills. This includes angels and Christians (John 10:28). (However, just as He gives immortality, He could also (potentially) take it away.)

As for Adam, we know for a fact that he was not inherently immortal, since only God is. Thus, the question we must ask is whether God ever gave immortality to Adam, before or after his transgression.

When Yahveh breathed into Adam's nostrils the "breath of life" (נִשְׁמַת חַיִּים), "Adam became a living creature" (וַיְהִי הָאָדָם לְנֶפֶשׁ חַיָּה) (Gen. 2:7). However, we do not know whether Adam was immortal or mortal at this point. Some time thereafter, Adam partook of the fruit from the tree of the knowledge of good and evil (Gen. 3:6). Afterwards, Yahveh declared (Gen. 3:22), "Behold, Adam became like one of us, to know good and evil, and now, lest he put forth his hand and also take of the tree of life, and eat, and live forever."

To "live forever" is undoubtedly synonymous with "be immortal." But, the scripture is clear that Adam would only live forever (be immortal) if he partook from the tree of life. The logical consequence is that Adam was not immortal - at least not after the fall - because he never partook from the tree of life. Yahveh obstructed Adam's access to the tree of life and banished him from Paradise (Gen. 3:24). Again, this only proves that Adam was not immortal after the fall.

However, there is a possibility, as Brilliant noted, that Adam was immortal prior to his fall, being made so by Yahveh. Then, by partaking of the fruit, he lost this immortality, and Yahveh prohibited Adam from regaining this immortality by impeding access to the tree of life.

But, we should note that, in his original state, Yahveh made trees in the garden that were "good for food" (טוֹב לְמַאֲכָל) (Gen. 2:9). While one may argue that the trees could have provided food for animals rather than Adam, Yahveh indeed informed Adam that he could eat from the trees (Gen. 2:16). Now, Jesus himself ate food after his resurrection (Luke 24:30; 24:43) despite having an incorruptible and immortal body. Therefore, the argument could be made that such trees in the garden, despite being "good for food," do not necessarily indicate that Adam required sustinence from the trees, just as Jesus did not necessarily require sustinence from the food he ate after his resurrection in his incorruptible and immortal body.

All that being said, I believe the apostle Paulos provides a definite answer in his first epistle to the Corinthians. In discussing the resurrection of the dead, he wrote,

• 1 Cor. 15:44-45

⁴⁴ It is sown a natural body; it is raised a spiritual body. There is a natural body, and there is a spiritual body. ⁴⁵ Likewise it is written, the first man "Adam became a living creature" (*or soul). The last Adam [became] a life-giving spirit.

⁴⁴ σπείρεται σῶμα ψυχικόν ἐγείρεται σῶμα πνευματικόν ἔστιν σῶμα ψυχικόν καὶ ἔστιν σῶμα πνευματικόν ⁴⁵ οὕτως καὶ γέγραπται Ἐγένετο ὁ πρῶτος ἄνθρωπος Ἀδὰμ εἰς ψυχὴν ζῶσαν ὁ ἔσχατος Ἀδὰμ εἰς πνεῦμα ζῳοποιοῦν

Now, it is important to note that in v. 44, the apostle Paulos is contrasting two bodies: the "natural body" (lit. "soulish body": σῶμα ψυχικόν) and the "spiritual body" (σῶμα πνευματικόν). Then in the very next verse, saying "likewise it is written," he establishes the proof of these two bodies, using as examples "the first man Adam" who "became a living soul" and "the last Adam," Jesus Christ, who became "a life-giving spirit."

By this, we can establish that Adam possessed the "natural body" (σῶμα ψυχικόν) at the very moment he "became a living soul." Since he became a living soul (Gen. 2:7) prior to his transgression and fall, then we could ascribe all the properties the apostle Paulos attributes to the "natural body" in 1 Cor. 15 to Adam himself prior to his fall. These would include:

• corruption (φθορά) (1 Cor. 15:42)
• dishonor (ἀτιμία) (1 Cor. 15:43)
• weakness (ἀσθένεια) (1 Cor. 15:43)

More importantly, it would include mortality and corruptibility (1 Cor. 15:53-54). On the other hand, Jesus who became a life-giving spirit possessed the spiritual body with the attributes of immortality and incorruptibility.