Dr. Dylan Johnson

And figs are delicious.

So I could also see that being, that'd probably be my choice, a fig.

I think we've covered the main points.

The only other connection that really gets established is Eden as a stand-in for the temple.

Ah, okay.

Because in Ezekiel, the author of Ezekiel starts to make very explicit connections between the temple being another Eden,

And there, the rivers that we talked about earlier, not the underground river, the one that splits into four, is more explicitly identified as flowing out of the temple.

And this becomes very important in later reception tradition in synagogues, in other places of worship, where we start to get Eden scenes

very prominently displayed because in some senses, Eden is the first temple.

It's the first place where humanity really contacted the divine.

And so lots of temples, lots of churches, lots of synagogues, you can go down the list, are very interested in those kinds of motifs and adorning them in association with the architecture.

Yeah, absolutely.

And I think it obviously factors incredibly powerfully in early church father interpretations with Augustine because of its association with sin in that interpretive tradition.

Again, as a proximate experience of humanity's encounter with the divine, it's going to figure prominently in mosaics, it's going to figure prominently in wall paintings, in churches, in synagogues.

It's actually a very commonly shared motif, especially in Turkey, in Judea, later to be Palestina.

And that's what I can speak on specifically, is its incorporation into the artistic world of late antique Judaism and Christianity.

Yeah, I mean, I think it's because the Genesis 1 creation story, it's very much, I think it's partially, it's an evolution of the religion in some respects.

This is a cosmic world god, impossible to really fathom, capture through image.

This isn't the god walking around a garden in the cool breeze anymore, right?

This is someone who stretches out the heavens.