0107 Is our current Lebenswelt a way to envision the Garden of Eden?
If so, then humans in the Lebenswelt that we evolved in, created as the image of God, associate to a reification, the Tree of Life. The tree of life is rooted in our evolved relationality. The tree of life branches out in cultural practices that maximize the fruits of our evolved relationality.
0108 The term, image of God, offers a vision, where worship conjoins life. Yet, our ancestors could not picture or point either “image” or “God” with hand talk. Just as birds fly, without intellectual awareness of the abstraction of flight, hominins talk to one another with manual-brachial gestures, without intellectual awareness of the abstractions that can be drawn from their discourse. Hand talk does not permit explicit abstraction.
0109 The term, the tree of life, is an abstraction. The meaning, presence and message that we project into the term, the tree of life, produces an artifact that validates our projection. The tree of life is a symbol that validates the word-symbols that compose the term.
Welcome to our current Lebenswelt.
0110 How do we define3 the tree of life2? What meaning, presence and message1 do we project into the actuality of the term2?
In the epic of Gilgamesh, the reader finds one definition. Gilgamesh obtains, then loses, a plant that confers immortality.
In Genesis 3:22, the reader finds the a similar rendering, uttered by the Lord God.
The tree of life confers immortality, by definition.
0111 But, does this definition represent a projection that reinforces an artifact (a particular interpretation) that validates an abstraction inherent in the spoken term, “the tree of life”?
This circularity is characteristic of spoken words.
Does the tree of life confer immortality because it is composed of the spoken words, “tree” and “life”?
0111 It makes me wonder about the term, “immortality”.
Immortality is just a word.
“Immortality” is also an abstraction.
Can one die and still remain alive?
Are there other meanings, presences and messages underlying the actuality of the term, the tree of life?