The Literal Meaning of Genesis
CHAPTER 6
How Adam and Eve, if they had not sinned, might have been transported to a better life after they had begotten children on earth.
10. If it had been necessary for parents to depart from this life and be succeeded by their children, so that the human race by the departure and arrival of generations would reach a determined number of persons, it would have been possible for them, once they had begotten children and in a holy manner completed their human task, to be removed to a better life not by death but by a transformation. Now this transformation could have been the final one in which they will receive their bodies and become holy like the angels in heaven;?> or, if that was not to be granted until it will be given to all men at the end of the world, it could have been something less than that, but a change none the less to a better state than this body of ours has or the original bodies had when God made the man from the slime of the earth and the woman from the body of the man.?°
11. For we must not think that Elijah is now as the saints will be when the day's work will be done and they will all receive a denarius,2" or, on the other hand, that his state is like that of men who have not yet gone out of this life. Elijah, indeed, departed hence not by dying but by being transported elsewhere.?8 Consequently, he now possesses something better than he could have had in this life, but he does not yet have what he is to possess on the last day as a reward for his life of faithful service. For they foretold a better lot for us, that they might not arrive at complete perfection without us.*? If anyone supposes that Elijah could not have merited this blessing if he had married and begotten children (he is presumed not to have had a wife and children because Scripture does not say he had, although it also says nothing about his celibacy), what will our objector say about Enoch, who begot children and, being pleasing to God, did not die but was carried of f?5°
Why, then, if Adam and Eve had lived a holy life and in chas-