The Literal Meaning of Genesis
BOOK EIGHT 39
And although this was something that really happened, something else was prefigured by it. This event was different from that of the fatted calf which was killed for the feast in honor of the younger son on his return home.?? In the latter case the narrative itself is a narrative of figures or types; it is not a matter of a figurative meaning of events that really happened.?? The narrator was not the Evangelist but the Lord Himself, although the Evangelist did state that the Lord told the parable. Thus, what the Evangelist told did happen: the Lord did speak these words. But the narration told by our Lord was a parable, and in this kind of narrative one is never expected to demonstrate that events told in the story literally happened.
Christ is the Stone anointed by Jacob,?* and the Stone rejected by the builders, which has become the head of the corner.?> But in the first case there is reference to an event that really happened, whereas in the second case an event is foretold in figurative language. The former was an account of a past event written by a historian, but the latter was a proclamation by a prophet who was foretelling only events to come.
CHAPTER 5
The tree of life had a special nourishing power and a symbolic meaning.
9. Thus Wisdom, namely, Christ Himself, is the tree of life in the spiritual paradise to which He sent the thief from the cross.2© But a tree of life which would signify Wisdom was also created in the earthly paradise. This is the meaning of Scripture, which in narrating the historical events that happened has told how man was made in the body and how living in the body he was placed in the earthly paradise.
Now if anyone thinks that souls on leaving the body are confined within visible corporeal places, though they are themselves without bodies, he may defend his opinion. There will be those who will support this position and even go so far as to hold that the rich man tormented by thirst was surely in a cor-