Following Augustine, it became traditional to see Adam and Eve as inhabiting a perfect world. There was a tendency to think of them as immortal. At times they were seen as morally and intellectually all but perfect. The result was that Genesis 3 was understood as a fall from a great height. All of this creates intolerable tensions with the modern scientific view. The Garden of Eden becomes like the lost city of Atlantis, the scene of a primitive culture of great value. There are problems with the