That's not my own reading of the passage; I'm more inclined to think that
Paul means APEQANON in the sense that Genesis 2 shows Adam warned, "Do not
eat of the fruit of the tree of knowledge of good and evil, for on the day
that you eat of it you shall surely die." Genesis does not record any
physical death of Adam on the day that he ate the fruit, but it does speak
of his becoming aware of his nakedness and hiding from God. I think that
the death Paul refers to is precisely that profound sense of alienation and
the demonic aspect of his doom as a rebel against God. In a sense this is
part of every human being's achieving adulthood, although it may be that
some don't ever reach it--I don't know. But there is a point of loneliness
and estrangement and wilful independence that one rues and cherishes at the
same time that may well deserve to be considered a death. Paul is talking
about a "fall" into awareness of moral helplessness--and I think that is
exactly what the story in Genesis 2 is also about.
Carl W. Conrad
Department of Classics, Washington University
One Brookings Drive, St. Louis, MO, USA 63130
(314) 935-4018
cwconrad@artsci.wustl.edu OR cwc@oui.com
WWW: http://www.artsci.wustl.edu/~cwconrad/