Tree of life (biblical)

[8] The Eastern Orthodox Church has traditionally understood the tree of life in Genesis as a prefiguration of the Cross, which humanity could not partake of until after the incarnation, death and resurrection of Jesus.

[10] In The City of God (xiii.20–21), Augustine of Hippo offers great allowance for "spiritual" interpretations of the events in the garden, so long as such allegories do not rob the narrative of its historical reality.

Enlightenment theologians (culminating perhaps in Brunner and Niebuhr in the twentieth century) sought for figurative interpretations because they had already dismissed the historical possibility of the story.

In the Summa Theologica (Q97), Thomas Aquinas argued that the tree served to maintain Adam's biological processes for an extended earthly animal life.

Thus he intends man, as often as he eats the fruit, to remember the source of his life, and acknowledge that he lives not by his own power, but by God's kindness.

[12] The tree of life appears in Asherah iconography, particularly on the Lachish ewer and Pithos A from Kuntillet Ajrud, where it is flanked by ibexes.

In the 1995 Anime Neon Genesis Evangelion, beings known as Angels possess the “fruit of life”, which provides them with infinite energy, enabling regeneration and shapeshifting, among other abilities.