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has endured as part of human yearning unto our own days. Even chosen Prophets must have longed to be so privileged, for it was there, in the Garden of Eden, that God spoke direcdy to the first human beings, instructing them regarding their nourishment: They can eat of all the garden's fruits, except the fruit of the Tree of Knowing. The chain of events leading to the Expulsion from Paradise raises a lasting question: How did Adam and Eve hear God— how does God communicate with humans at such, or any, Divine Encounters? Can the humans see the divine speaker, or just hear the message? And how is the message con- veyed—face-to-face? Telepathically? In a holographic vision? Through the medium of dreams? We shall examine the ancient evidence for the answers. But as far as the events in the Garden of Eden are concerned, the biblical text suggests a physical divine presence. The place was not a human habitat; rather, it was a divine abode, an orchard deliberately planted "in Eden, in the east," where God "put the Adam whom He had fashioned" to serve as a gardener, "to till it and to keep it." It is in this garden that Adam and Eve, through the inter- vention of the Divine Serpent, discover their sexuality after eating of the fruit of the Tree of Knowing that "makes one wise." Having eaten the forbidden fruit, "they knew that they were naked, and they sewed fig leaves together and made themselves aprons." Now the Lord God—Yahweh Elohim in the Hebrew Bible—enters the stage: Elohim in the Hebrew And they heard the sound of the Lord God walking in the garden in the cool of the day; And Adam and his wife hid themselves from the presence of the Lord God amongst the trees of the garden. God is physically present in the Garden of Eden, and the sound of his strolling about the garden can be heard by the humans. Can they see the deity? The biblical narrative is silent on the issue; it makes clear, however, that God can see them—or, in this instance, was expecting to see them but The First Encounters