Hello Notch, thanks for responding.

You said:

“Two questions:
1. Would Adam and Eve have died had they not eaten the fruit?”

Eating the fruit by itself wasn’t the problem.

Cutting themselves off from God was.

God was/is the Source of all life, all goodness, all truth, all love. When they cut themselves off from God, they severed that flow.

Instead of perpetual life coming from being connected to its Source, they would now die when their life ran out.

The Tree of Life shows up again in Revelation. It seems to be eternal life, not merely physical life. Adam and Eve already had physical life. They were physically alive. The Tree of Life wouldn’t give them something they already had. It was dealing with eternity, not the mere physical.

If they ate from the Tree of Life, and locked in their eternal state when they were in rebellion from God, they get an eternity severed from God. We call it hell.

God didn’t want that, so He sent them out of the Garden. But He stayed with them. In Chapter 4, God is present in all of their lives, even speaking often with their children. God didn’t give up on them. God stayed with them and loved them.

You said:

“2. Do you ever wonder why God didn't tell Adam and Eve that not only would they die if they are the fruit, but all of humankind to follow would also die? Maybe that "weight of the world" realization might have given them sufficient pause not to eat the fruit.”

God didn’t hide this from them. It’s obvious in all they knew.

God told them to be fruitful and multiply, to fill the whole earth. They knew the earth would fill with their descendants.

They knew their descendants would be like them, in their image, in a similar way to how God made us in His image.

You don’t have to live long to realize that your actions affect others.

And if you’re the first two, and you know many, many more will come from you, you don’t have to live long to realize that what you do will affect all of them.