If you put yourself in the place of Adam, when God tells us we will die, I’d logically assume my life will end.

Yet instead of dying, God casts Adam and Eve out into the world, where they live out their lives.

I understand the various metaphoric and symbolic meanings of what God said, but there is no indication Adam is aware of them. I’m reading the book of Genesis, in this case, as if it actually happened, and taking what people say literally, as I think any of us would if we were actually in that situation. We’re not told that God did the air-quotes thing when he mentions death – he meant we’d be pushing up the daises.

Adam certainly could not have read Romans 3: 16, as Anthony points out, because, well, at the time, it was several thousand years before the birth of Jesus, much less the writing of the New Testament.

If Adam were to die, his story should end right when he bites into the apple. He doesn’t die in any conventional sense of the world. Call this a lie, a deception, a manipulation, or whatever you like, but it’s certainly not a telling of the plain simple truth.