You can't Believe that Adam and Eve Story, can you?

The story of Adam and Eve was another of the reasons I rejected the whole Christian package.

We all know the story of Adam and Eve, don’t we? God created Adam, the first man on earth, put him to sleep and extracted a rib from which he made Eve. They lived at one with God in the Garden of Eden, a kind of paradise with plenty of food to eat. The devil in the form of a snake tempted Eve to eat an apple from the forbidden tree. This resulted in Adam and Eve being flung out of the Garden of Eden, with Adam destined to work land for food and Eve destined to suffer pain in child birth. The first couple had two sons, Cain and Abel, one of whom killed the other and somehow the whole world gets populated from there on.

This simplified account, or something close to it, is probably the account most non-Christians are familiar with. I am embarrassed to admit my views were formed without reading the biblical account in the first few pages of Genesis.

Having now read Genesis and works on the subject by other authors I have come to the understanding that many Bible stories are not meant to be taken literally. It seems this story would have meant something quite different to those who read it at the time it was written down. Most of us lack the contextual understanding of the language and culture to extract the full original meaning from the text, apart perhaps from some Old Testament scholars.

That said I believe there are a number of points we can clearly take from the story.

• God made the world perfect with people in his image
• In choosing to disobey God, humans brought sin in to the world
• Man has a responsibility to look after the earth upon which he lives
• Man and woman are meant to be together as one, in partnership.

I think in context of the other Genesis stories that both precede and follow Adam and Eve, the important point of the Adam and Eve story is that it introduces sin to the world. The successive descendents of Adam and Eve are shown to become ever more distant from Gods path, causing great frustration and anger in God. God’s anger eventually produces the flood to wipe out life on earth, apart from Noah who God allows to save his family and the animals because Noah is the only one who lives a good life. So from Adam and Eve’s initial sin humanity has a downward path of greater sin, until God regrets creating people and wipes them out apart from Noah and family.

Maybe one day in my studies I will reach a much fuller understanding of this story. I’m sure it can be pieced together, but for now it is enough for me to know it is not a literal story. The story is a mechanism for a deeper message, to teach us about the workings of God.