Were Adam and Eve two real people back in time or Mythology to teach us something?

Question

Particularly Christians; do you think that the story of Adam and Eve is a historical event or is it Mythology adopted to explore the human condition and our relationship to a Creator? I respect whatever is your view; Iam just curious to see how people generally view this issue today. Thank you

Answer 1

Gen 1:1  In the beginning God created the heavens and the earth.

Gen 1:2  And the earth was waste and void; and darkness was upon the face of the deep: and the Spirit of God moved upon the face of the waters

Gen 1:3  And God said, Let there be light: and there was light.

Gen 1:4  And God saw the light, that it was good: and God divided the light from the darkness.

Gen 1:5  And God called the light Day, and the darkness he called Night. And there was evening and there was morning, one day.

Gen 1:6  And God said, Let there be a firmament in the midst of the waters, and let it divide the waters from the waters.

Gen 1:7  And God made the firmament, and divided the waters which were under the firmament from the waters which were above the firmament: and it was so.

Gen 1:8  And God called the firmament Heaven. And there was evening and there was morning, a second day.

Gen 1:9  And God said, Let the waters under the heavens be gathered together unto one place, and let the dry land appear: and it was so.

Gen 1:10  And God called the dry land Earth; and the gathering together of the waters called he Seas: and God saw that it was good.

I believe its all true.

Answer 2

ahh...it was real of course...

who do you think was your great great great great.....FOREVER AGO....starter of the human race? God creates Adam and Eve and they make everyone else!!!

Answer 3

If you believe in Adam and Eve then you will have to believe in incest as they had grandchildren too.

Answer 4

Yes Adam and Eve is real. We had to begin from somewhere. It wasn't like boom the earth was populated!!! :)

Whoever doesn't believe in Adam and Eve how else did the world get populated

Answer 5

Adam and Eve were created on the sixth day of Creation. I suggest you read the Bible. Salvation could come for you.

You are welcome.

Answer 6

The Bible gives the genealogy of Abraham, Isaac and Jacob - the great ancestors of the Jews - right up to Adam and Eve.

If the Jews are real and Adam and Eve fiction then at what point do the characters in the genealogy become fictional? It doesn't add up. Only real people give rise to real people.

Answer 7

God, infinitely perfect and blessed in himself, in a plan of sheer goodness freely created man to make him share in his own blessed life. Adam was the first person He created. Eve was the second.

Answer 8

the literary genre of the creation story [where you can find the story of adam and eve] is MYTHOLOGY. so yes, it's a myth, although the characters or things symbolize something. for example, adam and eve probably werent the only exisitng people then. they symbolize the huma race and the tree of knowledge of good and evil didn't really exist, but it's to symbolize man's free will. although some of it is also real. like God saying things and thing appear. take note. the bible is not free from errors, BUT it DOES NOT preach ERRORS. [sorry, i just had to say that :))]

Answer 9

To answer the question, you have to determine the genre of Genesis 1 and 2.

Answer 10

I believe they were real, although I also believe that they weren't the "only" two people that God created. I just think they were the first.

Answer 11

No, I don't believe it as literal, but I am Christian. I just believe that God created the process of evolution. Adam and Eve symbolise original sin (we all need someone to blame). One of the main gripes I have is that when Cain murdered Abel, Cain was cast out. He asked what would happen when other people came across him. According to the Bible, the only other people were Adam and Eve. So it cannot be true, because of that inconsistancy.

Answer 12

For the Bible to be true, it has to be literal history.  The whole problem of sin goes back to Adam (Rom. 5:12-19), and Jesus says that Adam and Eve were the beginning.  Now if he was either lying or uninformed, he couldn't be much of a Savior, could he?

If you toss out Adam and Eve - It all goes.

Answer 13

Adam stands for male and Eve stands for female. I belive that they were more then two people. I also think the symbol of the apple that adam and eve ate means s*x. That is why we came into the world. If adam and eve have not sinned we would not be here.  And also about god creating the heavens and the earth. back then there was no science so to make the human mind understand they said it simple In the beginning God created the heaven and the earth and so on..  

Answer 14

It is well known that Genesis was not written until at least two thousand years after the event. It is also known that when the Jews were taken to Babylon and put in exile, around 580B.C. the library in Jerusalem containing all their ancient documents was burnt to the ground. It was a disaster, which was to repeat itself with the Alexandra Library some centuries later under the Emperor Nero; although there are debates as to just how this fire started. Moreover, the general shape of the Bible as we now have it, did not come into being until at least three hundred years after the death of Christ. Clearly then, there are parts of the Bible which cannot, and should not be taken literally word for word, as many believe. It contains myths; legends; analogy; poetry, parables and metaphors; tree for example cannot talk, Judges: 9: 7.15. What one doe’s is to take the essence, the essential message out of those parables and metaphors et-cetera, et-cetera. For example: The Book of Ruth is a story of simple perfection. The Book of Job is about faith and endurance. The Book of Jonah shows that when God has chosen someone to be His messenger, there is no Mediterranean Cruise which one can go on, that will take them far enough away from God in order to avoid His Will; God’s Will, will be done, is the message here. And so and so forth et-cetera, et-cetetra.

The Bible also contains a great deal of pictorial imagery, which is extremely rich in its symbolism. For example; the writer of Genesis (or translator) presupposes the planet Earth to have already been populated during the time of Adam and Eve, Cain and Abel. This would certainly explain Cain’s fear of being ‘slain’ and the sudden appearance of his wife. To use the argument that Adam and Eve had other children and that Cain took his sister, throws-up the major problem of incest. In any case, other children born to Adam and Eve clearly came after Cain had killed Abel. Gen: 5: 3.4. Unless of course the narrative has ‘not’ been written in chronological order, and that it was indeed a sister which Cain took as a wife. Either way, like Darwin’s theory of evolution, there is a ‘missing link’ here, which I would tell you of if I were Abel.

Perhaps the whole is better understood if we saw the story as ‘two different tribes’ who fought each other; those who settled and became farmers, and the wandering nomads with their cattle.

‘Now Abel was a keeper of sheep, and Cain a tiller of the ground.’ Gen: 4.2.

In fact, the whole of chapter four in Genesis clearly has all the hall-marks of the beginnings of civilisation. Verse’s 1 and 2 show the origins of pastoral and agricultural life; verse’s 3 too 5 sacrificial offerings; verse’s 8 too 10 disputes between the two tribes; verse’s 10 too 15 immunity from the law of blood-revenge; verse’s 16 too 20 of city and nomadic life; verse’s 21 and 22 of music and instruments of bronze and iron i.e. metal-works; verse’s 23 and 24 the blood-feud, and verse 26 the beginning of ordered worship. The Jewish writers were obviously not bothered over details, had they been Genesis would not be in the mess it is in now.

This is probably what happened:

At some time, on a fine sunny day somewhere on this planet, some old ancient scribe thought it a jolly good idea to collect the ancient folk-tales of the Hebrew Race, which had integrated into their nation from Babylon over a long period of time, sift them out, and write them down in a (somewhat) coherent way that was uniquely Jewish.

One might reason from this that the whole of the Genesis narrative to be void. If so, where doe’s it leave the rest of the Bible and how much can we rely upon it? Well, apart from those parables and analogy et-cetera, et-cetera, which we take the ‘essence’ from, the Bible can be relied upon a great deal.

You see, the Genesis Birth of Creation has one ‘central’ core running right through it, God. This doe’s not occur, as far as I am aware, in any other ‘creation story’ around the world. It is certainly not seen in the Babylonian story, nor is it seen in the Chinese birth of creation; unlike the Genesis birth of creation, the Babylonian and the Chinese lack Divine Authority.

What then are the translators of Genesis really trying to tell us? I believe they are using ‘one family’ to represent the whole human race, it is much easier to narrate that way. So here we have a man and a woman who were conscious of loving God and conscious of falling from God’s Grace, that is to say, sinned against God, symbolised by eating the forbidden fruit. In Genesis 3.1, Satan throws in doubt:- ‘Did God say.’ In verse 5, a prize is offered:- ‘You will be like God.’ In verse 6, the act is committed and that is how Satan works. First comes the thought; then the temptation, then the act, and BANG! You lose! Know also that the journey back to God is a long and thorny one, no one reaches the Grail without an arduous walk in life. Moreover, the translator of Genesis is clearly showing us the battle between the forces of good and evil, between two superhuman personalities, we are even shown how to deal with it; Genesis: 4: 6.7, I refer you to see it.

Now whatever way one cares to look at it, whether the whole of the Bible is taken literally or not, one cannot escape the fact that unlike other folk-tales around the world, the Genesis birth of creation has the ‘Seal of Divine Authority’ written  across it, with God as the central core. This makes the Genesis narrative divinely unique and takes nothing of its essence away. Apart from which the Bible is clearly a ‘Spiritually Inspired’ work containing the unwavering Word of God as spoken through His Spirit. Nor do any of the aforementioned seeming discrepancies for one second alter my belief in its essential message. In fact, this is precisely what the Jewish writers intended to show us; they have shown, through their narratives, the moral and spiritual consequences of disobeying God. As well as the moral and spiritual awakening of those who do obey God. In doing that, none of its essence is lost.

Edited on:

Thank you Ziffa, but that is the whole point, too show the 'essence of scripture,' and not necessarily ' the historical accuracy,' of Adam and Eve as seen in Genesis.