I wonder if those who believe the Adam and Eve myth as if it were genuine history, ever stop to consider the rather unpleasant implications.
Since we do not know who wrote the story, nor the source of his inspiration (almost certainly a ma, and he might have adapted it from a much older religion) it is more useful to ask why[/i it was written rather what it says.
Claiming it as "the word of God" is clearly absurd but may be what the author [i]believed, and at least understandably, unlike modern-day Biblical literalism.
I think those early Talmud / Old Testament books, randomly selected from many written by the Hebrew priest-kings over a few centuries and perhaps after some lengthy existence as oral tradition, were part of cementing the tribal Ancient Hebrews into a single, coherent, patriarchal society.
Their background was the Late Bronze Age and the start of farming, needing settled living in fertile regions long before nations had any formal territories and borders as we now know them. The own origins probably included Persia, with Zoroastrianism as the main faith (it still exists there, in minority); and they were between the Egyptians, Greeks, Roman Empire and various other societies.
Their exercise would have been helped considerably by formulating a new religion with a single and very authoritarian god, rejecting the religious beliefs and practices of their forefathers. A sort of "Year 0" principle.
So the Book of Genesis and much of the rest of the Ancient Hebrew anthology cannot possibly be seen as real history, let alone at all scientific, but may have had a "political" point as well as being a theological parable.
