The story of Adam and Eve is well known, even to many who have never read the Old Testament account of their life together in Genesis. Adam and Eve where the first man and the first woman, the beginning of humanity’s journey. A literalist’s interpretation may say that if we followed each of our family histories back through the generations, back to the very beginning, all our genealogies would begin with Adam and Eve, and no others.
But is this the message of the story of Adam and Eve? From Chapter 4 of Genesis we learn that Adam and Eve had two sons, Cain and then Abel. Cain then killed Abel. For this murder, Cain then “went out from the presence of the Lord.” Next in this genealogy we learn that Cain “knew his wife; and she conceived,” and bore Enoch. Also mentioned at that point in the story are successive generations of Cain’s progeny.
Only then do we learn that Adam and Eve had another child, and another son, Seth. And Seth had a son named Enos. “And the days of Adam after he had begotten Seth were eight hundred years: and he begat sons and daughters.” Genesis 5:4. Whether those sons and daughters of Adam were born to him by Eve or another we’re not told, but if they were not bore by Eve, then by whom? And more importantly, who is this wife of Cain? Whose progeny was she if Cain was the first born to the first created?
The literalist interpretation of the story of Adam and Eve falls apart quite quickly if we read the words for what they literally mean.
So what value for us is the story of Adam and Eve if the story is not consistent with the literalists’ interpretation? I think the essential message of the story of Adam and Eve is much more profound than just a recitation of our genealogies back to our first Father and first Mother. The message that the ancients perhaps understood, and were inspired to record and pass down through the generations, was that we were all the sons and daughters of a common parentage, if not the first man and first woman. Some contemporary genetic scientists say the same thing, although thousands of years after Genesis was written, that all men and women walking the face of the earth today have a common parentage. How far back in time this common parentage took place is debated amongst geneticists, and is not consistent with Biblical genealogies, but the implications for us is much the same.
In my mind the importance of the story of Adam and Eve, and the genetic science, is the same. We are all descendants of common ancestors, each and every man, woman, and child walking the face of the earth.
As an aside, the so-called “curse of Cain,” or “mark of Cain,” which fell upon the descendants of Cain as a result of his murder of his brother Abel, also suffers from the literalists’ interpretation. From the literalists’ interpretation of the story of Noah’s ark, Noah and his progeny were the only survivors of the great flood, and therefore all descendants of Adam alive after the flood have to trace their genealogy through Noah. But Noah was a descendant of Seth, not Cain. Therefore, if there ever was a “curse of Cain,” it would not have survived the great flood of Noah’s time, and certainly would not be here with us today.