While I believe that the events in Genesis 1-4 happened, I don't necessarily think they happened exactly as written. That is, I don't think there is a 1:1 historical correspondence. This being said, I also don't think them to be metaphorical. Rather, I think these events to be an amalgam of historical events which Moses saw on high speed "fast forward." Before I explain further, let me say that I am not excluding the possibility of them being a 1:1 history, I just don't think they have to be.
I think that at some point, based on evolutionary history, there were several different species of homo, or human which descended and branched off from a common ancestor. One of them happened to give birth to the ancestor of all homo sapiens. The problem here though was that this particular being was very different from his family group, and potentially reproductively incompatible with his own group. i don't think he would have survived on his own, and was likely outcast as they noticed the differences (as animals can sometimes do with an offspring they consider defective). Here, God took pity on him and raised the new human Himself, causing him to thrive. But he was still reproductively incompatible with the rest of his family group, and lonely as they had cast him out. For this reason, God did remove one of his ribs, or at least took DNA from that rib and built a female of his own species from it. From then on, God ensured that this new species of homo would survive and thrive, producing offspring. As Homo Sapiens were later reproductively compatible with species like Neanderthal and Denisovan, the original Adam was likely an earlier, more primitive hominid.
Those offspring eventually went east out of Africa and into what is now Mesopotamia, at least one family group of them settling in what is now the Black Sea region (prior to its deluge circa 7,000 BCE), which also happens to be the region where the headwaters of the four ancient rivers mentioned in Genesis originate. There this family group was given instructions by God to simply leave one of the fruit trees, or one stand of fruit trees alone because its fruit contained a toxin. It was placed there in the first place because it happened to be a primary food source for another particular animal, and likely predated their arrival. Every other food source in the region was open to them, and they were hunter gatherers. Especially one particular tree or group of trees which was intended as this family group's primary food source. This nutrients and substances found in the fruit of this tree would clean and repair human DNA, essentially extending the human life span indefinitely. There were at least several generations of the family group which lived and stayed within the boundaries of this region.
In order for herbivores to eat, plants have to die. In order for plants to grow, other plants and animals have to die and decay. In order for growth to occur in a complex organism, old cells have to die and be replaced by new cells. This is biology. In order for the biological creation to work, death already had to be operating because death, in its proper place, is a natural part of life. Where the text of Genesis is concerned, God didn't say "everything" would die or begin to die if the fruit was eaten, He says specifically to Adam, literally, "you will die death." Death, a function of the cycle of life, was introduced to our ancestors specifically, whom God had initially set up so that they would live indefinitely by using the Tree of Life as a primary food source. An assumption can be made that "Adam" understood what God was talking about, which he or they wouldn't have had death as a function of life not existed prior to this.
At one point, while the men were out hunting, the women went out gathering fruit. One of the women happened to notice other animals eating from the tree or stand of trees they were told not to, possibly a kind of skink (which look very much like snakes with legs and can also be fruit eating; some of which are bronze colored referring back to the Hebrew word for "serpent" in Genesis, Nahash) and then had Satan whisper into her ear that the fruit would be fine to eat because the animals were eating it. The woman then picked fruit off the tree and added it to the fruit being brought back to the rest of the family group. The women then prepared the fruit and the meat which the men brought back, most not knowing what was in the food they were eating that evening. By the end of the evening, every member of the family group had eaten the toxic fruit and had their brain chemistry and DNA irrevocably altered.
The effects began to show by the next day when they, the men in particular, began to react to the presence of the naked appearance of the opposite sex in ways they hadn't before, guilt, embarrassment, jealousy, rape, and so on. And they started to cover up with anything they could find to mitigate the previously unknown problems. Eventually, God intervened, pulling them all away from their previous homeland and out into the open to get them away from their original, primary food source which would extend their physical lives indefinitely. This was done as a mercy because the limbic systems of their brains were now malfunctioning from their original intended purposes, and allowing them to die naturally would be kinder than allowing them to live forever like that. Still though, their original food source had done its job so thoroughly that the individuals of the family group continued to live for hundreds of years while still producing offspring.
As they moved out into what is now Mesopotamia, Europe, Africa, and Asia they encountered other, unafflicted species of human. Some interactions were peaceful, many were not. Some were incredibly violent as the unafflicted males were slaughtered, along with their offspring, and their females taken as mates. Eventually, over the course of tens of thousands of years, there were no unafflicted humans left on Earth. Taking the natural course of life, their DNA began to multiply mutations by way of normal exposure to the environment, as well as interbreeding with those humans who had never been exposed to the original primary food source, and their lifespans began to shrink dramatically until what is now considered an average human lifespan.
The word "'adam" in Hebrew means "human being," but it also refers to the human race in general as descendants of that first human being. When God says in Genesis that the day Adam eats of it "you will die death," He didn't mean Adam would drop dead in that moment, He meant 1) He would remove them from the food source that was extending their life indefinitely, and 2) it would eventually lead to the death of his race, himself and his progeny entirely.
Y-Chromosomal Adam and Mitochondrial Eve both converge roughly between 70k-100k years ago. Human beings began wearing clothes roughly between 70k-100k years ago. One of the migrations of human beings out of Africa occurred roughly between 70-100k years ago followed by a migration back into Africa roughly about 60k years ago. The last neanderthals are though to have died out roughly about 30k-40k years ago in Gibraltar, and homo erectus and one or two other species between that 40k and 100k mark. For this reason, it can be reasonably assumed that the events between Genesis 2 and 3 occurred between 70k-100k years ago. There are other points from articles I have read which tend to support this narrative as well, though I think listing all of them would make this post ridiculously longer.
It occurs to me also that the reason why this particular fruit affected our ancestors in this way and not the animals which were eating from it is because we were also eating from the other tree, the Tree of Life. There was a chemical interaction between the two which caused our neurological malfunction. The species of "tree of good and evil" may still exist today as a common fruit tree and we wouldn't know the difference because the substances from the tree of life have been completely removed from the human system. The species of the tree of life however was specifically barred from us, and probably no longer exists.
I think I might have tracked down the type of fruit and compounds responsible for causing the malfunction known as hamartia. The fruit from the "tree of the knowledge of good and evil" was a stone fruit type tree, perhaps an ancestor species of the almond, peach, and nectarine. Its fruit held large amounts of cyanogenic glycosides which are toxic in large quantities even today. Our ancestors in the garden were already eating from the "tree of life" ( a currently unknown species whose fruit had properties of repairing and maintaining human cell structure and DNA thus potentially prolonging physical life indefinitely), and already had the compounds from that fruit in their systems on a regular basis. The substances from the two fruits reacted causing neurological damage to the limbic system (the hypothalamus specifically), and permanent damage to the DNA ensuring that every child born after would be afflicted with the same problem. Such fruit is harmless today, relatively speaking, because the species of fruit it interacted with is extinct (its remains probably still sitting under the Black Sea). Just some thoughts from some research I was doing today. I've potentially only got one half of the equation, but it's not terribly hard to imagine such a substance reacting in this way with another designed to directly affect cellular and DNA structure, and possibly designed to affect the limbic system of the brain as well, effectively delivering the cyanide toxin.
The question here though is, does it matter exactly how Genesis 1-4 happened? Not really. What matters is that it happened and the affects and consequences of those events still impact us today, necessitating the death, burial, and resurrection of Jesus Christ for us and for our final deliverance from our ancestors' mistakes as well as our own choices.
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