Hi Metis, There were NO Christian nor Jews with Adam and Eve. They were Created Real. They experienced the events that happened in the narrative recorded. And the penalties were real that occurred. There wasn't any allegory creation accounts. That is an asumptive/opinion made by man.
Yes, there was an illusion of the real Adversary appearing as a serpent or using the serpent.
Yo G2,
First of all, I would agree that there were no Christian and Jews back during the time of Adam & Eve since they're symbolic names of people whereas it's highly unlikely existed. In Hebrew, these names have particular meanings symbolically (Adam means "Man", and Eve means "life" or "life-giving"), along with Eden ("Paradise"), and what we see in the creation accounts is essentially poetry.
We also have confidence that these accounts actually came out of Mesopotamia, which has a similar narrative that predates the writing of Genesis. Plus we now know that we had access to that narrative since an ancient tablet was found that contained that in northern Israel not that long ago that also predates the writing of Genesis.
I grew up in a fundamentalist Protestant church, and let me just say that in this area of being opposed to the basic concept of evolution, which does not in any way deny God, you're been fed untruths. I know as I went through this process myself, and then finding out that I was being terribly mislead as my studies in biology and anthropology clearly were telling me when I was in my mid-20's.
Don't take my word for it, as I didn't take anyone else's word for it but checked it all out myself over years of study. I ended up teaching anthropology for nearly 30 years and retired 10 years ago.
