I used the more traditional interpretation to explain to a student at a Catholic college who was not brought up Christian. She could not follow how professors would teach from the Bible as if this is well established. To her it was a foreign framework. For Adam and Eve, I explained the relationship with God similar to her father teaching the children to obey. It is for our own safety and well being. As we grow to maturity, we learn to make decisions by free will and reason. So the NT is the later mature stage, after Jesus, but before that, we had people trying to follow God and laws by blind obedience to authority.
Below are two more ways that society has changed politically and economically, which Adam and Eve can also represent as a "falling out" and corruption of perfect order, where these corruptions have caused human bondage to oppressive conditions.
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Adam and Eve represent the lineage of generations under Mosaic Law and self awareness of will and ego. When we become aware of our will vs. others, and this gets corrupted by fear and selfishness, that is where we lose our innocence and start rebelling rejecting and fighting for control. It is symbolic on multiple levels.
The Daughters of the Earth who coupled with the descendants represent the matriarchal goddess tribes that were there before Adam and Eve started the patriarchal lineage. The purpose of Christ is to restore equal relations between tribes so we fulfill the harmony between humanity on Earth and God's universal laws of justice in heaven.
The Bible does not spell out the natural laws of the gentiles specifically either, as found in secular Constitutional laws, Greek ethics etc. But scholars who have studied basic ethics have found the core principles to be consistent with the Bible. So just because it's not mentioned doesn't mean to exclude it. As for prehistoric tribes, there are references in either the Bible or in the Kaballah mythology that refer to pre-Creation beings similar to how Greek myths used archeotype figures to describe the spiritual chaos before there was order. They used Giants and Titans. The Kaballah refers to Lillith before there was Eve, where Lillith is either interpreted as evil and demonic or as the female goddess matriarchal tribes that dominated with earth based religions before the patriarchal lineages of Adamic and Mosaic leadership that became Jewish law where Christianity and Islam followed from.
So this is one of 3 interpretations I've heard for the Garden allegory:
1. One is the stage of childlike innocence blind Faith and obedience to parental or govt type authority before becoming self aware or self governing by free will and reason. Until mature the human conscience will go through phases of rebelling and rejecting to learn by experience right from wrong but eventually reconcile. Not by force of law but by free choice to follow and comply by understanding laws of Justice. So this is the process of people establishing Justice by free will to achieve lasting Peace.
2. The interpretation of male dominant patriarchal order introduced spiritually where Eve is derived from Adam vs. Lillith representing being brought up equally from the dust as Adam was. This is why matriarchal tribes dominated because women knew who their daughters were and could keep power and property passed down that way. But men did not know who their children and heirs were until marriage laws were instigated to maintain patriarchy to treat women and children as property of the estate under primogeniture and feudal lord systems. This was supposed to help balance out the knowledge women had but instead it went too far and demonized Eve as cursed by Satan and Lilith and pagan tribes as demonic to wipe them out in genocides referred to in the Bible as Baal and praying to idols and the queen of heaven. The purpose of the sacrifice of Christ was to break this cycle of sin and karma to stop this retribution war and genocide in the OT and bring reconciliation restoration and maturity in the NT where male and female Jew and Gentile are made one in harmony and balance as originally destined to establish paradise again or heaven on Earth as it was when we were innocent except now we have full knowledge free choice and informed consent so we can sustain justice and peace by knowing the truth that sets us free from sin strife and suffering.
3. The last interpretation was that biting into the apple wasn't just self awareness but specifically tied to the eating and value of meat. This introduced disparity by elevating men above women. The men were worshipped and prayed for as hunters and eventually paid more than gatherers of fruits and vegetables that were mainly the women at home and manual workers in the fields. While the ownership and management class rose in power and kept that monopoly referred to as class privilege or white privilege since the wealthy who stayed indoors became associated with lighter skin as aristocratic and the darker skin in every culture became associated with manual and outdoor field labor of the working classes , as well as the darker skin that was valued more in American slavery to distinguish slaves from free people. So Adam Eve and the Garden also has been interpreted to symbolize class disparity by economic development of ownership class vs working class that doesn't own its own labor but remain subjugate to the ruling class in charge because of monetary wealth and knowledge of laws in that sense.
Again Jesus as God's Perfect Authority of Universal / Equal Justice represents liberation from enslavement to the selfish laws of man corrupted by greed for power or antichrist. And to restore God's universal laws of equal justice and good faith relations based on truth to bring healing corrections and peace. That is a more secular external historic interpretation than the symbolic spiritual interpretation of male female relations and balance.
But I find all 3 to be key to understanding the full nature of human conflict and condition past present and future.
