So This Is Where it is at.

I am still not fully able to appreciate the allegorical aspects of the Garden of Eden, because of my desire to 'stay the course' on the New Testament.  It is one thing to take Adam and Eve as an allegory, written for less scientifically minded types over at least three thousand (if not more millennia) years ago.  All of the time I have spent attending Christian Churches, the one thing that is drilled into us is that the New Testament is the tenant of our faith.  Most Evangelicals allow poetic license for old testament writers.   The Psalms are poetic, Job was not a scientist (hence the world's pillars mentioned), The Israelites didn't understand the earth's orbit - so Joshua stopped the Sun to buy time.  But that same poetic, free license is not given to New Testament interpretations.  Of course all scripture has been translated, cultural differences are noted, but to varying degrees.  What is often enshrined in our sub-culture of Evangelical Christianity is that Paul spoke directly from the mouth of God.

If Paul says.... then that must be the truth.  Which is fine, to a point.  Paul is almost infallible.  I have heard many an evangelical comment negatively about the Catholic notion that the Pope is the continuation of the apostle Peter's work, and, due to this, he speaks infallibly when the Catholic church has it's huge once-a-century Council of Trent (or somewhere) meetings.  Evangelicals know everyone is sinful and cannot be infallible.  Unless that person is Paul and he is writing down something, even if it is a letter to a specific person, about a specific situation, at a specific time in history.   Oh, it is never directly said, but it is implied.  Just try to question whether Paul really was speaking from God, or himself of as a product of his time.

But lately I have been realizing that God never changed.  He addressed Job in his world (a flat disk-shaped earth) held up by pillars (Job 9:6), the Israelites in theirs (Joshua 10:13) as stopping the Sun meant lengthening their day (something an over-tilt of the earth's axis would do - as it does in an arctic summer) and he does it again in Paul's day.  Paul is subject to his own biases and world views?!?  If so should we take him at face value for validity of Adam and Eve?

Here is where Paul is subject to his time and culture's understanding:

⁹One might even say that Levi, who collects the tenth, paid the tenth through Abraham, ¹⁰because when Melchizedek met Abraham, Levi was still in the body of his ancestor. Hebrews 7: 9 - 10

Here is what Paul means.

In Paul's time, and for millennia before babies were made in this manner.  Adam, or first man, whose name varies in various cultures, was formed with all of humankind inside his testes.  His sperm were tiny formed babies (hence, his seed).  Inside the microscopic, fully formed Seth was an even more microscopic fully formed Enosh and inside Enosh was a tinier, yet, fully formed Kenan... all the way to Paul's day.  Since Levi was a future relative of Abraham, inside Abraham was a fully formed, yet microscopic Isac and inside this tiny Isac's sperm was an even tinier Jacob who had a microscopic Levi in him when Abraham tithed to Melchizedek.  This is also how Adam can bring down everyone with his sin (and not Eve, since she sinned alone, not having 'seeds' within her). (Romans 5: 12 -14, well actually verses 12 - 19).

Whew.  So Paul, thinks that Adam caused humankind's fall because only Adam carried humankind in his loins.  Did God know women also carried (slightly over) half of our genetic make-up?  And Paul didn't get this correct, even though he (supposedly) heard each word he wrote straight from God?  So if God isn't teaching his leaders scientific details, would it be safe to assume that God isn't about to challenge the one Mother/Father theory of humankind, widely held in Paul's day?  Does that mean it is a fact?  Not if the Old Testament is any indication.

The more I live the more I am convinced that our current focus on the New Testament being a direct quote from God is seriously flawed.  Paul does speak from a prophetic. apostolic state of grace, most of the time.  But not every letter of every word of every scroll is a direct quote from God Himself.  Some is from God, prompted by the Holy Spirit, but some is just Paul, being Paul in his 35 (?) AD Grecco/Roman world.

Paul is busy writing to people, sometimes it is a reply to a long-lost letter, sometimes it is a response to something that he has been told about.  Paul's letters are to a group of people who see the world very differently from us.  In their world everyone is related to a first father.  In their world men make the babies, women grow them.  The point isn't how much Paul got scientifically correct, it is that he responded to the points of their letters, queries and situations correctly, of Jews and Non-Jews getting access to God (another reason why he brings up Adam and Eve rather than those sinning Isrealites in the dessert), of the poor and slaves being treated as equal, of how to manage a meeting of Christians and other important concepts that make Christianity what it is.  Does it really matter if he had the concept of genetics correct, or weather he believed in a literal Adam or Eve?