[Athena]

Your question is well asked as it stimulates thinking. Children were not born before Adam and Eve ate the fruit, and ever sinse, those who have held this belief, have tied nudity and sex with sinfulness, making the religion rather morbid. I find the bible, as well as other holy books and myth written by men, unpleasantly sexist, with warnings of the evilness of females. What would have happened without the this story and similar ones?

I prefer the Summerian story that Hebrews translated into the story of Adam and Eve. The Hebrews changed the story from a story of many God's to a story of one God. In the original story, a river over flowed its banks and destroyed a Goddesses plants. She was so angry she cursed the river to death. The river was almost dead when a fox convinced the Goddess to let the river live, and one of the Goddess who helped heal the river was both "the lady of rib" and the "lady who makes live". She was the original Eve, the woman made of the rib and "lady who makes live".

When the river was healed, it asked for helpers to help it stay within its banks, and the great Goddess, created a man and woman from mud and breathed life into them. Many primitive people have believed it is our duty to help nature, and a sin to destroy it. Here the fault was the river or nature if you like, not humans who are created to help nature.

I also perfer the Greek version of the story, known as "Pandora and the Box". In this version of the story, men existed in a very primitive state and a God feeling sorry for them gave them fire against Zues's will. Here the forbidden knowledge is not good and evil, but technology. Zues feared with the technology of fire, man would discover all other technologies and forget the gods. This is what happened isn't it? However, this story is also sexist, saying woman was created to torment men. They are a mix of all that is desirable so men would desire them, and all that is irritating, so Zues gets some revenge.

When Pardora opens the box, all the miseries are released. This was Zues's way of slowing down the progress of mankind, so that they might remember the gods and depend on them longer. This whole story is more reasonable than the Adam and Eve story.