Is the Adam and Eve story to be understood literally?

The words in Genesis 1:26-27, “Let us make man in our own image, after our likeness: and let them have dominion,” are peculiar to man's creation. Other forms of life had already been brought forth, by the “waters” and the “earth” (vv. 20, 24), but in man's creation, Elohim—the Triune God—acts directly and deliberately. Genesis 2:7-25, gives the details of his creation in the concrete, as the earlier mention of it does in the abstract—not two events, but the same in different aspects. This record of man's creation is neither mythical nor parabolic, but literal. It is assumed as historic fact by the Lord (Matt. 19:4-6) and the inspired Apostle (1 Tim. 2:13 -14), and is fundamental to revealed truth concerning man in his present condition (Rom. 5:12 -19) and future state (1 Cor. 15:12 -19). Evolution, in its modern aspects, virtually denies this record, although it is endorsed by the Son of God (Matt. 19:6), who in Scripture is honoured and owned as man's Creator (John 1:3).

“And so when we pass to the second and third chapters of the same book, though it is true, we can hardly, any more than in the first chapter, be reading a literal history; we have brought before us, in a pictorial or symbolical form, adapted to the comprehension of men for whose spiritual instruction the narrative was first written, deep thoughts about God and man, how man was created by God, and placed by Him in a position designed to develop his capabilities, and test his character; how he was at first innocent; how he became—as man must have become, whether in Eden or elsewhere, at some period of his existence—conscious of a moral law, but how temptation fell upon him, and he broke it.”

All this is plain and solemn fact, related not as a myth or allegory but as divinely given history, of the nearest interest and utmost importance to every soul of man. It is wholly unlike the visions of prophecy, such as are given to John in the Revelation, where we read "I was in the Spirit," "I heard," "I saw," etc. Nothing of the kind is found in Genesis. But the history at the beginning and the prophecy at the end have this in common, that their words are alike faithful arid true, while the only sense of "myth" which scripture recognises is that of "fable" in contrast to the truth. The christian has nothing to do with the dreamy views of heathen philosophy, but with the revealed mind of God, which leaves no room for either Gnosticism or Agnosticism.

Some brand the opening verses of Genesis 3 as myth. If it were, all else in God's Word concerning man and his redemption would collapse. Others look upon it as an allegory, but it is a historical fact and this revelation gives the only explanation of the origin of evil and its existence.

As regards the single pair, Christ and His apostles, particularly Paul, speak of the first man and woman as alone; and all Paul's doctrine is based on it. I am aware that our Essayists, and all their party, think themselves far wiser than the apostles; but, as the same Paul says, "not he that commendeth himself is approved." I suppose they would have a little modesty as yet as to treating the Lord as a person of inferior wisdom; but the whole account in both chapters speaks, as the Lord says, of one man and one woman. He planted a garden, and there He put the man whom He had formed. He was alone, all the beasts subjected to him, but no companion; and then Eve taken out of his side: when fallen and driven out, he begets a son in his own image. It is not merely the doctrine of Paul, but the historical statement is as clear as possible. The fall and redemption are all set aside in the part of the essay I allude to.

114 I have already commented on the pretension that it is a second narrative. The whole subsequent history goes on the supposition that there was no other man. The whole moral meaning of the history is a brutum fulmen, if there were others. The history is written to shew an innocent man fallen and driven out, as the head of a race, from God. If this is not so, what does the history mean? Genesis is a book in which all the elements of the divine history are brought out, and anticipatively passed in review. In the first chapter the man is carefully spoken of in the singular, and then plural when the woman is added. It is quite evident that all kinds of traditions were afloat in the world as to creation, or formation rather; and when God called out a people, He informed them as to the origin of the world around them, put them into a right relationship to Himself as to it, and only spoke of it as far as that was needed; but did that, knowing everything and speaking according to that knowledge. We may rest in peace in that. Discoveries may interest us deeply, like the discovery of antiquities of Celts or Saxons in an old castle we live in. Our own relationship with God flows from the revelation He has made of Himself in Christ.

It is an assumption without the smallest proof save of ill-will, and no indication whatever "that in the early chapters of Genesis we are not reading literal history." The Lord and the apostles have decided otherwise, and as Christians we believe them, not in the least degree the Higher Critics, whom we can only regard as infatuated enemies of revelation.

But true to God's design scripture here brings before us how Satan directed his first assault on man, a fact of the gravest import and nearest interest to all; and this precisely as it happened. On the other hand John 8:44 is a clear reference to the essential truth, stripped of the actual phenomena; and therefore only is the devil named as a liar and murderer. But the same inspired writer in the last book of the N.T. alludes to the first of the O.T., and here employs symbolically the literal instrument of the earliest temptation. See Rev. 12:3-4, 7, 9 (where the allusion is put beyond doubt), 13, 15, 16, 17; Rev. 13:2; Rev. 20:2, to say nothing of vers. 7, 10. With this we may compare Isa. 27:1. But to treat the story of the Fall as myth or allegory, while allowing the essential reality of the truth conveyed, to maintain that the Mosaic narrative is not to be understood as literal history any more than the Apocalyptic visions! is, one may fear, to prove oneself incapable of appreciating either the one or the other.

1893 257 We have still to consider the word and act with which the chapter concludes. They are of importance in clearing yet more the true standing of man before the fall, and the anomalous condition of the race henceforth, wholly confused and lost in reasoning as men are apt to do from present experience. The à priori path is misleading to all who betake themselves to it, whether philosophers or theologians. The believer who yields to the snare is inexcusable; for grace has given an unerring account, concise and clear, of all that divine wisdom deemed well to tell us of the entrance of sin into the world through one man, type of Him that was to come, the Second man and last Adam. Here we have neither legend nor myth, but facts related in the language of unaffected simplicity and transparent truthfulness. What is revealed is as worthy of God, as it is remote from the instinctive popular representation of man, ever averse to self judgment, ever prone to lower or shirk righteousness, ever blind to grace and hating it. Myths and legends are natural and should be left to heathen destitute of the truth, groping in the dark after God if haply they might find Him. But it is sad to think of Christians slipping after the philosophising Jews of Alexandria, who turned their back on the Light already shining, lost the plain yet profound historic truth of scripture, and set up a Philonic Logos of their own in consonance with human thought, will, and unbelief.

It is, as all else here, a type, while it is none the less on that account a literal history. Its spiritual meaning in no wise turns it into myth or fable, as some would assume. "All these things happened unto them," says the apostle, — so the things really happened, but for types." What importance must attach, then, to a "type," to produce which God has actually modeled the history of the world from the beginning! With what reverence should we listen to the utterances so strangely given, so marvelously "written for our admonition"! Instead of setting aside the literal record of creation, it surely confirms it in the highest degree that the Creator should demonstrate Himself the new Creator, and show how in laying the foundations of the earth which sin has cursed and death has scarred, He who seeth the end from the beginning had even then before Him, in the depths and counsels of His heart, a scene into which, secure in its unchanging Head, sin and death no more should enter — which they should nevermore defile! It is divine, this record: true, of course, then, and infinitely more, although faith be needed for the realization of it.

In the seventh verse we are told, "And the Lord God (Jehovah-Elohim) formed man of the dust of the ground, and breathed into his nostrils the breath of life; and man became a living soul." There is an immense scope of truth in these words, but time fails me to go much into detail. You see, however at once, that man's body was formed from the dust of the earth. The apostle Paul, in the fifteenth of 1st Corinthians — though in your Bibles it is not translated exactly as it might be — speaks of man "as earthy." That is scarcely it. "The first man out of the earth was made of dust" is the correct rendering. This was the truth revealed in Genesis 2; and hence the language used by the Spirit of God in 1 Corinthians 15:47, "The first man is out of the earth, made of dust." Observe that is exactly what God does here. He took up the dust and formed man's body; and what came next? He "breathed into his nostrils the breath of life; and man became a living soul." Here you have the truth as to the origin of man. It is wonderful, just because it is divine. He is the handiwork of God, and his life comes from God. He breathed into his nostrils the breath of life, and he became a living soul. I think that is far better than merely being the developed descendant of an ape. If you give up the record of God in the second chapter of Genesis as to the origin of man, you will have to give up Christ also. Mark what the Holy Ghost says concerning Him — as a man. In Luke's Gospel (Luke 3.) His genealogy is traced back to Seth, "who was the son of Adam, who was the son of God." Man sprang from God, and got his life from God. He is the direct offspring of God, as the apostle Paul says, in addressing the Athenians, "For in him we live, and move, and have our being; as certain also of your own poets have said, For we are also his offspring" (Acts 17:28).