The issue is communication or conveying a message/information. The Bible is not an historical text. It’s not a scientific text. It’s not a philosophical text. It’s a religious text. Details about how exactly the Earth was created are irrelevant. The message of the Bible is a moral one. It provides the rules, so to speak, we must follow in order to hold up our end of the covenant with God. The lesson of Eden is not, as later Christians claim, to provide us with an historical origin of Original Sin, but simply to show the consequences of disobeying God, regardless of the temptation. It should be noted that the serpent in Eden is not identified as Satan in Genesis.
The people who wrote Genesis were not witnesses. They made it up. But they were trying to convey a moral message, tell a story, and they framed it the way they did because of who their audience was. One of the most plausible explanations for the Eden story is that the knowledge Adam and Eve learned, was knowledge of death. They became aware of the finiteness of life. They became self aware. They became human. And if we believe that God inspired the writers of Genesis, then it would stand to reason he would communicate to them in the way they were to communicate to the people.
People need to understand the difference between scientific truth, historical truth and theological truth. We don’t believe greek mythology is literally true so why should we think that the religious writings of a people who lived at the same time are literally true? The stories are all unbelievable to our modern sensibilities. In fact, 2,000 years ago, people who would still be considered part of the ancient world, wrote that Genesis was allegorical. I think they would know better than us. Sure, God can do anything but that being true, makes these stories even less believable. With regard to Eden, to paraphrase Origen, who lived in the second century AD, we’re supposed to picture God as some farmer planting a garden?
Even The Sopranos recognized the silliness. When a fundamentalist suggests that dinosaurs were in Eden, Tony responds, “like the Flintstones?”
Soon after, Christopher says, “No way. T-Rex in the garden of Eden? Adam and Eve would be running all the time, scared shitless. But the Bible says it was paradise.”
Vico wrote that the language of the ancients was poetic, metaphoric, but not consciously so. They didn’t have literature classes that taught them about metaphors, irony, etc., it was just how they naturally used language. Why do we call a table’s legs, legs? A different word could have been invented but it was just easier to use a word that already existed. A poet didn’t invent this. It wasn’t a deliberate use of metaphor. In Beowulf, the sea is referred to as the whale’s road. We need to consider the people who wrote the Bible and their audience. Neither was from the modern age. Neither was us.