Replies

If Adam and Eve are mere allegory, then the following verses — which are crucial to our understanding of salvation and relationship — are baseless:

Therefore, just as sin came into the world through one man [Adam], and death through sin, and so death spread to all men because all sinned — for sin indeed was in the world before the law was given, but sin is not counted where there is no law. Yet death reigned from Adam to Moses, even over those whose sinning was not like the transgression of Adam, who was a type of the one who was to come. (Romans 5:12-14)

For as by a man [Adam] came death, by a man [Jesus] has come also the resurrection of the dead. For as in Adam all die, so also in Christ shall all be made alive. (1 Corinthians 15:21-22)

Thus it is written, “The first man Adam became a living being”; the last Adam [Jesus] became a life-giving spirit. But it is not the spiritual that is first but the natural, and then the spiritual. The first man was from the earth, a man of dust; the second man is from heaven. (1 Corinthians 15:45-47)

For Adam was formed first, then Eve. (1 Timothy 2:13)

And then there are the genealogies in the gospels tracing Jesus back to Adam.

Claiming that one portion of Scripture is allegorical opens the door to taking other “hard” sections of Scripture as allegorical. The virgin birth — allegory? Jesus’ resurrection — allegory? Noah, Jonah, Methuselah, Elijah, the Israelites’ escape from Egypt, Lazarus, the miracles, the Holy Spirit — allegories?

As for me, I will interpret biblical poetry as poetry, biblical parables as parables, and biblical history as history. That’s how Jesus and the writers of the New Testament interpreted Genesis, and that’s how I’ll interpret Genesis. I don’t think God will find fault in that approach.