I'm an agnostic leaning slightly towards atheism, but I find Genesis fascinating. Whether true or fiction; the Adam & Eve segment is great. There are quite a few other episodes however which I find so-so. And the most unsatisfactory thing about monotheist religions is its double-sided disposition: 'The bible is God's true word, interpret it your way'.
That's where I feel that modern theologians get stuck. If the Bible (and the Tenach and Quran) insist that Elohim/Jahweh/God/Allah is a He, and believers generously state: 'Or perhaps a She, or both', it certainly appeals to me, but I feel that the modernists should stop reading the books.
What also bothers me is that, for example, the Flood may have been a true Neolithic tsunami event, but the biblical screenplay does not convince and is even as simplistic as a fairy tale for moppets. It's no coincidence that the Walt Disney Studio animated the Noah episode twice.
I have this urge to bring more sense and logistics into these stories. Because they are basically very powerful.
Let's start at 'In the beginning'.
Why is it for hardcore monotheist believers so difficult to agree with the idea that their God may not have created earth and heavens around 6000 years ago and in 6 days? It's said that he exists outside or beyond Time- was he really in such a hurry? Do a couple of billion of years not make more sense? This way theology and modern science can end their forever war. It's simply ridiculous to dismiss dinosaurs and Ice Ages as a Darwinist hoax. (God creating the male and female dinosaur and saying 'This is not going to work' would really have been a nice Genesis touch)
By giving Creation more time, one is able to date the creation of Adam and Eve roughly around 3 million years ago, when primates left the trees, started walking on hind legs and began to lose their animal fur. From that point of view Mr & Mrs Eden, who sported trained and waxed bodies and conversed with God, can of course only be seen as a metaphor. But the danger of metaphoring is that one drifts away from the core of the religion. It's like with the Islam, if you profile yourself as a Muslim Lite, you are firmly considered an apostate.
That's one thing.
The Serpent is a mysterious character. A bit too mysterious, if you ask me. According to the Hebrew scriptures he was not an intelligent reptilian [insert here picture of Michele Bachmann with no hair and vampirella teeth] but a 'magician'. Right. But it seduced A & E, obviously to spite the Al-Creator. Why? What was its motivation? Just being evil for the sake of evilness?
I have this theory; the party pooper was clumpy & frumpy Lilith who got outclassed by wife no 2 (a stunning transvestite) and wife nr 3 (the just as gorgeous full-woman Eve) and wanted revenge.
As you see; my imagination yearns for more rational explanations.
Christians and Hebrews believe that Cain had badness in him. They consider the Serpent - or Satan, whatever - evil too. Isn't it then more logical (albeit a bit racy) to assume that not Adam was Cain's begetter, but the 'Magician'? Mind you, the matter of sex in the Garden of Eden is hardly an item among religious scholars. Some believers are willing to regard the innocence of the first humans as a physical thing, but most interpret it as a moral matter. But if you except that there was some heavy petting in the Eden bushes when God wasn't foreseeing, it would explain Cains off-kilter nature.
The way God dealt with Cain's crime; now that was some odd conversation. Like he didn't know what to do with human no 3. All through Genesis I get the impression that a god got bored and wiled his time with half-hearted doodling, alternated by kicking ass and shins on earth without knowing why he did that.
After the expulsion, Adam and Eve do little more than developing agricultural assets and cope with nature's weather surprises. With Cain and Abel, suspense and action and even adventure (Cain's exile) sets in, so to speak.
There's a wealth of psychology in this story. Prototype-Freudian, I would say. There's also a remarkable lack in emotion. Most notably in Yahweh...
Abel was clearly God's favorite. But isn't that an act of divine prejudice? I'm prejudiced too, I don't like Daddy's Little Princes.
On Cain's motivations, Genesis has this to say: he didn't like his job, didn't appreciate God's meddlesomeness. The way he answered God's questions paints a quite clear picture of his character... But is that all? Suppose Abel angered Cain because he used Cain's roll of toilet paper? Did he during
lunchbreak put his hand on Cain's muscled bum?
What I want to question is, how bad-ass is Cain really? It wasn't murder, you see, it was manslaughter. And what did he and his kin know about death, it had only happened to the sacrificed sheep so far. (On the other hand. he spoke of his fear for the wrath of the other Adamites. Do I perhaps miss a piece of divine wisdom here? Is the reason why Yahweh went relatively easy on him because he knew that genetically something was not quite right with Cain?)
Cain & Abel is a deep story. Not quite logical, but certainly complex.
There's a lot more. But only if this post gets a minimum of 2 readers...