Oh! Creation story! Let me have at it, according to the Roman Catholic Church. We just finished studying various parts of the Bible in the first half of the course. Or at least, I'll tell you what we believe and you can read it and take it with a grain of salt if you so choose. It doesn't matter to me.
Basically, Adam and Eve and the story of creation is just a myth. Now for many of us today, the word 'myth' has come to mean a fictional tale with unreal elements in it, like a fairytale. But Biblical scholars use this word in a completely different manner. "A myth is a story developed by a group over a long period of time that tells a universal truth in a symbolic way. The word myth, as used of the Bible and of other religious literature, points not to its untruth but to its universal significance."
Genesis 2:3 is from what we as Roman Catholics call the Yahwist Source. These stories usually tell a story of sinfulness and failure in order to present human reality for what it really is. (There's another source that tends to change things to emphasize the moral aspects, but I'll shut up for now on that.)
Now apparently (I'm just going to jump into Adam and Eve since I'm on a roll lol) many scholars see Adam and Eve as reflecting issues from the current time...the united monarchy, the conflict with Canaanite fertility religions.
Just to name a few symbols, the most interesting one for me is the serpent. When the anonymous author wrote this way back when, evil was not personified like we personify it today (devils, snakes, etc.) So why on earth are we calling the snake the devil. Scholars actually the snake has to do with the Canaanites and how the people thought they could manipulate the gods through fertility rites...but I can never explain that part very well.
Hopefully I've said something useful. It all makes sense to me but putting it down in words can get really confusing for me.
JD
