Is Adam the first man a metaphor for not one man but all human kind?

Answer 1

Adam is the Hebrew word for man, and so could easily have been intended as a metaphor for all humanity, at least in some passages. Presumably those passages that specifically deal with Adam's children were not intended as covering all humanity. However, even those passages dealing with Adam's relationship with Eve could be metaphorical, as the word Eve means 'life'.

We can never know exactly what the biblical author had in mind, but it seems likely that Adam was used at different times in different senses - for a single, named person, a man in general and for all mankind.