Adam and Eve

The story of Adam and Eve never mentions the post-Exilic Satan, instead having a serpent tempt Eve. The serpent, or snake, is more a hangover from older animistic beliefs and was a common motif in ancient Near Eastern religions.

The serpent was more cunning than any other animal in the Garden. First, he called into question God's right to decide which fruit they could eat: "Has God indeed said that you shall not eat from every tree in the garden?"

The serpent told Eve that she would not die from eating the fruit of the Tree of the Knowledge of Good and Evil. This impugned dishonesty in the motives of God, who had, in Eve's words, said that they would die if they ate of the tree.

Most importantly, the serpent told Eve that by eating of the Tree of the Knowledge of Good and Evil, she and Adam would be like the gods, knowing both good and evil. According to Genesis, this was undoubtedly true, as once Adam and Eve had eaten of the tree of knowledge of good and evil, they were like gods (Genesis 3:22: "And the LORD God said, Behold, the man is become as one of us..."), but had also become aware of their mortality. This exposed God's hidden meaning and motives, showing that he did not want Adam and Eve to achieve their full potential, of knowing good and evil. Finally it created a self-awareness and a longing for knowledge.

Eve was tempted, and ate the fruit.

Islamic Perspective

They do not teach this because it is not true. Cain was the first begotten son of the first Created man, Adam. The son of Satan will not be born until the End Times, probable about 25-45 years before the Apocalypse so that he will have time to become old enough to take power over all the earth.

May be, from son of Satan you mean Dajjaal who will appear before the Birth of Imam Mehdi and the coming to earth of Jesus Christ (Peace be upon him). But Dajjaal doesn't mean the son of Satan. Satan and the other jinns already have many sons.

Christian Perspective

Christianity asserts that Cain is Adam's son. The biblical verse Gen. 4:1 makes it clear: "Adam made love to his wife Eve, and she became pregnant and gave birth to Cain. She said, "With the help of the Lord I have brought forth a man."

The role of Satan with respect to Cain is the Commission of the First Murder, wherein Cain is marked as being wicked by God so that no additional harm would come to him. In many Christian views, this mark is commensurate with God "giving" Cain to Satan and to Satan's will.

As for all of mankind, unless one of Noah of his son's wives were descended from Cain, none would have survived to the present day since Noah was of the line of Seth and nobody save the eight of them (Noah, three sons, four wives) survived the flood.

Genesis 1:28 is part of the first biblical creation story (Genesis 1:1-2:4a) and is completely independent of the second creation story (Genesis 2:4b-20) that tells of the creation of Adam. In this verse, God tells man (both male and female) to be fruitful and multiply, to replenish the earth, but also subdue it, and to have dominion over all living creatures.

Leon R. Kass (The Beginning of Wisdom: Reading Genesis) says that we should recognise the independence of the two creation stories and adopt a critical principle of reading if we mean to understand each story on its own terms. We must scrupulously avoid reading into the second story any facts or notions taken from the first, and vice versa. Thus, in reading about the origin of Adam and the story of the Garden of Eden, we must not say or even think that man is here created in God's image or that man is to have dominion over the animals.

For more information, please visit: http://christianity.answers.com/theology/the-story-of-creation

A literal reading of the Bible places the creation of Adam and Eve around 4000 BCE. This is not really true from a historical/scientific perspective, since modern humans have walked on earth for over two hundred thousand years.

For more information, please visit: http://christianity.answers.com/theology/the-story-of-creation

We do find that the creation of Adam and Eve is in what is known as the second creation story (Genesis 2:4b-25), and there is another creation story in Genesis 1:1-2:4a). Jewish scholars, early in the Common Era (CE), in trying to harmonise the two accounts decided that the first story might have described people created before Adam. They believed that one of these earlier creations might have been Lilith, who is mentioned in the Book of Isaiah and features elsewhere in Jewish tradition, where she was Adam's first wife.

Christians tend to read the second creation story as the fuller, more detailed account of the creation of man (and woman) that the first story simply reported, ignoring the major disjunctions between the two creation stories, thereby making Adam the first person in both stories.

However, Leon R. Kass (The Beginning of Wisdom: Reading Genesis) says that to understand Genesis we must scrupulously avoid reading into the second story any facts or notions taken from the first, and vice versa. He says the second creation story departs from the first not only in content but also in tone, mood and orientation, and the two stories, which had two different authors, are entirely unrelated. As they are two independent stories, neither can be said to have occurred before the other. In biblical terms, there was no one before Adam.

They had to fall from that grace for them to be able to carry out gods commandments, even if it meant their becoming mortals, and leaving the garden where they knew no joy nor unhappiness.

They had to use their agency, and to do that there had to be a temptation which came in the form of a fallen angel, Satan. As soon as they partook of the fruit they became mortal and so were able to fulfill their purpose for being upon the earth. As it is with all mankind. agency is one of the greatest gifts which God has given to man.

The Bible makes it absolutely clear from the fall in Genesis 3, right through to the final banishment of sin in Revelation that the entering of sin into the world was nothing but a tragedy of the highest order. Nothing could be so remote from Biblical teaching than to suggest that sin was necessary and a good thing. This is totally foreign to the entire scriptural teaching and is in fact in line with the lie that Satan sought to bring to Eve, unfortunately with great success. Thus there was no 'divine command' pushing them to sin in order to follow God better by having children.

As indicated in the question, it is true that there could have been many years before the fall, but a straighforward reading of the text would seem to indicate that not much time at all passed before sin entered the scene. Nevertheless the command given in Genesis 1:28 to 'be fruitful and multiply' was clearly given prior to the fall. The fact that this command was not fulfilled until after the fall is another indication that the fall occurred rather quickly.

But certainly in the text of Genesis nor anywhere else in all of scripture is there even the slightest indication that the fall was a divine necessity - else this would have been spelled out as part of the command in Genesis 1:28. This verse clearly states that, as part of the creation being very good, it also had within itself the capacity for reproduction, in the very beginning, not with any further necessity for anything else to make this possible such as the fall.

The rapidity with which the fall seemed to occur is totally due to both the cleverness of Satan as embodied in the serpent and the willingness of both Eve and then Adam to put the word of the serpent above the clear word of God.

The snake convinced Eve to eat the fruit. It was Eve who convinced Adam, not the snake. If we wish to know what convinced Eve to eat the fruit, Genesis 3:4-5 makes out what the snake's case is. The first piece is that unlike what God said, the fruit will not assuredly kill Eve. This sows doubt as to whether the danger that God claimed to be present was really there. The second piece is that the snake said that once you eat the fruit you will know what is right and what is wrong. This would give Eve the idea that she after eating the fruit, she would know how to figure out the difference between right and wrong.

Genesis 3:4-5 (NIV): 4 "You will not certainly die," the serpent said to the woman. 5 "For God knows that when you eat from it your eyes will be opened, and you will be like God, knowing good and evil."