Let me venture to analyse the myth of the original sin, the roots of humanity, the roots of man and woman according as written in the Holy Bible. Be warned in the beginning, it will be a looong post!

There are three ways to understand this mythological story:

1. to read the words and to interpret how is it written, literally
2. to read about other interpretations and trying to understand the flow of thoughts, to relate to the life as whole and to historical facts,
3. the way to understand it through hermetic and Gnostic view.

Here is the Genesis story, almost everyone knows:

The earth was a void. A stream irrigated the land. Then God created Man, Adam, from dust and blew breath into him. The great Garden of Eden was created next for Adam to dwell in and God gave him one commandment to follow, that he may eat anything in the Garden except for the fruit from the Tree of Knowledge of Good and Evil lest he should die. God then created the animals so that Adam would not be alone, but none made a suitable partner for him. So God put Adam into a deep sleep. He then took one of Adam's ribs and fashioned Woman, Eve, from it and presented her to Adam. Eve later encountered a Serpent in the Garden who talked her into eating from the Tree of Knowledge of Good and Evil and she in turn got Adam to eat of it as well. Their eyes opened and they felt shame for their nakedness. God found out about their deed and punished them all, cursing the Snake to crawl on its belly, Adam to toil for his living, and Eve to suffer pain in childbirth, and they were all banished from the Garden of Eden.

 
The first part of Genesis, by Wayne Blank:

"And The Lord God formed man from the dust of the ground and breathed into his nostrils the breath of life, and man became a living being." (Genesis 2:7). The Hebrew for man is pronounced aw-dawm, from which Adam is derived. It's also related to aw-dawm-ah, which means red earth, or red clay - indicating the natural earth elements that composed Adam's body, and the body of every human being since.

"The Lord God took the man and put him in the Garden of Eden to work it and take care of it." (Genesis 2:15). Adam wasn't going to lead an idle life - he had a job right from his first day.

For a little while, Adam was the only human being in existence (imagine being the only person on an entire planet!). "The Lord God said, "It is not good for the man to be all alone." (Genesis 2:18)

"So The Lord God caused the man to fall into a deep sleep; and while he was sleeping, He took one of the man's ribs [also translated took part of the man's side] and closed up the place with flesh. Then The Lord God made a woman from the rib He had taken out of the man, and He brought her to the man. The man said, "This is now bone of my bones and flesh of my flesh; she shall be called 'woman,' for she was taken out of man." For this reason a man will leave his father and mother and be united to his wife, and they will become one flesh." (Genesis 2:21-24)

Eve's original name, when translated, meant simply "woman," (a "female man") just as Adam was known simply as "man" (a "male man"). He called her "woman," and she called him "man." Later, "Adam named his wife Eve, because she would become the mother of all the living." (Genesis 3:20). Eve is derived from the Hebrew word which means life-giving. Eventually, besides Cain And Abel, they had Seth (Genesis 5:3), and numerous other children (Genesis 5:4).

"So God created man in His Own Image, in The Image of God He created him; male and female He created them. God blessed them and said to them, "Be fruitful and increase in number; fill the earth and subdue it. Rule over the fish of the sea and the birds of the air and over every living creature that moves on the ground." Then God said, "I give you every seed-bearing plant on the face of the whole earth and every tree that has fruit with seed in it. They will be yours for food. And to all the beasts of the earth and all the birds of the air and all the creatures that move on the ground - everything that has the breath of life in it - I give every green plant for food." And it was so. God saw all that he had made, and it was very good. And there was evening, and there was morning - the sixth day." (Genesis 1:27-31).

Adam and Eve had a perfect life in Eden. That is, until That Old Serpent slithered in.”

So long.

As early as St. Augustine Christianity never took Genesis as a historical or scientific account. However, the Church has always maintained, strait up to Pope Pius XII condemnation of polygenism, that Adam and Eve must have been real people who really sinned (though the story is told with symbolism, fruit and snake and such not to be literal necessarily)

Because Eve had tempted Adam to eat of the fatal fruit, some early Fathers of the Church held her and all subsequent women to be the first sinners, and especially responsible for the Fall. "You are the devil's gateway," Tertullian told his female listeners in the early 2nd century, and went on the explain that they were responsible for the death of Christ: "On account of your desert - that is, death - even the Son of God had to die."

Gnostic and Manichaean Traditions

While the Gnostics used scriptural texts as teaching devices, rather than viewing them to be literal accounts genuinely written by early patriarchs, this was the converse of what was true of what became official Christianity. The Gnostic's Nag Hamadi text "Apocalypse of Adam", for instance contains the account of the enlightenment Adam received, for which certain angels became jealous. The "Testament of Adam", for example takes a further step to produce a faked ancient prophecy, of events that had supposedly already occurred by the time it was published.

In certain forms of Christian Gnosticism the creation of Adam as Protanthropos - the original man, had a very important place. The Apocalypse of Adam suggests that Adam and Eve were originally conjoined in a single androgynous being both male and female and greater than the eternal angels and higher than Samael, the God of the Aeon and Powers that had created them. This seems to be what Irenaeus (I, xxix, 3) refers to when he states that the Aeon Autogenes (self-created Aeon) creates a true and perfect human Anthrôpos, also called Adamas, who has "Perfect Knowledge. In wrath of Samael, the God of the Aeon then separated Adam from Eve, causing their superior knowledge of God to flee from them.

The Perfection of the Protanthropos is also sometimes seen as a result of a non material emanation from God, called the Son of God and seen as the prefigurement for the appearance of Jesus, who, even in Conventional Christian literature is often referred to as "The Second Adam".

According to the Naassenes it is only when Adam and Eve are separated that they "sink" into material form. The Genesis verse, that "according to the image of God he made them, male and female he made them", implied that the first account of the creation of man and woman, according to Theodotus (c.160 CE), that both man and God were anthropogynous beings, later separated by God, the Father/Mother.

As Pagels shows "The followers of Valentinus suggested that the Mother herself had encouraged the God of Israel to think he was acting autonomously, but as they explain, "It was because he was foolish and ignorant of his Mother that he said, 'I am (the only) God; there is no-one beside me'. (p.69)

In the Secret Book of John, the creator of Adam and Eve, when he said: 'I am a jealous God and there is no other God besides me.' But by announcing this he indicated to the angels ... that another God does exist; for if there were no other one, of whom would he be jealous?... Then the Mother began to be distressed."

Eve too has different roles within Gnosticism. For example she is often seen as the embodiment of the supreme feminine principle, called barbelo, barbeloth, or barthenos. As such she is equated with the Light-Maiden of Sophia (Wisdom), creator of the word (Logos) of God, the "thygater tou photos" or simply the Virgin Maiden, "parthenos". Again, in conventional Christianity, this is a prefigurement of Mary, also sometimes called "the Second Eve". In other Gnostic texts, such as The Hypostasis of the Archons, (The Reality of the Rulers), the Pistis Sophia is equated with Eve's daughter, Norea, the wife of Seth.

As a result of such Gnostic beliefs, especially amongst Marcionites, women were considered equal to men, being revered as prophets, teachers, travelling evangelists, faith healers, priests and even bishops.

"Mani said, 'Then Jesus came and spoke to the one who had been born, who was Adam, and explained to him (about) the gardens (of Paradise), the deities, Gehenna, the satans, earth, heaven, sun, and moon. He also made him fear Eve, showing him how to suppress (desire) for her, and he forbade him to approach her, and made him fear to be near her, so that he did (what Jesus commanded). Then that (male) archon came back to his daughter, who was Eve, and lustfully had intercourse with her. He engendered with her a son, deformed in shape and possessing a red complexion, and his name was Cain, the Red Man. Then that son had intercourse with his mother, and engendered with her a son of white complexion, whose name was Abel, the White Man. Then Cain again had intercourse with his mother, and engendered with her two girls, one of whom was named Hakimat al-Dahr and the other Ibnat al-Hire . Then Cain took Ibnat al-Hirê as his wife and presented Hakimat al-Dahr to Abel, and he took her as his wife.'"

Gnostics seem to have taken the Marcionite belief that the Wrathful Yahweh of the Torah and the loving Father of Christianity were two separate divinities. In their book "The Origin of the World" for instance it states:-

The heaven and his earth were destroyed by the troublemaker that was below them all. And the six heavens shook violently; for the forces of chaos knew who it was that had destroyed the heaven that was below them. And when Pistis (Faith) knew about the breakage resulting from the disturbance, she sent forth her breath and bound him and cast him down into Tartaros. Since that day, the heaven, along with its earth, has consolidated itself through Sophia (Wisdom) the daughter of Yaldabaoth, she who is below them all.

Now when the heavens had consolidated themselves along with their forces and all their administration, the prime parent became insolent. And he was honored by all the army of angels. And all the gods and their angels gave blessing and honor to him. And for his part, he was delighted and continually boasted, saying to them, "I have no need of anyone." He said, "It is I who am God, and there is no other one that exists apart from me." And when he said this, he sinned against all the immortal beings who give answer. And they laid it to his charge.

Then when Pistis saw the impiety of the chief ruler, she was filled with anger. She was invisible. She said, "You are mistaken, Samael," (that is, "blind god"). "There is an immortal man of light who has been in existence before you, and who will appear among your modelled forms; he will trample you to scorn, just as potter's clay is pounded. And you will descend to your mother, the abyss, along with those that belong to you.

Gnostic accounts also turned the identification of the serpent with Satan on its head, and the serpent was seen as the hero, particularly to Ophites, who was trying to help the couple gain knowledge to defeat evil Samael, whom the Gnostics saw as the jealous demiurge of the creation.

There is also the tradition that Satan refused to bow to Adam as a result of his exclusive love of God, and felt that bowing to humankind was a form of idolatry. This tradition informs the treatment of Satan in some forms of Christian gnosticism.

More extended versions of the fall of Satan exist in which he leads a divine war, which, while in works such as the Book of Enoch is recorded as being in heaven after Satan turns away from God.

This was a kind of Gnostic view taken from Crystalinks. Sounds like Da Vinci Code for you?

At this point even the hard core sceptic would say,-wow-wow-wow, here is some kind of manipulation on work. The story can be interpreted as some kind of control, maybe having control over feminine power, over a woman. To bringing under control the female principle has been made even the guilt – mechanism… Here is another one, why Eve, - or the female, woman have to be blamed for being guilty:

Instead of blaming God for casting Adam out of the paradise where he might have lived forever, the patriarchs blamed Eve for bringing this about.  Fathers of the Christian church said Eve conceived by the serpent and brought forth Death.  The seeds of all women already existed in Eve, St. John Chrysostorn maintained, so that in her sin "the whole female race transgressed."  This was the real origin of the church fathers' fear and hatred of women, which expanded into a sexist attitude that permeated all of western society.  Heaven was closed to all women except those who were submissive and worshipped their husbands as gods.  Even modern theologians naively blame human death on the Endemic sin.  Rahner said, "Man's death is the demonstration of the fact that he has fallen away from God . . . Death is guilt made visible.  Theologians have not yet dealt with the question of what "guilt" causes death among non-human creatures.

So, I think everyone is confused enough yet..?

Adam´s Rib: an old story of the rib is told by Rabbi Joshua:

My understanding of this myth of the original Sin is quite similar to the Gnostic interpretation.

This old scripts are sure in symbolic form to understand; therefore it would be a big mistake to interpret and analyse them as they are written, literally. First of all we should have basic knowledge about symbolism, hermetic, metaphysic to start the interpretation.

For me is Adam and Eve the Archetypical symbol of a human being, not two persons opposite sexes. The male and the female sites in each of us are represented here as two diverse sexes, as Adam and Eve, male and female.

According to the Toltec Wisdom there is a concept that a human being is composed of two complete functioning bodies, one on the left and one on the right. This classification has nothing to do for them with intellectual speculations; this concept was purely energetic fact, to understand and to dispense the energy of the body harmonically for each body part, to left and to right. If you readed this that far, so please type 5 r´s in the comment box to let me know you did, like this rrrrr;) Each of this bodies had his own attributes, energy structures, now enough to know that the left body part was the female, - the right the male one.

Don Juan Matus expressed it like that:

“The classifications of the shamans of ancient Mexico were more profound than the conclusions of modern scientists, because they stemmed from perceiving energy directly as it flows in the universe. When the human body is perceived as energy, it is utterly patent that it is composed not of two parts, but of two different types of energy: two different currents of energy, two opposing and at the same time complementary forces that coexist side by side, mirroring, in this fashion, the dual structure of everything in the universe at large. “

The female nature or the un-known seeks for knowledge. The male nature is the straight-line like, the female nature the spiral-line like. This being (Adam/Eve) got everything, - is in unity with God, life in paradise, nevertheless it seeks for something, for knowledge, maybe for recognition…

The serpent, - ancient symbol for wisdom, knowledge, here as the guardian for that fruit of damnation, seems to be the solution of the problem. The serpent is willing to help, to give the means for this human being to find answers. So the human can begin to map out the unknown for himself,- this world of polarity, world of sin, disease, lie, pain, love, hate, envy. He is not eternal anymore, he can experience death.

All this attributes of the material world should help him to recognition, should help him  to appraise what he lost, the unity. This is the way of the tragic catastrophe, the way of the original sin.

The human being found himself in the world of polarity. His mind, his imagination even his spirit is going separated, polar. So it is almost impossible to get in harmony with wholeness. We experience ourselves as individual, as I. Although we need contrast, we need polarity because even our thinking is dependant of polarity; - to differentiate things we need black or white. That is why the individual never get a whole; because we separate everything we meet to subject and object. Our way of thinking (the polarity) does make it necessary to oppose even the polarity, - and the antagonism, the opposition of polarity is the unity, the oneness.

We can’t say God is good or kind, because we would then exclude the terms of bad and rage and we would embed the unity into the world of polarity. We can’t say eternity is long or short because it is across our conception of time.

If we does exist (exist ere- Latin means move out, to appear)  it means we emerge from unity or “nothingness” to appear in the physical plane, and that means always to move into a world of differential, diverseness.

So this diverseness is necessary the manifestation of non-diverseness, what we can call unity, oneness or God. In unity is therefore everything equilibrate to null, to zero, the essence of God is therefore harmony. To move of this harmony is a jump into the existence, a state not to bind to time or place, this movement is the genesis, - origo.

Therefore this story of the original sin symbolises the movement from unity into a diverseness because every knowing  assume separation of the subject and the object, - the recognizer and the recognized. This “sin” is the polarisation, the disunion. So the human is from this step former sinner, because he developed his individual, he’s got I, ego, what does not identify itself with the unity anymore. There is something lacking from the oneness, salvation, and that something is his blame, his guilt, accident, - his I, the ego.

For me is this the message of the original sin.