No You are not comparing apple to apple. You are just just trying to give me a hard time
Paul compares Adam with Jesus in 1 Corinthians 15:45.
With all due respect Soleil, I think what Marsh, China Cat and others are trying to point out is the shortcomings of metaphors. I am not making Paul a liar, and I don't need to, to point out that Paul himself wasn't comparing apples to apples with the metaphorical comparison of a first and second Adam.
We have enough of a time trying to show historical verification of Jesus from sources outside of the Bible. There is precious little to verify Moses, and even less for Abraham. There is *nothing* to verify an original "first" Adam. In fact, what there is suggests that the first Adam and entire Garden of Eden story is a metaphorical lesson that is a collection and reference to a prehistoric and pre-civilization and "dawning of agriculture" period of time. It is historically impossible to point to a real live person of the name of Adam.
Even disregarding history, we have other complications. For example, Eve was made from Adam's rib, so all male humans have one less rib than female humans do. I know I have heard this repeatedly, emphatically, and most sincerely. The Bible says so, so it must be true. Yet it is biologically and anatomically false, or what most Christians would call a "lie." Men and women have the same number of ribs, always have, and barring some evolutionary glitch or injury or disease process, always will. So, how can it be true (the Bible says so) and at the same time a lie (biology shows us, over and over and over)?
Because the story is a metaphor. It is not meant to be taken literally, but it serves in a limited context to demonstrate an ethical lesson and help establish a *moral* truth.
The usual *Christian* interpretation of the Genesis story makes this first Adam the very first person ever created (on the "eighth day"), which completely ignores or disregards or tries to combine the "sixth day" creation...which is to say there were people here before Adam; long before Adam, and we have painted caves and so-called venus figures and decorated graves and a whole lot of real, hold-in-your-hand *evidence* to show there were people here before the first Adam.
I guess what I am trying in my own way to say is that we shouldn't make more of what is written than what it is. Paul was attempting to use metaphysical and socio-religious symbols to teach an ethical and moral lesson. Even more, taking Paul and his motivations into an historic and political context, I do wonder if he were in the process of establishing the "Jesus mythos" among the superstitious pagans he was speaking to at the time.
