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| Edeniä etsimässä Kartta Dora Jane Hamblin |
Jurins Zarins on kirjoittanut Adamin historiallisuudesta ja esittänyt mielenkiintoisia ajatuksia, Tässä ehkä ytimessä hänen tulkintansa, joka lienee vaikuttanut aiheen pohtijoihin suoraan tai epäsuorasti:
"The whole Garden of Eden story, however, when finally written, could be seen to represent the point of view of the hunter gatherers," Zarins reasons. "It was the result of tension between the two groups, the collision of two ways of life. Adam and Eve were heirs to natural bounty. They had everything they needed. But they sinned and were expelled. How did they sin? By challenging God's very omnipotence. In so doing they represented the agriculturists, the upstarts who insisted on taking matters into their own hands, relying upon their knowledge and their own skills rather than on His bounty.
There were no journalists around to record the tension, no historians. But the event did not go unnoticed. It became a part of collective memory and at long last it was written down, highly condensed, in Genesis. It was very brief, but brevity doesn't mean lack of significance."
