But these two myths, which may or may not apply, aren’t as simply put or cute as the Adam story.
And outside of the statement of the author of the Britannica article – unless I fail to understand it – the Adapa myth is not exactly a story of the fall. However, “Possible parallels and connections [between Adapa and Adam] include similarity in names, including the possible connection of both the same word root; both myths include a test involving the eating of purportedly deadly food; and both are summoned before god to answer for their transgressions.” - Wiki - so who’s whomming who, so to ask? Who influenced who, Adapa, or Adam? or was the notion in general circulation in Mesopotamia.
Abraham came out of Sumer, where Adapa was a god. William Albright, in his book From Stone Age to Christiamity, speaks of Adapa in the 7th c. B.C.E, right around when the book of Genesis was taking shape.
But speaking from the stone age and the fall. Was the civilization of Sumer & Mesopotamia a fall from that age? It’s touted as a great advancement from the stone age. Looking back from there, from developed civilization, I could understand that the hunter and gathering age looked like a time of ‘Paradise,’ a time of low population and lots of freely available food sources.
Okay, enough of that. I’m speaking of things we can’t know with any degree of confidence.
But ya know, I have an axe to grind with this fall and original sin thing. I was raised with it, along with free will. When I came to think of it I had to ask : Where was my free will in being born with original sin? I had no will in it, free or otherwise.
Eventually I concluded it to be a bunch of bunkum ; that it was just trying to explain and excuse why we’re human primates ; or brainy naked apes ; and no fall happened. If anything, we’ve evolved from “fallen” or less advanced times and human development, for hundreds of thousand years ; from neanderthals and before, onward, up to not as “fallen” today.