There is a natural break between Genesis 2:4 and Genesis 2:5. In Genesis 2:5 and throughout the story of Eden, we translate Eritz as land, and we thereby resolve the apparent contradictions between Genesis 1 and Genesis 2. Eden is a land, Eden is not the world. Eden is local, not global. This resolves the following apparent contradictions:
Genesis 2 has creation in a different order from that in Genesis 1. Genesis 1 has plants, then fish (and dinosaurs and birds) created before mammals, and then last, man. Genesis 2 has Adam created first, then trees and last, animals. If Genesis 1 is the story of the creation of the earth and life on earth, but Genesis 2 is the story special creation in a garden, then there is no contradiction. God created the earth and people, and then later God created Eden’s garden and Adam.
Local Eden answers the question of where Cain’s wife came from. She came from outside the Garden.
Local Eden answers the question of who Cain was building his city for. He was building it for some of the people who lived outside of the garden.
Local Eden answers the question of how the genealogies can indicate Adam lived 6 to 10 thousand years ago, but people have been around for 100,000 years.
Local Eden answers the Problem Of Pain and eliminates the need for the false doctrine of Original Sin. I have written about this in other places on the Forum. In a nutshell:Only God is perfect.We are not God.Therefore we are not perfect and will inevitably sin.Adam was not perfect, because he was not God, but Adam was blameless because he did not know the difference between good and evil.Adam chose to gain the knowledge of good and evil.When Adam gained the knowledge of good and evil he became culpable for his actions and was no longer blameless.All humans, given the choice would have made the same choice as Adam.All humans, because we desire to know the difference between right and wrong and make our own decisions, we require something to make decisions about.The evil in the world is composed of challenges to overcome or be overcome by, alternatives to choose from, and people who choose to do evil and these things are all necessary consequences of or prerequisites for moral freedom of choice.God is not evil for creating people he knew would sin and a world with evil in it; because the evil in the world is made necessary by our own desire for the knowledge of good and evil.I call that the doctrine of inevitable sin.
Local Eden makes a nice foreshadowing of a local flood. A local flood fits with the geological column and the distribution of fossils from complex to simple as we move downward through the column.
The fact that Eden and the Flood were local fits more correctly with the actual text of the bible.