I view them as real people wrapped up in a mythological tale. For me that fits with the patterns I see throughout the Bible. I do believe believe in God and I do believe in the supernatural. But for me, the supernatural is something that is a small outlier event that does not define actual laws. Such as Jesus turning a few fish and bread into enough to feed many or when he turned water into wine or when he resurrected Lazarus and when he conquered death. I do believe faith is needed because science can’t prove God was real.
So when I read Genesis 1-3 , and then think about history , and reflect on the rest of scripture this is basically the conclusion I draw.
Who was Adam and Eve?
I believe they were both people. Could have been younger or older. I think they were probably younger and were decent people for their time and God reached out to them. Just like God reaches out to Noah, Abraham, Moses, and many others. God reached out to Adam and guided him to a “promise land” and one of the benefits of this place was great food. Just like God sent down manna to Moses, sent ravens to fed Elijah and Jesus feed crowds.
More about the tree of life.
I personally believe in this paradise where Adam and Eve was led there was two trees in the center of the garden. One was ok to eat from and the other was not. I see this tree as evidence that Adam and Eve was not immortal. They had to eat from this tree of life to keep life and this tree sustained them and would have forever. We see this tree referred to symbolically throughout scripture and it eventually connects to Christ as the tree of life and we receive eternal life through Christ. We see trees used many more times throughout the Bible too as something linked to God. God appears to Moses as a burning bush, Noah is ordered to use certain trees to build the ark, and eventually the Messiah is taken from a garden ( as opposed to be cast out like Adam for sin ) and then crucified to a tree.
The other main points of contention is sin and death. I believe to understand this we need to look contexts of the word. For Adam and Eve, the death was a physical thing. It not immediate, ( dying until death ) is a good understanding of the praise in Hebrew because of how it uses death twice. After all the consequence was wrapped up in back into ashes and dust. Another aspect to it is that the first time someone was held accountable to sin.
Romans 5:13 says 13 for “ sin has always existed but until the law was given there was no accountability to sin”. So the rest of humanity that was not brought into the paradise on earth by God still sinned. But because God had not yet gave them any laws they were not held accountable to it. So when it says sin existed, it means that since Adam was told not to eat from the tree ( a law ) and he decided to go against that law and ( sinned ) he was held accountable for it and so was Eve. Same as all the other various laws that seem to have no moral implications other than disagreeing with God. There is a whole lot more woven in but this is the gist of my belief and how it answers this questions.
Adam and Eve were real people that was led to a promise land and their story is wrapped up in mythology. The literary style is why I believe it’s wrapped up in mythology mostly. God spent entire chapters on counting animals and spent books tying up the Hebrews in the desert but jumps through several characters, places and so on in just a few chapters with a lot of word play. I also don’t believe in original sin. As in everyone is born little sinners that deserve to be destroyed in hell. It even refers to kids not being old enough to choose good or evil. Original sin was a doctrine corrected to push infant baptism saying if you don’t baptize your baby and it’s dies it’s sentenced to hell or purgatory and ect… to me it’s a disgusting doctrine.