Not to barge in, but just wanted to quickly respond to R. Clouser above on mentioning the interpretation of Romans 5:13-14 "13To be sure, sin was in the world before the law was given, but sin is not charged against anyone’s account where there is no law. 14 Nevertheless, death reigned from the time of Adam to the time of Moses, even over those who did not sin by breaking a command, as did Adam, who is a pattern of the one to come."

From my interpretation I take this chapter to mean that sin entered the world through The Fall and was in the world before the law was given since it was Moses who wrote the law some time later than Adam.

For the sake of this topic I do believe in Adam and Eve being the first humans, but would argue that God also created other humans as well. As I read Genesis 4:13-16 I feel there may be a possibility that there were more than just the descendants of Adam and Eve, but since they did live for hundreds of years back then maybe in due time there were enough descendants of A&E to have other civilizations and communities...

 

Just curious OP is there an updated data table that you have made? Sorry I'm a couple years late

Modern scholarship regards the first five books of the Bible to have been written during the Babylonian exile or somewhat later. It was a case of the last being first in order to establish the history of God's chosen people and how their religious practices and beliefs developed. Genesis 1,2 and 3 were the foundation accounts of humanity. Another foundation account is found in Chapter 6. At the close of Chapter 5, reference is made to Noah and his sons. Chapter 6 opens with an account of the sons of God taking the daughters of men and having children by them. They were the heroes of old, men of renown. Noah is then reintroduced in verse 8 as having won the Lord's favor. The question about Adam is that he was the first self aware, fully conscious man.

Before getting into Adam and Eve in Genesis, it is vital to understand the meaning of myth,[1] to which the genre is often applied to Genesis, Chapters 1-11. Anyone interpreting Scripture as though it was written using mythopoetic formulation will likely misinterpret Genesis. Exegetes usually try to apply modern-day myth as the basis for interpreting what it meant when [likely] Moses (circa 1480 BC) wrote Genesis. In ancient Hebrew texts, the language is essential, not a supposed fable.

Mythopoeia formulation did not exist until the Hellenistic Greek period (circa 300 BC to 300 AD) — eleven centuries after Moses’ wrote Genesis. Using a linguistic style that did not even exist at the time of Genesis’ human author is not valid.

Bernard F. Batto[2] has his PhD in Linguistics. He is a Professor Emeritus of Religious Studies at DePauw University. He specializes in interpreting the Hebrew Bible within its ancient Near Eastern cultural and historical context. He served as Old Testament book review editor and associate editor for The Catholic Biblical Quarterly. Batto tells us that ancient Hebrew myth in Moses’ time was used to convey paradigmatic shifts in understanding, usually during the time of origins.[2]

The linguistic tool used to describe a paradigmatic shift in understanding in Moses’ time is called paradigmatic substitution. A modern-day example of mythical (paradigmatic shift) language as it would have occurred in Moses’ time is this: When trying to identify the very beginning of the creation of the universe (the paradigmatic shift in our understanding), it was given the description — The Big Bang. This is a beautiful example of using mythical language to describe the paradigmatic shift in our understanding of a scientific truth (or so we believe).

To accurately understand the creation account of Adam and Eve, we must first realize that the Holy Spirit is using the biological sciences to describe their creation. I make the case that dust and salt are direct references to the salt and dust of DNA. Why hasn’t anybody made this connection before?

This failure is because knowledge of three scientific disciplines are needed to connect the scientific dots. They are Biology, Organic Chemistry (defines an organic salt), and Geology (defines geological dust). In the second chapter of Genesis, God describes the exact science needed to build one person (Eve) from another person (Adam) — without the necessity of birth. This process is currently being used but without the ability to implant a spiritual soul. A more thorough explanation of this process can be found here: https://www.stossbooks.com/creation-of-eve.html.

 

[1] https://stossbooks.com/myth-in-scripture--especially-genesis-.html

[2] Batto, Bernard F. “Myth.” In The New Dictionary of Theology. Edited by Joseph A. Komonchak, Mary Collins, and Dermot A. Lane, 697–701. Wilmington, DE: Michael Glazier, 1987.