Were there a real Adam and Eve?

Were Adam and Eve two distinct people, or should the Genesis account of the first man and first woman be interpreted allegorically?  

The Bible states that God created Adam from the dust of the earth (Gen. 2:7) and formed Eve from Adam’s rib (Gen. 2:21.) A literal interpretation of this means that Adam and Eve embryos were not attached to an umbilical cord or nurtured inside a mother’s womb. Neither did they undergo natural childbirth. 

Instead, they arrived fully mature with one abnormality: a missing navel. The moment Adam and Eve experienced consciousness, they looked around and wondered how they got here. Surely, their sudden emergence into human existence left their minds reeling with wonderment. 

There are two separate accounts of creation: one in Genesis, chapter 1 and another in chapter 2. Chapter 1 fails to mention Adam and Eve. It states only that “God created ‘MANKIND’ in his own image, male and female he created them.” 

While this passage speaks of mankind in a pluralistic sense, the chapter-2 account confines itself to two discrete individuals: Adam and Eve. Bible scholars attribute these disparities to different authors, i.e. the author of chapter 1 did not write chapter 2. So the question is: Can the two divergent accounts be harmonized, or should we believe that God created “multiple people” (as chapter 1 implies) and that Adam and Eve in chapter 2 “are symbolic of the first humans.”  

Another question arises: Where did Cain (who slew his brother Abel) get his wife? Gen. 5:3 states that “Adam (other than Cain, Abel, and Seth) had other sons and daughters.” Therefore, Cain married his sister, which is incest. 

Was the Serpent who beguiled Adam and Eve a creation of God or did the Serpent create himself? Or, was the Serpent a metaphorical representation of mankind’s inclination to sin?  Such questions stoke the fires of evolution—that man evolved from a single-celled organism that became a fish, which in time walked up on the shore and eons later became a man.

The historicity of Adam and Eve is a question which strikes at the heart of the Christian faith. If Adam did not exist, it would invalidate Paul’s redemptive plan in Romans 5:19: “For as by one man’s disobedience (Adam) many were made sinners, so by the obedience of one (Christ) shall many be made righteous.” Therefore, man could not have inherited Adam’s culpability to sin, if Adam was an unreal, metaphorical character.

Further, recent genetic research has revealed that today’s human population could not have emerged from a single pair of humanoids:  the XX-chromosomal Eve and the XY-chromosomal Adam. Research shows that a core beginning of at least 10,000 humans would be required to produce the diversity of genes in today’s population.  

Yet, according to the genealogies in I Chronicles, chapter 1 and Luke, chapter 3, Adam was a historical figure. Jewish tradition has it that Adam and Eve are buried in the Cave of Machpelah in Hebron (Palestinian city on Israel’s West Bank). In summation, if you believe the first verse in the Bible, “In the beginning, God created the heavens and the earth,” the questions herein will be of no consequence.