Theistic evolutionists please explain this.

East Anglican,

Don't you know that the Theo-Evos believe that most of the bible is make believe?

Just about everything but the resurrection, according to them is not true. Good moral book though.

I know Jesus rose from the dead and I know that the evidence for our ancestors being apes is quite large so, can you Christians who believe we came from monkeys explain yiour way round this please?

12Therefore, just as sin entered the world through one man, and death through sin, and in this way death came to all men, because all sinned-- 13for before the law was given, sin was in the world. But sin is not taken into account when there is no law. 14Nevertheless, 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 was a pattern of the one to come.
15But the gift is not like the trespass. For if the many died by the trespass of the one man, how much more did God's grace and the gift that came by the grace of the one man, Jesus Christ, overflow to the many!

If they were reading Genesis literaly why did they get it wrong?

Sin did not enter the world through one man... The First human to eat of the tree was Eve, a woman. Then there was the snake, who was sinning by his deception, then there was God himself who put the tree there...

You have to realize that Paul was making up a theology from scratch. He couldn't keep the Jewish theology entirely because he was converting Gentiles that had no idea what the Jews believed. So, Paul was simultaneously trying to teach the Gentiles something about Judaism, place Jesus in Judaism, but preach also the gospel of salvation.

So ... here is my opinion.

The OT is clear in some places that what Paul is stating here is not permitted: you are not allowed to punish the sons for the sins of the fathers:

Deut. 24:16 "The fathers shall not be put to death for the children, neither shall the children be put to death for the fathers (2Chron.25:54) :every man shall be put to death for his own sin." (2 Kings 14:6)

Ezek. 18:20 "The soul that sinneth, it shall die. The son shall not bear the iniquity of the father, neither shall the father bear the iniquity of the son: the righteousness of the righteous shall be upon him, and the wickedness of the wicked shall be upon him."

What Paul is trying to tell us is that all of us sin. He did so in the poetic language of having Adam be what Genesis 2 intended him to be: the archetype for all of us. When Paul says "sin entered the world through one man, and death through sin, and in this way death came to all men, because all sinned" he is saying that each and every one of us is that "one man". So, since each of us sins, all sin.

Now, Paul has a problem. Paul wants all people saved by Jesus -- Jew and Gentile alike. But in Jewish theology sin was defined as going against the Law. Since the Jews are still obeying the Law, then they are not sinning and don't "need" Jesus. By making sin "hereditary", Paul gets around this difficulty and makes Jews also need salvation. What has happened since is that this practical theology -- facing a particular set of circumstances -- has been expanded by some Christians as an overarching theory that there was no physical death in the world before Adam's disobedience.

However, as Lewis pointed out, if Paul is really reading Genesis 3 literally, sin came into the world because of Eve. Eve is the one that disobeyed first. Only after that did she convince Adam. But that doesn't work for Paul's theology, does it? After all, he is trying to tie the Gentiles to Judaism and has chosen to make Jesus symbolic. Since Jesus is a male, he has to relate to Adam, not Eve. So Paul casually discards the literal reading in order to make his theological point.

has been expanded by some Christians as an overarching theory that there was no physical death in the world before Adam's disobedience.

If you accept the Creation story as mythology, it makes sense that one can make allusions to this mythology just as people do Greek mythology today. If Paul had said, "Just as sin entered the world through Pandora's box, so the Remedy for sin exited the box on the third day to conquer sin," would Paul be wrong? Even if the readers knew good and well that Pandora was not historical, the point would not be lost on them. Such applicability is the purpose for mythology. It doesn't need historical details to explain truth. Moses and the Hebrews didn't have to know the scientific details of how God created the earth and people are biologically incapable of godly perfection - that's why they chose etiological mythology.

What's to explain? I see nothing unusual here. Once there came to be humans, and God gave us the breath of life, which is to say, a soul, we became capable of sin. It's quite possible (and indeed, many people believe this) that the first two people were members of a species with other members; this would explain where all the missing people came from for Adam's kids to marry.

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And Micaiah said, "As the LORD lives, whatever the LORD says to me, that I will speak." (1 Kings 22:14)