I'll respond to more of your post later, but for now I'd like a clearer response to my question (though maybe my question needs rephrasing). I know that Paul believed God created us, but while you keep insisting he didn't believe in a literal Adam, what I want to know is what else would he have believed in? How does he think God made us?
I've been thinking about this for some time. I think it helps to remember that Paul was born and raised in a Greek-speaking city (Greek was probably his first language) and even if he didn't participate much in non-Jewish circles, he could not have avoided learning some Greek philosophy. In fact, much Greek philosophy had already influenced the thinking of many Jewish teachers over the previous two centuries.
There is a key idea in Greek philosophy that he may have picked up on: the Platonic concept of the "idea" or "form" (In Greek, 'idea' means 'form') Paul used the word 'form' of Christ in Philippians when he says "though he was in the form of God ....[he] emptied himself and took on the form of a slave ... and being found in human form..." He is writing in Greek to people who speak Greek and to whom the word 'form' meant, not mere shape, but the essential nature of something.
Recently I have been applying this to the serpent in the Garden of Eden. Was this an individual serpent? I think the story indicates that it was not; it was the form or idea "Serpent". Why do I say this?
If an individual serpent is being cursed for its role in the fall, there is no reason every serpent from then on should bear the same curse. Why would a change from walking to crawling in this one animal affect all other animals in its family?
But contained in the concept of "form" as it was used in 1st-century Greek is that each and every individual object, animal, plant, etc. is an instantiation of the one form which is what God originally made. Each bit of matter is what it is, because it participates in the form that makes it what it is. Each individual rabbit, or serpent or fig tree is made of different matter (i.e. material substance, stuff) but has the same nature as all other rabbits, serpents or fig trees, because there is only one form of a rabbit, one form of a serpent, one form of a fig tree and they all share that same form.
What happens to one individual cannot affect the form. But if the form itself is changed, that will change everything that shares that form.
I can't show that this kind of thinking is what Paul is using. But it is the kind of thinking that was taken for granted in Greek philosophy then, and in Jewish philosophy so far as it had been influenced by Greek philosophy. (It certainly took root in Christian philosophy right through to early modern times. One of the principle ongoing debates in the universities was about the nature of the forms. That there were forms was not an issue. What they were and how they acted was highly controversial.) Certainly when Paul uses the term, "form" this would indicate to his audience that they should be thinking in these terms.
So I think what we are getting in the story of the fall is not that an individual serpent was changed, but that the form of the serpent was changed. And since all serpents share in the same serpent-form, all serpents, not just that one, crawl on their belly instead of walking on legs.
Now this whole concept applies to humans as well. As we see, Paul spoke of Christ changing form in the incarnation. He doesn't explicitly use the term "form" to refer to Adam, but I think he is implying that. That is the only sense in which I can follow what he is saying when he refers to Christ as "second Adam" or "last Adam".
There is also a feature in Genesis itself that connects with this. In most of Genesis 1 or 2 the verbs describing God's creative activity are 'bara' (create) and 'asah' (make). But in Gen. 2:7 the verb is 'yatser' (form) Is this a hint that we are talking about more than shaping clay? Maybe the author is saying that what God made from dust was the essence, the nature, idea/form of humanity. God didn't just form a man. He formed Man. Adam is Man, or as a Platonist would say, the idea or form of humanity.
So then, what is the fall? When the original form of humanity exercised its autonomous free will (part of his nature, his form) the original form of humanity was changed---just as later, the form of the serpent was changed.
And since every one of us as individual human persons share in that same form/nature, when it was changed, so were we. That's the meaning of original sin. But then Christ comes in human form, but in a sinless human form. Jesus is an individual exemplar of a new human form--a second Adam or form of humanity. And through him we all get the chance to exchange our old Adam for the new Adam.
Was the Adam in the Garden also a historical individual exemplar of the Adam/human form? Could be. It doesn't really matter, though, whether he was or not. What matters is the change in the human form/nature/essence from its created innocence to its current sinful nature and potentially to the new glorified form that now exists in Christ.
Anyway, that's my take on it FWIW.
