Hi friend Wanda,
It is challenging to try to understand scripture when we cannot really know the original scripture as stated by the author to people who spoke the same language and heard the teaching first hand. Plus those teachings were given in capsule form for direct memorization by the listener who rehearsed them every sabbath for 40 years with family present. If there were any questions, they were addressed at that time.
When the Bible speaks of God creating "things" such as grass, whole fields of grass and cattle, whole herds of cattle it is tempting to see the creation of "mankind" in the same light. But is that appropriate?
Adam or mankind was extremely special since they were made to emulate God, even to the point of participating in the creation process in the production and daily care of their children who were destined to live forever with God.
God planned for mankind to assist in the creation of all future humans by having the first couple to guide and have dominion over all of their descendants even down to the tenth generation or more. That makes the first couple almost like King and Queen of the world for as long as they lived.
Mankind is being made in the image of God so that mankind and God may communicate on a personal level with mankind eventually being given immortality in the presence of God. That is not the case for any other of God's fleshly created order.
2.
Why is it deemed necessary for there to be long ages for mankind to have developed to the point of being able to think cognitively?
Is it imagined by some that God could not have created a "finished product" in the first human. A person with the ability to hear and speak and understand God's teaching from the first breath of life?
Just a few thoughts to stimulate our interest...
Indiana Bob
John from Kentucky, you said...
Eve is also the symbolic mother of all living. If there were other humans before Eve, then she would only be the mother of some of the living, not the mother of all living.
Can you please share scripture to support this?
Do these scriptures exclude others who might have lived outside of the garden, and if so how?
Act 17:26 “And He has made from one blood every nation of men to dwell on all the face of the earth, and has determined their preappointed times and the boundaries of their dwellings,
v. 27 “so that they should seek the Lord, in the hope that they might grope for Him and find Him, though He is not far from each one of us;
v. 28 “for in Him we live and move and have our being, as also some of your own poets have said, ‘For we are also His offspring.'