Adam & Eve: The Whole Story Doesn't Make Sense - until now

[searchinmyroots]

Putting the midrash aside, the questions he asks seem pretty legit.

What did death mean to Adam?

G-d didn't say "if" you eat from it, He said "the day you eat from it".

Adam didn't have a yetzer hara yet.

G-d didn't say they would suffer, He said they would die. Why no warning, that wasn't part of the deal!

Did Adam and Eve know what life was like outside the garden?

Why would Adam name his wife Chava (life) if she helped bring death to the world?

I get the feeling, bearing in mind that Torah gives overviews and not detailed analysis of everything that Adam understood the consequences, that "you will die" didn't mean you'll go down and bite the dust as soon as you ear the fruit, more, you'll start to decay, you'll no longer be eternal and privy to being what you are. 
In fact, they did die in the sense that they were no longer what they were, and became what we are. 
They became something  that would die, would feel pain, etc. 

What is also forgotten is that when they were cornered, they all blameshifted, and Adam even blamed HaShem (the woman YOU gave me) so the punishments were handed out based on blame shifting and ingratitude, where they could have fallen to the floor in tears and begged for forgiveness. 

There is so much more to the story than a basic reading gives, there is a lot of subtlty, but as it's all given in a very short and fast moving narrative, we have to extract and analyse the details ourselves.

Yes, very good points.

Judaism seems to focus on the blame shifting while Christianity focuses more on their interpretation of "original sin".