Well-written there Tim. You dissected the hell out of that particular fairy tale.

I want to add, there actually happen to be lots of versions of that fairy tale that didn't make the cut when that collection of angry men got together and wanted to come up with something to put women in their place and make clear who is the boss. There is a version of this where the original human is not a man at all. The first human is a Hermaphrodite. Of course, that is also "in the image of god," which makes God in actuality God/Goddess, also a Hermaphrodite. A shame that didn't make the cut, as far as fairy tales go, cuz imagine what a different society that would have inspired ... *sigh*

Making it even funkier still, there is a version where the snake is a “good guy”, an entity representing wisdom and knowledge and all that good stuff, who shows up there to help out those EQUAL humans who were split from original hermaphrodite. Of course, that story does cast the creator of this world as the bad guy …. it gets complicated. LOL But it is interesting to research let me tell ya. And a far better story than the dumbass depressing one that made the cut.