But they didn't die, the serpent said their eyes would be open knowing good and evil and thats what happened - read God's report to his buddies. Thats when God decided to block their way to the tree of life and kicked them out of the Garden.
And people were made on the 6th day before all this stuff happened in the Garden, thats how Cain found a wife and why he was worried about being killed.
I am not sure when the "gaps" started to appear, but most would hold that day nine was the dawn of the fallen era.
I don't think that the Bible supports that. I would say that entropy/death did not start right away. The book of Genesis was God telling Moses what to write for the new formed nation of Israel. It was not the whole picture, and for humans to narrow their view of the beginning to what is just in the first 3 chapters would deny future wisdom and guidance on the matter.
As science revealed the unknown world to us, biblical scholars started to place gaps to fit the Bible into a scientific time frame. Even in the 1860's you have Young doing a literal translation that changed the story in a totally different way altogether.
Saying that humans did not die, is the same thought process that satan held. It was not an immediate death, but humans did loose immortality. Meaning that now they were condemned to death. They would not live forever as they were created to do. That there was a tree that allowed that is proof. Continuing to eat from that tree in a fallen condition would afford eternal life. Knowing good and evil is just having knowledge of a depraved nature. If there was no depraved nature then there would not be any difference between good and evil. We have no concept of that. We may have instances of innocents where a human is incapable of doing harm to others, but to live a life where everything we desired, would be free of harming others is an alien concept. Peace and safety normally comes from giving up our desires and submitting to each other's will.
It clearly says that God created humans and that these humans could only fill the term Sons of God. This is consistent with the twelve tribes, and the twelve apostles. Now if we talk ourselves out of a world wide flood, then we have to explain who these sons of God were and what happened to them. Some have called them angels, but then the NT would be wrong, because they wrote that the angels cannot have sexual relationships with each other, much less with humans. There may be some extra-biblical accounts of half human half demon offspring. Humans have certainly imagined such existences throughout history. We do have it written in Genesis that these sons of God had children with the daughters who were from the family of Adam. So when Cain fled the area where Adam and his offspring were settling, he was marked so that his life was not taken at the hands of those not cursed like Adam. If people really want to cut up the Bible and make claims, the Line of Cain could be thrown out entirely. The naming of his offspring is so close to that of Seth's they could be the same family.
I would say that humans existed for some time, before the curse. But time as in death and entropy/decay did not start until the fall. It seems to me that even Cain and Able were born before the curse. Cain was driven from his home area, just like Adam was driven from the Garden. He was not given the death penalty, and was marked so other humans would not kill him. Within a time span of 230 years from the curse God placed upon Adam, about two generations removed, God seemed to be out of the picture. Enoch and Noah seemed to be the only ones who had a personal relationship with God.
It seems that Adam named Eve after the curse on humankind, and did say that she had been the mother of all living. That does not mean she was; it could just mean that he thought she was or was giving her more credit than she deserved. The Bible also says that he created males and females plural even before placing Adam in the garden alone. Seeing as how God said that he created everything and Eve was the last to be "formed", she can scarcely be titled the mother of all that came before her. If Adam was trying to gain her good side, after her big blunder, he may have had a point. God did point out though that she was the mother of Cain, Able and Seth, but that is all the credit she got. We may assume that she was the mother of all of Adam's sons and daughters, but she may not have lasted the next 800 years seeing as how painful child bearing had become.
