By the way, I think of God as comprising the masculine and feminine archetypes in equal measure, Steve.

But I'm not a bit surprised that ancient Jewish tribal societies of 2000 or more years ago, societies which were totally patriarchal in nature where men held all positions of authority, would have written about their concept OF God in words that routinely depicted God as a male figure. It simply fit their contemporary view of things and their normal way of expressing things, that's all, and they'd never have dreamed of putting it otherwise.

And after that...church people simply followed the traditional forms set out in those writings, because they were afraid to question them, but there are a great many Christians now who DO question those traditional forms and who consider God to equally represent both the male and the female principles...or to simply be beyond definitions of gender altogether.

The female and the male are equal to me, always have been, always shall be.

Adam, Eve, the snake, the Garden, and the "apple" are all symbolic, not literal. The story is, IMO, a parable about an ancient evolutionary time period when the consciousness of the human race changed in a very significant way.