The Fall
The next passage is usually referred to as the Fall, and is much more lengthy and detailed than anything we have read so far:
Now the serpent was more subtle than any animal of the field which Yahweh God had made. He said to the woman, "Has God really said, 'You shall not eat of any tree of the garden?'" The woman said to the serpent, "We may eat fruit from the trees of the garden, but not the fruit of the tree which is in the middle of the garden. God has said, 'You shall not eat of it. You shall not touch it, lest you die.'" The serpent said to the woman, "You won't really die, for God knows that in the day you eat it, your eyes will be opened, and you will be like God, knowing good and evil." When the woman saw that the tree was good for food, and that it was a delight to the eyes, and that the tree was to be desired to make one wise, she took some of its fruit, and ate; and she gave some to her husband with her, and he ate it, too. Their eyes were opened, and they both knew that they were naked. They sewed fig leaves together, and made coverings for themselves.
This segment of the Adam legend introduces angels for the first time, and concludes with a powerful angelic being keeping Adam and Eve from having any more access to the tree of life. It has been customary for Biblical commentators to identify the serpent with Satan, the chief of the fallen angels, so we must address this topic, at least in headline terms.
The Bible presents us with the teaching that God made two types of beings: the physical and the spiritual. The spiritual beings are usually called angels, which in both Hebrew and Greek simply means messenger. There are different degrees of angels, and they are depicted as having the power to appear as if physical, sometimes as obviously non-human, shining brightly, and sometimes as human enough to be mistaken for an ordinary visitor.
The Bible also gives us hints, though never with much detail, of a group of rebel angels who fought against loyal angels and were expelled from heaven.
Their leader is given various names: Satan, or Lucifer, which means light-bearer and so hints at an original splendor before the rebellion. Satan is depicted as an Accuser (Greek diabolos) and a Tempter. He is also described as the 'father of lies'.
That Satan should appear as a talking snake is obviously the mythical element of the legend, and need not be taken as literal history. The teaching behind the myth is what matters, and the nature of the outcome (fruit eating) is also symbolic of we know not what.
So I suggest a completely demythologized rendering:
Our first ancestors were tempted by a powerful spiritual force to do something they knew was forbidden, and they succumbed to the temptation. This made them aware of things they had not known before.