Is it time for a re-interpetation of the story of the Garden of Eden?

Let me start off by saying that I mean no disrespect toward any religion, but this story is just too good to be confined to religious interpretation. What follows is a very rough outline of a play or graphic novel, for which I have no talent, as should unfortunately become rather apparent.

What I find most intriguing is that the crime that Adam and Eve committed was to eat from the Tree of Knowledge of Good and Evil after being told not to. How are we to interpret this? Did Adam and Eve suddenly become evil? No, that does not fit. If Adam and Eve previously had no knowledge of good and evil then in a sense they were like animals. If an animal steals from or kills another animal we do not say that it is evil, because it has no idea of what this means.

So what happened is that Adam and Eve became self-aware and empathetic. Their shame in their nakedness stands not for concern about scrutiny of their physical selves but of their actions. They have become moral beings. To stretch things further, they have become rational beings. They see how they can capture animals for herding and land for agriculture. They are exiled from the Garden of Eden by turning it into farms.

Where the Bible says that they shall surely die, I interpret to mean that they become aware of their own mortality.

The punishment of Adam and Eve is existential angst.

As I see it, the serpent does not stand for evil, but for curiosity. I see Adam as the more impetuous of the two and Eve the more practical. It is Eve that keeps Adam in line and so it must be through her that the serpent can get to the two of them.

This is as far as I have gotten. Feel free to embellish.