Adam has a place in redemptive history. As God's ambassador, he was the first person who had access to God's kingdom which required simple obedience. We can only guess at what Adam might have done had he remained obedient. Created in the “image of God,” Adam was a representative whose purpose in all probability was to bring the human-populated world into a similar relationship, but being human himself, he wasn’t up to the task. The theme of an evil serpent and a “sacred tree” endured in ancient Sumer (Hebrew: “Shinar”) for many centuries and was pictured on wall reliefs and cylinder seals.