“While Genesis 1 portrays creation as a tabernacle, Genesis 2–3 portrays the garden of Eden as something of an archetypal holy of holies—the place of most intimate communion and fellowship with YHWH God.

There are, moreover, various features of the Eden narrative itself that would lead us to the same understanding as well. Gordon J. Wenham noted many parallels between the garden and the later tabernacle (and temple) of Israel.

The description of YHWH’s ‘walking to and fro’ (hithallēk) in Eden (Gen. 3:8), for example, is also used to describe the divine Presence in the later tent sanctuaries (Lev. 26:12; Deut. 23:15; 2 Sam. 7:6–7).

Eden’s eastward orientation corresponds to the eastward entrance of the tabernacle.

The lushness of Eden as a well-watered garden filled with fruit-bearing trees, and especially with the tree of life in its midst, also finds correspondence with the fullness of life associated with the tabernacle, including the menorah as a stylized tree of life.

Many of the symbolic features of the tabernacle would become more pronounced in Solomon’s temple, and probably conveyed to pilgrims that the Israelite sanctuary ‘recreated or incorporated the garden of Eden, Yahweh’s terrestrial residence’.

All of these parallels find their explanation within the temple ideology that was common throughout the ANE, whereby a temple was understood to be the architectural embodiment of the ‘cosmic mountain’; for our purposes, the tabernacle represents the holy mountain of God.

The garden of Eden, then, would have been understood as resting upon the summit of the mountain of God. The prophet Ezekiel (28:13–14) makes this precise connection:

You were in Eden, the garden of God …
You were on the holy mountain of God …

Furthermore, Genesis 2:6, 10–14 describes a spring-fed river that runs through the garden and then flows down from Eden, branching out into four riverheads to water the rest of the earth, suggesting a high locale that corresponds well with a mountain summit.

The temple being an embodiment of this mountain of God, wherein the source of abundant waters is located, explains similar descriptions of a river flowing out of the temple’s holy of holies (see Ezek. 47; cf. Ps. 46:5), the holy of holies corresponding to the mountain summit.

In sum, then, ‘Eden is thought to be a cosmic mountain upon which Adam serves as priest.’ Or, to reverse the point, the later high priest of Israel serving in the tabernacle must be understood fundamentally as an Adam-figure serving on the (architectural) mountain of God.

While various other parallels between Eden and the tabernacle will be mentioned in relation to the expulsion, the sanctuary symbolism pervading the Eden narrative considered so far is already suggestive of Adam’s priestly role within it.

Here we note one more significant point, confirming such a view of the primal man: the verbs used to describe Adam’s work in 2:15, translated most accurately as ‘to worship and obey’ (lĕ‘obdāh ûlĕšāmrāh), are used together elsewhere in the Pentateuch only to describe the duties of the Levites pertaining to the tabernacle (Num. 3:7–8; 8:26; 18:5–6).

Adam is hereby depicted as the original high priest abiding in Eden, the original holy of holies. The association between Adam and priest is strengthened by the parallel of Adam’s post-transgression vestments and the investiture of the Levitical priests, both needing their nakedness covered (Gen. 3:21; Exod. 20:26; 28:42) and the utilization of the same verb ‘to clothe’ (lābaš in hiphil) and the same noun for ‘tunics’ (kuttōnet):

Gen. 3:21: YHWH God made for Adam and for his wife tunics [kotnôt] of skins and clothed [wayyalbišēm] them.
Lev. 8:13: And Moses brought Aaron’s sons and clothed [wayyalbišēm] them with tunics [kuttŏnōt].

There has been, in fact, a continuous tradition of interpretation with respect to Adam as priest and sacrificer, from the late post-exilic through the rabbinic periods, Adam sometimes portrayed specifically as primal high priest.

I would suggest, further, that the early chapters of Genesis were not composed merely to rehearse origins, but to inform the worship of ancient Israel, explaining the rituals of the tabernacle cultus.

Genesis 1–3 conforms to the general priestly categories of sacred space (the cosmos as a tabernacle, Eden as the holy of holies), sacred time (the Sabbath) and sacred status (Adam’s priestly role).”

–L. Michael Morales, Who Shall Ascend the Mountain of the Lord?: A Biblical Theology of the Book of Leviticus (ed. D. A. Carson; vol. 37; New Studies in Biblical Theology; Downers Grove, IL; England: InterVarsity Press; Apollos, 2015), 51-53.