Do we as Orthodox Christians take the Genesis account of Adam and Eve literally, or are they figurative characters? (June '01)
Let's look at two "rock solid" sources in order to answer this question. Our first "rock solid" source is the God-inspired Holy Scriptures themselves. And let's, for a moment, leave aside the Old Testament Genesis account to which you refer and look rather at the New Testament. In the Holy Gospel according to St Luke the Evangelist (3:23-38), we find the genealogy of our Lord Jesus Christ which begins with St Joseph the Betrothed (who, the Evangelist says, people "supposed" was the father of Jesus) and ascends to "Adam the son of God."
Our second "rock solid" source is the Synaxarion or Great Synaxaristes which is a muti-volume set of books in which are listed the commemorations for each day of the year with an account or description (some brief and some rather extensive) of each. When we look in the volume for December, we find a listing under December 18-24 which is titled "The Sunday before the Nativity which is also known as the Sunday of the Holy Fathers." The account of that commemoration enumerates all of the ancestors of our Lord Jesus Christ beginning with "Adam and Eve the First-created."
Now we all know that to be listed in a genealogy as a progenitor or ancestor, one must be a person and not a figurative character -- people, not ideas or concepts, beget and bear children. So to answer your question, yes, the Church takes literally that there was a first-created male human being who is called by the name ADAM ('adam in Hebrew, which is etymologically related to 'adamah meaning "earth") and that there was a first-created female human being who is called EVE ('hawwah in Hebrew, which is etymologically related to hay meaning "life").