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Author | Topic: Is the Bible the Word of God II? | |||||||||||||||||||||||
Mister Pamboli Member (Idle past 7608 days) Posts: 634 From: Washington, USA Joined: |
quote: It's not often you see a link to a Roman Catholic website on the forum , but here is a good one which goes into the question of Antediluvian genealogy in scholarly detail. It's a very good brief summary of current biblical study in the subject. It doesn't directly answer the question "where did Cain's wife come from", but it does explain the scholarly identification of Cain and Cainan: see Genesis 5.
http://www.newadvent.org/cathen/01551c.htm Genesis 5 at the very least says that Adam had more sons and daughters than just Cain and Abel, so I don't think its an issue. It is one of the favourite "gotcha" questions raised by each generation of biblical-contradiction-hunters. Pamboli
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Percy Member Posts: 22508 From: New Hampshire Joined: Member Rating: 5.4 |
This interpretation might be a stretch. When there were only four people on the entire earth (Adam, Eve, Cain, Abel), Cain kills Abel and then we read: Gen 4:15b Then the Lord put a mark on Cain, so that no one who found him would kill him. The only people available to find and kill Cain at the time were Adam and Eve. Gen 4:16 So Cain went out from the Lord's presence and lived in the land of Nod, east of Eden. Since Adam, Eve and Cain were the only people in the world at the time, Cain went to live alone. In the very next sentence we read: Gen 4:17a Cain lay with his wife... But there was no one to be Cain's wife, so this means that between Gen 4:16 and Gen 4:17 there must have passed a considerable period of time, even though they're consective sentences, during which events related later on in Genesis must have happened: Gen 4:25 Adam lay with his wife again, and she gave birth to a son and names him Seth. And so at least 14 years must have passed after the death of Abel before the first girl to be born could marry Cain, all this taking place between consecutive sentences Gen 4:16 and Gen 4:17. Not impossible, but a stretch, and the text seems blithely unaware of the incongruities in what otherwise appears to be a chronological account. The story of creation, Adam, Eve and the fall and the tale of Cain and Abel have the feel of two different stories tacked together with a single interlude paragraph at Gen 4:1. --Percy
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no2creation Inactive Member |
Leviticus 11:6 And the hare, because he cheweth the cud, but divideth not the hoof; he is unclean unto you.
- I think we all know that rabbits DO NOT do this. This must be a mistake. It may have appeared that they were doing this, but upon closer examination we can determine beyond a reasonable doubt that rabbits do no such thing.
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no2creation Inactive Member |
Mark 16:15 And he said unto them, Go ye into all the world, and preach the gospel to every creature.
Does this include all creatures of the earth, or just humans? One person could only 'assume' he meant humans. For me, there isn't a solid indication that by 'creature' he in fact meant humans. Why not replace 'creature' with 'man and woman' or something similar?
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TrueCreation Inactive Member |
"- I think we all know that rabbits DO NOT do this. This must be a mistake. It may have appeared that they were doing this, but upon closer examination we can determine beyond a reasonable doubt that rabbits do no such thing."
--What rabbits do do is that after they leave their little presents around, they go back and eat them again. What would this be considered? ------------------ [This message has been edited by TrueCreation, 02-18-2002]
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Mister Pamboli Member (Idle past 7608 days) Posts: 634 From: Washington, USA Joined: |
[QUOTE]Originally posted by Percipient:
[B] When there were only four people on the entire earth (Adam, Eve, Cain, Abel), Cain kills Abel ... Ah you've skipped verse three you naughty thing ... "And in process of time it came to pass" which can (to coin a phrase) cover a multitude of sins. Gen 4:15b Then the Lord put a mark on Cain, so that no one who found him would kill him. I think the implication of "no-one" extends rather further than to his father and mother, no? The suggestion is surely that he was marked as a sign to identify him as one who should not be killed - hardly necessary if he is the only other human on the planet! The word "mark" is translated in the Vulgate as "signum", a sign, and other translations accord with this. You know what I think is going on? The OT is so mysogynistic that they have no interest in Cain's wife until he "lies" with her. After all, what else she was good for? Hardly worth a mention except as the world's first sex object.
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TrueCreation Inactive Member |
"You know what I think is going on? The OT is so mysogynistic that they have no interest in Cain's wife until he "lies" with her. After all, what else she was good for? Hardly worth a mention except as the world's first sex object."
--No more relevant worth mentioning in the bible than all the other son's and daughters adam and eve had. --I could almost come to the conclusion that if the bible included the detail that many desire, that it would be well above 20,000 pages in type6 font. ------------------
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no2creation Inactive Member |
quote: I am pretty sure that CUD is the food regurgitated from the first stomach to the mouth of a ruminant and chewed again. Eating food that has passed through the digestive system, would not be considered such...but I could be wrong.
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Percy Member Posts: 22508 From: New Hampshire Joined: Member Rating: 5.4 |
Since Adam and Eve do not have additional children until after Cain kills Abel, and since Gen 4:3 precedes the murder, that verse is irrelevant. Gen 4:15b-17 reads like this: Then the Lord put a mark on Cain, so that no one who found him would kill him. So Cain went out from the Lord's presence and lived in the land of Nod, east of Eden. Since there were no wives to be had at the time of Abel's death, in order for this passage to be possible at least 14 years must have passed between the end of verse 4:16 and the beginning of verse 4:17, and that just so Cain could marry his full sister. It's not impossible, but it's a stretch. The entire story makes more sense once you realize it was once two separate tales, at least two. A further point is that if the chronology of the Bible is so loose that 14 years can possibly be inserted between any two sentences when required to close the distance to the realm of possibility, then there are too many alternate possible interpretations to make it a useful reference about anything. --Percy
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Legend Member (Idle past 5037 days) Posts: 1226 From: Wales, UK Joined: |
Genesis 2:17
But of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil, thou shalt not eat of it, for in the day that thou eatest thereof thou shalt surely die. God tells Adam (the only human being alive at the time) not to eat the fruit. Gen. 2:22And the rib, which the LORD God had taken from man, made he a woman, and brought her unto the man. God makes Eve. AFTER he warned Adam not to eat. Eve has not heard the warning against Tree of Knowledge fruit. Gen. 3:1Now the serpent was more subtil than any beast of the field which the LORD God had made. And he said unto the woman, Yea, hath God said, Ye shall not eat of every tree of the garden? 3:2And the woman said unto the serpent, We may eat of the fruit of the trees of the garden: 3:3But of the fruit of the tree which is in the midst of the garden, God hath said, Ye shall not eat of it, neither shall ye touch it, lest ye die. The serpent tempts Eve, which she resists thanks to God's warning... which she was not alive to hear?! Gen. 3:6 And when the woman saw that the tree was good for food, and that it was pleasant to the eyes, and a tree to be desired to make one wise, she took of the fruit thereof, and did eat, and gave also unto her husband with her; and he did eat. Eve gives fruit to Adam... with or without telling him it's the fruit of knowledge? And how would she know anyway?
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Mister Pamboli Member (Idle past 7608 days) Posts: 634 From: Washington, USA Joined: |
quote: Genesis 1-4 covers the creation myth and the fall and the various shenanigans up to Cain and his progeny. Genesis 5 is a genealogy, ending with Noah, leading into the next major myth of the flood. The pattern is quite clear: myths - genealogy (Genesis 5) - myths (flood) - genealogy Genesis 10) - myth of Abraham and subsequent myths stitched together with little genealogies. It does have the feel of two original sources - a collection of myths of the orgins of the tribe, and a genealogy of the kings. These are stitched together as appropriate. The myths don't include detailed genealogies because that isn't their purpose. The genealogy at Genesis 5 can be read as a separate genealogy of those who formed the ancestors of the tribe. Cain doesn't figure in the genealogy because his role is to contribute to the myth not the genealogy. His wife, poor woman, doesn't figure in the genealogy for the same reason and only figures in the myth as a broodmare for his Cain's progeny: her genealogy and origin are of no importance to the moral and theological issues with which the myth deals.
quote: Hey don't get me wrong, Percy, I for one am not claiming the Biblcial account is historically accurate. In this case it just a pretty typical ancient text and it has the same flaws and lapses as you would find in any early genealogy. But it seemed a shame to see you pick a hole where there wasn't one. I would agree that it is not a useful "reference" in the sense that one cannot look it up like an encyclopedia to find the lineage or chronology of the ancient near east, but when cross-referenced with the archaeology and other primary sources, it is a wonderful set of documents. And of course it is useless as a guide to the physical origins of the earth or humankind.
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Percy Member Posts: 22508 From: New Hampshire Joined: Member Rating: 5.4 |
I'm afraid I'm having trouble understanding your original point. You came to the Bible's defense when No2creation raised the question of where Cain's wife came from, saying you didn't think it was an issue, that it was a favorite "gotcha" among Biblical contradiction seekers. I answered that I thought it was a stretch given that it required the insertion of at least 14 years between two consecutive sentences.
You then answered that Gen 4:3 accounted for the missing time, but that verse is about the passage of time up to the incident where Cain kills Abel, ie, it's irrelevant to passage of time after the murder. Further, the Bible explicitly states that Adam and Eve had no more children until after the death of Cain: Gen 4:25 And Adam knew his wife again and she bore a son and called him Seth, for she said, "God has appointed for me another child instead of Abel, for Cain slew him." So after Cain killed Abel, Cain would have had to wait at least 14 years before a sister could be born and become old enough to marry. But this isn't the impression the Bible story leaves in one's mind while it's being read. When it says that Cain killed Abel and then fled to the land of Nod where he slept with his wife it says it matter of factly as if there were people already living in the land of Nod among whom one could find a wife. This is, of course, impossible since the only people alive in the world at the time were Adam, Eve and Cain. There's nothing special about this problem. There are many other similar problems in the Bible, some worse, some not so bad. I'm not trying to make a big deal about this particular problem. I just didn't think it was accurate to say it wasn't a problem. --Percy
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doctrbill Member (Idle past 2795 days) Posts: 1174 From: Eugene, Oregon, USA Joined: |
quote: Were Adam and Eve the first humans in existence ...... or simply the earliest known ancestors of the Jews? Did the Lord create workers and set up the job ...... or did he create jobs, and set up the worker? If the Lord really needed Adam to work the plantation,then who would take care of it after he's fired? There must have been other people! -----------db
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Mister Pamboli Member (Idle past 7608 days) Posts: 634 From: Washington, USA Joined: |
quote: I don't want to labour this point either, but may I take a few sentneces to clarify? The point I was trying to make was that there are two sources - one mythical and the other genealogical. The mythical source has no particular interest in chronology - it is concerned with a moral fable. If I were a fundie who held that that the two must reconcile perfectly, then it would indeed be a problem. But for textual analysis there is no real difficulty.Narrative texts constantly do this kind of thing, only touching the incidents they are interested in, with holes often being filled in by other, chronologically parallel, passages. The significant incidents and detail are selected by the mindset of the writer, thus my slightly facetious point that the source of the creation and fall legends had no interest in Cain's wife or her origins until she had a function in the plot. My concern in raising the issue was that sometimes on this forum the textual analysis of the Bible, which has yielded wonderful information in the last 150 years, is often squeezed out between the rationalist and fundamentalist views on this forum. Damn - I have laboured the point now. I'm off for a coffee.
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toff Inactive Member |
[QUOTE]Originally posted by no2creation:
[b] quote: No, no2creation, you're not wrong. Cud chewing is the process of regurgitating (vomiting) partially digested food into the mouth where it is chewed again (the vomited partially digested food is the cud). It requires multi-chambered stomachs, and the animals that do this are known as ruminants. The best know example would be the cow. Rabbits, however, eat their food, partially digest it, excrete it, then eat their faeces, and further digest it the second time through. This ends up having about the same effect as chewing the cud - it is, however, a markedly different process. Rabbits do not chew the cud. This merely one of the many places where the bible is factually wrong (Leviticis 11 is a wonderful source of errors like this - there's like half a dozen errors of fact in one chapter). [This message has been edited by toff, 02-20-2002]
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