someone declined to mention it, so now we have all sorts of people putting their two cents in. Who's right? Who knows?
I don't see it that way. There is no prohibition stated in Genesis against them marrying close family kin. There is the mentioning of one man having two wives which seems to suggest this was not too good. And there are instances where murder is highlighted as if we are to take note of this negative.
The writer could have therefore pointed out the sin of Cain or Seth or the other early humans marrying cousins or sisters and it did not. So it must have been Okay with God at that point.
Yeah...it must have. Just like killing your brother must have been A-OK, too since Cain wasn't really punished and, in fact, God, protected him from the wrath of the other (mysterious) people and Cain went on to have multiple descendents.
Beside this, these early humans had very healthy lives. A life span of 900 years was normal. The point here is that the defects which incest latter manifested probably were not a problem for this pre-flood group of extremly fit early humans.
No doubt, latter generations after the longevity of people began to be shortened, the mental and physical problems associated with close to kin marriage became much more of a cause for God to forbid it.
Do you have textual support for this? I am having trouble finding the passages which describe these assertions? You sure you aren't just making them up?
It might be interesting to try to figure out:
1.) How many years it was before Cain killed Abel,
(and etc...the rest of the questions can be answered here)
From the text we cannot say, but we can calculate based on average ages of puberty. Starting at the expulsion of Eden (being conservative) Adam can be 1. Cain can be 2. The expulsion of Cain can be anywhere, but let's put it at 13 and his finding a wife at 14. Enoch arrives at Cain=15/Adam=16 (it looks really weird, but Adam was supposedly fully formed, but where was the time before Adam?)
We take an average age of 15 for reproduction. So, Enoch=15 and Irad is born (30 years so far). Irad=15 and Mehujael is born (45 years so far). Mehujael=15 and Methusael is born (60 years so far). Methusael=15 and Lamech is born (75 years so far). Lamech had a couple of wives, but we can attach about 15 years to him, too (90 years so far). Lamech's wives both bore two known babies. Let's put them a year apart each.
This now equals 106 years. 24 years give or take, before Seth is born at Adam's 130 years.
Factoring Eve in at the same age as Adam (again not counting the pre-expulsion years, if any), this leaves Cain with a "land of Nod" consisting of maybe 10-13 (most women naturally don't give birth until they are done weaning at around two years of age...breast feeding suppresses breeding hormones, but it can be faulty) individuals. We have no reason to suspect that Cain was not the first born. So who were these people in the land of Nod? His juvenile brothers and sisters (if any..we aren't given any sort of textual evidence for other Eve babies, much less a whole people)?
We are just not given too many details. We know that after the murder of Abel, Cain migrated to Nod. At sometime he married a wife.
Right...but the calculation of the whole history of the Earth and all of us depends upon the accuracy of the genealogies in the OT and NT, so why not get it right? How old was Adam when he was expelled from Eden? If Adam's (and, by extension, Cain's) age isn't right, then how are we to know if the supposed age of the Earth is right? Do you know? How old was Cain when he migrated to Nod? Who was there? Why is that important? Do you not think of those questions when you read your book?
I think the writer is saying that this was the genesis or the origin of the culture (a city) raised by the man who departed from the presence of God. This is the origin of the godless world culture - the city of Enoch.
Yeah, it could be a metaphor (for "heathen" cultures that surrounded early Jews), but why is the rest of Genesis not a metaphor in it's entirety? Why the selective thinking?
bluejay writes:
You do realize that this doesn't actually constitute proof of anything, right? The Bible doesn't actually state anywhere that Adam and Eve were the only ones created, nor does it actually state that Cain's wife was Adam and Eve's daughter. Under this logic, your interpretation of the Bible story is just as subjective and unfounded as Chiroptera's
jaywill writes:
bluejay writes:
Under this logic, your interpretation of the Bible story is just as subjective and unfounded as Chiroptera's.
You've failed to demonstrate that I think.
You've failed to demonstrate anything, which is why you have chosen to quotemine bluejay.
You cannot really prove much of your point without resorting to metaphysical propositions which some people may or may not agree with.
What you apparently have overlooked is the fact that Eve was the mother of all living. So Cain and his wife had to have been at last somewhat closely related.
No, we all acknowledge that a literal Genesis account says that Cain had to have slept with a sister. What
you have apparently overlooked is how that could have been possible given the timeline of events.
Unless the Genesis account omitted a few key details (ages of characters, identities of Nodians, interpretations of early human events) and, if so, why not just allow human interpretations to be human interpretations?
Is not "mastering the facts of the Bible" just interpreting it to mean what you want it to mean. How can you tell the difference?
"You are metaphysicians. You can prove anything by metaphysics; and having done so, every metaphysician can prove every other metaphysician wrong--to his own satisfaction. You are anarchists in the realm of thought. And you are mad cosmos-makers. Each of you dwells in a cosmos of his own making, created out of his own fancies and desires. You do not know the real world in which you live, and your thinking has no place in the real world except in so far as it is phenomena of mental aberration." -
The Iron Heel by Jack London
"Hazards exist that are not marked" - some bar in Chelsea
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