who cain married

i think that's probably a fair analysis, except i think the personification might have gone in reverse. adamah is the word for ground, suggesting adam's earthy roots (gen 2) would have come first, linguistically. i think the author of genesis 1 might have generalized a name into a word, much like we have done with "band-aid" and "kleenex" and such.

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אָרַח

quote:

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adamah is the word for ground

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You're right, I forgot about that. So the older tale personified dirt and then that name generalized into a term for mankind by the time Genesis 1 was written.It is amazing the trail that words take.

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There are two ways of spreading light: to be the candle or the mirror that reflects it. -Edith Wharton

quite.(that's just my personaly guesswork, btw)

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אָרַח

What we might fail to consider is that, at the time this tale was proposed by writer/writers to convert tribal groupings from polytheism to monotheism, there could have been extensive rebuttals by the status quo. None of which have survived. So, to say that the tale was accepted as---um---gospel, might be over-reaching.

The simplest explanation that doesn't require us to dismiss the Bible is that, like it or not, Cain was a redneck--well, he married his sister. Incest would not have been a problem when man was still so close to physical perfection. Even Abraham, many centuries later, married his half-sister with no unfortunate consequences (unless her barrenness before finally having Isaac is seen as one).We only read of Cain, Abel and Seth because of the stories that surround them. We only have the Cain and Abel story because of the murder, and we only read of Seth because he was an ancestor of Noah. It is possible that both Cain and Abel had kids before Cain's exile? Were Cain's descendants contemporaries of Seth's? Several had similar names (and some suggest they were really originally from the same list, but two different lineage traditions were created).Everything else that may have happened in the first few chapters of Genesis (or indeed, anywhere during the times of the Bible) that is not specifically addressed is open to speculation.This message has been edited by DeclinetoState, 03-18-2006 01:45 PM