fromdownunder

I realise that this topic has probably been done to death over the years, but I would like to revisit the marriage of Cain. The YECs can only argue that he married his sister, but I contend that there is some difficulty in the entire narrative, and would like comments (for or against) on my speculations.

In sequence, Adam and Eve had Cain, then Abel, and (according to YECs ) an unknown number of sons and daughters before the birth of Seth. Cain killed Abel when he discovered that God preferred meat sacrifices to vegetarian sacrifices, even though, since Man did not eat meat in those days, it would be logical to assume that Cain would think that food would be the preferred offering.

* Speculation On* Now, Seth was born, as a replacement for the late Abel, when Adam was 130 years old. Based on the average age of the fathers of first born pre-history children, Adam was possibly about 70 when Cain was born, hence, if Eve pumped out one kid every 18 months between Cain and Seth, the population of the world would have been in the vicinity of 40, (of which maybe half would be of marrying age) when Cain killed Abel, and all of these people would have been Cain’s brothers and sisters *Speculation Off.*.

Cain gets kicked out of the place he lived but is terrified that one of his brothers will kill him, so God puts a mark on him as protection. He then goes off and finds himself a wife.

So we find that Cain was heading off to another land, where his (probably) 10adult brothers resided. Why did they leave the nest so young, and why would he automatically think that they would kill him on sight? After all they were his brothers!

He then finds one of his sisters marries her (eeeeuuwww) and possibly lives happily ever after. Why did they leave the nest so young as well?

The whole narrative sounds like fiction, which of course, it is.

Norm

Thomas II

The narrative is mythological.
Do we know who mated with who in the beginning of humanity?

Doug Shaver

Of all the credibility problems that the Bible has, I'm surprised at how many skeptics find that one to be among the biggies.

Anat

Fromdownunder, you don't have any basis from which to speculate how many offspring anyone in those early generations of Genesis was supposed to have had - the god of Genesis spent a big part of his time opening and closing the wombs of the women of the time. Anyway, the Jewish midrash suggests that Cain and Abel had twin sisters they were destined to marry, and the big argument that led to Cain killing Abel had to do with that.

Anyway, the story is mythlogical, any number of details can be added to make it 'work' but it isn't essential. It is not at all clear that the people who told the stories originally cared about that, as long as the message was intact: brothers get jealous and fight; herdsmen and farmers are mortal enemies; acts of murder create the wish for revenge; murderers are outcasts at best.

WishboneDawn

That's it exactly Anat. Worrying about the inconsistencies just distracts from what the ancient Hebrews were trying to get across in telling each other the stories.

I can imagine a family sitting around a fire telling those stories and if the teller had to stop to explain how Cain got himself a wife it would just kill the story. I can imagine the second Genesis story being a great one for the campfire though, Adam needing a partner and God coming up with all the animals.

"Here Adam, how about this one?"

"No God, that's a giraffe!"

"Damn hard to please. How about this then."

"A rat? I should marry a rat?!"

If we could liberate some of these stories from the tyranny of the book...Piss of the fundamentalists but at least they'd be fun again, whether you believed or not.

fromdownunder

Well, not necessarily on my part anyway. I raised it because of claims that it is easy to solve, but the explanations are unbiblical to say the least. Biblical errancy is not all that exciting anyway, because one can always speculate on how things might have happened by filling in the gaps (which is what I tried to).

As it happens, and off the top of my head, I would put these above the Cain story:

The Judas narratives (how did he die, who purchased the Potters Field)
Noah's Fludde (both versions)
Elisha and the Bears (the lack of any form of morality in the story)
The Tower of Babel (inconsistancy regarding different languages.

There are of course thousands of others, all well documented.

Norm

fromdownunder

Well, I said it was fiction, and for Bible inerranists it is a problem which is claimed to have been solved.

Norm

fromdownunder

You are right, I don't have a basis for my specultaions, but then neither do those who claim to have solved the issue. As I suggested in my reply to Doug Shaver, it is inerranists who insist that there are no errors/mistakes etc. in the Bible, but they need to make up stuff to fill in the gaps. Not good "scholarship"

The problem is not with the original tellers of the stories, but with those who today, take these legends literally.

Norm

CaliNORML

I found the "link" to Neanderthal and Cain interesting.

Neanderthal Man seems to have stopped frontal brain development after they left the forest. Homo Sapiens were thought to have stayed behind longer.

They did not advance as Homo Sapiens did and had a low sloping skull with larger brow regions, and they were huge. They made no advancements in tool development, using only the same stone axe for centuries, and never developed art, music, or ornamentation; they also had no real death rituals.

If Caine was cast out, meaning left for lack of higher thought as he commited murder. I can see that as an almost accurate tale of the evolution story, on a personal artistic level of communication.

KMS

Anat

Except so far there is no evidence that I know of for homicide among Neandertals, but I recall evidence for such among Cro-Magnons.