Kosh

Of course, this ignores the plain fact that
adam and eve were written about long before
Jesus was born!

QuadWhore

The line of Adam and Eve led to noah. Thats as far as you need to go with it. Bringing jesus into the equation is over interpretation. As for incest, one thing to keep in mind is it is never actually said to be wrong until exodus.

wendel1808

In regards to the following:
AND
I will be brave… There is so much to say regarding this topic, so here is a "theist" perspective for you Talulah and hal900069: I believe the Bible and I am a Christian and would consider myself a person of great faith. Still, the idea of a Great Flood covering the entire earth seems hard to believe, as do many things in the Book of Genesis. I do not have the expertise to validate every claim the Bible makes, but a great astronomer, Dr. Hugh Ross, has written a book called "The Genesis Question" that addresses several areas of Genesis. The website <a href="http://www.reasons.org/resources/skeptics" target="_blank">http://www.reasons.org/resources/skeptics</a> might be of interest to several here.

To state briefly what Dr. Ross claims (and which I believe is quite plausible given his reasons and research) is that the "Great Flood" was a regional flood in Mesopotamia and waters DID NOT cover the entire earth. Some of you may be thinking this contradicts the Bible, but the problem with reading Genesis literally is that the Old Testament was written in Hebrew, which has a very limited vocabulary. (FYI: the New Testament was written in Greek that is a much more sophisticated language.) For example, Genesis chapter 1 says that God created the earth in six "days." The Hebrew word for day, yown, does not mean 24 hours like we think it to, but yown means "a long time," or "epoch." (When we say "in the day of the dinosaurs" we are not referring to a brief period of time but millions and millions of years!) In reference to The Flood, the same thing happens. "Everything living on the face of the earth was wiped out," Gen. 7:22 does not mean the entire globe, but more likely the region of Mesopotamia. (Please read Dr. Ross's article before you all get angry and disagreeable with me. He provides some very convincing arguments. Here is the direct link to his article on The Flood. <a href="http://www.reasons.org/resources/books/genesisquestion/gq18.html" target="_blank">http://www.reasons.org/resources/books/genesisquestion/gq18.html</a> )

Originally posted by hal900069:
Adam was the first man to live, then God made Eve from Adam’s rib (Gen. Chapter 2). From an example given by Dr. Ross, let’s say the first child was born when Adam was 50 years old. He lived to be 900 years old and was bearing children with Eve for 500 years. If he bore one child every 5 years, there would be 4.9 billion people on the planet by the time of Adam’s death. Check out the link: <a href="http://www.reasons.org/resources/skeptics/cain.html" target="_blank">http://www.reasons.org/resources/skeptics/cain.html</a> and if you want to know how it was possible for people to live so long, as the Bible says, then read this article also by Dr. Ross, <a href="http://www.reasons.org/resources/skeptics/methusela.html" target="_blank">http://www.reasons.org/resources/skeptics/methusela.html</a>

I would have to say, as does Dr. Ross, that “incest” did occur. It is correct that that before Exodus, the second book in the Bible, that relations between brothers and sisters were considered okay. However, relations between parents and children never were and never will be. This is not “moral relativism” as Godless Dave so put it, but part of God’s Plan. Throughout the O.T. until the New Testament and the crucifixion of Jesus Christ, God was continually giving people a chance to obey Him, acknowledge Him and love Him. Adam and Eve sinned first, then later in Noah’s time people were murdering one another and so the Great Flood happened, all kinds of things like this happened in Genesis and then Moses comes along, has a revelation and goes and talks to God on the mountain, brings down the tablets with the Ten Commandments, which became the foundation of the Jewish religion. So, now there were new laws, but in the rest of the O.T. kings and people continually ignored God and worshipped idols and other gods, killed others, committed adultery, etc. and so finally after giving humanity other chances, God knew an ultimate sacrifice was needed to atone for the sins of all humanity. The sacrifice, unlike a lamb, bull, or another animal would be pure and could not only cover sins, buy “wash” them away and people could be forgiven. God’s spirit came to a virgin woman named Mary and His spirit allowed Mary to conceive of a son, Jesus. Jesus lived a sinless life and then he died on the cross not for his sins, but the sins of all the people past, present and future. “For God so loved the world that he gave his one and only Son, that whoever believes in him shall not perish but have eternal life,” John 3:16. I don’t want to sound preachy, but this is what the Bible says in a nutshell, and that’s how it works.

Also, going back the The Flood, we have two options A) it was regional and therefore wiped out the people in Mesopotamia, or B) it was global flood and therefore only Noah and his family were left on earth. With option A, incestuous relations would have occurred between Noah’s children, and non-incestuous relations between Noah and his wife to repopulate the region of Mesopotamia. Given option B, incestuous relations would have occurred between Noah’s children, and non-incestuous relations between Noah and his wife to repopulate the entire world. As we saw with Adam, this idea of populating the earth is not unlikely given the lifespan of Noah—he lived 350 years after the flood and was 950 years old when he died (Gen. 9:28). Also in Gen chapter 10 it goes through the genealogy of Noah’s sons and they were blessed with many children and lived long lives as their father did.

Sorry this is sooooooo long, but these are not simple questions and so there are no simple answers.

zamboniavenger

You've got to be kidding me...

The other thing I wanted to bring up...

Ok, so that explains the whole Noah thing(at least for now), but how'd we get from Adam and Eve w/o child/parent incest?

spin

---------------------
these are not simple questions and so there are no simple answers.
---------------------

They are simple questions and the answers are relatively simple as well.

When giving aetiological information (ie how things came to be) one cuts the more trivial information and reduces the telling to a minimum.

Why on earth anyone would want to read these stories today as being scientifically and/or historically correct beats me -- other than gullibility enforced by religious commitment.

We are dealing with interesting stories often told with zest and irony, with great skill. There is no point in rubbishing the stories just because they are not historically accurate for modern tastes.

I can't see why people will not look on the biblical stories and accounts as quality writing without being forced to accept it as pure fact. One finds so much of interest about the ancient world of the Jews and what they thought, how they organised society, how they approached social problems, dealt with other peoples.

So, they aren't historical. Neither is Doctor Strangelove, but it doesn't stop people from being able to appreciate it.

So, it contains some beautiful literature. That doesn't make it a guide book for running your life.

wendel1808

Original post by: zamboniavenger

If you read Dr. Ross's article, it says and Adam and Eve had other children besides Cain and Abel, the most famously known. So, Adam and Even had sons and daughters and that is the best we can assume. In Genesis 4:17, it says "Cain lay with his wife and she became pregnant and gave birth to Enoch." So, Cain's wife had to come from somewhere.

I'm not 100% sure why the Bible is this way, but pehaps women's names are not listed very often in the Bible because we trace genealogy by the man's name. You can look in 1 and 2 Kings and 1 and 2 Chronicles and see tons of evidence in this. Of course women were born, otherwise people couldn't procreate.

zamboniavenger

Ok, sorry. I went off half-cocked there, I only read the article about living to be 900(I was supposed to be studying). However, my smart-assed comment about THAT article still stands.

case

Ross's article is an exercise in apologetics...but I don't see what it has to do with the topic. Why would god consider incest between brother and sister acceptable? Why suddenly make it unacceptable later in the bible? Does that mean that it would be acceptable for me to sleep with my sister now? And couldn't god, who had created all life, create wives for Cain and Abel? It was mentioned that they probably married their sisters, but why are they not mentioned? Genesis takes up a fair amount of space mentioning who begot who; why leave out the origin of Cain and Abel's wives? Ross also has an explaination for why Adam could live 900 years. I'll leave this for a biologist to debunk, but assuming this is true, why are Adam's other children not mentioned? Seems odd that they would be left out of the lineage.

Ragnarok

This is what they told me when I was a fundy: Adam and Eve had "perfect" DNA before the fall. When they fucked up and got thrown out of the garden their DNA was "cursed" as a result of the fall. But the curse was a progressive thing see So their children could all screw each other and it was OK because the DNA was still mostly "perfect". As time went on the Adamic curse really started to mess up the genetic code though and so incest became "wrong". This doesn't help much when you're trying to figure out how we repopulated after the flood though.

Or maybe none of it ever happened at all...

<img src="graemlins/boohoo.gif" border="0" alt="[Boo Hoo]" />

hal9000

Ah that explains it rather nicely, or not. You be the judge.