Cain: I now pronounce you man and... Huh?

Great Debates
1

So my dad is a strong agnostic who was raised devoutly Catholic. Every once in a while, like a 'Nam vet will have a horrible flashback to some atrocity, Dad will remember something from his upbringing and wonder…

So Dad and I are in a hotel and he grabs the book the Gideons were so kind to provide. He pointed out Genesis Chapter 4. The important stuff is as follows:

[quote]
Genesis 4[ol]
[li]And Adam knew Eve his wife; and she conceived, and bare Cain, and said, I have gotten a man from the LORD.[/li][li]And she again bare his brother Abel. And Abel was a keeper of sheep, but Cain was a tiller of the ground.[/li][li]And in process of time it came to pass, that Cain brought of the fruit of the ground an offering unto the LORD.[/li][li]And Abel, he also brought of the firstlings of his flock and of the fat thereof. And the LORD had respect unto Abel and to his offering:[/li][li]But unto Cain and to his offering he had not respect. And Cain was very wroth, and his countenance fell.[/li][li]And the LORD said unto Cain, Why art thou wroth? and why is thy countenance fallen?[/li][li]If thou doest well, shalt thou not be accepted? and if thou doest not well, sin lieth at the door. And unto thee shall be his desire, and thou shalt rule over him.[/li][li]And Cain talked with Abel his brother: and it came to pass, when they were in the field, that Cain rose up against Abel his brother, and slew him.[/li][li]And the LORD said unto Cain, Where is Abel thy brother? And he said, I know not: Am I my brother’s keeper?[/li][li]And he said, What hast thou done? the voice of thy brother’s blood crieth unto me from the ground.[/li][li]And now art thou cursed from the earth, which hath opened her mouth to receive thy brother’s blood from thy hand;[/li][li]When thou tillest the ground, it shall not henceforth yield unto thee her strength; a fugitive and a vagabond shalt thou be in the earth.[/li][li]And Cain said unto the LORD, My punishment is greater than I can bear.[/li][li]Behold, thou hast driven me out this day from the face of the earth; and from thy face shall I be hid; and I shall be a fugitive and a vagabond in the earth; and it shall come to pass, that every one that findeth me shall slay me.[/li][li]And the LORD said unto him, Therefore whosoever slayeth Cain, vengeance shall be taken on him sevenfold. And the LORD set a mark upon Cain, lest any finding him should kill him.[/li][li]And Cain went out from the presence of the LORD, and dwelt in the land of Nod, on the east of Eden.[/li][li]And Cain knew his wife; and she conceived, and bare Enoch: and he builded a city, and called the name of the city, after the name of his son, Enoch.[/ol][/li][/quote]

So what Dad wants to know - and I’ll admit, I’m curious - where did his wife come from? For that matter, what the hell is Nod? In Chapter 3, it mentions that cherubims and a flaming sword were placed east of Eden - does that have anything to do with Nod, which seems to be in the same geographic location?

Furthermore, Cain and his unnamed Nod-originating wife concieved E’noch, who begat I’rad - and where did HIS significant other come from?

2

I’m no biblical scholar (despite 13 years of Catholic school), but I would suppose that the land of Nod is just one of those places and peoples that God created on the 8th day, and that never got mentioned in Genesis. Otherwise, Genesis implies that the earth’s population got going due to a whole lot of incest, and that ain’t Kosher (kinda lends credence to the whole “Genesis is a myth” thing, doesn’t it? It’s a wonder the fundamentalists never picked up on this). Then again, maybe Cain’s wife is really his (previously unmentioned) sister.

Speaking of incest, last time I was down south visiting my relatives, a Bible discussion broke out. I kept quite, but the two groups in the debate were thus: 1) Genesis is literal truth, and provides a valid history for early mankind, and 2) Genesis is true history, but it only tells the story of the beginning of the Judeo-Christian-Muslim peoples, not the whole world. It’s amazing how some people will read the arcane, mistranlsated scrolls of an ancient nomadic desert tribe etched thousands of years ago by an unknown hand, and decide to take them at face value.* The group then preceded to rag on the Book of Mormon for being, of all things, illogical and contradictory.
Swear to god, this is how these people think.
*=Phrasing “borrowed” from The Onion.

3

The standard response I’ve always heard is that details were skipped that seemed frivolous to the Bible’s authors. This is the explanation that’s often offered for why Jesus’ youth is not chronicled.

Women in general don’t get very many column inches in The Bible.

4

[silliness]
No, Jesus’s youth was omitted because it talked about his brothers and sisters. Also, later in the Bible they discriminated against the 13th apostle, Rufus, because he was black.
[/silliness]

((Jello has been watching too many Kevin Smith movies lately))

I’d always wondered about the Cain thing and how the rest of the 100+ children of Adam and Eve procreated without their children becoming genetic anamolies and, even worse, act like Alabamans.

On an almost related note, why does Genesis have the only fictional* places? (Eden, land of Nod, etc.)

  • Or, if you feel like it, “places that remain undiscovered”
5

Jello, I think that these places such as the land of Nod and Eden became fictional places because they were in Genesis, and therefore became the stuff of fairy tales and such.

6

The most farfetched explanation I’ve heard about this one (and I forget exactly WHO I heard it from), was that the Creation listed in Genesis was only that of God’s “chosen people.” There were other people around before God decided to make the Jews, I guess. The person telling me this said something like, “That explains the whole evolution thing. God’s chosen people were created, and the rest just evolved from the monkeys like Darwin said.”

I recall stifling laughter and bowing my way out of the conversation gracefully. Some people you just can’t argue with.

7

Either a place is fictional or it isn’t. It can’t “become” fictional.

8

The really nasty, Christian Identity version of this theory is that Adam and Eve were the ancestors of the blond, blue-eyed white people, who are supposedly the “real” Israelites the Bible is talking about. All of those brown-skinned people out there are “pre-Adamic”, and the Bible’s not talking about them, except as smiting-bait. You can imagine where they go with this.

A goofy creationist “explanation” of the original question I’ve heard was that, being so soon after the Fall and all (which, in addition to introducing sin into the world, also gave rise to death and to the Second Law of Thermodynamics), the early generations immediately after Adam were genetically superior to us later generations who’ve been wallowing around in the post-Edenic muck for the last six or ten millennia. Therefore, those first generations were the result of rampant incest, but it was okay, or at least didn’t lead to whole nations of people who looked like cast members from Deliverance, because the gene pool hadn’t had time to accumulate many mutations. (I believe they also allow as how Adam and Eve must have had a bunch of girl-babies who–naturally–don’t get mentioned in the Bible. So, I guess Cain married his sister.) Incidentally, “scientific” creationists also claim this is why Methusaleh and people like that lived to be several centuries old–their DNA was still relatively pure.

Or, of course, there’s always the old “It’s just an Ancient Near Eastern fairy tale” answer.

9

Let’s not forget the Flood, either. All of mankind, with the exception of Noah and his brood, were wiped out. This, of course, left only Noah and family to re-populate the earth. So, even if there were other people created for Adam’s and Eve’s kin, there was no mention of anyone ever being created after the flood, and it still looks like we are the result of incest…

If one were to believe everything one reads, anyway :stuck_out_tongue:

10

OK, Satan, time for the Jewish explanation:

Very simple. Adam had other sons and daughters besides Cain, Abel and Seth. See Genesis 5. Also, note that there is no time frame for the Cain and Abel story. It could have occured many years after Eden.

Cain married one of his sisters (well, there was no one else).

Irad married a daughter of one of Adam’s other sons.

Simple enough?

Zev Steinhardt

11

I was raised with pretty much the same explanation that zev_steinhardt wrote. In addition I’d like to mention that women aren’t mentioned nearly as much in the Bible, so it is very likely that a daughter would not be recorded. Usually, the bible mentions direct male lineage, not female.

So yes, in theory, Cain married his sister, which means that Nod probably would have been located in the deep south, rather than east.

12

Hi,
I know this may seem a bit out of context but the Quran says that Cain killed Abel for the love of a woman.This woman was one of Adams daughters of course and both brothers fell in love with her.Cain saw a crow kill a small snake and then proceeded to do the same then the crow buried the snake and hence to hide this crime or whatever reason he may have had since he was only learning to murder,Cain buried Abel in the same way, and hence jealousy gave rise to human murder.The story is supposed to be metaphorical and teaches us about jealousy and how it has lead us to grab each other’s throats.
hey is it permissible for a person to marry his sister/brother in any religion today?
Bye
Zeeshan

13

Not in Judaism. Unless, of course, the brother/sister were the last people alive. Keeping the species alive would override the commandment against incest (proof from Cain and siblings, who, according to Jewish thought, were commanded not to commit incest, yet were permitted to in this case…). A highly unlikely scenario, in any event…

Zev Steinhardt

14

What about any sects or cults that might allow brother/sister marriages?

15

And there are those who figured the land of Nod was somewhere in the southern Appalachians, based on all these goings-on. :slight_smile:

One quick point, which gets missed whenever the whole Adam scenario comes up: Eden was not the name of the pre-Fall garden, no matter how you look at it. The passage says that God set a garden in Eden. OK, Polycarp, so Eden was a land where all this stuff supposedly took place. What’s your point?

Just this: Eden (the land) was not a fictional place like Lyonnesse, Atlantis, or Poictesme. (No offense to any Arthurians, Atlantophiles, or Cabellites is intended.) It was a specific area, in the times the O.T. was put together with a substantial river and irrigated and fertile, but now gone to desert, located in the approximate area that the Allied troops entered Iraq during Desert Storm. It was commonly referred to by that name well into Persian times.

Now, that proves exactly nothing about the scriptural story, but at least it gives it a location.

16

Oh, and Zeeshan, check over in GQ for the thread on the Pharaohs and Ptolemies, if you wanna follow up on that. John Corrado can probably give you a link, based on his .sig lately! :smiley:

17

Not really, as this leaves unanswered why he would have to go to Nod to meet his own sister?

Yer pal,
Satan

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18

Who says? Maybe she went with him there.

The verse only brings up “And Cain knew…” at that point because the verse was now going to deal with his children.

Zev Steinhardt

19

Curiouser and curiouser.

Somebody on another thread just said Jews don’t believe in the fall of man from Eden, but now Zev here is taking it literally.

So, Jews don’t believe this is just a parable? In light of scientific evidence to the contrary?

20

jmullaney: I do not wish to speak for the Jews here, but I do know that cmkeller and David B once debated the age of the earth, and he is of the opinion that the earth is 5,000-something years old because of the Bible.

As such, I would have to assume that some Jews - mostly the Orthodox ones - do view Genesis and the rest as literal and inerrent, even going so far as to say that evolution is bunk and this is NOT a parable.

Yer pal,
Satan

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