A few friends of mine and I went round and round about whether or not Adam and Eve had any children while still in the garden of eden. I’ll leave the slate blank for now and chime in if I can come up with any good responses. We came to the conclusion that there was no solid biblical evidence supporting either side.
Have fun and play nice.
Probably not.
There’s no indication of the kids being driven out of the Garden with them.
According to the genealogies, they had Cain, Abel, Seth, and “other sons and daughters” in that order. Seth was born 130 years after Adam’s creation; no dating on the others.
There’s no reason why they couldn’t have – they are, after all, commanded to “be fruitful and multiply.” Contrary to popular opinion, sex has nothing to do with their sin.
There’s an assumption that they ate of the forbidden fruit quite early on – within days after being created. But it’s merely an assumption, not supported by the text.
Jewish tradition supports both ideas. IOW, some sages maintain that Cain & Abel were born in the Garden, while others maintain A&E were expelled first.
Zev Steinhardt
One thing to note though:
Note that he [God] said greatly increase your pains in childbearing. For something to greatly increase, there must have been a standard there to base off of (aka, there must have been pains that could be greatly increased). If there were pains, and they were childbearing pains, that would lead to children.
Not necessarily. A increase in income from $0/year to $100000/year is a great increase even though there was no income beforehand.
Zev Steinhardt
Or it’s possible the childbearing pains were theoretical…that, if Eve did have children while in the garden, the pain would have been X, but then it becomes 5X.
Or maybe he meant that she was already in pain (i.e., having to leave Eden and all that), and that he would increase that pain via child-bearing.
If I’m remembering my Milton class correctly, whether Adam and Eve had sex in the garden was a hot topic of debate among seventeenth-century theologians. The “con” argument – which I’m sure I’m oversimplifying – ran something like this:
I) Everything in Eden was perfect.
II) Perfect sex would, by definition, result in conception. The children thus conceived would also be perfect – or at any rate, not murdering thugs.
III) Adam and Eve’s firstborn was Cain. 'Nuff said.
Milton himself was of a different opinion: Adam and Eve do have sex in Eden in Paradise Lost, and it’s clear that they expect and hope to have children, although Milton is silent about whether Eve is already pregnant at the time of the fall. (Or at least, if he does drop any hints they’re not obvious to me.)
I think one reason people sometimes mistake A&E’s transgression as a sexual one is due to God’s punishing Eve in “the genital area.” It does seem to be a curious punishment. An an etiological tale, it explains why childbirth is so hard for the woman. But for those who read the text literally, why do you think God chose this penalty for her? It seems like it would make following God’s one command from Genesis 1 – to go forth and multiply – even harder to obey.
On a side note, isn’t it the opinion of most biblical scholars and Chapter 1 and Chapter 2 of Genesis are by two different authors (J and P) and have been rather poorly collated? If so, I think the way the two separate texts are brought together make it seem like God created “humanity” in Chapter 1 and then set aside Adam and Eve in a special place called Eden in Chapter 2. Perhaps the folks created in chapter 1 are the folks who dwell in Nod, etc.
Well, if we’re going by the Christian Bible, in terms of chronology, God drove Adam and Eve from the Garden, not “Adam and Eve and all their chillun”, in Genesis 3. And it was immediately after the incident with the Serpent and the Apple, and there’s no mention before the incident of any children, or of whether any children were asked to make a decision about the Apple. The story is clearly just Adam and Eve, nobody else.
Then in Genesis 4:1, the minute they’re out of the Garden and the angel with the flaming sword is guarding the entrance, “Adam lay with Eve his wife and she became pregnant…”
So the big question is:
if it didn’t hurt for Eve to have kids before the big fall, how did she used to have them? Anyone care to build a hypothesis? You can’t say the same way, it just didn’t hurt as much. That’s not really possible if you think about it.
We’re starting with the base assumption that there is an all powerful, immortal deity, a paradise with no death, and a talking serpent; and you’re complaining about the physics of painless childbirth being impossible?
I’ve heard it argued that they definitely did not have children before the “fall” because of the concept of original sin. Original sin is passed down through the generations, and we all have it according to the Churches I know. All of A&E’s chldren had original sin, so they all came after the fall. All of humanity is flawed because of the actions of A&E, not just some of us.
Perhaps someone more informed on original sin theory can comment.
Of course, they still could have had children before the Fruit incident, who, being uncorrupted, remained in Eden under God’s direct fosterage while their no-account parents were driven out.
So some of Cain, Abel, Seth, et al’s divine brothers and sisters may never have left Eden.
Yeah, I guess that is the nature of religious discussion. Assume a bunch of inconceivable ideas. Interpret them so as to spell out reasons for life as it is now. Believe them exactly as they have been spelled out by those interpretors. Don’t dare question it because it will only cause newer interpretations to arise, arguments to start, factions to split off, wars to start and lead to the inevitable destruction of faith. That reminds me of some big round glob of dirt floating around in space.
Are they hiding out in Iraq with the weapons of mass destruction? 
Except, then, what about the flood? God said the entire world was wicked and so he flooded everywhere…it doesn’t say “The entire world is wicked, except the garden of Eden, so I’ll flood everywhere, except the garden of Eden”
Well, he IS God. All seeing, knowing, doing…etc. I’m sure he could have saved Eden if he’d wanted to.
Eden is definitely part of earth, isn’t it? (At least, according to Milton, and that episode of The Simpsons, I think it is…)
Well, presumably god did SOMETHING with Eden during the flood … I assume he didn’t flatten it, too. Perhaps he whooshed it off to Heaven with him? Or concealed it in a protective bubble under the sea? (Atlantis, anyone?)
Well, why not flood it? It had a nice garden, but it’s not like it was being used (with the possible exception of our hypothetical Eden people).