Eve...and three men....you do the math

Great Debates
1

Betty Bowers at her web site:
http://www.bettybowers.com/ had the following question posed to her:

Adam was the first man, right?
Eve was the first woman, correct?
They had two kids, Cain, and Abel.

The Bible says that Cain and Abel took wives.

My Question: Where did these wives come from? Who were their parents?

Yours through Christ,

Concerned

Her answer:

Dear Reader:

Well, actually, I think the older Abel was not able to marry as he was annoyingly killed (an event which has helped theologian-archaeologists to pin-point the location of Metropolitan Garden of Eden to one of the housing projects in Atlanta). It was Cain who took a wife, who is unnamed for reasons of propriety (See Genesis 4:17 for the Oedipal Complex Creation story).

You do the math, dear. Let’s just say that that apple was not the last forbidden thing that troublesome trollop Eve put in her mouth!

So Close To Jesus, He Designates Me On Forms That Require A “Contact In Case of Emergency” (as His Father has foresaken Him before),

Now putting aside Betty’s obvious frivolity and flippancy, that is an interesting question: Where DID Cain’s wife come from?

2

The two stock answers are:

  1. Adam and Eve had many more children, (with the women ignored in the text due to the patriarchal nature of the society in which the stories were recorded) and incest was not, initially, delineated as a sin in order to allow the species to get started.

  2. God created other “peoples” in other places who did not get named as they were not necessary for the story to be handed down.

The third common answer is that the stories are not intended to be taken literally, but to indicate the way in which sin entered the world through the actions of humans beginning with the first humans.

A search on GQ, GD, or Comments on Staff Reports using the search arguments “cain AND incest” or “cain AND wife” (or just “cain”) will turn up several earlier threads on similar topics.

3

As you can probably tell I am a novice and just delving into the BOARDS. What are GQ, GD, Comments etc. and where do I find them…and thanks for the reply

4

Genesis 4:25
Adam lay with his wife again, and she gave birth to a son and named him Seth, saying, “God has granted me another child in place of Abel, since Cain killed him.”

5

Sorry.

GQ: the General Questions Forum where questions with factual answers are handled.

GD: the Great Debates Forum (where you have posted this thread).

Comments on Staff Reports is the Forum where people comment on the columns written by the Straight Dope Staff that Cecil passed off instead of answering, himself.

When you click on the search button on the upper right corner of this page, you will be given an opportunity to select all forums or any specific forum of the message board. (Since the search engine is a real hog, we generally ask that you not select “search all forums”.

There is also an Archive Search for columns written either by Cecil or by the SD Staff, as found on the home page: http://www.straightdope.com/

6

GQ = General Questions

GD = Great Debates

Comments on Staff Reports = er, Comments on Staff reports

…all forums.

Welcome to the boards! My congratulations on your ability to get sensible answers to your Bible question right off the bat, unlike some people.

7

Aw, c’mon, Terrifel! We’re trying! :slight_smile:

8

Did anyone else think this thread might have been about our Eve?

9

Just after the Cain-and-Abel story, we get the birth of Adam and Eve’s third Son, Seth. This is followed by the note that Adam had other sons and daughters – and there is no indication that the daughters were after Seth’s birth; the patriarchal world of Genesis focuses on the males.

10

Just a minor correction: The Bible never does not say that the forbidden fruit was an apple. It never says what type of fruit it was - just that it was forbidden.

11

" You do the math, dear. Let’s just say that that apple was not the last forbidden thing that troublesome trollop Eve put in her mouth!"

To a naive reader this suggests some form of oral conception.

Must find out about this…

12

" You do the math, dear. Let’s just say that that apple was not the last forbidden thing that troublesome trollop Eve put in her mouth!"

To a naive reader this suggests some form of oral conception.

Must find out about this…

13

:eek:
Not me! Nope, nope, nope! :rolleyes:

14

I agree with the scenario that Adam and Eve had other children besides Cain and Abel and this is where Cain got his wife. It makes sense to me.

15

Even if Cain had sex with his sisters instead of his mother, how is that any better?

16

Better genetic distribution, since the daughters would have some of Adam’s DNA, as well.

17

It did cross my mind that someone was trying to explain her most recent vacation from the boards…with scurrilous gossip! Luckily it was just about that other Eve, the one with no sense of style. I mean, the woman wore leaves!

18

Hi everyone, I’m new here.

Is ‘anyone’ allowed to join in this discussion? And are we allowed to quote from other books than the bible in such a discussion as this? (Rhetorical questions). :slight_smile:

I would like to enter the discussion by quoting from the book ‘Genesis of the Grail Kings’ by Sir Lawrence Gardner. Page 94.

[Let me first explain that he is discussing the arrival on Earth of the Anunnaki (outer space beings) as recorded on the Sumerian Tablets and translated in modern times by Zecharia Sitchin. And he has explained that the two leaders of this group on Earth were the brother’s Enki and Enlil. Enki is the ‘good’ guy trying to help the genetically created ‘human’s’ and Enlil is the ‘bad’ guy. (The one who later caused the Great Flood, thus wiping out most of our ancestors). ]

Quote

"In the first instance, Enlil endeavoured to prevent Adam and Eve from gaining any wisdom beyond their perceived ‘servant’ status, and he warned them away from the Tree of Knowledge of Good and Evil, claiming that they would die if they took of its fruit.

"Enki (the wise serpent) claimed that this was untrue and that they should partake of the knowledge: "Ye shall not surely die - for God [Enlil] doth know that in the day ye eat thereof, then your eyes shall be opened, and ye shall be as gods, knowing good and evil’. (Genesis 3:3-4).

“In the event, Enki was correct - the man and woman did eat of the tree and they did not die, whereupon the disgruntled Enlil announced that ‘the man is become as one of us’ (3:22). Even so, he still imposed his will and sent the adama to ‘till the ground’ as a punishment for his disobedience (3:24). At that point the Genesis story of Adam and Eve concludes, to be followed by the stories of their sons - but certain non-canonical works do follow the adventures of the famous couple.”

<snip> Page 95…

“It is commonly believed that the Christian term ‘Original Sin’ had something to do with Adam’s and Eve’s sexual behaviour, but this is a Church-promoted absurdity. To the point where Adam is banished from the garden, there is no mention whatever of any physical contact between him and Eve.”

<snip>

“Not until the next chapter of Genesis do we discover that Eve followed in Adam’s footsteps and, according to the book of Jubilees (3:28), they ‘dwelt in the land of Elda’. There, she fulfilled her wifely function, but it then becomes clear that Eve’s first son was not the child of Adam, and because of this we discover why Eve was ultimately dubbed a sinner by the orthodox religious movements of future times.”

<snip> Page 101

"In the opening verse of Genesis 4, it is written that Hawah (Eve) said, ‘I have gotten a man from the Lord’. Other variations are ‘I have got me a man with the Lord’, and ‘I have acquired a man from the Lord’. The text then continues to say that this new man (Hawah’s first son) was Qayin - better known by the phonetic translation Cain. Subsequently, Hawah is said to have given birth to a second son, Hevel - as we know him, Abel.

The Jewish Midrash (meaning ‘Inquiry’), a traditional commentary on the Bible, emphasizes the point that Hawah’s first son was the son of the Lord, whereas the second son was the son of Adam. But in defining ‘the Lord’ in this instance, the Midrash uses the personal name Samael, thereby identifying Enki the serpent. The name Samael (Sama-El) derived from the fact that Enki was the patron god of the kingdom of Sama, east of Haran in northern Mesopotamia."

End quotes.

I guess enough for a first post. :wink:

lite

19

Anyone may join the discussion.

However, you may find that your thesis is not well-received if you rely on Laurence Gardner and Zecharia Stitchin.

I recognized Stichin as a Von Daniken wannabe who has irritated a number of archaeologists and paleontologists with some rather cavalier claims that do not seem to be supported by the evidence.

Gardner has a similar reputation–exacerbated by the fact that he does not seem to really know the material he is “interpreting.” (Stitchin seems to have read a fair amount of the published works on Sumer. It is difficult to see where Gardner has done likewise.)

General criticism of their works include:

  • a lack of attribution for material that they must have acquired elsewhere (unless they are making it up);
  • “interpretive” drawings of carved pictures with no indication of where the tablets or walls occur and no photogrtaphs of the drawings to provide a comparison between their interpretations and the actual images;
  • translations of known works that do not agree with any known translation of the same documents (or tablets), with no explanation as to why theirs are so different (this occurs both for Sumerian and Akkadian cuneiform tablets and for Hebrew Scripture).
20

Another thing is that Adam and Eve are long-lived - He lived for 930 years and have his first son on his 130th birthday. Genesis also mentioned “have other sons and daughters” (Genesis chapter five have much information about who was born and so on so forth)

Adam and Eve could very well have a daughter/son every two or three years. Seth married when he was about a 100 year old, and was as long-lived as his father…

That is according to the Bible, of course…