Where did Cain [Adam and Eve’s son] get his wife? I thought Christians were opposed to incest!
This is a question I get from believers and non-believers alike. I have answered it so many times and in so many ways, I sometimes think Cain’s wife and I are dear friends! Some skeptics think there is no rational escape from this supposed dilemma, but I couldn’t disagree more. The goal of my answer is not to “prove” anything, but, rather, to offer a reasonable argument for your consideration.
First, while the Bible names Adam and Eve as the first of mankind, it doesn’t say they were the only ones to be created by God – just the first. If one follows that line of thinking, all God had to do was create one other couple and their offspring would not have been related to Adam and Eve at all. Problem solved.
If you don’t buy that, consider this. We don’t know how long Adam and Eve were in the “garden” and what reproduction was like prior to their fall. In other words they could have had many offspring before Cain and Abel came into the picture. Cain, Abel, and Seth were the only children named and it was after Adam and Eve were removed from the “garden.” So if Adam and Eve had offspring while in the “garden,” there could have been a number of women that Cain could have chosen from.
By the way, while we don’t know how they reproduced in the “garden” nor the total number of children they had, the Bible, in Genesis 5:4, states that Adam lived 800 years after the birth of their third child, Seth, and that he had “sons and daughters.”
If you are thinking there couldn’t have been but a few women to choose from, guess again! The genealogical record in Genesis 5 lists descendants of Adam to Lamech and some of them had children born to them when they were older than 187! Hugh Ross, PhD, is an astrophysicist that has calculated the following:
Considering the long life spans recorded in Genesis 5 and assuming that couples remained reproductive for about half their lifetime, the possibility existed for a veritable population explosion. In fact, the world's population could have approached a few billion by the time of Adam's death at the age of 930. This calculation is based on the following assumption:
life span = 900 years
This is a question I get from believers and non-believers alike. I have answered it so many times and in so many ways, I sometimes think Cain’s wife and I are dear friends! Some skeptics think there is no rational escape from this supposed dilemma, but I couldn’t disagree more. The goal of my answer is not to “prove” anything, but, rather, to offer a reasonable argument for your consideration.
First, while the Bible names Adam and Eve as the first of mankind, it doesn’t say they were the only ones to be created by God – just the first. If one follows that line of thinking, all God had to do was create one other couple and their offspring would not have been related to Adam and Eve at all. Problem solved.
If you don’t buy that, consider this. We don’t know how long Adam and Eve were in the “garden” and what reproduction was like prior to their fall. In other words they could have had many offspring before Cain and Abel came into the picture. Cain, Abel, and Seth were the only children named and it was after Adam and Eve were removed from the “garden.” So if Adam and Eve had offspring while in the “garden,” there could have been a number of women that Cain could have chosen from.
By the way, while we don’t know how they reproduced in the “garden” nor the total number of children they had, the Bible, in Genesis 5:4, states that Adam lived 800 years after the birth of their third child, Seth, and that he had “sons and daughters.”
If you are thinking there couldn’t have been but a few women to choose from, guess again! The genealogical record in Genesis 5 lists descendants of Adam to Lamech and some of them had children born to them when they were older than 187! Hugh Ross, PhD, is an astrophysicist that has calculated the following:
Considering the long life spans recorded in Genesis 5 and assuming that couples remained reproductive for about half their lifetime, the possibility existed for a veritable population explosion. In fact, the world's population could have approached a few billion by the time of Adam's death at the age of 930. This calculation is based on the following assumption:
life span = 900 years
first child comes at age 50
child-bearing years = 500
one child every 5 years
during child bearing years
Therefore, starting at year 0 and ending at year 900 there could have been 4,917,014,660 people on the face of the earth! (Source: Hugh Ross, Reasons To Believe). Even if the numbers were a tenth, or for that matter, a hundredth of that, you can see we’re not talking about an insignificant number of people. Problem solved.
Now, let me address the incest issue. I got this idea from Dr. Raymond G. Bohlin: B.S., in Zoology, University of Illinois, M.S., in Population Genetics, North Texas State University, M.S., Ph.D., in Molecular Biology, University of Texas, Dallas, co-author of The Natural Limits to Biological Change, Basic Questions on Genetics, and Stem Cell Research and Cloning (The BioBasics Series).
Here’s the idea. At some point, unless you follow my first statement, that God created more than Adam and Eve, thus eliminating familial relationship with the offspring, it’s true, Cain or someone would have had to marry a sister or niece in order to fulfill God’s command to “be fruitful and multiply.” And yes, it is also true the Bible forbids incest. However, the Law concerning the marriage of a brother and sister did not come about until some 1,500 years after the Garden of Eden story.
When sin entered the world at the Fall, bringing with it death, disease, and destruction, the gene pool would gradually become corrupted. At first, no harm would result from the marriage of brothers and sisters. The timing of the command makes perfect sense, since biologically genetic defects, as a result of intra-family marriage, would not begin to crop up until after the first few dozen generations. Problem solved.
These ideas are enough for me to rationally believe the Biblical account. You do not have to disengage your mind to be a believer!
Here are a couple of trivia items. A footnote about Adam’s family appears in the works of Josephus, “The number of Adam’s children, as says the old tradition, was thirty-three sons and twenty-three daughters” (Source Antiquities of the Jews, chapter 2, section 3). Finally, an apocryphal work known as The Book of Jubilees, asserts that “Cain married his sister Awam and Seth married his sister Azura” (Source: Gene Davenport, The Eschatology of the Book of Jubilees, quoted in the Interpreter’s Bible, 12 vols. Nashville: Abingdon, 1982).
Therefore, starting at year 0 and ending at year 900 there could have been 4,917,014,660 people on the face of the earth! (Source: Hugh Ross, Reasons To Believe). Even if the numbers were a tenth, or for that matter, a hundredth of that, you can see we’re not talking about an insignificant number of people. Problem solved.
Now, let me address the incest issue. I got this idea from Dr. Raymond G. Bohlin: B.S., in Zoology, University of Illinois, M.S., in Population Genetics, North Texas State University, M.S., Ph.D., in Molecular Biology, University of Texas, Dallas, co-author of The Natural Limits to Biological Change, Basic Questions on Genetics, and Stem Cell Research and Cloning (The BioBasics Series).
Here’s the idea. At some point, unless you follow my first statement, that God created more than Adam and Eve, thus eliminating familial relationship with the offspring, it’s true, Cain or someone would have had to marry a sister or niece in order to fulfill God’s command to “be fruitful and multiply.” And yes, it is also true the Bible forbids incest. However, the Law concerning the marriage of a brother and sister did not come about until some 1,500 years after the Garden of Eden story.
When sin entered the world at the Fall, bringing with it death, disease, and destruction, the gene pool would gradually become corrupted. At first, no harm would result from the marriage of brothers and sisters. The timing of the command makes perfect sense, since biologically genetic defects, as a result of intra-family marriage, would not begin to crop up until after the first few dozen generations. Problem solved.
These ideas are enough for me to rationally believe the Biblical account. You do not have to disengage your mind to be a believer!
Here are a couple of trivia items. A footnote about Adam’s family appears in the works of Josephus, “The number of Adam’s children, as says the old tradition, was thirty-three sons and twenty-three daughters” (Source Antiquities of the Jews, chapter 2, section 3). Finally, an apocryphal work known as The Book of Jubilees, asserts that “Cain married his sister Awam and Seth married his sister Azura” (Source: Gene Davenport, The Eschatology of the Book of Jubilees, quoted in the Interpreter’s Bible, 12 vols. Nashville: Abingdon, 1982).
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