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I always find this discussion interesting due to the assumptions people make.
A big one is, "Oh, brothers and sisters couldn't possibly have procreated. That's sinful!" Uhh. Adam and Eve ate the fruit. Cain murdered someone. I think sinful behavior had already long been the order of the day.
Another relates to the idea that Genesis gives an exhaustive history. There is no reason, theological or otherwise, why that must be the case. But the interesting flip side for those who realize Genesis is not exhaustive is to then assume wild speculation will lead to an answer.
Also, just because Cain was worried about being murdered it doesn't mean he was in danger of being murdered. There is a thing such as projection
The book of Genesis is absolutely true, but it was never designed as a comprehensive history, a text book on the cosmos, or science. But what it says is absolutely accurate and true. It is because God inspired it and because He is absolutely true in all He says and does not lie, what is written is the absolute truth.That only becomes a problem when you take the story of Genesis as literal and exhaustive.
The list consists not of individuals, but the names of generational family groups represented by them. This means that there could have been hundreds of years between Cain being banished, founding a city and marrying a wife in the Land of Nod.Also, have you considered that the list of people descended from Adam and Eve isn't an exhaustive list?
If you are going to doubt one part of the Bible, you might as well doubt the rest of it as well and say that Paul is a liar when he said that all Scripture is inspired of God. Either you have to say that Paul was lying when he said it, or that God is lying when He inspired Paul to say it.To answer your question on the heretical books you mentioned, if you read them they truly are heretical and what Gnosticism is based on. They preach a different Christ, a Christ who was a spiritual elitist teaching the Apostles and the enlightened the way to leave reality. They also are not authored by any known apostle. Based on that and their radically different teachings from the rest of the NT, I think their absense from Canon is legitimate.
As for the rest I'm not sure the Bible claims Adam to be the first created humanoid, only the first created in the image of God. 7 day creation could easily be different from what our traditional day spanse is.
There are too many unanswered questions to take Genesis as the sole authority on pre Jewish history. One only has to study the Mayan and Egyptian early constructions to see that there was much more going on then the OT goes in depth on.
I don't think Noah was the sole survivor of the flood either. Every culture in the world has some flood narrative in their mythology, but spread over the entire globe.
If you are going to doubt one part of the Bible, you might as well doubt the rest of it as well and say that Paul is a liar when he said that all Scripture is inspired of God. Either you have to say that Paul was lying when he said it, or that God is lying when He inspired Paul to say it.
As I said before, doubting the truth of any part of the Bible is to weaken the fabric of the whole Christian faith and destroy any sure hope of salvation for anyone.
No one is putting words in your mouth. All I am doing is stating that the Bible is totally true because it is inspired of God, and God is truth Personified. He cannot lie; therefore everything in the Bible from Genesis to Revelation is absolutely true, although not exhaustively so.I didn't doubt the truth, merely that we do not necessarily perfectly understand what it means. And also that it isn't in full detail (obviously). Don't put words in my mouth.
Also inspired is not the same as dictated.
No one is putting words in your mouth. All I am doing is stating that the Bible is totally true because it is inspired of God, and God is truth Personified. He cannot lie; therefore everything in the Bible from Genesis to Revelation is absolutely true, although not exhaustively so.
If the Bible is designed by God to communicate to mankind His plan of salvation, how it developed, and what sinners should do in order to be saved, God does not have to give comprehensive and detail explanations of how His miracles happened, including the miracle of creation.
It looks like I touched a bit of a nerve here, but this is not about you nor me, it is about whether the Bible is absolutely true in all its parts, even though some of it does not compute with our limited, logical minds.
He does this. He'll just keep pushing the point no matter what you say. Doesn't know when to stop or how to apologize. My suggestion is to just ignore it.Don't put words in my mouth.
I think you are starting to stray into the personal. It will be good to back off that, and keep our discussion objective, so that the thread doesn't decline into a tit for tat series of personal sniping. You have every right to disagree with me, and to voice your disagreement in the most direct terms, and I would respect that. That is what this forum is all about.Are you trying to touch a nerve? I never said scripture lied. Apparently you cannot understand that metaphor and holy mystery exist. All those things the Bible doesn't mention are important too. I never said anything in scripture is untrue, merely that there may be more to the story then we are told. I'm fine with having mystery. You seem to be misinterpreting the point I was trying to make entirely.
I think you are starting to stray into the personal. It will be good to back off that, and keep our discussion objective, so that the thread doesn't decline into a tit for tat series of personal sniping. You have every right to disagree with me, and to voice your disagreement in the most direct terms, and I would respect that. That is what this forum is all about.
There was no law against mating with your relatives until the time of Moses, which was hundreds of years later (Leviticus 18). Until that time there were no genetic problems doing it. Cain & Seth would have mated with their sisters or nieces or such.There are seemingly two giant plot holes in the first few chapters of Genesis. They have always bothered me. When I was an atheist I was able to point and laugh, but as a Christian there is no satisfactory answers to be found. Anyone that ever tries to answer them ends up making assumptions that are not backed by scripture--adding to the word of God. Does anyone have insight into these mysteries:
Cain's punishment.
God cursed Cain to wander the Earth, separated from the land, etc. He thought this punishment too much to bear, and was afraid people would kill him for his transgression. Of whom exactly was Cain worried about killing him? According to the scripture him, Abel, Adam, and Eve were literally the only people on the planet.
The Wives of Adam and Eve's children.
After Cain and Abel, Adam and Eve had other children, and they had children, etc. With whom exactly did Adam and Eve's children mate? Again, with them being the only people on the planet, incest would be the only viable option--and that genetic line would not have survived, let alone been able to populate the entire planet.
There are only two conclusions I can draw from this. Either the scripture is wrong or incomplete. I have heard that the Roman Catholic church buried certain books from the bible, calling them heretical. Book of Nod, gospels of Judas and Mary Magdalene, other gnostic gospels, etc. Is it possible the RCC buried books that fill in the gaps on this part? Thoughts?
Most of us would claim to be very familiar with the Biblical story of the creation, temptation and fall found in Genesis 2. Some fundamental Christians might rejoice in it as a proof text for the inferiority of women and their continued suppression both in the church and in society at large. More liberal Christians might condemn it as an irredeemably patriarchal and mythological account. However when carefully examined without dogmatic preconceptions and with the help of competent scholarship, the story loses much of it's imagined patriarchy and opens into fresh insights.
To begin with, Genesis 2 is completely unlike the other Biblical creation accounts such as in Genesis 1, Proverbs 8, Psalm 104 or Job 38. It is a "stand alone" account. It begins with God creating ha'adam from ha'adama. This Hebrew pun literally means "the earth creature from the earth". It is usually quite difficult to preserve a pun in translation from one language to another but in English we might say, "the human from the humus". Note that ha'adam is not yet at this point a proper name but merely indicates what it is. In Hebrew it is a nephesh or "living creature". Note also "it" is not yet a creature with a sexual identification of any kind. We should further note that God's creative action here might be thought of as a form of evolution from a lower state to a higher.
God continues the creative process by producing a "garden" of all vegetation and places the ha'adam there to tend and till it. The care of the garden is entrusted to the care of the earth creature whom we might even think of as the patron saint of the environmental movement. The ha'adam is informed that it may eat of the fruit of any plant except the "tree of the knowledge of good and evil". This suggests two things. Firstly, the ha'adam is a totally naïve and innocent creature. Without the knowledge of good and evil it lacks even the capability of sin. This would seem to me a crucial defect in the storyteller's development of this mythology.
Now we are informed that our androgynous ha'adam is lonely. Would not an omniscient God have foreseen this from the beginning? To remedy this lack of foresight God creates the animals and brings them to the ha'adam who names them, thus attaining symbolic power over them. However the ha'adam does not find another creature that would be suitable to overcome it's loneliness. Did God really think that an aardvark or a platypus would be a suitable companion? Once again it seems odd that God could not have foreseen this as well. God now intervenes to cast the ha'adam into a deep sleep so as to perform the world's first "sex change operation". The rib taken from the ha'adam is formed into a woman and what remains of the ha'adam is now male. Both sexes came into being simultaneously! The woman is now described as a suitable "helpmate" to the man who is still referred to as ha'adam even though he is now a sexual creature. The Hebrew word that translates as "helpmate" seems to us in our language to infer a degree of inferiority. This is primarily a translation problem since the same word is used in many instances to refer to God as the helpmate of Israel. This hardly could suggest inferiority! It could in fact be suggestive that the female is superior to the male at this point.
Essay remains unfinished.
God cursed Cain to wander the Earth, separated from the land, etc.
The Wives of Adam and Eve's children.
After Cain and Abel, Adam and Eve had other children, and they had children, etc. With whom exactly did Adam and Eve's children mate?
There are only two conclusions I can draw from this. Either the scripture is wrong or incomplete. I have heard that the Roman Catholic church buried certain books from the bible, calling them heretical. Book of Nod, gospels of Judas and Mary Magdalene, other gnostic gospels, etc. Is it possible the RCC buried books that fill in the gaps on this part? Thoughts?
First, Genesis can not be literally taken. For all we know Adam and Eve could have been a title for numerous people, not just exclusively 2 individuals.
Next, in terms of your question with Cain having children. Regardless if Adam, Even, Abel and Cain where all individuals or titles of # of people, then yes it's most likely incest. I understand it sounds grows.
However, even if we reject the Judeo Christian story of creation and stick to Atheisms theory of the origin of life, logically speaking how would the first actual human/ape's reproduce? If we all came from a single cell or molecules, wouldn't the first forms of species during that period literally be siblings?
The Bible has verses sprinkled throughout which indicate the author meant Genesis to be taken literally.
For example the genealogies.
Luke 3:23-38 the genealogy goes all the way back to Adam.
Then in Romans and Corinthians, we are told that sin came through one man, Adam.
12 Therefore, just as sin entered the world through one man, and death through sin, and in this way death came to all people, because all sinned—
I Corinthians 15:20-22
20 But now Christ is risen from the dead, and has become the firstfruits of those who have fallen asleep. 21 For since by man came death, by Man also came the resurrection of the dead. 22 For as in Adam all die, even so in Christ all shall be made alive.
It was also written in a factual style, not as poetry.
Being married to and having children with siblings was not called incest until the time of Moses. Even Abraham was married to his half-sister Sarah. God blessed this marriage, promising they would become a mighty nation. If God didn't call it incest then we shouldn't either when talking about these marriages before the law came in. No doubt by the time of Moses when God gave them the law mistakes in the genes had built up to the point that it was dangerous to have children with siblings. Deuteronomy 27:22 ‘Cursed is the one who lies with his sister, the daughter of his father or the daughter of his mother.’ “And all the people shall say, ‘Amen!’
However, even if we reject the Judeo Christian story of creation and stick to Atheisms theory of the origin of life,
I don't deny TOE, i've been very supportive of it and have defended it here many times.Atheisms theory??? Are you perhaps referring to the Theory of Evolution? That is an evidence based scientific theory and the vast majority of people who regard it as a valid theory are Christians themselves.
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