The Biblical Evidence Reconsidered
Cain
The account of Cain in Genesis 4 has always been a difficult passage, and the difficulty comes from the text, long before Darwin and dinosaurs. For example,
(Gen 4:10-17 ESV) 10 And the LORD said, “What have you done? The voice of your brother’s blood is crying to me from the ground. 11 And now you are cursed from the ground, which has opened its mouth to receive your brother’s blood from your hand. 12 When you work the ground, it shall no longer yield to you its strength. You shall be a fugitive and a wanderer on the earth.”
3 Cain said to the LORD, “My punishment is greater than I can bear. 14 Behold, you have driven me today away from the ground, and from your face I shall be hidden. I shall be a fugitive and a wanderer on the earth, and whoever finds me will kill me.”
15 Then the LORD said to him, “Not so! If anyone kills Cain, vengeance shall be taken on him sevenfold.” And the LORD put a mark on Cain, lest any who found him should attack him. 16 Then Cain went away from the presence of the LORD and settled in the land of Nod, east of Eden. 17 Cain knew his wife, and she conceived and bore Enoch. When he built a city, he called the name of the city after the name of his son, Enoch.
Who was Cain afraid of if only Adam, Eve, and Cain lived on the earth? The birth of Seth is recorded later (Gen 4:25-26). And where did Cain get his wife? And how does Cain build a city named after his son if there were less than 6 people on the planet?
Many conservative commentators say that building a city in ancient times referred to building a city wall, and so they conclude this is what Cain did. After all, it’s rather hard to imagine him building thousands of houses! And a hated man might well want a wall to live behind. No one would live in a group of houses unless there was a wall. But if Cain built a wall, from whom was he protecting himself and the other city dwellers? The avenger of blood for the sake of Abel?
It’s possible, of course, that Cain married his sister, with incest being allowed due to the greater purity of human DNA back then, with much less chance of a birth defect. But it’s a bit odd that the fact she was Cain’s sister as well as a sister to Abel is not mentioned. What kind of sister would marry her brother’s murderer?
That incest was allowed due to greater genetic purity is a common assumption among conservative commentators. But anyone with any pastoral experience to speak of knows that incest is also banned because of the risk of abuse of girls by their fathers and brothers. It’s ugly, damnable, and far too common. And if murder existed in the second generation of mankind, why not child abuse? Humans were plenty sinful enough to abuse their children, and so why would incest have been allowed?
It’s perhaps possible Cain killed Abel hundreds of years into their lives, so that the population had grown rapidly by virtue of long lives and long periods of fertility. On th other hand, Cain and Seth have descendants who are named. Abel does not — making it appear that he died without children. This is surely why the text later affirms that it was because of Seth that the worship of God was preserved. And it seems that Cain’s first son came later.
Moreover, we’ve always imagined that the murder of Abel was a sin of immaturity and youth, not the anger of a 300-year old man. We aren’t told why Cain’s sacrifice was rejected, but it seems unlikely that he’d been sacrificing with approval for 300 years, only to be rejected then. It just seems obvious to interpret this as an event early in Cain’s life
Also, what on earth does it means to go “away from the presence of the LORD”? The whole cosmos belongs to God! Cain could not leave God’s presence — unless there was a limited portion of the earth where God had a special presence. Hmm …
Many conservative commentators point out that the reference to someone taking vengeance against Cain sounds very similar to the “avenger of blood” concept found in the Law of Moses — which evidently predated the Law by a very long time. But how could a custom of avenging a relative’s murderer have developed so early in human history? How do honor killings find their way into the second generations of humans? If this was the first murder, how would Cain know that he might be killed by an avenger?
And, of course, these questions were being asked centuries ago by devout Christians. The text itself hints that there is much more going on that has been mentioned. And Darwin did not create these difficulties.
In short, the account of Cain strongly suggests there were other humans around when Adam and Eve were evicted from the Garden.
Vegetarians
There’s another issue: food.
(Gen 1:29-30 ESV) 29 And God said, “Behold, I have given you every plant yielding seed that is on the face of all the earth, and every tree with seed in its fruit. You shall have them for food. 30 And to every beast of the earth and to every bird of the heavens and to everything that creeps on the earth, everything that has the breath of life, I have given every green plant for food.” And it was so.
God appears to limit mankind to vegetarianism here. On the other hand, there is no prohibition against meat. However, later, God permits Noah to eat flesh —
(Gen 9:2-4 ESV) 2 The fear of you and the dread of you shall be upon every beast of the earth and upon every bird of the heavens, upon everything that creeps on the ground and all the fish of the sea. Into your hand they are delivered. 3 Every moving thing that lives shall be food for you. And as I gave you the green plants, I give you everything. 4 But you shall not eat flesh with its life, that is, its blood.
“I gave you” is not in the Hebrew, but is supplied by the translators, and so we can’t build a theology on the past tense. It could as easily be “I give you.”
On the other hard, recent studies in human diet find that we are essentially carnivores. We don’t do well on a vegetarian diet. Did God re-wire our metabolisms after the Flood?
And it’s possible to read Gen 1:28-29 as God allowing animals to only eat vegetables. Of course, the passage from God’s covenant with Noah doesn’t change that, but readers assume the animals were then freed to eat meat, because there are plenty of carnivores around today. Something changed sometime. (And it’s just not wrong to exegete scripture in light of our observations of nature — which is also from God.)
But if humans were vegetarians, why did Abel offer animal flesh as a sacrifice to God? Cain offered the product of his fields. He appears to be a farmer. He gave up something that he ate. Abel was a shepherd. Did he not eat from his flock? Why keep a flock if not for food? (See Eze. 34:3, where it’s assumed that shepherds eat of their flock.)
We don’t know the purpose of the sacrifices by Cain and Abel. Were they for forgiveness? Or were they thanks offerings? Under the Law, a thanks offering was eaten, in part, by the family making the sacrifice — it was a thanksgiving meal with God. Other sacrifices were eaten in part by the priests. Few sacrifices were burned entirely to nothingness.
Isn’t it possible that humans began eating meat as soon as they left the Garden? It would be possible for a Garden prepared by God for man to provide his nutritional needs, especially since it contained the Tree of Life, but once he’s cast out of the Garden, he’ll need a source of nutrition other than plants.
Although God gives explicit permission to eat meat after the Flood, if Eden was vegetarian, then why isn’t it a sin to eat meat? I mean, we teach that God only gave one command to Adam and Eve: Do not eat from the Tree of Knowledge of Good and Evil. But they were also told not to eat meat. Doesn’t that make eating meat a sin? Many Seventh Day Adventists have concluded that Christians should be vegetarians thinking very much along those lines.
On the other hand, if eating meat is allowed because we’re no longer in the Garden, no longer have access to the Tree of Life, and so unable to eat God’s perfect diet, things fit together quite nicely. But that requires that the second generation be allowed to eat meat — as is implicit in Abel’s work as a shepherd.
I’ve always thought that what made Adam a new creation was the “breath of life” that God breathed into him. That is how I see that “man” was created and separated from what was already being developed as humanoid.. Even the NT talks about being a “new creation” in Christ… Otherwise, you do run into the questions that you presented about the obvious indications that there were others.. perhaps many others… and the gyrations that people go to in protecting Adam’s lack of a navel aren’t quite convincing.
There were people in various places on this earth at the time of Adam and Eve. God in the bible is telling the story of His relationship with man and uses one lineage to follow. It would be very confusing to include all the humans from all over the planet. break down the lessons and its do good, knowingly obey God and good things happen. Do bad, knowingly disobey God and bad things happen.
Man written about, sinned, knowingly disobeyed and that is made clear in the old testament and God sent His son to give another opportunity at being forgiven and made it even easier to obey.
What God was doing with others on this earth is not known but He sure wasn’t sending all them to hell as is taught by a few today.
The others were worshiping God in various ways and it so today in many parts of the world.
Romans 4 makes this very clear and the verse quoted most often is verse 15. There are many others.
To think all our ancestors from the beginning of time didn’t have an opportunity to know God and died and all went to hell because of it, all except the Jews is wrong and paints a very erroneous picture of our God we love and who loved them and us just as much as the Israelite, Jews.
Adam had more children, not just Cain and Abel. Genesis 5:3-4, “And Adam lived one hundred and thirty years, and begot a son in his own likeness, after his image, and named him Seth. After he begot Seth, the days of Adam were eight hundred years; and he had sons and daughters.”
Cain was able to take a wife when he was an adult, there were many more people perhaps dozens or more people living on the earth from other siblings. Genesis 1:28, “Then God blessed them, and God said to them, “Be fruitful and multiply; fill the earth and subdue it; have dominion over the fish of the sea, over the birds of the air, and over every living thing that moves on the earth.” Adam and Eve lived and had other children who spread out on the earth.”
There is no way to interpret this metaphorically but only literally, Genesis 5:1-2, “This is the book of the children of Adam and of their children’s children. When God made man, He made him in the likeness of God. He made them male and female, and brought good to them. And He gave them the name Man when they were made.”
Adam and Eve had more children most likely before Cain was an adult and was sent away by God. Women were not always mentioned in family lineage and women were married at a very young age. Since Adam and Eve were blessed by God and they were fruitful and multiplied and their descendants spread out over the earth, there was no difficulty in Cain finding a wife at all.
God had not yet gave the law not to marry close kin. God instituted the laws against incest that protected against birth defects when they started happening after many generations. Cain’s paranoia about revenge being taken against his for killing Abel makes sense that it was siblings and cousins who were upset that Cain killed Abel.
Jesus spoke about the creation in the beginning, Matthew 19:4-5 “And He answered and said to them, “Have you not read that He who made them at the beginning ‘made them male and female,’ and said, ‘For this reason a man shall leave his father and mother and be joined to his wife, and the two shall become one flesh’?” Jesus being God and that God cannot lie, His matter of fact to the Scriptures in Genesis about the beginning of creation, is that the creation and the beginning of man in Genesis is true.
Grace points to the truth. Adam and Eve had many children, of whom a few are named. Those children had children who had children, often one each per year, and soon the land was populated. This is easy to understand unless we don’t believe the Bible and want to suppose that humans just happened to happen due to some accident of nature.
The same thing happened with Noah and his three sons. Lives were long. Families multiplied. Being human, arguments arose and clans and ultimately, nations. God tells us of only SOME of the families. Common sense tells us of other families and groups of families. If we choose to believe the Bible, we’ll see that by time here spoken of there were many families already living and being human.
That would be so easy to prove if the Bible said that Ray.. but alas it does not and we are left with speculation… Unfortunately, you barely addressed any of the inconsistencies that Jay pointed out and just claim truth as your guide… Might be helpful to engage with the actual issues rather than just sling piety.
The bible explicitly declares that we descended from one man not many. And that Jesus(as the arch-Adam) came to reverse the curse in which all of creation is subjected due to his sin.
I don’t see any hint of limitation in God gifting man with horticultural food(fruits, veggies, nuts, seeds). Unless we assume that everything is exclusively his unless he shares(else we’d be taking what doesn’t belong to us). But even there he does endow us to rule benevolently over all living things(which could also entail personal benefit, domestication, and compassion/shepherding).
After the flood God gave Noah an antithetical command(all this is yours, but don’t do this) rather then a permit given for the first time. So long as we don’t drink animal blood(like vampires) nor cruelly peel of the flesh of living creatures(gnawing on their limbs as they watch), meat is ours to enjoy.
Speaking of which, does this mean blood sausages are sinful(I’ve heard of a Scottish church split over this very issue)? What about rare steak or juicy red meat for that matter? Doesn’t Chinese Duck sauce have blood in it?
Is that because there were no other humans or that all of the others that did not descend from Adam were killed in the flood ?
RJ asked,
I find the idea of eating blood repulsive — so I never get to sinful. Some commentators take the prohibition on eating blood as opposing a pagan idolatrous practice of eating meat from a living animal (ugh).
Rare meat had the blood drained at the butcher. The “blood” is really proteins in broken down by the heat in water.
http://www.todayifoundout.com/index.php/2010/04/the-red-juice-in-raw-red-meat-is-not-blood/
After Adam and Eve. God made several different looking peoples in various parts of the world.
To show his love for mankind, and that this world was for them, is why there is so much differences in physical and mental capacities.
In those beginnings from all over this world they all spoke the same language, but God corrected that and that difference is obvious up to today. The first on this earth was Adam and Eve, but their lineage was to tell us a story about God and to show His love for us all. Its not a story or history lesson to be interpreted as limiting God. Lets not get too legalistic like the others we accuse of doing so. Open your eyes and imagination as God is way beyond even our wildest imagination. We have no problem doing this with God creating various galaxies and universes possible so why not humans of various ancestry?
Even today we can still see the result of His creating difference and many times can tell from what part of the world folks ancestors came from simply by their looks. Maybe that is why God made them that way!!!
Alabama Johns said,
“After Adam and Eve. God made several different looking peoples in various parts of the world.”
What happened to Eve being the mother of all living? Even the Human Genome Project said we can trace everyone’s ancestors back to one (mother) female.
Monty,
we can, and did do the same with the wolf. Its genes being the ones all the various dog breeds come from. Still we call a Poodle a different breed from a Beagle.
We did that with canines, God did that with humans.
While the creation story given to us by God certainly gives rise to speculation, as it doesn’t answer so many of our questions. However, the speculations men come up in their attempts to fill in the gaps (so to speak) seem to just lend themselves to becoming weirder and weirder, and tend to undermine one’s trust in the scriptural account.
How in the world do some of you, including Jay, stand before men and women who are in the church and teach your theories as having more credence than the scriptures themselves? It’s like saying, ” I know the Bible says this is what happened in Genesis but science says otherwise. It couldn’t have happened that way.” “And if you’ll just use your brains and give me unlimited time and read article after article like I have, some of this stuff will start making sense to you?” In the end you just end up contradicting the very scriptures you say you are trying to teach. Good luck with that.
I think by the very select few comments posted on these articles it says that most readers feel very uncomfortable with Jay’s teaching in this area or else they are agreeing but wouldn’t want it known that they agree. For me personally, this is about as far out there as anything I’ve ever read. And while it by no means causes doubt in a Creator, it certainly could put doubt about being able to read the Biblical account of creation and believing anything means what it says in the minds of most. This goes way beyond teaching things in Genesis chapters 1-4 are a metaphor.
Jay’s a very good writer and obviously has a very sharp mind, but there are many with brilliant minds who end up at odds with the scriptures. That’s not a good place to be, especially when scientific theories and even what science thinks it knows is constantly shifting. Consider Pilt-Down Man of years gone by, or even recent articles(last year) about skulls found in Georgia(the country) of “Homo-Erectus”, that they say have thrown a monkey wrench in the Evolution time table.
I don’t follow you AJ. Are you saying everyone came from Adam and Eve or that God made Adam and Eve and then made other people(not of Adam and Eve)?
Monty,
I’m say everyone came from Adam and Eve, but God made us different in many ways physically included (color, slant eyes, the most obvious) and put us in different places on this earth to start new peoples. Might of been from the tower of Babel episode. No one knows?
Everyone did not become an Israelite nor Jew. Only those from the men God chose for the Bibles purposes. To think God abandoned all the people of this earth except the Jews is wrong.
Others did bad things, but, so did the Israelite, Jews.
Romans 4:17 Abraham was made the father of MANY nations.
An interesting conjecture on children: were children born in the “Garden?” If not, why did God say ” your PAIN shall be greatly increased, if A&E did not even know what a child was? “As in Adam all die” includes the consequences of sin for the “innocents” of Adam’s own family. Regarding NTW’s “groups of hominids from whom Adam was chosen: such a view places death and disease LONG before the garden, and certainly at odds with the record given — unless ALL or ALMOST ALL is metaphorical — creating a horrible metaphorical mess.
Regarding the Cain/Abel encounter, we see a very interesting spiritual principle: “If you do right, will not your countenance be lifted up, but if not sin is crouching at the door.” Principle, Doing RIGHT precedes “feeling” right.
Jay, thank you for taking an honest look at this and sharing your thoughts. I’ve been following you for a few years now and have come to trust and respect your integrity. For that reason, it’s easier for me to hear this from you than it would from someone else. I’m more open. Truth can stand investigation and close scrutiny. There are still many questions that come up for me. You talked about the problem of incest, but Abraham married his half sister and I don’t see it being really relevant that she was only a half sister. The things you said about incest would still apply. In fact, it has often disturbed me that I can’t find anything in the Bible about child molestation specifically. Where are the age limits? We know it’s hideous instinctively. We know God hates it instinctively, but I don’t know where the law against it is found. To be honest, I’m disturbed by the common teaching that Mary was probably 13 and Joseph may have been 40. That may be true, but I find it disturbing. I’m confused. Is Genesis 1 about the beginning? There has to be a beginning. Maybe everyone came from one woman, or two women, but where did that woman come from? Could it be that Cain married his niece? If everyone came from two women, as I have heard, did they live close enough together that they would know each other’s children?
Ellen,
Thanks for your note.
I’ve thought about that. Let me suggest two possibilities.
1. They may have grown up in different households, having two different fathers, that is, Abram’s mother have been widowed and remarried. The children were likely considered owned by the father in that primitive culture. Two households means no increased risk of abuse, bringing us back to the greater genetic purity that long ago.
2. It could have been a sinful marriage. Abram/Abraham was not perfect, just faithful. We tend to think that sinful marriages are void in God’s eyes, but David married Bathsheba after he murdered her husband, and her second son, Solomon, became king at God’s command — making him legitimate because illegitimate sons only got the throne by assassination.
The scriptures do not romanticize the heroes of the Bible. We do that. The scriptures are brutally honest about the flaws of the people through whom God works — and this may be one of the several flaws of Abraham.
Ellen asked,
As a rule, in Second Temple Judaism (after the exile in Babylon) and likely for long before, girls married soon after puberty. So 13 is not unrealistic but not certain. Men married when they’d learned a trade, generally around 20. Not 40. (And now you know why they had so many widows!)
Child abuse would violate Leviticus 18.
Ellen asked,
Not sure I follow you. A few years ago, scientists announced Mitochondrial Eve, the supposed mother of all humans. But if Eve was her descendant and all other lines died out (or married someone descended from Eve), Eve could still be the mother of all humans.
Child abuse is not always at the hands of a close relative.
If creation began 14 billion years ago, why did Jesus say “In the beginning of creation, he made them male and female”?
@Ellen The Apostle Paul in 1 Corinthians 6 gives a list of vices that will bar one from God’s kingdom(fornication, homosexuality, extortioners, etc.). Many scholars maintain that the Greek term “Malakar” signifies a catamite-one who softly groomed children for sexual favors. In other words, a pedophile.
Which of the vices is a translation of the word “malakar”? This would certainly make me feel better! Thanks!
Jay, what I’m “getting at” is that, at some point, there had to be a first. Maybe you already answered this in the text, but, forgive me, this is a lot more confusing than trying to reconcile two different creation accounts in Genesis. Whether it was the Eve of the Bible or another”Eve”, there was a beginning; a first woman.
While “arsenokoitai” most certainly refers to homosexuality, “Malakar” has been variously translated as either: homosexual, male prostitute, or a pedophile. I believe the latter has much more support in 1 Corinthians 6:9(it being common in Corinth).
Ellen asked,
I may have misspoken. I believe both Adam and Eve were specially created by God.
Ellen,
What’s a “malakar”? Is that Hebrew or Greek? Google can’t find it.
Ellen and RJ,
The word is “malakos.” I refers to a man who allows himself to be used as a woman in homosexual activity. See 1 Cor 6:9. It’s used in parallel with arsenokoites, referring to the man who lies with another man as a female. The Greeks made a distinction, treating being the “man” in homosexual sex act as permissible but being the “woman” as shameful and so only appropriate for boys or lower classes, especially slaves. Hence, Paul goes out of his way to condemn both.
This is all very controversial, of course. I covered it in detail in a recent series. Just search “gay man.”
Jesus said,
But actually, he made male and female last — near the end of Creation. Surely Jesus should be read as saying “from the beginning of the [or this] creation,” that is, referencing all six days. Jesus wasn’t saying that male and female were made on day 1.
Therefore, if Days 1 – 5 took 14 billion years, “Creation” wasn’t complete until God made Adam, Eve, and the Garden. There’s no contradiction because under anyone’s interpretation, the Creation culminated in mankind and only then did “this Creation” — God’s creation in its fullness — come into existence.
Ellen wrote,
Of course. But it often is. And the reason we tell fathers they can’t marry their daughters, even if they neither have genetic flaws, is because of the incredible danger for abuse that creates.
“I may have misspoken. I believe both Adam and Eve were specially created by God.”
How are they specially created to be reconciled with evolutionary hypotheses? Were they (in the image of God) made to look like apes or early hominids? Do we have eons of humanoid development BEFORE Adam and Eve? Great speculation indeed needed here.
Big problems with both young and old earth postulates; but perhaps none of more spiritual importance than understanding the creation of man. Did God allow death of humanoid creation BEFORE the garden? What does that say about Eden and evil?
NT WRIGHT: The way I see it is that there were many hominids or similar creatures, part of the long slow process of God’s good creation. And at a particular time God called a particular pair for a particular task: to look after his creation and make it flourish in a whole new way. Actually, this fits with the scientific evidence according to which there were some significant changes in the hominid population and lifestyle around 6000 years ago, though I wouldn’t myself put too much weight on that. –
Jay, is this your view?
We often make the Genesis account a matter of doctrine, but in reality we are given a breif window into God’s creation and are not told all of the details. But a few things are notable. God tried to find a mate for Adam among the other animals, but none worked so God created woman. Either this hints at God moved bestiality or it argues possibly that there were others like him, but unlke him. and God had to create another like him..Eve.
In the beginning satan was bound to be next to the ground by God’s curse, so does this argue that satan was in the form of a reptile that didn’t go close to the ground like a dinosaur before the curse. All reptiles today walk close to the ground.
Adam and Eve even talked to the reptile so does this argue that man was closer to animals then or that man at least was able to communicate with animals. These are thoughts that appear by implications if we choose to go this route, but I don’t lose any sleep over it. It is not important in relation to God’s plan.We should just sit back & be glad we are here at all by God’s grace.
John F,
I wrote,
That is true for the reasons stated in the post. I think Adam and Eve were specially created — as the text plainly states.
The fossil record is clear that there were hominids before there were humans. That doesn’t mean Adam and Eve weren’t specially created. So Wright may be right. But I’m not sure I have a “view.” Just some observations and speculations.
To truly delve deeply into these questions, you should follow the posts at Jesus Creed. Scot McKnight often has guest writers who deal with the creation/evolution question, esp. the questions regarding the nature of Adam and Eve. The possible positions have been very thoughtfully discussed.
I sometimes think that while we delve into the past digging up bones, we forget the future. I know some Christians that are focused on proving creation and disproving evolution, which kind of sidsteps faith and we lose sight about the new-creation in Christ.
It doesn’t matter where we came from and it doesn’t change anything, but it does matter where we are going. When we get to heaven we ask about al of those pesky things that we have questions on. We must live by faith, not by sight.