Can you share your knowledge with me regarding Eve. We do believe her to be the very first woman for Adam… to go forth and multiply. Then came Cane, Abel, Seth after him I do not know. Who are where did Cane and Abel’s wife’ come from? How did they procreate?
Hi, friend.
Note well: Everything added by me in this thread is my opinion. Even quotations and cites are my opinion, because my use of the third party material may not be correct.
That being said…
Cain and Abel are fictional. The only reason why anyone says otherwise is that they are clinging to a false notion that “understanding the Bible is simple. Since the book is ‘from God,’ every jot and tittle is perfectly true.”
In fact, even ancient Hebrew children – even ancient Hebrew little children – knew that the Genesis Adam and Eve and Cain and Abel stories were fictional.
Fictional doesn’t mean “bad theology.” In fact the stories teach good theology. Infallible theology.
But they don’t teach infallible history. In fact, the stories are the ancient version of modern day Dr. Seuss stories. If we were travel back in time and kidnap two ancient Hebrew children to our day-and-age, and plunk them down in front of a computer screen and translate what some of the folks here maintain, when they say that the Bible, including the Adam and Eve and Cain and Abel stories, are perfectly historical, the ancient Hebrew children would look at each other with complete astonishment, and then burst out laughing at the members of this site who maintain that the stories are historical.
The effect would be the same as a room full of adults seriously discussing in front of modern kids whether Mickey and Donald and Pluto ever got married, and where they spent their honeymoon, and, by the way, do they have good credit and do they prefer Mastercard or Visa, or Discover Card?
The story of Cain and Abel is the story of Mr. Smith and Mr. Shepherd – literally!
The Hebrew term underlying Cain’s name,
qayin, means “[metal] smith.” The
real reason why the story gives him that name as a baby is that at the end of the story Cain becomes a tatooed wanderer, like the metal-mongering nomads of ancient times, anbd in fact a subsequent story has one of Cain’s descendants becoming a metal smith. When the story, in Genesis, says that Eve “
conceived and bore Cain, saying, ‘I have produced a man with the help of the LORD,’” Genesis 4:1, that is an ancient Hebrew
joke – a
pun to make the audience laugh. The Adam and Eve story has several of these jokes. We don’t see them because puns are almost always innately non-translatable.
When Abel is named Abel, and we are told that Abel became a shepherd, that, too, is a joke. “Abel” was the ancient Hebrew word for “herdsman” derived from the ancient Syrian tongue – “shepherd”! The joke is, How did Eve know that Abel, as an adult, would engage in the work which was the same as his name?
The reason why the story doesn’t tell us about the mother of Cain’s children isn’t because the story assumes “incest.” That whole “incest” business is the worst form of nonsense. It’s because the story was a kid-level piece of fiction, that doesn’t answer things like, “Did Mickey and Minnie Mouse have sex?”
The story teaches excellent theology, though. Abel is a picture of Christ. Abel’s death is a picture of Christ’s death. Cain’s “punishment” is really a reward, just as mankind was rewarded for killing Christ – we received salvation!
Abraham married half-sister? With Noah it could be cousins having to procreate.
As usual, your explanation is the only one that makes sense. Of course these old stories in the Bible aren’t literal. That they have so much hidden meaning is what awes me!