If all people are from adam and eve, who would kill Abel in the wild?

[Skye_Ariel]

The genetic defects this process implies explains many of our politicians .

ROFL!!

If I remember the bible, God put a mark on Cain’s head so that those who encountered him would slay him.It says that he took refuge in the Land of Nod,and it was there he found a wife. This says that there were other peoples around. Therefore, since the Jews are the chosen people,or consider themselves as such, Adam and Eve were considered to be the founders of the jewish race. God could have very well made others in His image,but Adam and Eve were the founding ancestors of the Hebrews. Look at it that way,and it will make some sense maybe.

A possible answer to this - assuming God used some sort of evolutionary process to create humankind - is that a biological progenitor (genetically identical) to human beings existed in large numbers and God “endowed” two of those individuals with rational free will. The others would be available to procreate but God would only further endow with reason and free will the genetic descendents of Adam and Eve.

This explanation would also serve to shed light to the term “sons of God” used in the book of Genesis and elsewhere in the Bibke to, possibly, refer to those humans who retained the character of their “endowed” rational nature in the image of God.

This is only ONE possible explanation and not to be taken as a definitive answer.

Those theories don’t work when you think about Adam & Eve’s sin causing the fall of mankind. How could their sin fall on all of humanity if all of humanity were not descendants of Adam & Eve? That theory opens up a whole other can of worms worse than where Cain’s wife came from.

 

[Skye_Ariel]

This actually wouldn’t make sense. Adam and Eve are the founders not of the Hebrews but of the entire human race–**that is why we *all ***inherit Original Sin.

The Jews were all the descendants of Isaac, who was of course a descendant od Adam and Eve, but there were many other people around by then who were also their descendants,

Exactly!

Genesis only mentions three children of Adam and Eve: Cain, Abel, and Seth. But they certainly would have had to have more than that (including some girls!).

True, and we don’t know how old Cain was when he found his wife either, so many generations could have been born and spread out to their own place by the time he wandered around and found someone that would take him.

The Bible states that in the beginning of human history that men (and women )
lived hundreds of years. Hence Adam and Eve could have had many other
descendants. It makes sense , that as sin became more prevalent on earth
that the health and life-expectancy were greatly diminished over time .

Exactly. God originally made mankind to never die, and death came as a result of sin, so in the beginning people still lived hundreds of years because it took time for the effect of sin to diminish people’s life expectancy. Then as time went on mankind’s life expectancy became shorter and shorter. That slow diminishing also gave humans extra time to reproduce and populate the earth before life span became shorter too.

 

[Skye_Ariel]

The land of Nod was close to the garden Eden, and by certain bible verses, we already know there was other tribes in the area, some were mostly black people, some were not, and was probably scattered around the planet by then too, but apparently this topic is banned for some reason…??

Any people around back then were descendants of Adam & Eve who eventually began to spread out.

 

[Peter_Plato]

It is Catholic teaching that all mankind descended from one set of parents. As I understand it, geneticists have verified this through their studies. Pope Pius X in Humanae Generis papalencyclicals.net/Pius12/P12HUMAN.HTM says it is to be believed by all Catholics. Otherwise, as another poster stated, the doctrine of original sin is eroded.

Those theories don’t work when you think about Adam & Eve’s sin causing the fall of mankind. How could their sin fall on all of humanity if all of humanity were not descendants of Adam & Eve? That theory opens up a whole other can of worms worse than where Cain’s wife came from.

Not necessarily. The biological progenitors of Adam and Eve would not have been, strictly speaking, “human” because they were not endowed with reason and free will. Those humans who descended from the union of Adam and Eve’s offspring and the biological pre-human progenitors would have inherited enough from the “Adamic” humans along with endowment of reason and will by God to become fully human. That would only have been possible, given this scenario, AFTER intermarrying with the Adamic humans, so Adam and Eve would indeed be the biological parents of all the truly human homo sapien sapiens that resulted from then on. Any non-Adamic pre-human species would not be descendents of Adam and Eve, but that wouldn’t be an issue because they would not be fully human if they lacked the capacities of reason and free will.

In a similar vein, we might not consider other ancestral pre-human groups such as Neanderthals as necessarily descending from Adam and Eve because these may not have been fully human.

 

[Darryl_B]

I always wonder why these questions on origins are raised as if our current generation are the only ones who have suddenly discovered the conceptual problem.

Traditionally Adam and Eve had thirty three sons, and twenty three daughters. According to Josephus Antiquities Book 1 Chapter 2 Paragraph 1 God cast Cain, together with his wife, out of the land, and Cain was concerned about suffering at the hands of wild beasts, so a mark was set on his that he might be known, and God commanded him to depart. Then Cain and his wife came to the land of Nod. Cain had a wife before he slew Abel.

 

[Roscoe_Turner]

Not necessarily. The biological progenitors of Adam and Eve would not have been, strictly speaking, “human” because they were not endowed with reason and free will. Those humans who descended from the union of Adam and Eve’s offspring and the biological pre-human progenitors would have inherited enough from the “Adamic” humans along with endowment of reason and will by God to become fully human. That would only have been possible, given this scenario, AFTER intermarrying with the Adamic humans, so Adam and Eve would indeed be the biological parents of all the truly human homo sapien sapiens that resulted from then on. Any non-Adamic pre-human species would not be descendents of Adam and Eve, but that wouldn’t be an issue because they would not be fully human if they lacked the capacities of reason and free will.

In a similar vein, we might not consider other ancestral pre-human groups such as Neanderthals as necessarily descending from Adam and Eve because these may not have been fully human.

How are you defining reason?

Also

nytimes.com/2012/01/31/science/gains-in-dna-are-speeding-research-into-human-origins.html?_r=0

Instead, the genetic analysis shows, modern humans encountered and bred with at least two groups of ancient humans in relatively recent times: the Neanderthals, who lived in Europe and Asia, dying out roughly 30,000 years ago, and a mysterious group known as the Denisovans, who lived in Asia and most likely vanished around the same time.

Their DNA lives on in us even though they are extinct. “In a sense, we are a hybrid species,” Chris Stringer, a paleoanthropologist who is the research leader in human origins at the Natural History Museum in London, said in an interview.

 

[Joe_5859]

Ahem. Correction:

Okay, I should have said that Genesis only mentione three children by name.

 

[Peter_Plato]

How are you defining reason?

Also

nytimes.com/2012/01/31/science/gains-in-dna-are-speeding-research-into-human-origins.html?_r=0

That is a good question. I am suggesting that reason involves intentionality, self-awareness and the capacity of autonomous free will that would make such a being morally responsible.

It may be that while these other proto-human species were biologically “compatible” and could interbreed with Adamic humans, there may be a very specific genetic basis that would allow homo sapiens sapiens - the lineage following Adam- the “carrying” capacity for autonomous free will. If Adam and Eve carried that trait and passed it on, then fully human beings with it would have all descended from the line of Adam and Eve.

Please understand that I am not offering this as THE only possible alternative explanation for the “others” that seemed to have existed at the same time as Adam and Eve, but I do not think it ought to be discarded without adequate consideration.

 

[Roscoe_Turner]

That is a good question. I am suggesting that reason involves intentionality, self-awareness and the capacity of autonomous free will that would make such a being morally responsible.

It may be that while these other proto-human species were biologically “compatible” and could interbreed with Adamic humans, there may be a very specific genetic basis that would allow homo sapiens sapiens - the lineage following Adam- the “carrying” capacity for autonomous free will. If Adam and Eve carried that trait and passed it on, then fully human beings with it would have all descended from the line of Adam and Eve.

Please understand that I am not offering this as THE only possible alternative explanation for the “others” that seemed to have existed at the same time as Adam and Eve, but I do not think it ought to be discarded without adequate consideration.

There is evidence that Neanderthals had religion and tool making. I would think that qualifies.

en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Paleolithic_religion

en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Neanderthal

Neanderthals made advanced tools,[64] had a language (the nature of which is debated) and lived in complex social groups. The Molodova archaeological site in eastern Ukraine suggests some Neanderthals built dwellings using animal bones. A building was made of mammoth skulls, jaws, tusks and leg bones, and had 25 hearths inside.[65]
While largely carnivorous,[66][67] and apex predators;[68] new studies indicate Neanderthals had cooked vegetables in their diet.[69][70] In 2010, a U.S. researcher reported finding cooked vegetable matter in the teeth of a Neanderthal skull, contradicting the earlier belief they were exclusively (or almost exclusively) carnivorous[66] and apex predators.[68][69]

 

[adrift]

If I remember the bible, God put a mark on Cain’s head so that those who encountered him would slay him.I.

Did you mean to say so that they would not slay him? It says that he went to Nod and there his wife had children but it didn’t say that he found his wife there.

16 And Cain went out from the presence of Jehovah, and dwelt in the land of Nod, on the east of Eden.
17 And Cain knew his wife; and she conceived, and bare Enoch: and he builded a city, and called the name of the city, after the name of his son, Enoch.

 

[Erich]

You are mistaken. Mitochondrial Eve and Y - Chromosomal Adam are separated by thousands of years.

Two major studies of modern humans’ Y chromosomes suggest that ‘Y-chromosome Adam’ and ‘mitochondrial Eve’ may have lived around the same time after all.

 

[Roscoe_Turner]

Two major studies of modern humans’ Y chromosomes suggest that ‘Y-chromosome Adam’ and ‘mitochondrial Eve’ may have lived around the same time after all.

From the article -

Yet Hammer sees the discrepancy between the age of the Y-Adam and that of the mitochondrial eve as a “red herring”, and he, as many other population geneticists, bristles at the use of biblical names. Because of the random nature of genealogy, he says, two different genetic lineages are unlikely to have common ancestors who lived in the same population at the same time.

 

[thewanderer]

You are mistaken. Mitochondrial Eve and Y - Chromosomal Adam are separated by thousands of years.

en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mitochondrial_Eve

Actually… No one knows exactly when Y-Chromosonal Adam lived, and, as you Wikipedia article points out it is possible that they were actually living at the same time.

 

[Darryl_B]

From the article -

I think both sides have no real way of producing historical evidence. I read things like statistically A, therefore probability B, but statistically A is an assumption, at best a guess, with a fudge factor. Therefore B is at best an assumption derived from an assumption, with its own fudge factor.

I really don’t see how any of that can be classified as “scientific”. Though it probably sells media articles if it is framed with just the right amount of mathematical terms such as “statistically” and “probably”. But there is not a 50% chance of that.

 

[victorbuhagiar]

The genetic defects this process implies explains many of our politicians .

In the begining of times, people were constitutionally strong and children could marry relatives. As time went by man became weaker, which is why intermarriages were stopped. As for Cain’s wife, if you ever read the implications of the scripture, you should know that women, except in a few times, where not considered important and hardly mentioned. Only a handful gained some importance like Sarah, Ruth, Esther, Of course there were others who had their impotance because of Jewish laws.

 

[irishcolleen45]

How many years ago did Adam and Eve live?

Depending on which article you read on the orgin of the human race, some claim human beings lived 20,000 years ago.

 

[jmcrae]

The genetic defects this process implies explains many of our politicians .

Since Adam and Eve were perfect, their children would also have been perfect, and the genetic defects would most likely have evolved to about where they are now, if Adam and Eve had in fact actually lived about 11,000 years ago - about the same time that biologists theorize the beginnings of “technological man.”

 

[Dtmccameron]

Did the almighty create more people to merge with adam and eve after the fall?

I do not know. But it seems likely to me that the cousins and predecessors of humanity would still be around. I don’t know how much of a soul they might have.

Luckily, we don’t have to worry too much about the specifics: to focus on the minutiae is to somewhat lose sight of the larger purpose and actual meaning of the passages.

 

[TimeToGrow]

The land of Nod was close to the garden Eden, and by certain bible verses, we already know there was other tribes in the area, some were mostly black people, some were not, and was probably scattered around the planet by then too, but apparently this topic is banned for some reason…??

This logic is well founded…

There are two creation events in Genesis and the transliteration of the text is how one makes sense of it… Adam and Eve are injected into a world that aready exist is how it is better understood… Adam and Eve can be both literal and figurative in its understanding and both contexts would be correct… …