If "Eve became the mother of all the living," where did Seth and Cain find spouses?

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I did search the forums, but I didn’t see anything promising.
Ok, so Eve is mother of all of the living. But there are a few unexplained details of that.
1: Cain and Seth needed spouses to have children, where did the spouses come from?
2: We can trace the mitochondrial DNA of all humans back to one woman Eve. How does that makes sense if other women had children with Seth and Cain? OTOH: if we assume that that one woman is not Eve, then who is it, Seth’s, or Cain’s wife?

Thanks!

PS: As I’ve said before in my OPs, I’m not trying to disprove any of the faith. I just don’t understand certain parts of it.
 
Cain and Seth married their sisters.

Their sisters were also children of Adam and Eve so received their DNA from Eve.
 
The sin of incest is depriving offspring of the strength that comes with a second set of grandparents and their families.
 
AlNg said:
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Zaccheus:
Cain and Seth married their sisters.
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Would that not bring about genetic disorders and birth abnormalities?
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Adam and Eve were directy created by God. Why would God have given them defects to pass to their immediate descendents? I think the danger of genetic disorders came only many generations later.
 
Considering that what you are proposing is currently defined by the CCC as a grave sin, would you please provide a source for your claim?
 
The Bible and logic are the sources. The reason it’s a sin now is because it’s obviously not needed to procreate now.
 
redcatholic said:
The reason it’s a sin now is because it’s obviously not needed to procreate now.
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So the natural moral law changes over time? At one point in time it was Ok for brothers and sisters to get married. But now it is morally wrong for brothers and sisters to marry?
 
Truth2.0 said:
1: Cain and Seth needed spouses to have children, where did the spouses come from?
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Gen 5:4 And the days of Adam after he had begotten Seth were eight hundred years: and he begat sons and daughters:

The Holy Scriptures says:

Son_4:10 How fair is thy love, my sister, my spouse! how much better is thy love than wine! and the smell of thine ointments than all spices!

At first natural, then spiritual (meaning of the same faith).

There was nothing wrong with marrying sisters, for God had said:

Gen_1:28 And God blessed them, and God said unto them, Be fruitful, and multiply, and replenish [fill] the earth, and subdue it: and have dominion over the fish of the sea, and over the fowl of the air, and over every living thing that moveth upon the earth.

It was only way later that, due to the increase of sin, and degredation of the genetic code (thus genetic load), that God spoke to Moses:

Lev 18:6 None of you shall approach to any that is near of kin to him, to uncover their nakedness: I am the LORD.

There are some other things involved here (like the condition in filling the earth, etc), but that is a basic summary.
 
It is the glory of God to conceal a thing: but the honor of kings is to search out a matter. (Prv 25:2)

I believe this much-debated question about who Cain and Seth married is one of those hidden mysteries of God. However, I heard an interesting speculation about it one time:

The Scripture says that after the fall God put Adam out of the garden:

He drove out the man; and at the east of the garden of Eden he placed the cherubim, and a flaming sword which turned every way, to guard the way to the tree of life. (Gn 3:24)

The speculation was that the language about the “cherubim” and the “flaming sword” blocking the way back to the tree of life suggests that this was some type of supernatural portal that Adam and Eve passed through. When they emerged on the other side, they entered a world that was already populated with humans.

The difficulty that arises, of course, is how can we then say that Eve was “the mother of all the living.” (Gn 3:20) The argument here would be that Eve eventually became the mother of all the living because the entire ancient world (with the exception of Noah and his family) was destroyed at the time of the flood. Because Noah was a direct descendent of Eve everyone born after him is also descended from her.

I don’t know if this will prove to be the answer to this question. But if not this, it’ll likely be something similarly mysterious that will leave those who doubt the Scriptures completely confounded.
 
I trust the Lord with the mystery described in this thread, and won’t bother my head about it.

With regard to the Cherubim and the Flaming Sword…I believe that represents the purification that us individuals need to go through willingly in order to be sanctified after the Fall from grace.

(Thank you, St. John of the Cross, Doctor of the Church on Prayer, for your (name removed by moderator)ut.)

Thanks be to the Incarnation of the Second Person of the Blessed Trinity!
 
Maybe “living” isn’t meant to be literal. Maybe it means all who are alive in God.
 
Truth2.0 said:
We can trace the mitochondrial DNA of all humans back to one woman Eve
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This is incidental to your query, but we should not confuse the mitochondrial “Eve” with the Eve of Genesis. All humans’ DNA traces back to mitochondrial “Eve”, but there could have been, and almost certainly were, women before this “Eve” and other than and contemporary with this “Eve”, whose lines have died out.

The decision to call the latest common female ancestor of today’s humans “Eve”, while good PR for genetic studies, is also the source of confusion.
 
on_the_hill said:
Maybe “living” isn’t meant to be literal. Maybe it means all who are alive in God.
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Well, it could be literal. God could have created other people after Adam and Eve. Those original individuals were not from Eve, ok, but they were not living at the time the scripture described Eve as Mother of all the living.

They could have provided spouses to Eve’s children, but otherwise those groups died out as independent lines.
 
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PickyPicky said:
The decision to call the latest common female ancestor of today’s humans “Eve”, while good PR for genetic studies, is also the source of confusion.
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Science does not claim this. Evolutionary Biology does not say there was a first human.
 
Zaccheus said:
Adam and Eve were directy created by God. Why would God have given them defects to pass to their immediate descendents? I think the danger of genetic disorders came only many generations later.
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^^^This. The earliest descendants of Adam and Eve would have inherited perfect or nearly perfect DNA, as evidenced by their ridiculously long life spans. The deterioration in DNA cams later, as shown by the gradually decreasing life spans, until we got to a point where 80 was considered really old (Psalm 90:10).

Dxx
 
I would conclude that the marriage of siblings isn’t in conflict with natural law, but it is in violation of divine law, which was given later and can change according to the sovereign decree of God.
 
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