who did Adam and Eve's children marry?

[steveandersen]

buffalo:

God could have simply “inserted” Adam into the timeline as He wished, regardless of what was happening in the animal kingdom.

Yes, He could have but it raises the awkward question of what happened to the existing hominids.
Things have gone extinct before so that could have happened but then it still leaves the question of why He would make it look like we are biologically related to them.

The only semi-reason I can think of is that if special creation was supposed to be accepted on faith that physical evidence for it would be kept hidden. But I really don’t like that.

Knowing that humans are part of it enhances my faith in Creation.

buffalo:

Uh No! That’s how we are interpreting the limited data set. We could be flat out wrong.

Yes, we very well could be…but it’s not likely. The data set gets bigger and better every day from many independent fields.

 

[buffalo]

steveandersen:

Yes, He could have but it raises the awkward question of what happened to the existing hominids.
Things have gone extinct before so that could have happened but then it still leaves the question of why He would make it look like we are biologically related to them.

The only semi-reason I can think of is that if special creation was supposed to be accepted on faith that physical evidence for it would be kept hidden. But I really don’t like that.

Knowing that humans are part of it enhances my faith in Creation.

Yes, we very well could be…but it’s not likely. The data set gets bigger and better every day from many independent fields.

If one looks back far enough we are all related to hydrogen. It should be no surprise that all living creature share building blocks of life, and that some are closer than others.

 

[YinYangMom]

steveandersen:

BUT He certainly made it look exactly like He evolved us over billions of years and I don’t think of God as a practical joker or deceiver type

Not necessarily…how we humans perceive God’s creations, timing, etc. is limited by our own minds. Should God choose to reveal to us the full and complete mystery of life He can do so at any time. For now He has enabled man to comprehend His awesomeness in small bits and pieces, He has provided us with as much of the Truth as He knows we can handle through Scripture. That we find ourselves frustrated with that limited bit of knowledge is our own weakness - we want to know it all, just as Adam and Eve did - but all is not for us to know right now.

It comes down to the basic submission thing…God is God and knows it all. Man is Man, created by God for His purpose. We need only accept our roles in His grand plan to find happiness, we do not have to understand everything in order to submit, serve and be happy.

 

[YinYangMom]

steveandersen:

some would even opine that development of love is a contimum rather than an on/off thng.

As Fr. Altier explained yesterday on the Drew Mariani show, Love is not an emotion, it is a virtue. It exists in and of itself.

God is Love, plain and simple, so there is no way love could have developed as a continum. Adam and Eve experienced the fullness of God’s love from the very beginning until the Fall. They knew what it was they lost when they fell and mankind has been seeking it in all the wrong places ever since, but Love has never stopped existing…it is, in its fullness, in God. We are able to experience Love as much as we allow ourselves to grow close to God and submit to His will.

 

[CollegeCatholic]

Originally Posted by CollegeCatholic
…… Your view of sex seems to be inline with modern views that seek to seperate love from sex and you may find a more open ear with them.

Most of human history did not equate love with sex. That is a contribution of modern times.

Good luck in your attempt at seperating humanity from love. You need to understand that not always have we been called to marry the one we love, but love the one we marry. As already stated, love is a virtue that is instilled within us inherently by us being created in the image and likeness of God. It’s not simply a matter of emotional expression.

My point is that the Bible says nothing about where the spouses came from. God clearly would have a mechanism for his creation to survive. We had evolved for millions of years reproducing without love before we received souls. All I’m saying is that a transitional one off is a step toward reconciling what we know and what we believe.

We will play hardball.

Definition of Man according to the Church:

I. "In the Image of God"

[356 (http://javascript%3Cb%3E%3C/b%3E:OpenPopupWindow%28) Of all visible creatures only man is "able to know and love his creator."219 He is "the only creature on earth that God has willed for its own sake,"220 and he alone is called to share, by knowledge and love, in God’s own life. It was for this end that he was created, and this is the fundamental reason for his dignity:

• What made you establish man in so great a dignity? Certainly the incalculable love by which you have looked on your creature in yourself! You are taken with love for her; for by love indeed you created her, by love you have given her a being capable of tasting your eternal Good.221

[357 (http://javascript%3Cb%3E%3C/b%3E:OpenPopupWindow%28) Being in the image of God the human individual possesses the dignity of a person, who is not just something, but someone. He is capable of self-knowledge, of self-possession and of freely giving himself and entering into communion with other persons. And he is called by grace to a covenant with his Creator, to offer him a response of faith and love that no other creature can give in his stead.-------------------------------------------------------------

Now that we know how we define Man, which does not mention genetics, by the way, we can then explore whether Man procreated with non-humans (animals) for the propogation of Humanity:

CCC 371-372

God created man and woman together and willed each for the other. The Word of God gives us to understand this through various features of the sacred text. "It is not good that the man should be alone. I will make him a helper fit for him."242 None of the animals can be man’s partner.243 The woman God “fashions” from the man’s rib and brings to him elicits on the man’s part a cry of wonder, an exclamation of love and communion: "This at last is bone of my bones and flesh of my flesh."244 Man discovers woman as another “I,” sharing the same humanity.

[372 (http://javascript%3Cb%3E%3C/b%3E:OpenPopupWindow%28) Man and woman were made “for each other”—not that God left them half-made and incomplete: he created them to be a communion of persons, in which each can be “helpmate” to the other, for they are equal as persons (“bone of my bones . . .”) and complementary as masculine and feminine. In marriage God unites them in such a way that, by forming "one flesh,"245 they can transmit human life: "Be fruitful and multiply, and fill the earth."246 By transmitting human life to their descendants, man and woman as spouses and parents cooperate in a unique way in the Creator’s work.247

Thank you.

 

[Ortho]

College wrote:
"Good luck in your attempt at seperating humanity from love. You need to understand that not always have we been called to marry the one we love, but love the one we marry. As already stated, love is a virtue that is instilled within us inherently by us being created in the image and likeness of God. It’s not simply a matter of emotional expression."

You told us about “modern views that seek to seperate love from sex…” You didn’t say anything about separating love from humanity.

Hardball? That is so cool.

 

[steveandersen]

CollegeCatholic:

…We will play hardball.

Definition of Man according to the Church:
…

Now that we know how we define Man, which does not mention genetics, by the way, we can then explore whether Man procreated with non-humans (animals) for the propogation of Humanity:

CCC 371-372…

Yes, yes I know that, all well and good
But it doesn’t match what we observe
Faith and reason can’t contradict
So there has to be an explanation to reconcile them
We may never know it
But there has to be one

The OP was regarding a CCD class. These kids know their science (or should). They are at that skeptical age and the questions will come up. The teacher should be prepared to deal with them.

I remember how confused I was as a kid by the nuns refusal to reconcile (or even acknowledge) these things.

I had this wierd mental picture of Adam & Eve, the Tower of Babel, and the Flood followed by the Jurassic, the Neolithic, and then the Egyptians showing up. :whacky:

Kinda funny the notions that go through a kid’s mind.

never mind, pretend I didn’t try to help

CollegeCatholic:

Thank you.

you’re welcome

 

[YinYangMom]

steveandersen:

Yes, yes I know that, all well and good
But it doesn’t match what we observe
Faith and reason can’t contradict
So there has to be an explanation to reconcile them
We may never know it
But there has to be one

The OP was regarding a CCD class. These kids know their science (or should). They are at that skeptical age and the questions will come up. The teacher should be prepared to deal with them.

I remember how confused I was as a kid by the nuns refusal to reconcile (or even acknowledge) these things.

I had this wierd mental picture of Adam & Eve, the Tower of Babel, and the Flood followed by the Jurassic, the Neolithic, and then the Egyptians showing up. :whacky:

Kinda funny the notions that go through a kid’s mind.

never mind, pretend I didn’t try to help

you’re welcome

I should think introducing the concept of humanids without souls with which Adam and Eve’s children populated the earth would be even more confusing for the kids.

What I’ve shared with my kids is that Adam and Eve did as God instructed, they populated the region. Yeah, that means there was inbreeding for a time, and yeah, nowadays that’s a no-no for many reasons - not only moral but physical - but back then, in the beginning, for a time determined by God - it wasn’t.

Scriptures shows a time when when God stopped permitting it but it doesn’t show in detail what happened from when it was ok and when it stopped being ok. The progression of events is not important to the grand scheme of things…for us, and for our salvation, what we need to know and accept is that inbreeding is not alllowed.

 

[Daniel_Marsh]

If Evolution is true, they would have married pre-humans which explains a lot about us men. If there were no other tribes, people other then brothers and sisters, then they could only marry each other unless God created other mates post Adam and Eve.
It could be that they married people from other tribes.

 

[CollegeCatholic]

steveandersen:

Yes, yes I know that, all well and good
But it doesn’t match what we observe
Faith and reason can’t contradict
So there has to be an explanation to reconcile them
We may never know it
But there has to be one

The OP was regarding a CCD class. These kids know their science (or should). They are at that skeptical age and the questions will come up. The teacher should be prepared to deal with them.

I remember how confused I was as a kid by the nuns refusal to reconcile (or even acknowledge) these things.

I had this wierd mental picture of Adam & Eve, the Tower of Babel, and the Flood followed by the Jurassic, the Neolithic, and then the Egyptians showing up. :whacky:

Kinda funny the notions that go through a kid’s mind.

never mind, pretend I didn’t try to help

you’re welcome

At this point you are simply taking a stance that is not in line with Catholic teaching or the Bible, both of which make perfect sense. The only thing that doesn’t make sense to you is incest as you obviously has some sort of phobia to this idea as evidenced by your disposition to explain every other possibility, including disagreement with the Church’s interpretation of the biblical account.

 

[Gottle_of_Geer]

steveandersen:

Yes, I know. And that is not inconsistent with the explanation I gave.

This is what comes of Fundamentalism:​

Either:

1. Cain and his siblings have to commit incest in order to perpetuate the human race - which is against the natural law (unless God allows incest at one time and not at another: which is exactly what a “conservative” God does not do, because He is an absolutist in morals);

or:

1. There are are other human beings, not descended from Adam:

• which is a denial of the unity of the human race;
• is a condemned error
• is against the Church’s traditional understanding of this passage.

IOW - Catholic Fundamentalism is in a cleft stick.

This is one of many reasons that the old exegesis of Genesis, that took for granted that Adam was the father of the brethren Cain, Abel, & Seth, and that they married their sisters (see Genesis 5 for them) has been so generally abandoned.

Fundamentalism has to distort the Biblical texts or the teaching of the Church in order to be sustained. ##

 

[CollegeCatholic]

## This is what comes of Fundamentalism:

Either:

1. Cain and his siblings have to commit incest in order to perpetuate the human race - which is against the natural law (unless God allows incest at one time and not at another: which is exactly what a “conservative” God does not do, because He is an absolutist in morals);

or:

1. There are are other human beings, not descended from Adam:

• which is a denial of the unity of the human race;
• is a condemned error
• is against the Church’s traditional understanding of this passage.

IOW - Catholic Fundamentalism is in a cleft stick.

This is one of many reasons that the old exegesis of Genesis, that took for granted that Adam was the father of the brethren Cain, Abel, & Seth, and that they married their sisters (see Genesis 5 for them) has been so generally abandoned.

Fundamentalism has to distort the Biblical texts or the teaching of the Church in order to be sustained. ##

I’m at a loss over what exactly you are saying is being represented and what your personal view is (if one was even being stated). Please excuse my ignorance.

 

[steveandersen]

CollegeCatholic:

At this point you are simply taking a stance that is not in line with Catholic teaching or the Bible, both of which make perfect sense. The only thing that doesn’t make sense to you is incest as you obviously has some sort of phobia to this idea as evidenced by your disposition to explain every other possibility, including disagreement with the Church’s interpretation of the biblical account.

Sigh

It is not that I have a phobia against incest (well I do ……and so should you……but you know what I mean)
It is just, as Greer pointed out, that it is against natural law and, since I believe that there are moral absolutes, God wouldn’t say it is ok for “just a little while” if it is wrong it is wrong.

With my suggestion humans are mating with…humans, not animals. It is the way it had always been prior to Adam & Eve and is consistent with natural law

As for being contrary to Church teachings; the Church says that Adam & Eve were the first to be fully human and that we are all descendant from them.

What I have suggested is not contrary to that.

It also has the bonus of being consistent with what we can observe. I’m not sure why you have a phobia about genetics or Church teaching…
hardball :

159 Faith and science: “Though faith is above reason, there can never be any real discrepancy between faith and reason. Since the same God who reveals mysteries and infuses faith has bestowed the light of reason on the human mind, God cannot deny himself, nor can truth ever contradict truth.” “Consequently, methodical research in all branches of knowledge, provided it is carried out in a truly scientific manner and does not override moral laws, can never conflict with the faith, because the things of the world and the things of faith derive from the same God. The humble and persevering investigator of the secrets of nature is being led, as it were, by the hand of God in spite of himself, for it is God, the conserver of all things, who made them what they are.”

…but it doesn’t make sense

Geer is right. This sort of disagreement is pointless. I suppose that it doesn’t really matter how it happened. It did happen and we can’t know for certain how. If we did there is nothing we could do about.

Peace

 

[steveandersen]

## This is what comes of Fundamentalism:…
…
This is one of many reasons that the old exegesis of Genesis, that took for granted that Adam was the father of the brethren Cain, Abel, & Seth, and that they married their sisters (see Genesis 5 for them) has been so generally abandoned.

Fundamentalism has to distort the Biblical texts or the teaching of the Church in order to be sustained. ##

Amen

 

[YinYangMom]

steveandersen:

…as Greer pointed out, that it is against natural law and, since I believe that there are moral absolutes, God wouldn’t say it is ok for “just a little while” if it is wrong it is wrong.

Time for my ignorance…

Is it against the natural law for the daughters and sons of Adam and Eve to procreate with each other?

Or is incest against the moral law?

Is there a difference between natural law and moral law?

I would suppose natural law is, as you noted, absolute due to its very nature, but moral law - is that something, a standard, set by society in order to achieve something?

I would think incest is not against natural law as much as it is against moral law, since physically it’s possible and if a brother and a sister didn’t know they were of the same blood line it could be probable even, that they’d one day hook up…and since they do not ‘know’ they are related is it still incest? Certainly it isn’t willful incest, but I digress…

naturally, incest is possible. Morally, now that’s a whole other matter, is it not? Just because it’s possible is it moral to do so? No. So when did incest become morally wrong? We see it in scripture and we can deduce from the fact that it’s even mentioned that the practice had been taking place during the time of the writings or sometime before then otherwise, why make a point of bringing it up?

 

[CollegeCatholic]

YinYangMom:

Time for my ignorance…

Is it against the natural law for the daughters and sons of Adam and Eve to procreate with each other?

Or is incest against the moral law?

Is there a difference between natural law and moral law?

I would suppose natural law is, as you noted, absolute due to its very nature, but moral law - is that something, a standard, set by society in order to achieve something?

I would think incest is not against natural law as much as it is against moral law, since physically it’s possible and if a brother and a sister didn’t know they were of the same blood line it could be probable even, that they’d one day hook up…and since they do not ‘know’ they are related is it still incest? Certainly it isn’t willful incest, but I digress…

naturally, incest is possible. Morally, now that’s a whole other matter, is it not? Just because it’s possible is it moral to do so? No. So when did incest become morally wrong? We see it in scripture and we can deduce from the fact that it’s even mentioned that the practice had been taking place during the time of the writings or sometime before then otherwise, why make a point of bringing it up?

They think it’s gross and therefore MUST be against natural law. If they really want to talk “science,” genetically speaking, incest is only a major issue when multiple generations are reproducing within the same gene pool. In the case of Adam and Eve, within the first two generations they would already have the means of producing outside of their immediate gene pool through cousins, second cousins, blah blah blah. Also, I “hate” to bring in God and all that Faith stuff but it could also be plausible that God would alter the genetic code in a way that made procreation perfectly normal for the first few generations, even in spite of the fact that it wouldn’t have necessarily been a problem anyways.

 

[the-3rd-parent]

steveandersen:

Another explanation is that there was a group of hominids and at some point two of them were given souls and thus became the first full humans. We’re their decendants but they had other folks to breed with

A much nicer explanation than incest and it is consistent with observations

How is that a nicer explaination? Isn’t that like saying they married apes?

 

[wjp984]

I find it hard to believe in the mythology parts of the bible since they are just that, myths. The two creations stories, Noah’s Arc, the Tower of Babel ard everything leading up to Abraham are myths that may be ture but mostlikey are not. Besides, how can both creations stories be true anyways. In the first one man isd created on the sixth day after all the plants and beasts and in the second, creation story, Adam and Eve, Man is created first, then the beasts and finally woman is created last.

 

[the-3rd-parent]

SONG 4:9 You have ravished my heart, my sister, my bride; you have ravished my heart with one glance of your eyes, with one bead of your necklace.

SONG 4:10 How beautiful is your love, my sister, my bride, how much more delightful is your love than wine, and the fragrance of your ointments than all spices!

SONG 4:12 You are an enclosed garden, my sister, my bride, an enclosed garden, a fountain sealed.

SONG 5:1 I have come to my garden, my sister, my bride; I gather my myrrh and my spices, I eat my honey and my sweetmeats, I drink my wine and my milk. Eat, friends; drink! Drink freely of love!

SONG 5:2 I was sleeping, but my heart kept vigil; I heard my lover knocking: “Open to me, my sister, my beloved, my dove, my perfect one! For my head is wet with dew, my locks with the moisture of the night.”

SONG 8:1 Oh, that you were my brother, nursed at my mother’s breasts! If I met you out of doors, I would kiss you and none would taunt me.

Yea, so I don’t think that in the beginning, incest was wrong between siblings.

By the way, you can believe in Evolution without believing that one species evolved into another. That’s Darwinism, a type of evolution, but not the evolution I believe in. I for one do not believe we came from Apes. Moreover, didn’t they find that our DNA is closer to some Ameba than to an Ape’s? Who cares if we look kind of like them or even if there was one species that looks inbetween us and them. Appearence can be deceiving.

 

[the-3rd-parent]

wjp984:

I find it hard to believe in the mythology parts of the bible since they are just that, myths. The two creations stories, Noah’s Arc, the Tower of Babel ard everything leading up to Abraham are myths that may be ture but mostlikey are not. Besides, how can both creations stories be true anyways. In the first one man isd created on the sixth day after all the plants and beasts and in the second, creation story, Adam and Eve, Man is created first, then the beasts and finally woman is created last.

Well I think myth is the wrong term for the story. I believe it contains condensed and highly symbolic versions of the truth. Therefore you have to look at what the stories are trying to answer. And I do believe that the story does answer that humanity stems from one set of parents. Thus their children had to have married each other. To have it otherwise is to argue against us stemming from what set. It would rather argue that first two humanoids were given souls and that somehow the soul was a genetic trait, like having a superior brain or intellect that was passed down.

But rather, we are set distinct from the animal world and Genesis makes a point to state that Adam could not find a suitable partner in the outside world. If Adam’s children were to look outside of their parents they would have been looking at what Adam saw and they would not have found a suitable partner. The fact that it makes this point with Adam is to show that our genes, our beings do not stem from the animal kingdom. We are a unique creation.

It leaves no room for Darwinism. Nor do I believe that finding skeletons of creatures that look more and more human proove anything. It just means “Hey that kind of looks like a human.”

Perhaps humans looked more apish then, but I don’t believe that some Apes mated and out popped a man and then in another group of unrelated apes out popped a woman and then the two happened to meet across all distances and impossibilities without having one of their humaniod …uh…things (cuz souless humanoid things would and that would mean Adam would have babies outside of Eve and that Eve would have gotten pregnant with someone outside of Adam)…try to mate with them…then they find each other and are like “Yeah! Intelligent person with a soul!” Then have children and the children unlike their parents are somehow satisfied with the lesser humaniods.

Its not just “oh boy that’s a romantic and sweet notion in genesis with Adam coming from the dust.”

To argue that we all came from Apes is to argue that the entire animal population is all one family that stems from one source of…I don’t know…plantlife? that stems from some tiny multi-celluar thing. Eventually you’re just stuck with a “pop” Now he’s not there. Now he is! What we are being taught is that Adam and Eve are unique, that no other life around them was a suitable partner thus no other life outside of humanity is a suitable partner for us as well.

So maybe Adam was more hairy, shorter…or perhaps taller than men are today. Perhaps he was a combination of all the character traits that is within the human race today --something like a blond haired black man with green eyes. Perhaps Adam and Eve were polar extreemes. Perhaps they were the blackest of blank and one day there came this albino child who has been deluting the human race of its color ever since. Who cares? I don’t. I don’t care about the stinking time line. What matters is that we originate from a unqiue source, man isn’t good alone and the animal kingdom is not suited for his sexual or companionship needs, marriage was instituted by God, man fell into sin and we inherit it…etc, etc, etc.

Everything else, I don’t care to know because it simply doesn’t matter! Its like arguing about what Jesus’ dental hygene was like.