Biblical question (prompted by another thread):

[rurallib]

the thread concerned whether god made 'Adam and Steve'.
This prompted a question in my mind:
If god made Adam and Eve and they begat Cain and Abel -- and Cain killed Abel THEN --
-- how did humanity continue?
--- did Cain have sex with mother and have some kids who in turn committed incest?
--- Were there other kids with whom Cain committed incest?
--- did Cain go outside his species and find one he could breed with? In which case maybe we are really a human-animal hybrid?
I make no claims to have ever read the bible. Nor do I have any desire to.
Therefore I trust you folks will be totally truthful with your answers and base them only on biblical truths.

[Rabrrrrrr]

1. We must remember that the creation stories (there are two different ones) in the Bible

are not meant as literal fact, but are poetic interpretations.

To confuse you even more, what happened is that God created Adam and Eve, they had Cain and Abel, then Cain killed Abel and was then banished to a far city.

Yep - somehow, a city (at least one; probably more) managed to get populated, and that is not explained in the Biblical text at all.

And Cain, of course, is worried in his banishment that the other people of the world (yep - other people of the world, already) will want to kill him, which is why God gives him the mark.



The problem is with the assholes doing the interpreting, twisting words and meaning around to fit their own myopic insane evil agenda, not with the Biblical text.

[rurallib]

2. learning is so much fun

so this must have been a city of advanced apes?

[ghostsofgiants]

24. Cain = Charlton Heston?

[rurallib]

6. BTW what is the difference in the 2 bible creation stories?

[Rabrrrrrr]

12. The first story is the day by day one, in which humanity is created last

(and man and woman are created at the same time). That's Genesis 1 and the first couple verses of 2.

The second story begins with the creation of Adam (and it assumes already that the earth, water, air, skies, plants, trees, insects, and heavens are already created, since no mention is made of them), and then because Adam ("Adam" in Hebrew just means "person" or "sexually undifferentiated earth creature") is all alone, God feels that he should have a companion, and so all the animals are made; none of them are suitable companions, so God creates a woman, named Eve (from the Hebrew word for "is" or "being" (the verb, not the noun), which I think is wonderfully exciting that woman gets to be the verb for "isness"), and she is a suitable companion.

That is Genesis 2.

[RetroLounge]

3. I got asked to leave sunday school for asking this very question

:hi:

RL

[GCP]

4. God forbid logic is allowed anywhere near a bible class

:grr:

[rurallib]

5. I got thrown out of religion class in catholic scholl for (wait) ------

If God knows everything, then he knows who will sin and who won't then why do you say we have a choice?

[pokerfan]

15. The Epicurean paradox

[Danger Mouse]

7. Quite simply, the bible is imperfect.

[rurallib]

8. Well -- some say it is perfect and the word of he whose name shall not be spoken.

[Danger Mouse]

10. Yes, they do, and I disagree with them.

I think the Bible is full of so many contradictions that it can't be considered perfect. Why would God have His Word contain any flaws of logic?

[buzzycrumbhunger]

9. Eve wasn't the first wife, actually.

Lilith was first. She refused to accept Adam as her superior and wanted to be equals, so he tossed her over for someone more submissive. (Guess the joke was on him, huh?)

Of course, I never heard this taught in Sunday school. I did manage to ask all sorts of questions to piss them off, though, and was pretty much allowed to go my heathen way at a very young age. I say if you don't want people questioning how the world was already full of giants or how one couple could spawn a family without eventually all having two heads or other weird mutations, you shouldn't bring it up, man.

[rurallib]

11. So was Adam dating Eve while living with Lillith

Geez, if that's the way our parents acted that explains a lot about our current conditions.

[LeftyMom]

13. Cain hooked up with some other people God hadn't mentioned previously.

That's the supposedly correct answer.

[Deep13]

14. Okay, here we go.

"-- how did humanity continue?"

There were other children of A & E besides Cain and Able. When Cain left we found other people living elsewhere. Their origin is not explained in Genesis.

--- did Cain have sex with mother and have some kids who in turn committed incest?

If everyone started from a single pair, incest seems inevitable.

--- Were there other kids with whom Cain committed incest?

I don't think it says. My recollection is he left to go east and found others in that direction who were not related to A & E.

--- did Cain go outside his species and find one he could breed with? In which case maybe we are really a human-animal hybrid?

In point of fact, we are animals in every sense of the word. The challenge of the 19th century was to make people accept that we are related to apes. The challenge of the 20th and of this century is to let people accept we ARE apes. Nevertheless, I don't recall that incest was actually described in Genisis except for Lot and his daughters much later on.

If you did decide to read the Bible having no background in it, you would become anti-Christianity pretty quickly. (Note, I am referencing the idea and not the people who follow it.)

[busybl]

16. and who is Lilith?

not frasier's wife either.

[BrklynLiberal]

17. Some of the contradictions and confusion has to stem from the fact

that the bible has been translated from a translated text that came from a translated text that came from a translated text that may have come from a translation of the original. Aramaic, Hebrew, Greek, Latin, Italian, English, etc etc

Parts have been added later, and parts of the original have been dropped.

Compare it to a huge, long, long lasting game of telephone..

[DarkTirade]

18. And that it all came from ancient oral traditions of tribal groups

that didn't start writing this shit down until way later. And then when they put together the christian bible, they picked and chose which bits they liked from those original texts. :P

Seriously though... ask any jew how many commandments there are. There were a whole lot more than just 10.

[BrklynLiberal]

22. Of course..don't you remember that Moses came down the mountain with 15...and dropped one of the

tablets?




..these fifteen...Oy!!...these ten commandments!

[Fire Walk With Me]

19. All this, and the potential of the "snake" representing the Kundalini.

Few examine the Bible as an arcane document, a mystery school text. The New Testament, at least, with its shamanism. Controlling weather, walking on water, and such. Quite common in India. Read "Autobiography of a Yogi" and compare.

[laconicsax]

20. God answered this question last month in His Holy Blog

QUESTION #5:

Jurobei: What are your views on incest? I mean, since there weren’t two original families, somebody had to screw their sister at SOME point. I tried looking to the Bible, but they didn’t have any passages like ‘And Cain screwethed his younger sister of unknown name, and they begat Joseph, and it was good, and everyone dug it.’ Or, did Adam have a secret mistress who the Bible does not talk about? This has been on my mind for quite some time now.

ALMIGHTY GOD: Yes, of course. Everyone screwed their sister at first and knocked her up dozens of times and everyone dug it. You have to start somewhere. Later on, when there were a couple thousand humans I made it clear this was no longer ok. This explains why you humans are all such retards. You’re all inbred. Feel better now?

http://stuffgodhates.com/?p=748

[hunter]

21. The Hebrew name for man, Adam, is a pun on the Hebrew word adama...

...which means arable land and/or clay.

As a storytelling device it says right away that the story is a poetic truth (later it would be called a metaphor) and not the literal truth.

A Dirty Joke: One day the scientists decided that mankind no longer needed God, so one of them went to Him, bearing the news. "God," he said, "we don't need you anymore. We can do our own miraculous things. We can clone people on our own. So why don't you just get lost?" God was patient and kind. "Very well," He replied. "If that is how mankind feels, then let us resolve this with a contest. Let us see who can make a man." "Sure," said the scientist, "that's fine with me." "But there is one condition," said God, "We will do this just the way it was done the first time when I created Adam." "Sure, no problem," said the scientist. He bent down to grab a handful of dirt. "No, no, no," said God. "You go get your own dirt."

http://www.endicott-studio.com/jMA0301/menMud.html

[BrklynLiberal]

23. :D

[Turbineguy]

25. The Bible was written by, of and for

people who thought the earth was flat, the center of the universe and did not know about the 2nd Law of Thermodynamics.

Oddly enough... it still often is...

Anyway, when it comes to the physical world, the Bible should not be taken too literally.

All of this, according to my friend Vinnie.

[undeterred]

26. Asked and answered.

To believe this literally, incest would have to be practiced.