Cain after killing Abel

[LiberalFighter]

11 And now art thou cursed from the earth, which hath opened her mouth to receive thy brother's blood from thy hand.
12 When thou tillest the ground, it shall not henceforth yield unto thee her strength; a fugitive and a vagabond shalt thou be in the earth.
13 And Cain said unto the LORD, My punishment is greater than I can bear.
14 Behold, thou hast driven me out this day from the face of the earth; and from thy face shall I be hid; and I shall be a fugitive and a vagabond in the earth; and it shall come to pass, that every one that findeth me shall slay me.
15 And the LORD said unto him, Therefore whosoever slayeth Cain, vengeance shall be taken on him sevenfold. And the LORD set a mark upon Cain, lest any finding him should kill him.
16 And Cain went out from the presence of the LORD, and dwelt in the land of Nod, on the east of Eden.


How does Cain become a fugitive when only Adam and Eve exist?

How can Cain say that every one that findeth me shall slay me when only Adam, Eve and himself exist?

Who are these people that will slay Cain if God doesn't set a mark on Cain?

[boobooday]

1. self deleted Flintstones joke. n/t

[rfranklin]

2. Because the Bible is a bunch of fairy tales...

written out of the fevered imaginings of people who would be wearing tinfoil hats today.

[Tace]

3. Actually, I Think They'd Be Chomping Magic Mushrooms

All religious scripture is trip tales.

[Angry Dragon]

4. It is unfair to question religion

You will be punished for these questions

[RandomThoughts]

5. Or it is the story of Job.

Told from a different perspective.

And also, why would God Curse Cain like that, and not everyone else that did the same type of things.

Or maybe it is something that he changed, or wants people to correct.



It is the same comment that Job is cursed, which is opposite of the saying that he is a favorite servant. If you think on the purpose of Job, then it makes more sense. The concept of getting everyone home through an intermediary.


The main problem is those verses show massive limitation on what is thought of as God by those verses. Why didn't he stop it, why couldn't he teach Cain what was right, why did he have to punish him with such a harsh action?

It seems more to be observational to excuse why some are treated wrongly. Seems to be more of a rationalization to break empathy by saying their is a divine judgment against someone.


But anyways, why it also makes sense for Jesus to say forgive them. If Able could not forgive Cain, then wouldn't he also be doing a terrible thing to a brother? But there should be justice, and best guess Cain was kicked out of the village he was in for his actions, after some judgment by some religious group in the village.

If I saw a Cain, I would try to treat him nicely. It makes sense.

:shrug:

Way to many ways to think about that stuff then just use it as a rationalization, because how could you know.


And I am due beer and travel money, and many experiences.

Also why nobody owes me beer and travel money, even though it is due.



On a side note, it is easier for people to say someone like me is like Cain, then to realize they should correct that beer and travel money issue. So I understand those that think like that for rationalizations.

[LiberalFighter]

8. Be a bit difficult for Able to forgive Cain.

[RandomThoughts]

12. I would think, any brothers willing to sit down over a beer would do the trick.

Most of the time it is the easy things people don't do, then things get worse and worse.

Best to bring brothers together.

oh yea, did I mention.

I am still due beer and travel money, and many experiences.



(LOL you would think that, your blockers are funny) :rofl:

[elocs]

6. Uh-oh! Somebody skipped Sunday School. Let's assume your question is serious.

http://www.behindthebadge.net/apologetics/discuss206.html

Genesis 4:1-2 Adam lay with his wife Eve, and she became pregnant and gave birth to Cain. She said, "With the help of the Lord I have brought forth a man." <2> Later she gave birth to his brother Abel.
Now Abel kept flocks, and Cain worked the soil.

But think about it, does that mean Abel was the second born of Adam and Eve? No it just means he was born after Cain. So why would the Bible tell us about Abel but not about Larry, Moe and Curly? Well could it be because Abel was important to the story because Cain killed him? If Cain had killed Moe then we would have known Moe and not Abel.

My point is simple, we have no idea how many other children were born of Adam and Eve after Cain and before he killed Abel. We do know that Adam was 130 years old when Eve had Seth. We also know that Adam and Eve were created sexually mature, so that is 130 years in which they were capable of having children. We are not told how old Adam was when Cain was born, nor how old he was when Abel was born.

The Bible does not say how many people there were at the time, but there could have been very many because Adam and Eve were instructed to populate the Earth, so a couple of sons in over 100 years doesn't quite do the trick. By the time Cain killed Able it was likely that Adam and Eve were already great-great-great-great-great grandparents. Seth was born when Adam was 130, a brother of Cain after he killed Able.

So those are the people.

[Angry Dragon]

24. So we have a lot of incest??

[cleanhippie]

27. Lets assume your answer is serious.

Are you simply reposting that or do you actually believe that explanation?

[rurallib]

7. how did the human race continue if Adam and Eve only begat

Cain and Abel?

[LeftishBrit]

18. I think that there was a third son, Seth, who was supposedly the ancestor of the rest of humanity

Not clear who he found for a wife, though. Also, why did Cain have to have 'the mark of Cain', when apart from his immediate family there wasn't anyone else in the world who could kill him anyway?

[DeSwiss]

9. What's even curiouser is......

...where did Cain's wife come from? Not to mention where the hell did he get all the materials and workers from to builded himself a city? Hmmmm???



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.

[brendan120678]

10. The best part about that passage...

is that a great band got their name from it!

Know who?
It's a pretty easy guess.

[montanto]

11. How does he have kids when no women exist?

Except his mom? Oh well. TLWIMW.

[Azooz]

13. "After"?

Cain knew for a fact (straight from God) that he was going to spend eternity in hell, yet he argued for the last few years of his time on Earth - treat his words "after" as the words and actions of an idiot and it'll be easier to think about.

After the murder the story is over, the end - the morals and things to question are before the murder because "after" has already been settled.

The "Vengeance" here is divine kind of vengeance, Cain is to be left to God - like "He's mine!" as a movie line that a movie king might say so no one harms his enemy before he does.

"the people" - Adam and Eve were told to populate the Earth, and they did - but the numbers will differ from religions and sects - Cain might have had centuries to meet (and avoid) new people.

The "after" part is that Cain went to Hell for all eternity, and Abel went to Heaven.

The last question for the Earth part of the story is this one (I think):
Abel had a dagger that he used to slaughter that sheep he offered - why did he chose to die than to use that dagger on his brother?

[Deep13]

14. The thousands of Sumerians who were surprised by the Creation. nt

[DeSwiss]

15. Not to mention the people of......

...Gobekli Tepe who predated the Sumerians by about 6,000 years or so! And these guys were sooooooo smart! I mean they lacked even a written language nor did they possess any kind of mathematics or geometry -- hell they hadn't even discovered the wheel yet! And yet they were somehow supposed to have built huge glyphs of animals -- some that were not know to be indigenous to the area, along with carving and moving standing stones weighing up to ten tons!

Did I mention that they did all this while still supposedly being http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/G%C3%B6bekli_Tepe">Pre-Neolithic hunter-gatherers? {I suppose we gotta hold onto those scientific "myths" they worked out to fill-in-the-blanks of our past history -- otherwise the whole shebang falls apart. Don't it???? Not to mention the careers and reputations that are at stake!!!}

I mean these were a people who were not even sure where their next meal would come from and yet they took the thousands upon thousands of hours necessary to build these huge structures (supposedly coerced by yet unknown rulers of a yet unknown civilization). And yet they fashioned and carved all these huge stones and glyphs with not even soft metals like copper or bronze which hadn't been invented yet because this was way before they got around to inventing that stuff -- so they only had things like flint and I suppose caribou bones to work with. And yet somehow they did it!

:) - Amazing, huh?!?!?!





http://www.smithsonianmag.com/history-archaeology/gobekli-tepe.html">link

[Deep13]

16. Stone age people took full possible advantage of what they had.

So far, nothing discovered evades at least a possible normal explanation. Like the pyramids. We know it was ramps and levers, even if we don't know the details.

[DeSwiss]

17. Ha-ha! n/t

[frogmarch]

19. Cain and Abel face off!

Andy Dick as Cain and Lou Ferrigno as Abel.



from the movie And God Spoke

http://www.directorscut.com/ags/photos.html

The Cain and Abel scene is hilarious! I love this movie. The whole thing is a hoot.

[onager]

25. "You wanna piece of me?"

:rofl:

Thanks for reminding me! You're right, it IS a hoot! You just can't beat Eve Plumb as Mrs. Noah and Soupy Sales as Moses.

One of my favorites is the touching nativity scene...

"And what screen credit does that angel get? 'Angel who blew the producer to get her SAG card?'"

[Petrushka]

20. If you're wondering about people who existed in addition to Adam, Eve, and Cain . . .

. . . see the first chapter of Genesis for a "hint" concerning those who were created on the sixth day---those other people created, that is, before the second chapter of Genesis and the seventh day rest---before, that is, the Adam who was formed on the eighth day. Considering how lon-n-ng a "day" might be, who knows how many people had been fruitful and multiplied upon the earth before Adam and Eve began to procreate?

:shrug:



Genesis 1:26-31

26And God said, Let us make man in our image, after our likeness: and let them have dominion over the fish of the sea, and over the fowl of the air, and over the cattle, and over all the earth, and over every creeping thing that creepeth upon the earth.

27So God created man in his own image, in the image of God created he him; male and female created he them.

28And God blessed them, and God said unto them, Be fruitful, and multiply, and replenish 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.

29And God said, Behold, I have given you every herb bearing seed, which is upon the face of all the earth, and every tree, in the which is the fruit of a tree yielding seed; to you it shall be for meat.

30And to every beast of the earth, and to every fowl of the air, and to every thing that creepeth upon the earth, wherein there is life, I have given every green herb for meat: and it was so.

31And God saw every thing that he had made, and, behold, it was very good. And the evening and the morning were the sixth day.

[backscatter712]

21. Let's complete the story.

Going from memory, the end result of the Cain and Abel story...

Abel pleases God because He is a meatitarian when it comes to sacrifices, so Cain gets jealous and kills him.

Cain gets punished by being driven off... to get a wife (conjured out of nowhere) and a city to rule, while Abel's still dead.

Yep, that's the Lord's justice for you. Makes sense to me!

[provis99]

22. people have been asking these questions since the story first came out.

over 2000 years, and they're still waiting for an answer.

[_ed_]

23. It's just a myth made up by people so stupid

that they didn't even know the world was round.

[PATRICK]

26. As far as the story details, the poster is an easy winner

Admittedly this creation hodgepodge is not as simple or cohesive as creation myths of other cultures of at least four major historical traditions according to scientific literary analysis. But the exact point here is not the characters or story details but the message. There is an overall theme of chosen/rejected etc., but in particular I think(without doing better research right now) that the mark of Cain has to with Israelite enemies and competitors in Palestine and the eponymous origin and rationale for the contemporary conflict. Even THAT particular distinction faded with time for people still writing the Bible and only the general theological ruminations and mythic story in itself remained.

Genesis would be a poor thing to defend in any fashion did it not begin with the sweeping cosmological progressiveness of the Jewish exiles in Babylon, edited in first and throughout. It is interesting to see even the crudest myths, disturbingly applied in condemnation of huge chunks of the human race, have greatly universal and progressive aspects. People who take comfort in the primitive folklore and tempting brutality of folklore willfully ferret out rubbish from the gems. Those who criticize this are doing everyone a favor.

History itself is hardly a 100% reliable science but I believe in better tools for better living. Let's see, I had a Rabbi professor who was dismayed that famous "Lord is my shepherd" Psalm had a much more militaristic(naturally when you consider source and times) translation. "Thy rod and staff"- the shepherd's tools could? or are? actually "shield and spear". The Bible was edited by people who believed what they wanted to believe and sometimes that helped or hurt the original intent. Hopefully, if you have at least faith in human nature, things overall got better and will continue- with conservative reluctance.

[Sal316]

28. So you read the bible....

....the same as a young-earth Creationist.

Good to know.