Adam and Eve go forth and multiply.
80Adam and Eve go forth and multiply.
This explanation of the history of Adam and Eve and the early population of the world, comes from The Book of Genesis, although originally a book important to the Jewish faith it is the evangelical christian source for Creationism.
About 1/3 of the world claim to be christians with about 1/3 of these believing in all humankind originating in the Garden of Eden.
God created Adam to be a gardener tending The Garden of Eden. He was allowed to eat from the Tree of Life, this meant that Adam would be able to live for ever, he could also eat anything else in the garden, except the fruit of the Tree of Knowledge.
So that Adam would not be lonely, God created Adam a helper, she was constructed from one of Adams ribs.
The Snake made friends with the woman and explained that the fruit from the Tree of Knowledge would give her the ability to see the difference between good and evil and assured her it would not kill her to eat it.
The woman tried the fruit, found that it did not kill her and could now see the difference between good an evil.
She convinced Adam to do the same and he also ate the fruit.
God found them hiding in the garden. Adam explained that the woman gave him some fruit from the Tree of Knowledge and they were embarrassed to be naked.
God told Adam, that now he had knowledge of good and evil, he could no longer eat from the tree of life, so he would have to leave the Garden of Eden.
God gave Adam and Eve some clothes and kicked them out, he told the woman that childbirth would be painful and Adam that he would have to work hard to get ahead.
It was now that Adam gave his woman the name of Eve because she would become the mother of all the living.
The first child of Adam and Eve was the murderer Cain, he killed his younger brother Abel when God showed him more appreciation for his harvest offering.
Cain left to go wandering in the wilderness, and with his partner had children and built the first city.
The bible only ever gives the name of the oldest relevant son, as he will of course be family heir.
So now we have to consider that, Eve recieved her name because she would become the mother of all life.
When Cain killed Abel and left, Adam and Eve did not yet have a suitable replacement as family heir. This means that their other children were daughters and not sons. It is from these daughters that some left with Cain.
The thing that we don't want to accept with our modern western christian values, the itegral part of this story, is the incest that must have occured.
The consequence of incest before the daughters of Adam and Eve, would be children with their father, or their brother.
Thousands of year later, laws from another book by Moses, would make this incest unlawful, at this time, the species of mankind as created by God in the Garden of Eden depended on incest to multiply.
(If it makes it any easier for modern christians, there were no christians or followers of islam yet, this story was written thousands of years later by homeless Jewish People.)
After Cain left, Adam and Eve had another Son who was named Seth, the new family heir.
Seth and Adam both fathered more children after this time living another 800 years.
Although it is mentioned that Adam had many more children it is not recorded that Eve was the mother of them all.
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Hi cindyvine, when you ask if there were other people on the planet for the children to marry, a literal reading of the bible says no.
For it to be possible that there were other people on the planet, you have to accept the bible is not a literal account of creation. Many Christians and nearly everyone else on the planet view the bible story of creation, as just another creation myth.
Some followers of islam,christianity and judaism have an unshakeable faith which is not open to negotiation. Any argument they make is based on faith and what may sound like logic to others will only be heard as heresy to them.
Most everyone else on the planet is prepared to accept scientific evidence and aknowledge the limitations of religious texts.
The bible is not a scientific document. It is a collection of stories written two to three thousand years ago, the story of creation is from a much older time when the story was handed down verbally.
Most Christians do not believe in the literal words of the old testament books. These books, originally written as part of the Jewish history, help us understand the world of Jesus.
His interpretation was often at odds with the 'religious wise men' of his day. Jesus focused on one message, love your fellow man. I have no idea what he thought about the whole Adam and Eve creation story.
If you want to know the biblical truth of creation, then with conviction you must commune with God, or accept the literal word of the bible. If you want to continue to figure out the world around you, just keep doing what you have so far cindyvine, ask questions, talk to people and keep an open mind.
Difficult though I find it to take the story of Adam and Eve seriously (I am an agnostic and a former lecturer in philosophy, including the philosophy of science!) I have to say that the whole 'Lucy' theory that Dawkins and Leakey and others of that ilk constantly propound seems to me nothing more than a secularised version of the same myth.
I find it impossible to believe that all humans derive from a single common ancestor called Adam, Eve, Lucy or any other name the monogeneticists care to come up with.
To my mind it is obvious that human beings descend from differing branches and though I of course accept the theory of evolution as a broad guide to the origins of life its actual details are still open to modification as is the case with ANY serious scientific hypothesis.
Creation science, being based on two dogmas - the inerrancy of the Bible and the notion of a 'young earth' - cannot adapt or modify its basic ideas in the light of new discoveries and is therefore a pseudo-science rather than a genuine if problematic one like evolutionary biology.
I no more believe in the notion of 'Lucy' than I do in the myth of Adam and Eve!
As a myth, it's simply a "how did we all get here and why are things so hard?" story...it's value is in it's history and it's revelation of the roots of judeo-christian thought...the seeds of western civlzation and all that, yadda yadda...
so could their can be a possibility that different races were created later on throughout the bible? o r all by adam and eve family?
Mya, this is the story of the bible and the bible has absolutely no room for manouver on this issue. We can not go back in the past and alter the words of the prophets. If you want the baby you just have to keep the dirty bathwater.
I think that it is good you are asking this question, you just now must realise that if you do not like the literal word of the bible then fortunately because you live in a free and fair society you are allowed to hold a differing opinion.
Your opinion is no better or worse than any other opinion, no living person can offer you anything other than the word of the bible or their own opinion.
cindyvine says:
8 months ago
Thanks for answering my request. Is it not possible, that there were other people on the planet who their children could have married, who were not a part of Adam's clan. Maybe the bible only looks at one clan, the chosen clan? because, how would that account for all the cae dwellers all around the world at the time? The very religious orthodox Jews believe that the world is only 6000 years old! But evidence of cave dwellers goes beyond that. Interesting hub and definitely thought-provoking.