If Adam & Eve were the first people....?

Question

First of all, I am a Christian and am not here to discredit the Bible, but I have just never understood this. Can somebody logically explain it?

In Genisis we are taught that Cain's punishment for killing Able was to be sent alone into the wilderness. But, Can was afraid that the others in the world would find him and slay him.

What other people? If Adam and Eve were the first people on earth and they only had 2 sons, who else would kill Cain?


Genisis 4:14 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.

Answer 1

This is the problem when you Christians accept only the Bible as you define it, while we Jews, the original people to whom the Book of Genesis was given (as part of the Torah, the Five Books of Moses), have MANY other books and records of the history of our people and their lineages. One of these is the many-volumed Midrash (literally in Hebrew, "from telling") -- a collection of oral details passed down from Jew-to-Jew and eventually written down in the Greco-Roman period. It gves many details that the KJV is lacking. It is online at:
http://www.sacred-texts.com/jud/mhl/mhl05.htm

Reading the Bible is like looking at a family album: If it's not your family, then all you have is the short caption below each photo, if that. But the oral tradition of the family members (representing the Midrash) fills in the details that everybody in that family knows. With the Bible, this is true to the point that the Midrash says you can tell who are true Jews and who are imposters by those who know BOTH the written and oral parts of the story, not just what is written in the Bible. But I am digressing...

The answer, as recorded in the Midrash, is simple: Cain and Abel had brothers and sisters, who had children, who had children... Both brothers were adults when the fratricide happened -- and by then, given the long lifespans of everyone, the population had multiplied exponentially. The Midrash also says that the brothers fought over a woman. (So it wasn't that God liked lamb chops better than bread...)

No, the sisters are not directly mentioned in the Bible itself because the main story is about Cain and Abel and their descendants. In fact, nobody's wife is named until Abraham and Sarah -- see the article linked below.

Answer 2

The Bible does not state that Adam, Eve, Cain and Able were alone on the earth.

The Bible does NOT tell us everything. The Bible, God's Word revealed to us, tells us what we need to know but leaves a vast body of knowledge unstated.

In this particular example, the Word does not state that these four were the only persons on the earth, neither does it state that they were not.

Perhaps Cain was speaking of future people yet to be born. Remember, in those days people lived hundreds of years, certainly enough time for many generations of people to be born and roam the earth.

Another thing to consider is that the Bible frequently does not state how much time has passed between one verse and the next. Look at the next verses:

Gen 4:15-17 Then the LORD replied to him, "In that case, whoever kills Cain will suffer vengeance seven times over." And He placed a mark on Cain so that whoever found him would not kill him. Then Cain went out from the LORD's presence and lived in the land of Nod, east of Eden. Cain knew his wife intimately, and she conceived and gave birth to Enoch. Then Cain became the builder of a city, and he named the city Enoch after his son.

How long did Cain wander until He found his wife? Doesn't say.
Where did he find his wife? Doesn't say.
How long did Cain live and how many children did he have before he built the city? Doesn't say.

There are a lot of questions in the bible and we just need to keep reading, studying and questioning unti we are face to face with God. None of these questions discredit the Bible; they just make it that much more fascinating to study!

Answer 3

If the first 2 human beings were both male, it may make the bible even extra absurd. God did not write the bible, adult men wrote the bible, and it changed into all politically astounding for the day. With Adam and Eve we are all a set or inbreds through the indisputable fact that is, yet with Adam and Steve, umm yeah, except Steve had a womb, which negates the gay rights activists element.

Answer 4

Read up on the info on the Sumerian tablets with the same type of garden of eden story and it'll make sense. The OT god was the Anannaki, who weren't gods in the least, but in that region mining gold. They forced the highest form of humans at that time to slave for them, thinking we had sex too often when they wanted us to be working, thus the shame of sex though the centuries.

Eve was a male in the original version and the snake a good guy trying to help humanity escape these evil occupiers. Get a book by Zecharia Stichin who studied these tablets which predate the bible extensively.

Answer 5

Adam and Eve had many children, they lived over 900 years, so they had plenty of time. The Bible doesn't say how long it was before Cain killed Abel, or how long God waited before he confronted Cain. It may have been several hundred years after creation, thus many people.

Answer 6

Genesis 5:4

Answer 7

The short answer is: Adam and Eve were the first people on earth, but they weren't the only people! Cain's siblings and their children would have had plenty of opportunity to kill him.

Genesis explains that Adam and Eve's first children were Cain and Abel; after Abel was murdered, they had Seth. However, Gen. 5:4-5 goes on to clairify that "After he begot Seth, the days of Adam were eight hundred years; and he had sons and daughters. 5 So all the days that Adam lived were nine hundred and thirty years; and he died."

Think of all the babies (and grand babies, etc) Adam and Eve would have after 800+ years!

Answer 8

I would think that Cain knew that his parents would bore other children, hence, his fear of being hunted. It might also be possible that he was referring to his parents when he said that everyone who finds him will kill him. I mean if you think about it, there were only 4 people in the world that day. He killed Abel, which means there are only 3 left. So the term "everyone" that he used is a referring to the other 2.

Answer 9

.I have asked this same question when i was a kid but no ans then. It shows that people have been living on earth b4 adam & Eve. The truth of the matter is that after the great polarian civilization came another civilization called atlantis. when the atlantian ( atlantic ocean today) sank under the great ocean, it nearly destroyed mankind. one nation, say to say, started what u see today as the world, our world. Thats exactly what happened.

Answer 10

if you read genesis correctly you will see that god made mankind which plainly states they are the first humans to watch over the animals of the land but adam and eve where to be the first perfect humans