Who populated the earth after the flood?

Question

If everything was wiped out except for what was on the Ark, and that was Noah, his wife, their three sons, and their wives (for a total of 8 human beings), then regardless of whether or not there were other people around for Adam and Eve, doesn't it still mean that the earth was re-populated by incest?

Answer 1

Yes. But look:
Many people immediately reject the conclusion that Adam and Eve's sons and daughters married each other by appealing to the law against brother-sister intermarriage. Some say that you cannot marry your relation. Actually, if you don't marry your relation, you don't marry a human! A wife is related to her husband even before they marry because all people are descendants of Adam and Eve — all are of "one blood." The law forbidding marriage between close relatives was not given until the time of Moses (Leviticus 18-20). Provided marriage was one man to one woman for life (based on Genesis 1 and 2), there was no disobedience to God's law originally when close relatives (even brothers and sisters) married each other.

Remember that Abraham married his half-sister (Genesis 20:12). God blessed this union to produce the Hebrew people through Isaac and Jacob. It was not until some 400 years later that God gave Moses laws that forbade such marriages.
Today, brothers and sisters (and half-brothers and half-sisters, etc.) are not permitted by law to marry because their children have an unacceptably high risk of being deformed. The more closely the parents are related, the more likely it is that any offspring will be deformed.

There is a very sound genetic reason for such laws that is easy to understand. Every person has two sets of genes, there being some 130,000 pairs that specify how a person is put together and functions. Each person inherits one gene of each pair from each parent. Unfortunately, genes today contain many mistakes (because of sin and the Curse), and these mistakes show up in a variety of ways. For instance, some people let their hair grow over their ears to hide the fact that one ear is lower than the other -- or perhaps someone's nose is not quite in the middle of his or her face, or someone's jaw is a little out of shape -- and so on. Let's face it, the main reason we call each other normal is because of our common agreement to do so!

The more distantly related parents are, the more likely it is that they will have different mistakes in their genes. Children, inheriting one set of genes from each parent, are likely to end up with pairs of genes containing a maximum of one bad gene in each pair. The good gene tends to override the bad so that a deformity (a serious one, anyway) does not occur. Instead of having totally deformed ears, for instance, a person may only have crooked ones! (Overall, though, the human race is slowly degenerating as mistakes accumulate, generation after generation.)

However, the more closely related two people are, the more likely it is that they will have similar mistakes in their genes, since these have been inherited from the same parents. Therefore, a brother and a sister are more likely to have similar mistakes in their genes. A child of a union between such siblings could inherit the same bad gene on the same gene pair from both, resulting in two bad copies of the gene and serious defects.

Adam and Eve did not have accumulated genetic mistakes. When the first two people were created, they were physically perfect. Everything God made was "very good" (Genesis 1:31), so their genes were perfect -- no mistakes! But, when sin entered the world (because of Adam -- Genesis 3:6, Romans 5:12), God cursed the world so that the perfect creation then began to degenerate, that is, suffer death and decay (Romans 8:22). Over thousands of years, this degeneration has produced all sorts of genetic mistakes in living things.

Cain was in the first generation of children ever born. He (as well as his brothers and sisters) would have have received virtually no imperfect genes from Adam or Eve, since the effects of sin and the Curse would have been minimal to start with (it takes time for these copying errors to accumulate). In that situation, brother and sister could have married with God's approval, without any potential to produce deformed offspring.

By the time of Moses (a few thousand years later), degenerative mistakes would have built up in the human race to such an extent that it was necessary for God to forbid brother-sister (and close relative) marriage (Leviticus 18-20).[12] (Also, there were plenty of people on the earth by then, and there was no reason for close relations to marry.)

Answer 2

Tradition claims Noah's flood was a global event. The Hebrew says simply the "erets" was flooded. Erets can mean the world, but it also is used to mean the region, land, area, etc. If we stick with the subject and object of what was being discussed, we find a regional flood was used to wipe out the nephilim who had attacked the bloodline of Adam. Their offspring were abominations, and had infested the region in which the descendants of Adam lived. That's all it was about.

Australian aboriginees, African natives, Asians, Native Americans, etc., did not need to be cleansed from the face of the Earth with a flood. The nephilim were the flood's target.

This becomes very apparent when you consider the fact that we have continuous written histories of other nations before, during, and after the date of Noah's flood (2348 B.C.) Egypt conducted and documented sea trade with the port city of Byblos through this period (Early Bronze III, 2700-2300 B.C.).

We get confused when we listen to the traditions of men, rather than the scriptures themselves.

Good question! Thanks for asking it!

Answer 3

God told Noah to take 2 of every flesh, not just animals.
2 of every race also. Check it out in the Bible.
Genesis 7:9 "There went in two and two unto Noah into the ark, the male and the female, as God had commanded Noah."

Answer 4

People

Answer 5

and think how thin the dna of the animals would have been spread.

"The biblical account of Noah's Ark and the Flood is perhaps the most implausible story for fundamentalists to defend. Where, for example, while loading his ark, did Noah find penguins and polar bears in Palestine?"
- Judith Hayes, In God We Trust: But Which One?

Answer 6

They married among families, yes; because there was not any other way. But, in those days there were not as many diseases as today. Now, if you marry a brother or a cousin, there are a lot of probabilities that your sons will come out unhealthy. In those early days, it didn't happen. They were much healthier than human beings from now --about 4,000 years later. Besides, it was something normal among them when there were not too many human beings. Abraham, for example, married his sister Sara who was the daughter of his father or mother but not both of them. It is said by historians that families back then used to preserve their wealth by marrying among themselves.

Hope I helped

Answer 7

Witches and dinosaurs for a brief time! There was a small population of witchosaurs...didn't last and God sent a new batch of folk down to tidy up the mess from the flood and get to work repopulatng the place.

Answer 8

Noah's sons and their wives repopulated the earth. Noah may have had more children, too. Again, this was long before the law was given to Moses.

Answer 9

imagine about it logically, how ought to an previous guy (something like 600 years previous yet i will't undergo in options precisely) construct a enormous ark to carry a number of each and every animal contained in the international and his family individuals? there ought to were a flood on the time, yet noah and his ark are a step too far.

Answer 10

Incest? Not if it was "repopulated" by Noah's sons and their wives.

It would only be incest if their wives were close relatives of theirs -- but the Bible does not indicate that in the slightest.