Will you please help with a perplexing question?

Question

According to Christianity there was Adam and Eve in the beginning. These were first man and first woman. They had two sons. Cain and Able. Able was killed by Cain and Cain was sent to the land of wandering. ( Nod ) During his stay there, the bible mentions he was married.

Who did Cain marry?
His mother?
His sister?
Is this not incest?
Is incest acceptable to the Christian faith?

Answer 1

No, you don't ask the awkward questions. They'll just say

"It was a metaphorical Adam and Eve, just like it was a metaphorical 6 days, but every word is still true. You can't prove evolution exists"

Answer 2

Dont forget Seth. Adam and Eve didnt stop at two kids. Yes that would be incest, but in that day that was not looked down upon. Did you know the Levites had to marry within the family as well to keep a pure blood line. Find how many years passed from the first birth of Cain and Able till the time Cain leaves for the land of Nod.

Answer 3

Well! Other than the fact that Cain married his own sister, cannot be ruled out as the Bible too, does not speak much about his wife. But the truth that he married his sister (what we in the present day term as incest) cannot be denied either, for in the later days the Law was given in which it was clearly stated that 'one should not marry within the blood', which by itself proves that 'incest' was in practise and at the time when the Law was being given, the line was drawn.

There have been several scholars of the Bible purporting the fact that there could have been a parallel genealogy to that of Adam and that the Bible is silent or rather not much significance is given about the 'second line', since the manifestation of the Saviour of the world was to come thru the line of Adam alone.

Answer 4

Who did Cain marry? His mother? His sister?

I do not know. But I am sure they did not have the institution of marriage, people mated and helped each other out of necessities or affection, or both. That created family unit or even a tribal unit.

Is this not incest?

This is a not a religious term but a legal term meaning sexual relations between specifically related people(may or may not include marriage). It is also very local in definition. In USA certain state allow marriage between first cousins and some do not, the ones that do not also have age exemption, they allow after 55years for the female. Most people can get married by moving to another location.

The reason for not allowing the union between close blood relative is that genetically they may be very incompatible, there are good chances that off spring will have at birth physical defects, or, and, and both, mental defect.

Is incest acceptable to the Christian faith?

No.

Not to day but in the times of Adam and Eve or even in the time of Cain do you think Christian faith even existed.

You say "the bible mentions he was married". I think he mated, some one, if you believe in this theory there were very few men and very few female since you have not named the sister or sisters there is only one other possibility. This may have been an accidental intercourse that occurred.

They all got lucky, that the off springs turned out OK. There may be other reasons also and that is they did not have any bed genes in them to pass it on to the off springs.

I hope I have thrown some light on this subject.

I also think what we call marriage to day may have been just mating then. The words "Marriage and Mating" were truely interchangable. Humans got married and animal mated each other.

Answer 5

The Bible mentions that there were other people in the world, outside of Eden. Cain and Abel married women from these other tribes and thus propogated the human race.
(there is no mention of a sister, or of either boy marrying his mother).

It could be argued that Adam and Eve were the first man and woman of the *human* race, blessed with souls, and the other people were still-evolving homonids, thus allowing for both creationism and evolution.
But yeah, the Bible is pretty fuzzy on this point.

Answer 6

Between the birth of Cain in 4:1 and the killing of Abel in 4:8, there are a lot of years that went by. There were enough years for them to grow up, get occupations, etc.

In Genesis 5:4, they had "other sons and daughters."

Cain, then, married one of his sisters. This event happened prior to God's entering into the covenant with Israel where stipulations were made that incest is wrong.

Incest is unacceptable both in Judaism, and in Christianity. (But these people were pre-Jewish and pre-Christian)

Answer 7

First you have to ascertain that the Bible was written when the present civilisation was not existing. When the population was less in number, marrying a mother or a sister was not considered as a sin. The only aim was there to increase progeny. Moreover the narrations that are found in the religious scripts should be treated as simple stories. We have to consider and accept only ethical and moral statements that are beneficial to lead our civic life sociably and peacefully. We are living in the scientific era. Naturally we are proned to assess and examine anything and everything according to the norms of science and reasoning. But we have to realise that these religious scriptures were written long ago when the present day social and scientific benefits were not available. If you want to have a critical study, you drag your mind back to those ages and try to imagine the conditions of the then society. We are yet to find a faith acceptable to all religions.

Answer 8

Genesis 5:4 states that :"And the days of Adam after he had fathered Seth were eight hundred years. And he fathered sons and daughters." .It doesn't say how many sons and daughters,but it says that he fathered many.
Genesis 5:5 says that Adam lived for 930 years.It is possible that Adam had a child once a year for a few hundred years.That's a lot of children that could have spread throught the land!
As well as that,the laws forbidding close relations marrying were given 400 years after Cain married,in the time of Moses.(Leviticus 18-20).

Answer 9

Adam and Eve had MANY children* but the Bible mentions only two of them for the lesson to be learned... Seth came later as the good seed.

Cain married one of his sisters and incest was NOT an issue then... UNTIL it was so pronounced under the Mosaic laws, as it is written.

Christianity is only a couple of thousand years old... I hope this helps remove some cobwebs.

Peace be with you.

Answer 10

Cain married a neanderthal. Adam and Eve were the first people known by the God of Love.

Answer 11

Odd that you asked the same type of question a long time ago. Apparently, incest was practiced because everyone supposed to have come from Adam and Eve. Then at some point in time, someone decided incest was not needed anymore and somehow a law was enacted to ban incest and name it a crime. If you know some world history, incest was practiced as late as in the 19th century, mostly by European royalties.