Genesis 4

[Dason Kurkiewicz]

So Adam and Eve go off and have Cain and Abel. Then Cain kills Abel and Cain later goes on to have this dialog "... you have made me a homeless wanderer. Anyone who finds me will kill me!" [NLT].

Now I haven't read much commentary on Genesis but if Adam and Eve are the first humans and Cain and Abel are their sons... who is going to be attacking Cain?

Also it goes on to say "Cain had sexual relations with his wife..." but I haven't seen any mention of other humans up until now so who did Cain marry? I guess it never explicitly says that Adam and Eve are the only humans at that point and it seems like that would have to be the case to be consistent. Wouldn't it? Unless of course Adam and Eve had more children other than Cain and Abel that the bible doesn't mention.

I guess I just always thought Adam and Eve were the first humans and there weren't any others. What are your views on this?

[jrabbach]

Yeah, I had always kind of wondered about that too. If you go back to the first part of Genesis, we actually find two different creation stories. In Chapter 1 we have the whole 7 days thing, and then in Chapter 2 we have another creation story that seems to walk us through God's thought process as he creates stuff, but in a different order than we got in chapter 1.

What I have to make out of it is that we basically have the final written copy of an oral tradition that had been going around for a long time. Stories have a tendency to change in the retelling, and possibly all of the facts may not add up at times. I feel like we can get a lot more accomplished if we are willing to act on the moral of the stories presented in the Bible, and not always get bogged down in semantics of a book that has been translated several times before it hit English.

For me what is important is that we are told that "God Created." That is the moral of the creation story if you ask me. We are living breathing creatures created in His image. We may not physically look like God (we may for all I know) but we are in His image, and our thoughts, actions and worship should reflect the fact that we are God's precious creation.

Thank you God for making me and for all those who I get to meet! However you did it.