The Bible recorded that Adam and Eve were the first people on earth, they also gave birth to Cain and Abel, and Cain killed Abel. Who did Cain marry, since there were only three people as of then, Adam, Cain and Abel?

Koh Handoyo

Love the Bible and have been reading it since childhood

24w ago

The Bible recorded that Adam and Eve were the first people on earth, they also gave birth to Cainand Abel, and Cain killed Abel. Who did Cain marry, since there were only three people as of then, Adam, Cain and Abel?

Thank you for the ask to answer.

I have once written an answer to similar question. And I’m sure that you can also read in other answers in this question.

Basically, Adam and Eve did not just have three sons. They had numerous sons and daughters of which only three names were recorded in the Bible.

Genesis 5:4 (RSV) The days of Adam after he became the father of Seth were eight hundred years; and he had other sons and daughters.

Remember, Adam and Eve received divine commandment by God to fill the Earth with their offspring and to take care of it.

Genesis 1:28 (RSV) And God blessed them, and God said to them, "Be fruitfull and multiply, and fill the earth and subdue it; and have dominion over the fish of the sea and over the birds of the air and over every living thing that moves upon the earth."

Of course, this could not be done if they chose to only have three sons. And as mentioned above, they did have many sons and daughters.

At first, the marriage of their offspring must be carried out between siblings. There was no other way. There was no other human beside Adam and Eve at that time. Cain must have married one of his sister. This marriage would not cause any trouble in genetic as it is today, because they all still had close-to-perfect DNA.

Rachel Stephens

27+ years studying the Bible (since 1990)

25w ago

There wasn't just 3 of them. Nothing says that Cain's sister / wife was or wasn't close in age to Cain, nor does it specify that Seth was Adam and Eve's 3rd child. People just assume these things.

“When Adam had lived 130 years, he had a son in his own likeness, in his own image; and he named him Seth. After Seth was born, Adam lived 800 years and had other sons and daughters.” Genesis 5:3-4

Anything about each having a twin sister is not in the Bible and would fall under the “Jewish myths” that Paul, a former Jewish leader, spoke of:

“One of Crete’s own prophets has said it: ‘Cretans are always liars, evil brutes, lazy gluttons.’ This saying is true. Therefore rebuke them sharply, so that they will be sound in the faith and will pay no attention to Jewish myths or to the merely human commands of those who reject the truth.”

Udo Andre

God would never allow this

20w ago

You all realize that it is just a story, right? I mean, it is not real, OK?

With that in mind, let’s look to the story to see who Cain may have married.

The vast majority of answers center around the other sons and daughters of Adam and Eve, requiring the human race to have been produced through incest.

This can be avoided by a more liberal interpretation of the Genesis story. You 
will recall there are two versions of God creating Man.

In the first, Gen.- 1: 26, “And God said, Let us make man in our own image ; after our likeness, and let them have dominion over…”

Gen, 1: 27, “So God created man in his own image, in the image of God created he him; male and female created he them.”

Gen. 1: 28, “ And God blessed them, and God said unto them, Be fruitful and multiply…”

There is no indication of individuality as there is in the second version, in Gen. 2.
This could very well be the accounting of God creating Mankind, sending a mass of humans out into the world to ‘replenish the earth’.

Besides, in this version God told ‘mankind’ that it was Ok to eat the fruit of 
any tree, no garden of Eden, no tree of the knowledge of good and evil. God was speaking to the general populace, which he created and sent out to ‘be fruitful and multiply.

One of the reasons for the story was to show where the Hebrews came from. (It is the Hebrew God, after all) Being the “chosen people”, they did not come from the general populace, but rather, from God’s special pair, Adam and Eve.

In the second version, God creates Adam, an individual, to tend God’s garden. (God don’t pull no weeds.)
And almost as an afterthought, creates Eve to be ‘an help meet’.

The people that Cain encounters, from which he selected his bride, are those already released into the world by God, in Gen. 1. This avoids the implication of incest so carefully sidestepped by apologists with their, oh it was OK back then, and yeah, DNA was more pure, and blah, blah, blah.

Bottom line: It really was only a story…

Matthew O'Neil

M.A. Theology, Saint Michaels College (2012)

6w ago

Excellent question! I wish more people would see this as being a bit problematic.

To start, the story of Adam and Eve was likely less intended as an original story of all of humanity and more likely an origin story of the nation, or people, of Israel.

Looking at the history of the people of Israel, the Adam and Eve story makes more sense if it's read as analogous for Israel's history up to their expulsion from their land into Babylon. Around the early sixth century BCE, the Babylonians came into Israel, destroyed Solomon's Temple (viewed as the house of God on Earth), killed their Kings children, imprisoned their king, and enslaved their people.

Israel was “God's promised Land" to the Israelites. It was where God could walk among them (at least in their temple). It was…paradise (as far as they were concerned). Ancient Israelites also believed that sin was met with punishment from God (the Book of Job is an excellent example of this; one of Job's friends says that he would not have lost everything he had if he had been a righteous man). And so how do you think the Israelites felt when they had their temple, the place viewed as God's dwelling on Earth, destroyed and they were expelled from the land that was “promised” to them by God?

We could extrapolate on the Cain and Abel story, but it's not relevant for our conversation. Instead, we are now asking why Cain was able to find a wife when he and his now-dead brother were the only two humans on Earth, aside from Adam and Eve. It goes back to the point I was making before; Adam and Eve weren't assumed to be the first humans on Earth, just the first Israelites. It was likely assumed by the ancient audiences that heard this story that they knew other tribes, or cultures, were present. But they were concerned with their origins. The origin of the Israelites people. They knew others were around, but they wanted to understand how their culture grew and the legends around that.

It should also be noted that the Hebrew people we're sort-of okay with incest (Moses and Aaron's parents were cousins, Abraham's first wife Sarah was his half sister, Lot had sex with both his daughters to start a couple nation's…). So, even if this wife came from his own parents, it's not the last time that type of relationship shows up. I still think the “analogy-for-first-people-of-Israel” concept is more likely.

Gordon Stanger

former Former Chief Technical Advisor for UNDP, etc. (1973-2017)

11w ago

This is just one of a whole catalogue of factual errors and logical inconsistencies which arise from reading the first 11 chapters of Genesis as if it was a modern literal post-enlightenment Greco-Roman style of writing. When will people start taking the Bible seriously, reading it as a an early Hebrew spiritual allegory? The reality is that such questions as posed above only arise in the event of spurious misunderstanding of the spiritual intent of the author(s).

Damon Nailer

Theologian, biblical scholar, minister, & author- Revelation Rightly Revealed

25w ago

Cain and Abel had a twin sister born with each of them. The initial plan was that Cain would marry Abel’s twin sister (Aklia) and Abel would marry Cain’s twin sister (Lulawa). However, Cain’s sister was prettier and this is one of the reasons why Cain killed Abel. After the murder, he married his own twin sister Lulawa. Below is the information from the 1st Book of Adam/Eve. The Forgotten Books of Eden

CHAP. LXXIV.

5 And God looked at His maid-servant Eve, and delivered her, and she brought forth her first-born son, and with him a daughter.

6 Then Adam rejoiced at Eve's deliverance, and also over the children she had borne him. And Adam ministered unto Eve in the cave, until the end of eight days; when they named the sonCain, and the daughter Luluwa.

7 The meaning of Cain is "hater," because he hated his sister in their mother's womb; ere they came out of it. Therefore did Adam name him Cain.

8 But Luluwa means "beautiful," because she was more beautiful than her mother.

CHAP. LXXV.

11 When the days of nursing the children were ended, Eve again conceived, and when her days were accomplished she brought forth another son and daughter; and they named the son Abel, and the daughter Aklia.

CHAP. LXXVI.

10 But as to hard-hearted Cain, Satan came to him by night, showed himself and said unto him, "Since Adam and Eve love thy brother Abel much more than they love thee, and wish to join him in marriage to thy beautiful sister, because they love him; but wish to join thee in marriage to his ill-favoured sister, because they hate thee;

11 "Now, therefore, I counsel thee, when they do that, to kill thy brother; then thy sister will be left for thee; and his sister will be cast, away."

12 And Satan departed from him. But the wicked One remained behind in the heart of Cain, who sought many a time, to kill his brother.

CHAP. LXXVIII.

3 Then Adam said to her, "We will join Abel's sister in marriage to Cain, and Cain's sister to Abel."

Britain Lewis

Delivery Driver at Google Express (2016-present)

24w ago

Nicola Di Pietro

BASc Bachelor Degree of Nutritional Science, Università Cattolica Del Sacro Cuore - Sede Di Roma (2003)

25w ago

The Bible also says that after Cain and Abel, Adam and Eve gave birth to Seth, and also to “many” other sons and daughters.

Also, as St Thomas Aquinas explains clearly (way better than me): in the beginning of mankind, because of the necessity of mankind expansion, the “minor” incest (between brothers and sisters) wasn’t forbidden by God (it’s called “case of grave necessity” in moral theology). God forbid the minor incest later, when it wasn’t necessary anymore. The major incest (between parents and children), on the contrary, was always forbidden by the divine law.

The scientifically documented phenomena of genetic entropy allows us to assume that the more we go back in time, the more intact was humans’ DNA. It is reasonable to say that, at the beginning of mankind there were exponentially less “defects” in humans’ DNA. This would allow siblings’ mating without major diseases occurring in their offspring.

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