Actually, if you mate with your cousin your offspring has a very low chance of genetic defect (due to family ties). Marrying a cousin is pretty common in other parts of the world and is really kind of a recent taboo in the Western world. Cousins, although we're taught that it's creepy, are actually genetically safe to mate with..... so... like... do it up, I guess.

Brothers and sisters are just two genetically similar and you will end up with a mutated (in some fashion) child.

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It is true that Adam and Eve did not only have Cain and Abel. It is mentioned, in the Bible, that they had many other children. Calvin, as Luther, sorta sidetracked this problem. Luther said that it is not for us to question, we should just believe, and adds that it only says that Adam and Eve where the firts people, not the only ones god created.

Calvin disagrees, saying that all men are from Adam and Eve (gets it from the descriptions of the new testament), saying that it mustbe so, as all men are sinfull due to the orginal sin of Adam and Eve. It would be wrong to hold mankind responsible for Adams sin, if we were not related to him, according to the REformer. He then agrees with Luther, that we should not question this too much, as we can not understand, and as the Bible was not written as a history book, but a book of relevation.

Since then, most protestant churches, up to the pentacostal movement anyway, maintain mainly that Cain must've married one of his sisters, or his sisters shildren, or something like that.

The problem for me is that when god cursed Cain, he was afraid that the other people would kill him. But his opther brothers and sisters where only born after Cain's death, acording to Genesis. So who was he afraid of??

AH

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“From the point of view of the pharmaceutical industry, the AIDS problem has already been solved. After all, we already have a drug which can be sold at the incredible price of $8, 000 an annual dose, and which has the added virtue of not diminishing the market by actually curing anyone.”

His other brothers were born after his exile... as I said, it isn't clear about the sisters. But why would he be scared of his sisters? More likely, they'd be scared of him. I suppose he could have been scared of his father.
But yeah, it doesn't make a lot of sense if we assume that there were no humans other than Adam, Eve, and their children.
As I said though, if it is true, then it would have been passed through thousands of generations of oral tradition before being written, so the story's details would be severely distorted.

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I have the honour to be... your obliged humble servant, Anthony Henley
- MPs reply to constituent, mid 1700s

Well, I think that brings up the question of whether or not Cain already had siblings who would take revenge against him. The problem is, from creation to the fall of man to Cain killing his brother, Genesis is summarizing many important events in just 4 short chapters and not giving out many details. Four chapters is probably not enough info to answer everybody's personal questions. As a matter of fact, much of the Bible is like that. Perhaps because there would be scores of books in it if it gave all the details and every single answer to everyone's questions. So many people throughout history are asking questions and having to make various personal assumptions.

For instance, if you read Acts 12:21-23, it's easy to get the impression that an angel struck down Herod and he was suddenly eaten by worms:

But it's actually just giving you a quick account of what happened, because Flavius Josephus, the Jewish historian has this to say about the death Herod Agrippa which helps to clear things up by giving more details that the Bible doesn't give. Notice the lengthy passage of Josephus compared to the short passage of the Bible:

Damn, now I can nail my hot cousin! Lol, just kiddin!

I think that, though a catholic, the evolution theory is much more literal and could actually happen.

__________________
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I have read a theory that the Old Testament is basically the history of a family. Not much detail is given of anybody outside of that family. It's very possible that other people were created, as well as Adam and Eve.

That said, Genesis isn't a literal telling of history. It's there mainly for the point of telling us that God created the earth, and that all mankind is related. The details of how God created the earth was beyond the understanding of primitive nomads, hence it wasn't part of the story.

"builded a city" seems to imply that there was more people present than just Cain and his wife...or why would they need a city?

Well, if they were told to fill the earth and multiply, then I'm sure mankind wasted no time doing such a thing. Given how long the Bible says that early man lived, it's not easy to imagine how many people were in his downline that he knew throughout his life, unlike us who only live a short time and are lucky to know our grandchildren and great grandchildren.

But once again, the problem is that the Bible probably just gives a quick summery of Cain and what he did after having settled in Nod. It does not say exactly when these events took place. For all we know, it he could have tried to build a town or city long after having his first child, who by then, probably had children, and who probably had their children, and etc.

If we just look at the passage and assume that he immediately tried to build a city right after after having laid with his wife, then it wouldn't seem to make sense. Like I said in a previous post, the Bible just simply states certain events in short passages without going into further detail. For that reason. it can sometimes be misleading and cause people to make quick assumptions.

Many commentators tend to, these days anyway, say that we should move away from a litteral reading of the Bible, and look more at the meaning. So Adam and Eve, and Cain and Abel, is not historic fact, but serves as an ilistration that man himself is the cause of the problems he faces, and of sin and misery in the world. Cain and Abel then proofs that it is so bad that even brothers kill one another over rather trivial things.

Cain also had to have children, as it is the popular believe that the bad in the world is the children of Cain, whilst Semt, his younger brother, is the father of the good, the new hope that came after Abel.Jesus's ancestry is then traced back by Matthew all the way to Abraham, who's ancestry is traced to Noah, who's then is traced back to Set.

Offcourse, if the Flood happend, we all trace our ancestors back to Noah, and Cain's people died. This means that we are all from the 3 sons of Noah, who took their wives on the Arc with them.

AH

__________________
“The subject no longer has to be mentioned by name. Someone is sick. Someone else is feeling better now. A friend has just gone back into the hospital. Another has died. The unspoken name, of course, is AIDS.”
“From the point of view of the pharmaceutical industry, the AIDS problem has already been solved. After all, we already have a drug which can be sold at the incredible price of $8, 000 an annual dose, and which has the added virtue of not diminishing the market by actually curing anyone.”

The real parents of mankind: