The text suggests that he was conceived before Adam and Eve were expelled from the Garden.
Prove me wrong.
Blessings
When did mankind figure out that SEX = BABIES?
- "But some cultures â including, allegedly, Australian aborigines â never got the picture. One writer says that as late as the 1960s âthe Tully River Blacks of north Queensland believed that a woman got pregnant because she had been sitting over a fire on which she had roasted a fish given to her by the prospective father.â
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thanks for your response but please forgive my denseness, I have no idea how to interpret your response.
Cheers,
- Iâm going to go out on a limb here and assume that everybody reading this post âknows how babies are made.â The point of my post is that not everybody finds out at the same age how babies are made, some human females donât find out or figure it out until they are adults. I know a woman who, at the age of 11 thought that a man and a woman sleeping in the same bed was all that was needed for the woman to become pregnant.
- Now, how old was Eve when she became pregnant, and did she know how it was that she became pregnant and at what point did it dawn on her what âbeing pregnantâ even meant?
- Next question, were Adam and Eve still in the garden or not when she figured out that she was pregnant?
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You are partially correct.
- Gen 3:16a To the woman He said: âI will greatly multiply your sorrow and your conception; In pain you shall bring forth children;
Multiplied conception. 1 x 1 = 2. Children = plural. Both Cain and Abel were conceived in the Garden. Twins⌠and backing up a little bit, they are more specifically fraternal twins with different fathers.
- Gen 3:15 And I will put enmity between you and the woman, and between your seed and her Seed; He shall bruise your head, and you shall bruise His heel.â
Cain represents the seed of the serpent (born of flesh) and Abel represents the seed of Christ (born of Spirit). Cain killing Abel in the field is a type representing Jesus being killed on the cross by those whose father is the devil.
- John 8:44 You are of your father the devil, and the desires of your father you want to do. He was a murderer from the beginning, and does not stand in the truth, because there is no truth in him. When he speaks a lie, he speaks from his own resources, for he is a liar and the father of it.
But you canât really kill the Word of God:
- Gen 4:10 And He said, âWhat have you done? The voice of your brotherâs blood cries out to Me from the ground.
Thanks, Terry. I appreciate your time.
Cheers,
M
The translation of Gen 4:1 is a pluperfect (past perfect) tense. The previous verse is a Hebrew tense (a verb conjugation not known in English) known as a wayyiqtol is followed by verse 4:1, a pluperfect clause (âAdam had known his wifeâ). In other words, sexual intercourse happened before the wayyiqtol and in the Garden. Other linguistic evidence suggests the first time they had intercourse was shortly after they acquired knowledge of good and bad (aka, sexual awareness).
Cheers,
M
p.s. Also, I agree that a reasonable case can be made for Cain and Able to have been twins. The text can be translated both ways.
Peter Enns wrote an article about this on Biologos in 2011
I havenât really delved deeply into it, however, given that God told all creation to be fruitful and multiply BEFORE the fall of mankind and sin entering this world, i would seriously challenge any notion that Adam and Eve only became aware of sex after they gained the knowledge of good and evil. That claim is not only false, its totally unbiblical. Its quite likely that Even may have conceived in or outside the gardenâŚwe arent really told nor is it sinful for either location to have been the spot where Adam impregnated her.
There is no reason why they didnt root like rugrats in the garden almost straight away to be honest. Id suggest that the problem lies in the fact that sex and marriage have been corrupted by sinâŚsomething that was âvery goodâ has been turned into what is sometimes an abomination!
Even from merely a logical perspective, the bible clearly tells us that Adam observed that the animals had partnersâŚeven this early on, he clearly recognised the need for companionshipâŚits hardly unthinkable in any full grown man that testosterone wasnt also present when he first saw EveâŚespecically given animals would have been rooting left right and center from the first day they were created (insect breeding cycles are almost certainly to have been quite a few generations within days and there is simply no way Adam didnt notice what even insects were up to within the first hours of his creation)
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Yes, note that it doesnât say Adam knew Eve again, conceived and bore Abel, but only that she bore again as in right after having Cain she continued in labor.
- Gen 4:1 Now Adam knew Eve his wife, and she conceived and bore Cain, and said, âI have acquired a man from the Lord.â 2 Then she bore again, this time his brother Abel.
Abel represents the good shepherd, Jesus, and the Voice crying out from the ground being the Living Word is confirmed in faith here:
- Heb 11:4 By faith Abel offered God a better sacrifice than Cain did. By faith he was commended as righteous when God gave approval to his gifts. And by faith he still speaks, even though he is dead.
Unless Genesis 1-2:3 is a summary of All Time divided up in 7 days, and then jumps back to the beginning with this statement:
- Gen 2:4 This is the history of the heavens and the earth when they were created, in the day that the Lord God made the earth and the heavens, 5 before any plant of the field was in the earth and before any herb of the field had grown. For the Lord God had not caused it to rain on the earth, and there was no man to till the ground;
The heavens and the earth were created in the beginning and this describes them as not yet filled with plants, no water, no man. Basically without form and void like in the beginning.
I donât want to help this descend into a YEC debateâŚwhat is clear is that Adam noticed he did not have a partner, he saw the animals, God created Eve to fill that void. Whether or not we are talking darwinian evolutionary timeline or not, for the purposes of the story, the timing of the conception of Cain with regards to the expulsion event (whether literal or allegorical)⌠thatâs all that we are really focusing on here isnât it?
I think for the ANE world view, Peter Enns article is a pretty good one on the topic. Much of his discussion also aligns closely with my own world view.
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Why should we prove you wrong?
Why should we even care?
Frankly, I personally think the forbidden tree was parenthood, giving them the authority over good and evil before they had a good understanding of it.
You should never feel compelled to reply. If a topic doesnât interest you or you have nothing to offer then just move on to something else. No problem.
Cheers,
M
I said no such thing. I responded because I am interested. I am just not interested in responding according to how you dictated we respond.
Why should we limit our responses according to what you have demanded?
And why shouldnât we ask our own questions?
âWhy should we care?â was a question to you. So⌠does this mean you have no answer to this? You havenât even considered why it would be important that Cain was conceived before the fall? I have. My answer is that his conception was part of it. People have often suggested that many elements of the story point to a sexual event and I agreed with them. Of course the frequent objection is Genesis 1, even though the same people belabor in other discussions how these are two separate creation stories.
But what then do you do with the contradiction? There is only a contradiction in the creationists understanding of the story insisting that Adam and Eve are golems of dust and bone created magically with no biological parentage. Since I never believed this, there was no contradiction for me. It was a commandment to Adam and Eve only and not to the homo sapiens species.
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Genesis 4:1, which described Cain being conceived, is after Genesis 3:23-24, which describes the expulsion from Eden, and there is no indication that these events are not in chronological order.
So Genesis suggests Cain was conceived after Adam and Eve were expelled from Eden. This is a much clearer indication that anything in your source, especially since the justification for Cainâs conception being earlier is
Genesis 4:1a: âNow âAdam had known Chavvah, his wifeâ (Authorâs translation).[1]
None of the translations I have checked include any past tense here, and one (AKJV) explicitly says the opposite:
Later, Adam had sexual relations with his wife Eve.
So the AKJV translation proves you wrong. That text doesnât just suggest that Cain was conceived after Adam and Eve were expelled, it says that explicitly.
(Of course Iâm working from translations, not the original language, which might make a difference. But probably not).
my emphasis âŠď¸
From my initial reading of your response (thanks, by the way), it appears that you did not read the article referenced in the original post. You may want to [re]read the article.
It does. And Iâm working from the biblical/classical Hebrew. It wasnât until the mid 90s that Ziony Zevit, a Hebrew scholar in Israel, discovered/developed a grammatical rule that could identify a past perfect (aka pluperfect) conjugation of Hebrew verbs. The rule is called the Anterior Construction. You might be able to dig up my explanation of this by searching the forums (Iâve explained it here before). Otherwise, you can find it in his book, here.
In any case, after Zevitâs publication I believe most Hebrew scholars acknowledge that the couple had sexual intercourse (Gen 3:7) prior to expulsion.
I see no reason to limit your responses. You should feel free to respond in any way you want. Though addressing the specific question would be nice.
First, if you donât care, then donât answer. Easy peasy.
Second, I have considered âwhy it would be important.â But before the âwhyâ can be answered we need to have agreement as to what the author of the text means to tell us. Now, if you donât believe Cain was conceived in the garden (and thatâs a fair point) then I should think you would want to explain your rationale (i.e., prove me wrong). Instead, it appears as though you would prefer to redirect the discussion to the more abstract topic of why without tethering the it to the actual text itself. In the absence of textual support, the why question cannot be answered, much less come to some agreement.
In other words and speaking only for myself, I cannot get to the âwhy it happenedâ until Iâm convinced that âit did happen.â
Cheers,
M
You have attributed some-one elseâs response to me.
Oh⌠thanks. This helped me find his response to me.
Incorrect. Many questions like this donât have definite answers and most never will. And no it does not stop us from asking further questions. We can consider both possibilities and the implications of either one.
Yes. They do have definite answers. Most answers (including mine) may be wrong. But thatâs why the ability to rationalize oneâs interpretation of the biblical text is so important. Differences in opinion (as to what is right and wrong) are the substance and center of discourse and should be relished. Now, If Iâm wrong, for example, I would love to know on what basis I am wrong.
Having said this, I would only add that the OP was a peer reviewed (and accepted) academic study. Two of the five reviewers said the text didnât support my conclusions, but three said it did. Three didnât answer.
Cheers,
M
Ah⌠then you have some special information that not only does this text has a particular author, but you even have insight into the authorâs mind as well to know that he has a particular intent with regards to this question. My experience with authors suggests otherwise. Quite often they do not think about such question readers ask, let alone care what answer they choose to give to the question.
How can the text not have a particular author? Because such texts tend to have a long line of people copying the text or transcribing it from an oral tradition, all during which the content has slowly changed. I suppose you might believe like many of us do that God has guided the process and is thus the particular author. That is possible. LOL