I just want to know the decendants of Cain.
1. What was the name of his wife?
2. I he and Abel which was killed by the latter was the 3rd and 4th people in the earth how can possibly Cain get a wife?
3. Do you have a book about that story rather than the bible?
Thank you very much.
May our God bless us all!
Our reply:Greetings,
In answer of your three questions:
1.
Believe it or not, Cain's wife was probably his sister. We might look
upon an act like this in disgust, but for Cain, there were no other
alternatives because his sisters were literally the only women in the
world, besides his mother. What about the negative effects of incest
like birth defects? These occur because of negative mutations in our
DNA. Fortunately, most of these mutations are genetically recessive,
which means they will will only produce defects in the offspring if
both the mother and the father have the mutation in their DNA. When
two people from separate families marry, it is very unlikely that they
will both have the same negative mutations. If two people from the
same family marry, it is more likely that they will have the same
negative mutations, since their DNA is very similar. This means that
any children they have will likely have birth defects or other
problems. That's why, in the Hebrew Law, God outlawed sex between
close family members. It's considered a sexual sin. However, the
Hebrew Law was not written until the time of Moses. So at the time, it
was lawful for Cain to marry his sister. His children wouldn't have
any birth defects or any other negative effects of incest, because Cain
and his wife had no negative mutations in their DNA. God created Adam
and Eve with perfect DNA, and thus their children inherited that
perfect DNA. It wasn't until generations later that negative mutations
started to arise.
2. It's true that Cain and Abel were the third and fourth people
on Earth. But the Bible says in Genesis 5:4 that sometime in the eight
hundred years Adam was alive, Adam had another son named Seth (the
sixth person on Earth), AND "other sons and daughters". Cain's wife
was probably one of these daughters.
3. If you're asking if there are other ancient texts besides the
Bible which tell the story of Cain and Abel, then yes. The Koran also
tells the story of Cain and Abel, as do many folktales of various
cultures (most of which were not published until the nineteenth
century). See here for a comparison of different versions of the story
of Cain and Abel:
http://www.pitt.edu/~dash/cain.html#genesis
Remember that the Bible's account of the story is
by far the oldest, and therefore it's the original story. All other
versions of the story are based on it.
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