Genesis,where did the other Guys come from

[England my lionheart]

Ok,when i was a Kid i was puzzled by Genesis,especially the part after Adam and Eve ate from the Tree,what puzzled me then was where did certain people come from,i'll explain as i go.

Genesis Chapter 4 (New International Version)

1 Adam lay with his wife Eve, and she became pregnant and gave birth to Cain.
OK so far thats 3 people

She said, "With the help of the LORD I have brought forth a man." 2 Later she gave birth to his brother Abel.
Thats 4
Now Abel kept flocks, and Cain worked the soil. 3 In the course of time Cain brought some of the fruits of the soil as an offering to the LORD.
4 But Abel brought fat portions from some of the firstborn of his flock. The LORD looked with favor on Abel and his offering, 5 but on Cain and his offering he did not look with favor. So Cain was very angry, and his face was downcast.
6 Then the LORD said to Cain, "Why are you angry? Why is your face downcast? 7 If you do what is right, will you not be accepted? But if you do not do what is right, sin is crouching at your door; it desires to have you, but you must master it."
8 Now Cain said to his brother Abel, "Let's go out to the field." And while they were in the field, Cain attacked his brother Abel and killed him.
OK we now are back to 3

9 Then the LORD said to Cain, "Where is your brother Abel?" "I don't know," he replied. "Am I my brother's keeper?"
10 The LORD said, "What have you done? Listen! Your brother's blood cries out to me from the ground. 11 Now you are under a curse and driven from the ground, which opened its mouth to receive your brother's blood from your hand. 12 When you work the ground, it will no longer yield its crops for you. You will be a restless wanderer on the earth."
13 Cain said to the LORD, "My punishment is more than I can bear. 14 Today you are driving me from the land, and I will be hidden from your presence; I will be a restless wanderer on the earth, and whoever finds me will kill me."
At this time there is only 3 people so who's going to find him?

15 But the LORD said to him, "Not so; if anyone kills Cain, he will suffer vengeance seven times over." Then the LORD put a mark on Cain so that no one who found him would kill him. 16 So Cain went out from the LORD's presence and lived in the land of Nod, east of Eden.
There is still only 3 right

17 Cain lay with his wife, and she became pregnant and gave birth to Enoch. Cain was then building a city, and he named it after his son Enoch. 18 To Enoch was born Irad, and Irad was the father of Mehujael, and Mehujael was the father of Methushael, and Methushael was the father of Lamech.

Where did his Wife come from and why was Cain building a City for two adults and a Child?

 

[Rakhel]

I can't site anything of this because I have heard others say this, that Adam and Eve were not the first people on Earth but rather the beginning of that particular lineage.

Now if you want to take Genesis to heart, then it is a matter of interpretation.

Genesis 3:16. To the woman He said, "I shall surely increase your sorrow and your pregnancy; in pain you shall bear children. And to your husband will be your desire, and he will rule over you."

If you focus on the word "increase" one can assume that Eve had children before Cain and Able. This can allow for the other people.

 

[England my lionheart]

I can't site anything of this because I have heard others say this, that Adam and Eve were not the first people on Earth but rather the beginning of that particular lineage.

Now if you want to take Genesis to heart, then it is a matter of interpretation.

If you focus on the word "increase" one can assume that Eve had children before Cain and Able. This can allow for the other people.

Then why were they not mentioned before Cain and Able,and in Genesis it definately say that Man=Adam was created and then Eve,there is plenty about Birds and Beasts but nothing about other people.

 

[Rakhel]

Then why were they not mentioned before Cain and Able,and in Genesis it definately say that Man=Adam was created and then Eve,there is plenty about Birds and Beasts but nothing about other people.

Their lineage and story were not as important as Cain and Able's to the Jewish people.

 

[England my lionheart]

Their lineage and story were not as important as Cain and Able's to the Jewish people.

Why is that

 

[Rakhel]

I don't know. That is a question I have no answer for.

 

[England my lionheart]

I don't know. That is a question I have no answer for.

OK,thanks for your imput anyway ,wheres the other half then

 

[Rakhel]

The other half of what?

 

[England my lionheart]

The other half of what?

You,your Husband

 

[outhouse]

you are trying to pull reason and reality from a ancient fable. it wont happen.

these fables are not first hand accounts, in fact most spent about 300-500 years of oral tradition before many of the books were compiled into two that were used and edited into genesis.

its a literal patchwork from egyption and sumerian sources plus other local legends edited into semetic languages

much of the fables are not reality based, trying to drag reality out of this is not what the 5 unknown jewish authors ever wanted there work to become.


this is all allegorical material.

 

[England my lionheart]

you are trying to pull reason and reality from a ancient fable. it wont happen.

these fables are not first hand accounts, in fact most spent about 300-500 years of oral tradition before many of the books were compiled into two that were used and edited into genesis.

its a literal patchwork from egyption and sumerian sources plus other local legends edited into semetic languages

much of the fables are not reality based, trying to drag reality out of this is not what the 5 unknown jewish authors ever wanted there work to become.


this is all allegorical material.

I agree yet there are many that do,its pretty obvious it cannot be taken literally but still......well you know the rest

 

[esmith]

It is well recognized by many biblical scholars that the first 11 chapters of Genesis are based on myth/legends. However, this has been a point of contention among believers. So if you believe that the first 11 chapters are stories based on legends or myths it is up to you. But if you do accept this, then it answers your questions. Adding immaterial characters to the story doesn't affect the storyline. If you don't accept this premise then your on your own; but again adding characters doesn't affect the point of the stories.

 

[England my lionheart]

It is well recognized by many biblical scholars that the first 11 chapters of Genesis are based on myth/legends. However, this has been a point of contention among believers. So if you believe that the first 11 chapters are stories based on legends or myths it is up to you. But if you do accept this, then it answers your questions. Adding immaterial characters to the story doesn't effect the storyline.

Doesn't make the storyline believable either

 

[outhouse]

where did the others come from??

they were always there.

genesis is a myth

we know man existed for roughly 200,000 years not 6000 years
adam and eve were not the first people
man was created magically in 1 day from dirt.
eve was not created from a rib.
cain and able were not the first children
creation is a myth


these non truth's [lies] go on and on and on

 

[outhouse]

Returning to Eden - Ancient Roots

this page has some great history

Adamu” is the name in Sumerian mythology for the first man, created by “Enki”, the creator god and inventor of civilization. Adam is Hebrew for “man”, and adamah is a Hebrew word signifying dust and earth, and in Aramaic signifying blood. Havva — Hebrew for “Eve” — in Hebrew signifies life.
In the Sumerian myth, magical food is the source of immortality, not the source of its downfall, and Adamu is tricked to not eat it (the gods tell him it is poisonous), and thereby remains mortal. The Hebrew biblical account also describes such a life-giving magical food — the food of the “tree of life”, distinct from the forbidden “tree of knowledge of good and evil” — and it is chiefly to deprive them of the immortality bestowed by the fruit of the tree of life, that God exiles Adam and Eve from the garden. The tale of Cain and Abel (Genesis 4:1-16) parallels tales in Sumerian mythology of rivalries between farmer and herder gods.
Genesis 11:26-31 and 17:5-8 teach that Abraham himself, vaunted father of nations, is a native of the Sumerian city Ur (southeast Iraq, near the ancient mouths of the Tigris and Euphrates) under Chaldean suzerainty, growing up there some time in the second millenium BCE, and departing for Canaan (Israel and environs). Abraham's father Terah adhered to the Sumerian mythology, and was a maker and seller of idols, but Abraham rejected polytheism and his father's idols, and managed a remarkable escape from the Chaldean king's sentence of death for his heresy. Joshua 24:2 records the break: “And Joshua said unto all the people, Thus saith the LORD God of Israel, Your fathers dwelt on the other side of the flood in old time, even Terah, the father of Abraham, and the father of Nachor: and they served other gods.” In any case, the similarity of the Torah's cosmogony to the Sumerian epic may be evidence that the biblical tales of Abraham are at least partially historical.
Monotheism was first consolidated in the nation of Judah by King Josiah (reigned ca. 641-609 BCE). But soon thereafter, the Chaldeans sacked Jerusalem and forced the Hebrews into exile in Babylon (597-538 BCE), under king Nebuchadrezzar II (605-562 BCE) and his successors. This captivity culminated in the syncretion of proto-Judaism with the Zoroastrianism of their Persian liberator, and the commitment of the Torah to writing. Zoroastrianism, founded ca. 750 BCE, is incidentally but one representative of the descendents of a common prehistoric Indo-European religion; among the other representative mythologies are Hindu, Norse, Greek, and Roman. Zoroastrianism contributes to the Eden myth the very word “paradise”, deriving from the Avestan (Old Persian) pairidaēza. This was the term used in Zoroastrian Persia to refer to the king's enclosed garden parks. The Hebrew in Genesis 2:8 for “garden of Eden” is gan-be'Eden — gan signifies not just a garden, but a walled garden, and Eden is not just a proper name, but a Hebrew term for “delight”. The garden motif even draws direct inspiration from Nebuchadrezzar II, who (according to legend) built “hanging gardens” in Babylon to please his homesick wife Amyitis, daughter of Median king Cyaxares (625-585 BCE). The Medes commanded a vast and verdant pre-Persian, partly Zoroastrian empire east of Chaldea, and the marriage cemented an alliance of the two empires. In fact the Old Persian pairidaēza is believed to have its root in the Mede language, which was in any case quite similar to Old Persian and the other Indo-Iranian languages of the region.
It seems inescapable that, to arrive at the creation mythology articulated by the postexilic authors of Genesis, the Hebrews conflated their ancestral Sumerian cosmogony and cultural inheritance, tales of the Zoroastrian king's idyllic garden in the east, and the Zoroastrian doctrine that the world created by Ahura Mazda was a paradise, spoiled by the evil Ahriman, but to be restored to its paradisiacal condition in the eschaton, as prophesied by Zoroaster. Before this syncretion, neither Satan nor the divine messiah (nor a great many other key doctrines) existed in the Judaic canon — all supernatural acts and promises were attributed directly to the covenant god Yahweh (or, before Josiah's monotheistic edicts, to any number of gods in a heterodox pantheon).

Cyrus the Great


The Hebrews were surely inclined to sympathy with the Zoroastrian worldview, because it was the Zoroastrian king Cyrus the Great (reigned ca. 546 to 529 BCE), imperial uniter of the Medes and Persians, who delivered them from their Chaldean captivity, and instigated construction of the second Temple in Jerusalem. Isaiah 44:28-45:1 records a sympathy so great it smacks of open kinship: “That saith of Cyrus, He is my shepherd, and shall perform all my pleasure: even saying to Jerusalem, Thou shalt be built; and to the temple, Thy foundation shall be laid. Thus saith the LORD to his anointed, to Cyrus, whose right hand I have holden, to subdue nations before him”. In 538 BCE, Cyrus commissioned the Judaic prince Sheshbazzar to lead the return to Jerusalem, and carry back the sacred vessels confiscated by the Chaldean empire at the start of the exile. As told in the first chapter of the Book of Ezra, the universal god of the Israelites and the universal god of Cyrus are the same god: “Thus saith Cyrus king of Persia, The LORD [“Yahweh”] God [“Elohim”] of heaven hath given me all the kingdoms of the earth; and he hath charged me to build him an house at Jerusalem, which is in Judah.” Under the patronage of the ardently Zoroastrian king Darius (reigned 521 to 485 BCE), Zorobabel (also transliterated Zerubbabel, as in the Book of Haggai) in ca. 520 BCE led another company of Babylonian Hebrews back to Jerusalem, assumed governorship of the city under royal dispensation, and completed the second Temple. Zorobabel is mentioned in Matthew 1:12-13 as a 29[SIZE=-1]th[/SIZE] generation lineal descendent of Abraham, and a tenth generation lineal ancestor of Joseph (husband of Mary, mother of Jesus of Nazareth), though this account is immediately suspect because it requires fifty year generations between Zorobabel and Joseph. In any case, in the immediate postexilic period, there is no clear boundary, either political or religious, between the Zoroastrian establishment and the tribes of Israel. It was during this period that the Torah was committed to writing. Moreover, the “wise men from the east” of Matthew 2:1, the pilgrims come to Israel to pay homage to the infant Jesus, are in fact emissaries of the Zoroastrian court of Persia (magi), come to honor the child they believe is the Zoroastrian messiah. Regardless of the historicity, this account continues the biblical pattern that considers messianic Judaism and Zoroastrianism to be the same religion. While it might be coincidental, the Star of David, now the centerpiece of the national flag of Israel, was an important symbol in Zoroastrian astrology.

At its mythological root paradise was almost certainly believed to be in the celestial heavens, coming to prehistoric earth only through narrative modification. The words for heaven and for paradise are the same in a great many euroasiatic languages, including the Indo-European languages, Hebrew, and Korean.
As Islamic scholars understand it, the Qur'an places Eden itself in heaven, so that it can only be reached through death (particularly, by martyrdom). Correspondingly, Islamic doctrine holds that the forbidden fruit of Eden was in fact ineffectual, and it was the devil who tempted a mortal Adam to eat it, telling him falsely that it would give him immortality, whereas his betrayal of god simply led god to eject him from paradise.
Thus there are three principal permutations of the myth. In the first, the Sumerian version, a mortal Adam is in an earthly Eden, and a life-giving fruit is not eaten, due to divine trickery. In the Judeo-Christian version, an immortal Adam is in an earthly Eden with two fruit trees, one giving the immortal life of a god, the other a forbidden one giving the vision of a god, eaten at the instigation of a diabolical serpent (divine trickery). In the Islamic version, a mortal Adam is in an ethereal Eden, and a false fruit is eaten at the instigation of the devil. The confusion of earthly and heavenly paradise recurs within and between the extant religious canons (including the Indic canons), facilitating acceptance of the Edenic movement's promise of earthly paradise. For example, in America, some radicalized Muslims are explicit Edenists (this is the Taliyah movement, broached below in the Keeping Eden Green chapter). Though for utopians frank introspection and circumspection is generally alien, they stand to learn a great deal about their movement from an appreciation that in most of the world, for most of history, paradise has been associated with death, and in particular, with the end of life.

 

[England my lionheart]

where did the others come from??

they were always there.

genesis is a myth

we know man existed for roughly 200,000 years not 6000 years
adam and eve were not the first people
man was created magically in 1 day from dirt.
eve was not created from a rib.
cain and able were not the first children
creation is a myth


these non truth's [lies] go on and on and on

In the Qur'an the same thing happens,people just randomly appear

 

[KnightOwl]

Extrapolating from other conversations I've had with the devout, I'll tell you what they would say...

It never says Cain and Abel were the only children. Back then there was not the problems with incest as there is now because the human body was soooo perfect, even interbreeding produced people far superior to today's humans. So we don't know if his wife was his cousin, sister, niece, etc.

The same line about people not mentioned did exist thing comes into play when people try to claim they can date Adam and Eve's creation using the Bible to date things. Those who are Christian or Jewish but not YEC's point out that the geneaologies in Genesis are telescoped and despite our Engliish translation making it look like direct lineages... there would have been extra people in there.

 

[outhouse]

I like genesis


Distribution of materials of Jahwist, Elohist and Priestly sources, as well as Redactor's contribution in the first four books, following Richard Friedman.

For much of the 20th century Wellhausen's hypothesis formed the framework within which the origins of the Pentateuch were discussed, and even the Vatican came to urge that "light derived from recent research" not be neglected by Catholic scholars, urging them especially to pay attention to "the sources written or oral" and "the forms of expression" used by the "sacred writer".[41] Some important modifications were introduced, notably by Albrecht Alt and Martin Noth, who argued for the oral transmission of ancient core beliefs—guidance out of Egypt, conquest of the Promised Land, covenants, revelation at Sinai/Horeb, etc.[42] Simultaneously, the work of the American Biblical archaeology school under William F. Albright seemed to confirm that even if Genesis and Exodus were only given their final form in the first millennium BC, they were still firmly grounded in the material reality of the second millennium.[43] The overall effect of such refinements was to aid the wider acceptance of the basic hypothesis by reassuring believers that even if the final form of the Pentateuch was late and not due to Moses himself, it was nevertheless possible to recover a credible picture of the period of Moses and of the patriarchal age. Hence, although challenged by scholars such as Umberto Cassuto, opposition to the documentary hypothesis gradually waned, and by the mid-twentieth century it was almost universally accepted.[44]

Documentary hypothesis - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

make no mistake,, ,moses work is a patchwork of wishfull thinking and want

Educated people, scholars and historians came up with this information

Can you refute these with something other then your imagination????? or a question???

LOOK you can go about this educated or not, here is both sides of the story so that your not so ignorant to the facts at hand

The Straight Dope: Who wrote the Bible? (Part 1)

Timeline of Old Testament History

 

[outhouse]

The same line about people not mentioned did exist thing comes into play when people try to claim they can date Adam and Eve's creation using the Bible to date things.

it doesnt matter what they think of bible dating it is not relevant, they did not have the slightest clue from 187,000 ish years ago.

Those who are Christian or Jewish but not YEC's point out that the geneaologies in Genesis are telescoped and despite our Engliish translation making it look like direct lineages... there would have been extra people in there.

still doesnt change the historical facts at hand. It never happened as written, and at that period in time the hebrews had very little knowlegde of real history or events due to there lack of a decent written language. Thats why we have sumerian and egyption storys in genesis, because they had a decent written language for there time.

 

[KnightOwl]

outhouse, that is very interesting. It now makes perfect sense why the first part of the 10 commandments is all about worshiping one true god.