Adam and Eve??

Caleo always good to look at these issues.

Jesus said "I am the truth" so I guess we agree on God being the absolute truth.

Artemisia Gentileschi and Caravaggio both painted the Judith and Holofernes story.

(Just in case anyone from ages ago is interested)

And here's an article where there are many many more:

www.currentaffairs.org/2018/09/ranked-10-paintings-of-judith-beheading-holofernes

HolySox, Jesus of Nazareth is extremely credible because he lived what he preached all during his life and death.

Going back to the OP - I heard another answer to where did the wife come from? In those days every birth produced 6 babies including some girls.
Also other nations were being created at the same time so some marriages were from outside of the family.
So God only knows - literally.

It's a myth, meant to be taken as a kind of poetry, and not analyzed literally. If we do that with the Bible, it's largely a lot of nonsense.

Example: Noah built a boat big enough to hold two of each animal on earth, and then God destroyed all the rest of the animals plus mankind, because the people had been "bad" and needed to be punished? And what about all the animals who live in the sea? Did they drown also?

It's kind of fun to estimate how many whoppers there are in that story! It sounds like something a 5-year-old would write!

The question about where did the women come from that Cain married is an old conundrum. Of course there's no answer. There was probably no Cain, and no Adam and Eve either. It's just a poetic fairy tale.

In the book of Proverbs wisdom is personified as a woman . Just saying.

If you want to understand the creation myths literally, then there are three obvious possibliities :

Either Cain and Abel had sisters, whose names have not come down to us, and had children with them, or they had a child with their mother, or they were not acutally the only people on earth.

The first two possiblities later generations consider incestuous and wrong, but could be explained by them having no other way to obey the injunction to be fruitful and multiply!

The Creation story we read in the bible is the explanation given by one religious tradition originally. Presumably there were other people on earth at the time, with other traditions and Adam and Eve's sons, or at least Cain and Seth, as Cain had killed Abel probably before Abel married anyone, can have married women from another tribe.

Well if you actually read the Bible Genesis 5:4 you will see that after Seth, Adam lived a further 800 years ‘and had other sons and daughters’.

More interestingly Genesis 6:2 tells us that “the sons of God*(the Nepholim) saw that the *daughters of men were beautiful and lay with them as those chose”.

Make of that what you will.

Well if the “older lady” can believe that Eve was made from one of Adams ribs, surely the question of further procreation is a mere technicality?

It's like a long drawn out fairy story. I'd take it with a large pinch of salt, as my mother used to say.

Cain and Able, Cain is the one that murdered his brother Able. Cain went East to the land of Nod and took a wife. Land of Nod was east of Eden. Eden was in the palimar plateau area which is western china there he took a wife of the oriental people already established there for 1,000s of years prior to Adam and Eve and Cain.

Well if there were already tribes of people before Adam and eve pollinsworth where did they all come from ? and why then did eve have to come from a rib Adam would have had plenty of women to choose from
I don’t get any of it, it’s beyond me, anyone can make any interpretation of anything in it so what is the point of it all ?
Some people live by the bible so what do they live by ?

Bluebelle I don't understand the old testament at all. I (try to) live by the teachings of Jesus.

Well I don’t Adam and Eve it.

If anyone is interested there is a very good App you can get called the Bible Project, I listen to the podcasts, their series called The Creation Series has really helped me understand the creation story and especially the early parts of Genesis. It helps to understand that the Bible is ancient literature and it is helpful to read it as such, all parts of the Old and New Testament lead to Jesus. There is another series on Bible project on how to read the Bible. The Bible is not a rule book it is a revealing of God’s character and his love for us. There are some terrible stories in there but terrible things have always happened and will keep happening until Jesus returns.

This thread is interesting to me as it includes something I said in 2011 in one of my former incarnations. I didn't realise I had been on gransnet that long!

It must be lovely to have a solid belief very comforting to believe in life ever after etc etc I think it’s all to do with the brain and whether it has scientific or imagination leaning

All I can do is live by my own rules and I know I ve failed miserable many times and hope I live on in the minds of my children and grandchildren and then unless we ve done something spectacular ( like Stephen Hawkins or others who go down in history) your memory will be gone and no one will ever know you even existed ….An ant …. quite depressing really

Agree entirely with BlueBelle. I cannot fathom blind faith at all and don’t want to upset believers with my views. Unknown before birth and forgotten after death just about sums it up for me.

Not forgotten though, surely?

It's the way people seem to pick and choose what bits of the bible they want to believe. Question any of it - such as the whole Adam and Eve thing - and they'll say, 'oh, it's just a story, it's not meant to be taken literally', then in the next breath, tell you' the bible says 'thou shalt not kill' or whatever to justify their arguments against abortion, as just one example.

Not immediately Merlotgran but only a generation or so later. Talking about loved lost ones keeps their memory alive, but DGS2 born after my DH died won’t have any first hand knowledge - just stories from his mummy and me.
Maybe the phrase should be changed from forgotten to not remembered - if that’s more appropriate.

Thanks for resurrecting (again!) a very interesting thread which I hadn't seen before. As people have said, the The Old Testament is a never ending mystery. It has multiple layers and threads, and you cannot just read a story and take it literally. There is much that is unsaid as well as what is said. Adam and Eve is such a fascinating story because we can never quite understand whether there is any truth in it or whether it was imagined to explain the mystery of creation.

Georgesgran

Not immediately Merlotgran but only a generation or so later. Talking about loved lost ones keeps their memory alive, but DGS2 born after my DH died won’t have any first hand knowledge - just stories from his mummy and me.
Maybe the phrase should be changed from forgotten to not remembered - if that’s more appropriate.

I don’t mean loved ones. History ensures that the only forgotten people are the ones we never heard of in the first place

My father was sent to Sunday school three times a day and he didn't know the answer. It's simply a fiction to satisfy the uneducated and naive who are more inclined to believe in jam tomorrow religious twaddle.