Cain's Wife

Common Doubts about the Bible

Introduction

A. When we speak of "Science versus Faith" we allow the unbeliever to frame the debate as "smart versus stupid." The paranormal advocates do the same thing saying that public schools can teach classes on psychic studies because it is a science and not a religion.

1. Reminds us Bil Maher interviewing "stupid Southerners in Mississippi and Alabama as if to imply that Southerners are conservative because they are stupid.

2. Science is not neutral. The assumptions prejudice the conclusions or interpretations of the evidence.

3. Real Science-4 Kids curriculum used in private "Christians" schools "Did God create humans?"

a. Mt 12:30 Jesus says that we cannot be neutral.

b. "in my opinion any time we present information as "undisputed fact," we have crossed over into "dogma" This includes both scientific "facts" and religious" facts.

-- Does that include the virgin birth and resurrection of Jesus?

B. Let's reframe and answer the suppositions of the unbelievers.

I. Where did Cain get his wife? or "Let us open a door to Theistic Evolution"

A. Debate of the Scopes "Monkey" trial: Clarence Darrow and William Jennings Bryan

1. Generally speaking, Bryan won the debate, but he left unanswered the question of Cain's wife.

2. Carl Sagan wrote "Contact" and the Movie based on the novel... makes the same point.

3. "Inherit the wind" movie about the Scope's Trial

4. Leaves the impression that Christians cannot defend the Biblical Record of Genesis.

-- many Christians refuse to defend the Genesis account and have undermined faith in all of the Bible. The wimpish fall back to Theistic Evolution also leaves the impression that the Bible is mythological and unreliable and useful only as a loose guide to morals. It fails even in that when the young abandon their faith.

B. The point of the question of Cain's wife without serious study of the actual Bible account leaves the impression that there were other extant peoples (after millions of years of evolution). A sort of slip of the Mosaic pen.

C. Bible affirms that Adam was the first and only man.

1. Romans 5:12

2. 1 Cor. 15:45

D. Bible affirms that all human beings descend from and are of ONE Blood: Acts 17:26

E. Bible affirms that Eve was the Mother of ALL Living: Genesis 3:20

1. From Adam's side - Gen. 2:21-24

2. Jesus endorsed the Genesis account: Matt 19:4-6

3. Paul endorsed the Genesis account: Eph 5:31

F. Bible affirms that before Eve, Adam could find no human mate: Genesis 2:20.

G. Chronology of the murder is helpful.

1. Genesis 4:1 Cain was firstborn

2. Genesis 4:25 Seth was born after Cain was murdered... But that when Adam was 130 years old. Could have been nearly 130 years since the birth of Cain.

3. Genesis 5:4 Adam and Eve had sons and daughters after the birth of Cain, that is, brothers and sisters of Cain. Over the next century, the brothers and sisters could have had children or even grandchildren and great grandchildren. Cain could have married any of these women.

4. Genesis 4:3 The sacrifices and subsequent conflict between Can and Abel could have happened anytime in the "in the process of time" that is mentioned in that time context.

H. Genesis 4:17 Cain's wife is called "ishshah" is the same word as "woman" of Genesis 2:23 "from man" or Adam "iysh". Thus the wife or woman of Cain was a descendant of Adam or man. Therefore she had to be sister or neice, etc.

I. Objections

1. Law of Moses prohibited the marriage to close relatives, Levitcus 18-20

-- Law came 400 years later than Abraham who married his half-sister Sarah, Gen 20:12.

-- Abraham was thousands of years after Adam.

2. Biological deformities result from marriage of close relatives.

-- Question of genetics and gene diversity. Original creation of man gave him much more genetic material that man has today. We have genetic mutations and degeneration increasing.

3. Land of Nod implies another civilization of people, Genesis 4:16-17

-- "Nod" means wandering in Hebrew. It was not a place but the curse of a life of wandering as a nomad.

-- Cain was already married when he began his family in the "land of wandering"

4. Who did Cain fear? Genesis 4:14

a. Possibly 100 years of births had already populated the earth with angry relatives of Cain's brother: children, grandchildren, maybe even great grandchildren.

b. Cain had no reason to fear that strangers would avenge the murder of his brother.

II. Darwinism (or Evolution Theory) is the religion of Racism.

A. Racism is based on the imagined sin of inter-racial marriage... or marriage with someone of an inferior race.

1. Before Darwin published "On the origin of species b means of natural selection or the preservation of favoured races in the struggle for life."

2. Previously, "races" was used of peoples of different nations or cultures. The English race or the Irish race...

B. Darwinism is inherently racist.

1. Stephen Jay Gould, "Biological arguments for racism may have been common before 1859, but they increased by orders of magnitude following the acceptance of evolutionary theory."

2. Australian Aborigines were considered the ape-like ancestors of the rest of mankind.

3. African pygmy was displayed, along with an orangutan, in a cage in the Bronx Zoo. His name was Ota Benga. That was in New York City, USA!

4. Congo pygmies once thought to be small ape-like, elfsh creatures that exhibit many ape-like features in their bodies. (Many Dutch and English settlers married pygmies and had children who in turn were not infertile.)

5. Modern science now recognizes that there is biologically only ONE RACE of humans.

6. Most hideous example of contrived racism was Nazism of WWII.

7. Mapping the human genome, genetic material, there is only one race.

The Word "race" should be abandoned.

C. Bible teaching about the races.

1. Acts 17:26 One blood, all human beings.

2. 1 Cor 15:45 All descendants are of one man, Adam, who was created in the image of God, Genesis 1:26-27.

3. Policy on slavery

a. Old Testament moderated a current practice. Slavery had developed out of the borrowing of money and the dilemma of what to do with the prisoners of war.

-- Job 31:13-15 illustrates the OT attitude of a righteous man toward his servants.

b. New Testament did not demand liberation of slaves, but the teachings of Philemon and Colossians caused many to free their slaves beginning in the second century.

c. Most ardent abolitionists of the 1800's were Bible believing. The pulpits rang out condemnation of the evils of slavery. Major cause of the Civil War of the mid 1800's.

-- Remember John Newton's Amazing Grace. And Harriet Beecher Stowe's Uncle Tom's Cabin.

D. "Racial" differences

1. Skin tones and eye/nose patterns are arbitrarily chosen as criteria.

2. There is more variation WITHIN races than BETWEEN races.

a. So-called racial differences are trivial, shallow excuses to build walls between groups.

b. Tissue and blood type matches cross racial lines.

E. Origins of People Groups

1. Human population was reduced 8 with Noah.

2. Genesis 11, the Tower of Babel: languages dispersed men into groups according to their languages, in order to scatter men on the face of the earth.

3. Language and Geography caused unique cultures and isolated gene pools, certain features became dominant in each group.

F. Issue of Marriage

1. The purpose of the Bible prohibition against marriage to the Gentiles as repeated in Malachi 2:15: God seeks godly offspring!

2. The issue was always spiritual. Genealogies were kept to fulfill the prophesies and laws concerning the priesthood and the royal seed of David, ancestor of the Messiah-Christ. Purpose was not primarily carnal or anti-group. God was more concerned about them marrying someone who is a faithful servant of God than what skin shade or cultural background.

3. Raising of children in the Lord requires parents who will both follow the Bible mandates.

-- Isa 38:19 make known God's Truth to the children

-- Eph 6:4 raise them up in the nurture and the admonition of the Lord

-- Gen 18:19 Abraham will command his children that hey keep the way of the Lord.

4. Among the ancestors in the genealogies of Jesus are the names of two Gentile women: Rahab and Ruth.

a. Rahab was actually of the Canaanite race of the "cursed" Ham. (which of course never was a reference to skin color.

b. Rahab's marriage into the tribe of Judah was approved of by God: Matthew 1

c. Ruth was a Moabitess.

III. Dinosaurs

(Some have lost their faith over the apparent lack of mention in the Bible of dinosaurs.)

A. The word "Dinosaur" is not mentioned in the Bible because it was a term not invented until 1841. by Sir Richard Owen.

B. Current evolutionary dogma asserts that "dinosaurs" walked the earth 235 million years ago, before any human being existed.

1. Their fossils are found in layers from millions of years ago.

2. They have been extinct for 65 million years.

C. If you accept the Bible, men and dinosaurs lived together from the beginning.

1. Genesis 1:24-25 created on the same day or at least the same week.

2. Job 40:15-24 Job had knowledge of living dinosaurs in his day.

3. Survived even the Flood of Noah, being kept alive on the ark.

D. If you start with the Bible, all becomes simple, but if you start with the assumption of atheists and secularists, it prejudices all conclusions.

1. Rom 12:1-2 our service to God is rational

2. Prov 1:7 fear of God is the beginning of KNOWLEDGE

3. Prov 9:10 fear of God is the beginning of WISDOM

E. Genesis 1:21 "great sea monsters" -- tannin, same word as dragons elsewhere

1. Ps 74:13 dragons in the waters

2. Isa 27:1 dragon in the sea

3. Job 41 leviathan, breathing fire

4. Isa 30:6 flying serpent

5. Job 40:15-19 moves his tail like a cedar (behemoth)

6. Sumer: 2,000 BC Gilgamesh killed a dragon

7. Alexander the Great, generals report in India a people who worshiped huge hissing reptiles kept in caves.

8. China: dragon stories. prominent in their pottery.

9. England's story of St. George slew a dragon in a cave.

10. 10th Century Irishman wrote of a creature which had to be a "stegosaurus" before the name was invented.

11. 1500's European science book: Historia Animalium listed several living animals we would call dinosaurs.

a. May 13, 1572 near Bologna,Iraly a peasant killed a small dragon/dinosaur.

12. Mexican Mayan and Peruvian Incas made idols and painted the skin colors and designs of dinosaurs along with other more familiar animals.