The Write Place

The question asked so often, and answered by the sceptic ad nauseum that the biblical answer is almost drowned out by sheer repetition of the question.

The reality is scripture already answers the question by the time Cain comes onto the scene.

Genesis 3:20

“The man called his wife’s name Eve, because she was the mother of all living. “

The bible isn’t especially interested in the question because it answers it already in Genesis 3:20, and it is concerned with the question of the chosen seed promised as a deliverer (Genesis 3:15). In fact, the Greek translation of the Old Testament calls Eve Zoe (ζωή), the Greek word for life to tell us she is the mother of all human life. When Cain goes off it doesn’t tell us how much time passed before he knew his wife (Genesis 4:17), and it is possible the other children Adam and Eve had (Genesis 5:4) are not chronologically after Cain murdered Abel.

This explanation compares well to the alternatives.

The objector usually makes the claim regarding the charge of incest. The argument goes the relationship would have been incestuous, and produced nonviable, or soon nonviable children. Their alternative however is that the origin of humanity, and all life began with a single celled organism. It does not take much to see the real issue of incest would be immediate. The issue would be no better as soon as this organism could possibly be capable of sexual reproduction, with it’s mate being an exact duplicate minus a different bodied sex randomly mutated, and the question of viability would be immediate.

This solution would also make all life merely a random assembly of protein and leave the difference between man and animal being only a mechanical difference in how that protein is arranged. All things become a related family, and just a family of protein. Humans therefore are no more dignified than anything else in creation, whether you are a Christian or not.

A frequent Christian explanation I have heard, often assuming the incest genetic limit objection as true, is that there were other people outside of Adam’s line. But the rest of scripture contradicts this claim. Jesus and Paul reference Genesis 1 and 2 as history Matthew 19:3-5, Romans 5:12-21 where Adam and Eve are the only humans and parents of all humanity. Further we are told God has made us all of one blood, Acts 17:26. The testimony of scripture is that humanity is one family, rooted in the line of Adam and Eve.

Likewise, this accommodation also has horrific implications for human rights. The human race being split in two by lineages leads to a logical ability to divide humanity. One family at the beginning becomes fallen, the other not. It opens up the ability to argue who is more of Adam or less, who has what rights, who is more or less culpable for sin, who’s nature or of what amount did Jesus take on and so on. Either we are all of one and the same Adamic lineage or we are not capable of having the same savior or rights.

What is left out is the near certainty of immediate genetic perfection in the creation of life by an all-knowing creator. God created all life with the purpose of filling the earth, and God says so specifically about human life Genesis 1:28. It would be a serious oversight for God to simply forget this and neglect to include the potential in his original creation. This is reflected in the surprising (to some) ability of many animals to continue to crossbreed across species (and with children who can bear children of their own), indicating they had a common mating pair as their ancestors (such as bears).

Biblical examples and the concept genetic bottleneck (as explained here and here) actually help serve to illustrate this, displaying this exact concept as you would expect to find it if biblical history is true. We see the life span of humanity takes a nosedive after the flood, after only Noah’s family was left alive. That radical reduction in the human genetic pool would naturally reduce the genetic information left. Take a genetically perfect population and reduce it down to eight people and you will feel the effects of such a drop with an increase in disease and a drop in life expectancy.

This explains why the arrival of the marital laws regarding incest are only given in Leviticus 18. There are examples of marriages that would later be considered invalid in biblical law, including the parents of Moses himself (Exodus 6:20). After a genetic bottleneck, we would expect inbreeding to become an issue at some point. It would appear that it was about the time of Moses God saw fit to make a prohibition against it.

While an interesting question, I hope I have demonstrated how weak an objection the question of where Cain got his wife is. As an objection, it reads a post fall and post flood condition back into the original creation. The bible is clear, and as always has been, it’s account of history fits reality the best, effectively explaining the world we live in.