An argument against the Bible that I have heard very, very often goes like this: If Adam and Eve only had two children, both of them boys, how could everyone in the world be descended from them?
The answer is simple: Before you point out "plot holes" a story, read the WHOLE story. In this case, read just one more page. The Bible says that after the death of Abel, Adam and Eve had another son, Seth. And then it says, Genesis 5:4, that after Seth, Adam and Eve had "other sons and daughters". Both "sons" and "daughters" are plural in the original Hebrew, so at least two of each.
So Adam and Eve had AT LEAST seven children: three named sons, at least two more sons whose names are not given, and at least two daughters whose names are not given.
Side note: Why aren't we told the names of these other children? Because they didn't figure in any important story that the Bible wanted to tell. Cain and Abel were important because they figured in the story of the first murder, Cain the murderer and Abel the victim. Seth is named because he became the new "head of the family" after Abel was killed.Genesis is very abbreviated, like 50 pages to cover 2000 years or more of history, so lots of people get only brief mentions.
So Adam and Eve's children had to marry each other. Yes, that would have been incest. But God did not forbid incest until thousands of years later. And in any case, we routinely recognize exceptions to general laws in extreme situations. If Adam and Eve's children had NOT married each other, the human race would have died out in one generation. If there was some horrible pandemic or war and everyone in the world was killed except for one man and one woman, and they were brother and sister, I think most people would accept that if the human race is not to die out, they have to have children with each other.
© 2024 by Jay Johansen
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