There are a number of questions that come to my mind as I study the first five chapters of the Book of Genesis. Questions such as:

• How long did Adam and Eve dwell in the Garden of Eden?
• How old were Cain and Abel at the time of Abel’s murder? (Gen 4:8)
• Who were those that Cain feared would slay him? (Gen. 4:14)
• Where did Cain’s wife come from? (Gen. 4:17)
• How did people live those extremely long lives?

The answer to first two questions is hinted at in Genesis 5:3. “And Adam lived one hundred and thirty years, and begot a son in his own likeness, after his image, and named him Seth...” Genesis 4:25 indicates that Seth was born after the death of Abel. “And Adam knew his wife again, and she bore a son and named him Seth, ‘For God has appointed another seed for me instead of Abel, whom Cain killed.’”  It would be through Seth that the seed of the woman (c.f. Genesis 3:15) would descend: Abraham, Isaac, Jacob, Judah, David and ultimately Jesus Christ. From Genesis 5:3, we see that Adam and Eve were 130 years old when Seth was born and, so obviously, Cain was less than 130 years old. We can also infer that Adam and Eve dwelt in the Garden less than 130 years and Cain was born after their expulsion. We generally assume that Cain was the first-born son, and that Abel was the second, but is that necessarily inferred from the reading of Genesis 4:1-2? It is possible, but I think unlikely, that Cain had older brothers and sisters. It is also possible that Cain and Abel were twins. The Bible never says that Adam “knew” his wife between mentioning the births of each son! Or, they could have been born a year apart. It is also possible that there were brothers and sisters born between the birth of Cain and the birth of Abel.

With these thoughts in mind, please pardon me for the following bit of speculation based upon what we already know to be true:  the age of Adam when Seth was born (130 years old). IF Adam and Eve were cast out of the Garden after only one year, and then Cain was born the next year, then his birth date would have been roughly in year 2, thus making him 128 years old when Seth was born. In those 128 years Cain found a wife and the Earth’s population had grown considerably! Where did all the people come from? Math can be fun! If Eve had one child per year, half boys, and half girls, by the time of Seth’s birth she would have born 129 children! And IF as soon each daughter would reach child-bearing age and be married to one of her brothers they would have started families of their own. For the sake of discussion, let’s assume that Cain was 19 years old when he married in year 21 and that he and his sister-wife had one child per year like their parents, by the time year 130 comes around he could have had as many as 109 children. If Abel had also married at age 19, in the year 22 and his wife gave birth at the same rate, then he could have had as many as 107 children by the time of his death in year 130! If every 2 years after that another set of sibling-spouses began having one child per year, then the population of generations one and two, Adam and Eve’s children and grandchildren, would have been well over 1,000 by the  year 130! That is only counting generations One and Two. Generations Three, Four and Five likely had already begun by this time. How many great-grandchildren, great-great grandchildren, etc. did Adam and Eve by at this time? Also keep in mind, that after Seth, Adam continued having sons and daughters for the next 800 years! (Gen 5:4) The math escapes me here! I think the population could have easily been numbered in the tens of thousands by the year 130. This number would explain why Cain feared being a stranger and vagabond on the earth and that people would seek to harm him.

Another thing that comes to mind is that in those early years, there were brothers and sisters marrying and having children together! (Yuck!) In our time, in virtually every society, this sibling-spouse relationship is very much taboo! The practice of even cousins marrying is taboo in the USA today yet is still practiced in many places around the world. The reason for the taboos against near-relations marrying is Biblically based upon the prohibitions against it in Leviticus 18 and 20. (But this prohibition did not come until at least 2,500 years after creation.) The taboos are in places also for practical reasons because birth defects are much more common with these near-relation relationships. This happens because, after more than 6,000 years since Adam and Eve were created in absolute perfection, the human genetic profile has become increasingly corrupted by the processes of genetic mutation. Generation One, though, (Cain, Abel, Seth, etc.) came from the union of two genetically perfect human beings. They passed their perfectly created genetic material down to their children, which then passed it down to their children and grandchildren, respectively. It is similar to what happens when you make a copy, of a copy, of a copy on a Xerox machine. You will notice that each copy becomes increasingly blurry than its predecessor. The same is true with genetic material that is passed down from one generation to the next. There will be a slight degradation from one generation to the next, and so on. This would also explain why we do not live extremely long lives like Adam or Methuselah.

These are just a few of the questions that came to my mind in reading these earliest accounts of the human family. I hope that I have answered these questions logically and that this article can at least help you to answer any critics of the Biblical narrative that you may encounter! “But sanctify the Lord God in your hearts and always be ready to give a defense to everyone who asks you a reason for the hope that is in you, with meekness and fear.” (1 Peter 3:15)