• FourPacketsOfPeanuts@lemmy.world
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    1 year ago

    It literally says “Adam and Eve had other sons and daughters” in Gen 5:4. Which doesn’t improve the situation, but at least makes it biologically possible. (Except for where Cain’s wife comes from).

    • turmacar@lemmy.world
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      1 year ago

      Cain is also worried about people killing him after he’s banished. Genesis chapter 6 talks about the “Sons of God” finding the “daughters of humans” beautiful.

      The bible treats Adam n’ family like Greek demi-gods or Norse giants that mingle with humans who came from “gestures vaguely”.

      • FourPacketsOfPeanuts@lemmy.world
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        1 year ago

        It was probably intended as an origin myth just for Semitic peoples as to why they’re holier than the pagan rabble around them and it just lost its way a bit and ended up confused

        Then the NT comes and doubles down on the whole human race explicitly coming from Adam. Now that I think about it, I can’t think of an OT reference explicitly saying everyone’s from Adam? Maybe the ancient Jews just always knew genesis wasn’t supposed to explain everything?

          • FourPacketsOfPeanuts@lemmy.world
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            1 year ago

            People say there are two genesis creation myths “mashed” together. I think this is true, but not really giving enough credit to the people doing the mashing who I think - as the rest of the literature pans out - not generally in the habit of writing directly contradictory things (usually you have to dig deeper for mistakes, but blatant surface level ones are not so common). They didn’t have science, but they knew how stories worked. I think it’s possible the original editor, when joining the myths together, intended the “man” created in myth 1 (the sixth day) to be understood as humanity in general. And myth two following on immediately is the specific creation of Adam on the eighth day. That would at least explain why Cain’s wife is referred to so casually (as well as the implied peoples Cain is afraid of)

            • maynarkh@feddit.nl
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              1 year ago

              That’s what I mean, ChatGPT recombines existing stuff without knowing and caring about a larger context. It seems the same thing happened with the Bible, I guess other “holy books” as well. It’s not really a dig at the Bible, more like an interesting parallel between the mechanisms.

        • Lux@lemmy.blahaj.zone
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          1 year ago

          One interpretation is that 6th day creation is non adam people, and adam was created on the 8th day

          • FourPacketsOfPeanuts@lemmy.world
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            1 year ago

            Yes! Surprised I’ve not seen that brought up more often. Even if it was an editor working with two origin myths and joining them together, reading it that way at least gives them some credit…