A Command of Incest?

[Guest]

Tk How else would they multiply and 'replenish the Earth? since there was only two human beings?
some things stay the same through the different administrations is obvious, like taking another persons life out of jealousy.

[_Mort_Coyle]

May I offer a different viewpoint?

It's funny, last Sunday I was conducting a service at the local jail and was teaching on Cain and Abel and after the service one of the inmates came up to me and asked the exact same questions.

Why do we assume that Adam & Eve, Cain & Abel are supposed to be taken literally? Why do we try to read Genesis 1 as a scientifically accurate description of the origins of life on earth? Is it because we think it has to be literal in order to be true?

Are you familiar with the story of the boy who cried wolf? Is it a true story? We don't really know if its historically true, but it certainly does convey truth! In ancient Hebrew thought, something that is true doesn't mean necessarily that it corresponds to a set of empirical observations. In Hebrew thought truth means something that can be relied upon - something that fulfills its purpose successfully. If I could prove that the story of the boy who cried wolf was not a historical event, would it diminish the truth that the story conveys?

Tradition says that Genesis (and the rest of the Pentateuch) was written by Moses. It was originally written for the Israelites who had come out of Egypt and were headed towards Canaan. God, though Moses, was making the refugee slave Hebrews into a nation. They were being taught in the wilderness wandering who God was and, in light of God, who they were.

Prior to entering the promised land, they were to be offered a covenant with God, which would include the giving of Torah. Deuteronomy begins and ends with the offer to accept and obey the covenant (thus choosing life) or reject and disobey the covenant (thus choosing death). If they rejected, or failed to keep, the covenant, they would be ejected from the land.

These are the people who first heard the story of Adam and Eve, who walked with God but chose to mistrust and disobey God because something God had forbidden looked very enticing. The Israelites in Canaan would be surrounded by people who were more advanced, culturally and technologically, and it would be very enticing to take on their ways. The Torah was to act as a hedge about them. If they kept the Law it would prevent them from assimilating into the various Canaanite tribes.

God encourages Cain to master his sin, but Cain murders his brother and is banished from the land. The Israelites learn this story and then are given the Law which includes "Thou shall not kill".

These stories, Adam & Eve, Cain & Abel, etc. are easily passed from generation to generation in the ancient oral culture of the Israelites. They help to deeply ingrain who God is and what the essence of the Law is into the collective psyche of the Hebrew people.

At the risk of being overly cryptic, here's an anecdote: A man attended a performance of the greatest dancer that ever lived. It was perhaps her greatest performance. The man was so moved by the dance that he used his influence to get backstage and meet the dancer in her dressing room after the show. Upon being introduced that man expressed how beautiful he thought the performance had been and asked the dancer if she would explain what the dance meant. The dancer replied, "My dear sir, if I could explain it I wouldn't have to dance it."

Likewise, I think maybe we try too hard to get some Biblical texts to explain things that they never were intended to explain.

[Guest]

JF-- i'm not sure what you mean-- i agree that "incest" was likely necessary (barring djeaton's scenario) in order to be fruitful and multiply. because of this practical necessity, i dont believe God considered it a sin 1) because if He did it wouldnt make much sense given the command to be fruitful and multiply and 2) it wouldn't be very nice.

TK

[Guest]

MORT--

all i can say when i read your post is "wheww." certainly it is possible that adam and eve and cain and abel etc etc are allegories. and believe me i dont have an emotional attachment to the 24 hr creation day view, in fact i personally believe otherwise(although not 100%!). but i have never got to the point of believing that God had Moses make up names and stories, relate them as fact, and then build much of the rest of the Bible on these ideas. When Aesop told a fable, i am pretty sure that his listeners knew they were fables(i.e there really wasnt a foot race between talking hares and rabbits). this wouldnt seem true in the scenario you have posed. my question (at least for the past several years) has been where Adam and eve and cain and abel etc fit into a framework of a billions of years old earth framework. but i havent ever considered than adam etc werent real people. while this is technically possible (because i wasnt there to witness it myself), when Paul, etc talks about adam it seems that he believed adam was a real person. of course paul was a smart guy and may have been arguing the allegory but this seems doubtful.

i must say that this forum is incredible. every day i read something i have never considered (and i do a lot of reading and listening). keep it up everyone!

TK

[Guest]

Moses informed the people he was giving them the law "for their own good". There is inarguably much in the law that was of great benefit; things that could not be known at that time. Incest is obviously, to us, a cause of great potential harm. Could it be that Adam and Eve's children were flawless genetically and thus incest not a problem at that time, so not yet forbidden?

Interestingly, some years back I read in the newspaper (secular) that it had been proven genetically that all humans were descended from one woman!

[_Mort_Coyle]

Hi TK, thanks for the feedback. I understand and appreciate your discomfort.
Let me follow up by asking you this: Did all of the people and events depicted in Jesus' parables actually exist? Many Christians think so. Or did he make up stories for the purpose of conveying deeper truths? Were His listeners hung up on whether or not a character in one of Jesus' stories was an historical person or not?

Likewise, I don't think Moses presented his stories as fact. He used established cultural genres of oral storytelling to convey truths. I don't think his listeners were hung up on whether or not Adam and Eve had bellybuttons and where Cain's wife came from. The point of the story, in Jesus or Moses case, is what it tells us about God and ourselves.

Of course, I could be totally wrong!

[Guest]

Hi Mort,

The problem I have with this theory is that the lineages presented in Genesis, beginning with Adam, eventually lead into people we know are real (like Abram, Noah, etc.). So where would you draw the line between fictitious and historical?

Also, it seems to me that the Jews did take Adam and Eve as literal people, at least at the time of Jesus and the early church. Paul's contrast of Jesus with Adam was already mentioned. But besides that, why would Luke place Adam in Jesus' geneology if he were not a historical person (Luke 2)?

[Guest]

Hi MORT-- no, I dont believe that the people in the parables of Jesus were necessarily real people.. some may have been. but i don't believe that the hearers assumed they were real people. Jesus didnt say "i once knew this guy David" or something like that when prefacing his parables (although he did use the name lazarus in one of his parables). so i dont think his hearers took them as literally true stories. but when Jesus talked about Noah, and Jonah, etc as historical figures, that is different.

TK

[Guest]

What was Genesis trying to tell us? That God created the universe, and wanted a family and that family stared with two people created. The women was then fooled by the Devil and the man was right there and partook in what ever the one thing that God told them not to do. Thereby turning over dominion to God's arch enemy, who was once by the way the most perfect of God's creations. Mort cole I think you are far out there on this one, the point being man was created to make the family of God from two people. Sheese.

[Guest]

"Was incest a sin before the commandment in Leviticus 18?"

No.

"If so, when did it become a sin?"

When the law was given Dane.

Hugh McBryde