h2g2 The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy: Earth Edition

The Adam and Eve / incest question came up in other forums.

My question is this (and feel free to correct me):

Either the offspring of Adam and Eve did partake in incestual sex or there were other people around for them to procreate with.

If there was no incest does this not negate the whole concept of original sin?

I'm not pushing any agendas here but am genuinely curious as to peoples thoughts on the matter.

BTW, i liked the article

There certainly is plenty of opportunity for interpretation in the Bible, and this opportunity has certainly been liberally exercised over a long, long period of time.

I am no biblical scholar, but I had a chat to a Jewish friend of mine about the use of the plural pronouns in Genesis - eg "Let us make man in our own image" and the response may have some relevance here.

Interestingly, the pronoun "he" appears not to be part of the original Hebrew text, but there is no doubt that the word translated as "God" is in fact plural and, apparently, means "gods in the ordinary sense", whatever that is supposed to mean! Sometimes it is apparently used to mean angels. So, perhaps, and I am by no means an expert on this, a number of men and women were created "in our image" by the "gods in the ordinary sense" and perhaps it was Adam and Eve who were created by the Lord God? This would then have meant that there were plenty of sons and daughters of men "available" without the need for incest.

As I said, there is plenty of room for interpretation.

After the great flood the only people to have survived are Noah and his family. Again the Incest Debate raises it's head or were there other survivors and if so then the earht was not as clensed as we were led to believe.

Fair point.

Interestingly, I read an article .... (somewhere, sorry can't recall now) that suggested that the story of the great flood may have arisen from the broaching of connecting points such as the straits of Gibraltar and the Dardenelles, as sea levels rose after the last ice age. Apparently, there is some evidence on the sea floor of the effect of rushing water that is consistent with a large dam breaking.

This, of course, is not consistent with 40 days and nights of rain (although it could have been coincidental), and it is not necessarily exactly the same timing, but I think it is interesting nonetheless. It would also make the flood something that would have been experienced on a relatively global scale, especially at lower altitudes.

I doubt that rushing water would have made it all the way down here to Australia, although we may well have had some of our own.

Re the earlier point on other people being around in adam and eves time, this gets back to my original question on original sin.

Do any of you know if the tower of bable was before Noah or after?

Australia certainly did have the equivalent type of event when ocean levels rose - for example, Sydney Harbour used to be a river valley.

Not too sure but i think it was pre noah.

Babel is post Noah.

No incest necessary; Adam and Eve had two sons, Cain and Abel. Cain left home and married a wife (Gen 4.16) before Adam and Eve had their next child, Seth; this suggests that Adam was not created the first anthropoid, but the first anthropoid with the magical power of language (see Gen. 3.22). The story if read this way ties in fine with modern evolutionary theory, though in the modern version Adam never met Eve; they were the father and mother of all people now on earth but they lived at different times. Steve Jones has a new book on the subject (out now or soon).

Clive Ponting makes a good case for the bible "creation" story coinciding with the beginning of settled farming (c 10-20,000 years ago), in A Green History of the World (excellent book).

More to the point of the present article, I can't agree that Revelation is good fun. It has landed the Catholic Church in hot water, following its advice (ch 22.11: "He that is unjust, let him be unjust still: and he which is filthy, let him be filthy still . . .")

Thanks for that, so no incest, therefore not everyone was born with original sin either, which would seem to open a whole new can of worms.

"Original sin" is also compatible with modern evolutionary theory: since all our instincts were evolved in a hunter-gatherer situation that lasted hundreds of thousands of years, or millions (depending on what you're measuring), they frequently conflict with the requirements of living in settled farming-based communities.

That's it. Following your nomadic impulses = sin.

and there i was thinking it had something to do with eating apples

And talking Snakes

on a more serious note

I'm interested in all those who have pointed out books / theories relating to the history behing the 'myths' of the creation story. It does seem to make some sort of sense, many religious teachers i have had discussions with will happily concede that Adam & Eve, for example, should not be taken literally.

I'm starting to harp now i suspect, but i would have thought that the premise of original sin is one of the foundations of the Christian world and if it doesn't exist for all people then the whole religion is starting to look like a house of cards...

I'm a catholic and speaking as such there has been a huge turn away from the church. Not necesarily the religion but the whole notion of going to church. I think it not only has to do with a general feeling of apathy but also the two faced preaching of the Priesthood. Where they are up on the pulpit preaching one thing but behing the scenes they ignore their own preaching. Also all you have to do is look at the history of the catholic church and it's disregard for the general public. During the middle ages when the general population had very little the church took that to build cathedrals all over europe. Not to mention what the early missionarys did in the name of "GOD".

I think Homer Simpson said it best when in a dream he was having a conversation with god and was asked the question why does he not want to go to mass. "Why should i go to be told all the reasons why i'm going to hell"

gotta love the man

I read somewhere that the concept of hell was not part of the original teachings of the church, but was brought in as a way of controlling the general populace.

I think that this is right.

I understand that the word sometimes translated as hell specifically refers to the perpetually burning garbage dump fires outside of the walls of the city, into which all manner of rubbish, including the bodies of criminals, was thrown.

Interesting. I hadn't heard that before but it seems to make sense from a historical perspective. So this was then changed somewhere along the way to the version of hell that we now have?

A lot of Christian teachings come from the collapse of the Western Empire. Between 300-350AD (I think) the number of schools in the West halved! Christianity stopped talking about loving one's neighbour and switched to basic morals (which was all the Visigoths, Ostragoths and Ultragoths could understand).

Consider in 300AD, they could build a 50mile aquaduct with a continual gradiant without using arithmetic (roman numerals aren't great for addition, let alone division) - by 400AD a round hut with a thatched roof was a supreme architectural achievement. Christian teaching has taken 1700 years to extract itself from that intellectual mire and isn't free yet.

Original sin (in a Western European sense) is a product of the imagination of St Augustine of Hippo. The Eastern church never bought into the same conception through sex=original sin.

PT

There is a common view among conservative Christians that Adam and Eve did have daughters (you may have noticed that female offspring are raraly named in the Old Testament unless something important happens with them) and that these daughters are the wives of Cain, Abel and Seth. Incest was not forbidden in the OT until much later. Many years after the fall close family marriages were still common. Abraham married his half sister and Isaac married his cousin.

Answers In Genesis has a really great website that explains a literal scholar's view the creation of man, the fall, the flood and the tower of Babel. (Which happened after the flood.) http://www.answersingenesis.org/intro.asp

thanks for that. I will check it out when i get a chance.

Re the incest thing, it would have started all over again after the flood so presumably it was still okay then?