Arnold B. Murray (1929-2014 AD) was the pastor of The Shepherd’s Chapel, the official website of which has a page titled In Answer to Critics that was written by Murray. The relevant portions read as follows:
What about teaching Serpent Seed? I make no apology for teaching the Word of God. In Matthew 13, our Lord and Saviour explains the Parable of the Sower directly to His disciples. He is very explicit about exactly who the sower of the bad seed really is. Matthew 13:37-39 states, “He (Jesus) answered and said unto them, He that soweth the good seed is the Son of Man. The field is the world; the good seed are the children of the kingdom; but the tares are the children of the wicked one; the enemy that sowed them is the devil; the harvest is the end of the world; and the reapers are the angels.”
The issue, that Murray is not addressing, is that there are two seeds but they have nothing to do with genetics but with actions, with sin, with rebellion. Such is the case in 1 John 3 (see Reply to Zen Garcia on the serpent seed of Satan theory) John 8 (see Did Jesus teach the serpent seed of Satan theory in John 8?) and Matthew 13 (see Did Jesus teach the serpent seed of Satan theory in the parable of the sower?).
Arnold Murray continued by noting:
Let no one tell you Christ was speaking in a parable here for He was carefully explaining to His disciples the real meaning of the parable He had previously spoken to the multitude. He talked with them in private, and He used language that a child could understand. Christ’s teaching of the seed of the devil (or serpent) was nothing new, it was taught from the beginning of Scripture – Genesis.
Here again, the issue is just what is Murray getting at; that the serpent seed of Satan are those who are in sin or that they have Satan’s genetics via Eve and Cain?
Well, Arnold Murray further notes:
In Genesis 3:15 God is speaking to the serpent, “and I will put enmity between thee and the woman, and between thy seed and her seed; it shall bruise thy head, and thou shall bruise his heel.” The bruising of the heel took place when Christ was nailed to the Cross.
And finally, for those who still want further proof as to who the serpent really is; we read in Revelation 12:9, “and the great Dragon was cast out, that old Serpent, called the Devil, and Satan, which deceiveth the whole world.” Now can anyone with eyes to see and ears to hear have any doubt or confusion about Satan’s own seed?
Indeed, Satan has seed but at least in this reply to his critics, Murray is not very specific however, we can learn more about his views on this issue via his Genesis Lecture 3 wherein after quoting “Gen 2:9And out of the ground made the LORD God to grow every tree that is pleasant to the sight, and good for food; the tree of life also in the midst of the garden, and the tree of knowledge of good and evil” Arnold Murray states:
…the tree of life is a different subject. The tree of the knowledge of good and evil is a different “type”, let’s put it that way. The tree of life, the tree that gives life, is Jesus Christ. The tree of the knowledge of both good, I mean Satan knows how to be good, he was created good but he is evil. That tree happens to be Satan…I’m going to give you quite an education in trees, symbolism, and what actually happened in the garden.
We can also consider Arnold Murray’s Genesis Lecture 5:
Why then, why is Cain not in Adam’s genealogy? Because he’s not of his genes…Now, had Cain been of the genes of Adam, he would have been in Adam’s genealogy, but he’s not because he wasn’t….Open you minds if you don’t understand, put it on a shelf and just come along with us….Cain, which is not of his genes.
Murray had actually referenced Genesis 4:1 which states, “Adam knew Eve his wife; and she conceived, and bare Cain.” He comments thusly:
We know that conception took place and the prior chapter and here we have another conception from Adam. Not understanding the word “again” as it is used here, “she again bare his brother Abel”. I want you to look at that word in the Hebrew. Let’s call it up. It’s: H3254 yasaph – yaw-saf’ A primitive root;
Here Murray quotes a lexicon:
…to add or augment (often adverbially to continue to do a thing): – add, X again, X any more, X cease, X come more, + conceive again, continue, exceed, X further, X gather together, get more, give moreover, X henceforth, increase (more and more), join, X longer (bring, do, make, much, put), X (the, much, yet) more (and more), proceed (further), prolong, put, be [strong-] er, X yet, yield.
Now, just what is it that Eve continued to do? She not only conceived again but did so through Adam.
Following the thought, the context, the action, Genesis 4:1-2 state:
And Adam knew Eve his wife; and she conceived, and bare Cain, and said, I have gotten a man from the LORD. And she again bare his brother Abel. And Abel was a keeper of sheep, but Cain was a tiller of the ground.”
So what will Arnold Murray do with this fact? He elucidates the Hebrew and comments thusly:
And it means to continue. Now if she’s giving birth to Cain and she continues in labor, what does that mean? It means that she continued in the labor of having delivered Cain and delivered Abel. They were twins but not by the same pregnancy. Identical twins are conceived in one conception, one pregnancy I should say. They’re both in the same bag of water. Whereas twins that are not identical, they are two separate pregnancies that happen at two separate times and they are in separate bags of water. Now any of you that might have a hang-up on that, talk with to your medical doctor. He will assure you that is correct.
It is odd that Murray seemed to read 4:1 and 4:2 as continuing events—birthing Cain with Abel coming out after him as twins—but he actually states that they are not only “two separate pregnancies” but that they did “happen at two separate times” which is what the text implies (with Adam fathering both Cain and Abel as per the Bible).
Well, Arnold Murray actually provides a reference to “DDC, DNA Diagnostics Center: http://www.dnacenter.com/media/twins-different-fathers.html” which is a page titled, “Paternity Testing: Twins With Different Fathers” (Posted May 22, 2008 AD) which reads, in part:
There are two possible scenarios when the paternity of a set of twins is in question, depending on whether the twins are Identical or Fraternal. Because Identical Twins have exactly the same DNA, they would therefore have the same father…fraternal twins may have different DNA profiles because they come from two different eggs that have been fertilized by different sperm cells… In the case of fraternal twins, a woman has ovulated more than once in a given month, thus releasing more than one egg. If this occurs and each egg is fertilized by sperm cells from the same man, fraternal twins are formed that have the same father…
While extremely rare, it is possible that each egg is fertilized by sperm cells from two different men, thus forming twins with two different fathers, called bi-paternal twins.
You can see how easy it is to get bogged down in semantics as the term twins implies that they are born at the same time. They may be “two separate pregnancies” but, of course, this depends on how one defines pregnancy such as, in this case, two eggs and two different father’s sperm. Also, just what is meant by that the fertilizations “happen at two separate times”; minutes apart, days apart? And what is being referred to as happening at separate times; the sex act, the fertilization, the pregnancy, the birthing?
We will see whence Murray got this strange idea of twins but for now, he continues thusly:
We even have records of a person having non-identical twins that are of two separate races. So it’s not a medical mystery. It’s something quite frankly—if there’s a set of twins that are not identical; this is what happens (separate bags of water). I’m not saying by separate fathers; that’s separate conceptions (as with Eve’s twins having separate fathers). So what do we have here? We have a set of twins; but at two separate conceptions. How do we know that? Because Cain is not in Adams genealogy (period).
The reason that Cain is not in Adam’s genealogy is that as per Genesis 4:16-17, “And Cain went out from the presence of the LORD, and dwelt in the land of Nod, on the east of Eden. And Cain knew his wife; and she conceived…” The separation was not genetic but geological; Cain moved and started his own family.
The fact is that the interpretive idea that Cain and Abel were twins was invented circa 1,500 to 2,000 years after the Book of Genesis was written (depending on when one dates Genesis). It is found with The Targum of Palestine, Commonly Entitled the Targum of Jonathan Ben Uzziel, on the Book of Genesis. Targumim (of which there are a few) combine Aramaic translations of the Hebrew along with paraphrases which often simply insert invented comments into the text of the Bible that simply do not exist in the Hebrew.
Following the thought, Arnold Murray references Genesis 4:10, “What hast thou done? the voice of thy brother’s blood crieth unto me from the ground” and states:
In the manuscripts this word “blood” is plural meaning “bloods”. Why? All the children that Abel would have given birth to, those genes also cried out from the ground. Because when you murder someone you don’t only just murder that person you murder all the offspring that would have come from that person.
Well, he is even wrong on this simple point as the Hebrew word in the text is dam (Strong’s H1818). What makes a Hebrew word plural is an im ending for masculine words and ot for feminine—dam is neither.
We will leave off with another of Murray’s statements as he quotes Genesis 5:3 thusly, “And Adam lived an hundred and thirty years, and begat [a son] in his own likeness, after his image; and called his name Seth” and states:
Do you find Cain listed there? No you do won’t. Do you know why? This is a chronological giving of the genes of Adam. Why isn’t Cain there? He was not of Adams genes. He was not Adam’s son. It’s very difficult to accept that (for some), but if you were not to understand it, then as Jesus said concerning the parable of the tears which the wicked (one) planted in the world, if you don’t understand it you won’t understand any of my (Christ’s) parables, Mark, chapter four. So it’s up to you. Let God’s word speak, and God gave you a brain.
I wrote specifically on the issue of the tears referencing the parallel text in Matthew 13, see: Did Jesus teach the serpent seed of Satan theory in the parable of the sower?. In short, the parable says nothing about genetics nor much about the issues involved in the debate over the serpent seed of Satan. Arnold Murray begins by re-writing, as it where, Genesis and then overlays that eisegetical interpretive template over Matthew 13 / Mark 4.
The most relevant New Testament texts on this issue are John 8 and 1 John 3 about which I wrote here Did Jesus teach the serpent seed of Satan theory in John 8 and Reply to Zen Garcia on the serpent seed of Satan theory.
You will find that those texts, as well as YHVH’s statement to and cursing of Cain in Genesis 4, make it clear that it is about actions, about sin, about rebellion and not about genetics.