@RealBibleStudyOrg YouTube channel posted a vid titled Did Adam & Eve’s Children Marry Each Other? | What Genesis Actually Says. I was made aware of it by its creator since we’d been discussing issues ranging from that to Nephilim. We first got in touch when I informed him that I had posted Chris Bell claims “The Nephilim were the ‘bad’ descendants of Adam & Eve before Noah’s flood” I then posted Reviewing Chris Bell answering, “Were There Really Giants Before Noah’s Flood? | What Does the Bible Say About the Nephilim?”
After listening to it, I was quite unsure why he wanted me to watch a video that merely states what I already debunked but I suppose I’ll repeat what I already noted to him plus a few other details.
Chris Bell’s MO for dealing with these issues is to ask gotcha questions which supposedly have no answers and so he seeks to fill the gaps with his own assertions—some which are misguided and anachronistic. It goes something like this, “Where does the Bible say _____________” filling in the blank with any given point, “since it doesn’t then it can’t be the case.”
Yet, the blanks turn out to be demanding that certain things be told to us at certain times and in certain words which misses any given narrative’s implications and the implications of the overall greater context.
For example, the vid’s info section begins with, “Genesis never says Adam and Eve were the only people God created”: question 1) why would it, 2) does it need to, 3) Gen 1 gives us a succinct statement and Gen 2 gives us the details, 4) why state that when there’s no other game in town, 5) we, the readers, don’t get to come along and demand that we’re spoon fed by a text that’s meant to tell us what it tells us and yes, leaves us to follow it’s narrative flow.
What about this gotcha question: where does the Bible say, “God created other people too”? Since it doesn’t then it never happened, right?
Chris Bell tells us, “It never says their children married each other” but there were no other options so that’s a conclusion based on the data we have: they initially married each other and then further and further family members as time went on.
He notes, “It never says Cain’s wife was his sister” which is nitpicking a very specific claim that some people make. It’s better to say that he married some relative of some familial distance rather then specifying she was his sister.
I had previously told him, “The bottom line seems to be, ‘references to other people in the land during Cain’s time’: I can only imagine that by, ‘in the land’ you’re referring to Nod. As for who was there well, the previous two chapters record many generations so there were plenty of (related) people around, some of which settled in Nod.”
How about this gotcha question: where does the Bible say that Cain was Adam and Eve’s first born and that Caleb was second? It doesn’t, it may be that they’re mentioned since something particular was to be detailed about them. This would mean that plenty of people could have been born before them.
Thus, when Chris Bell tells us, “Yet Cain feared other people: ‘Whoever finds me will kill me.’ (Genesis 4:14)” we already have our answer. Yet, the his perspective is that, “At this point, Genesis had only introduced” Adam, Eve, Cain, and Abel.
We can’t demand that a text tell us everything in full detail so, again, since various generations are revealed to us, there’s every reason to conclude plenty of people were around and that Cain didn’t necessarily have to marry one of his sisters: even though it’d be no problem if he did.
Chris Bell noted, “And what does Scripture mean when it calls Eve ‘the mother of all the living’?” with the vid’s answer being, “Genesis gives us the detailed story of Adam and Eve because their lineage becomes the focus of scripture, ultimately leading to Jesus Christ. This is why Eve was called the mother of all the living (Genesis 3:20). Throughout scripture [inaudible word] living refers to those who have life in God, the saved.”
Thus, apparently, the non-Adamites didn’t have life in God and were condemned—for unknown reasons. He’s removing the statement from it’s context about the original creation, remove it from the context of, “Be fruitful and multiply,” and apply it to a concept that’s millennia down the scriptural road—as we will see he does with other issues.
One such issue is that we’re told, “And Scripture later calls brother-sister marriage a disgrace. (Leviticus 20:17)” about which someone in the comments section noted, “Their was No Law against marriage [of those sorts] till leviticus. Your point is invalid.”
Chris Bell replied, “Correct, the Law of Moses came later. But that doesn’t make the point invalid. Leviticus shows how strongly God is against brother-sister marriage – He calls it a disgrace and says they are to be removed from their people. More importantly, Genesis never says sibling marriage happened in the first place. That conclusion depends on first assuming Adam and Eve were the only people God created.”
“Correct…But” is a problematic way to go about chronologically linear facts, it makes the point 100% invalid: he jumped millennia into the future to then insert a statement back in time.
Note that he doesn’t get into why, contextual to Genesis, the fall, entropy, etc., regarding, “Leviticus shows how strongly God is against brother-sister marriage” why was it that, “He calls it a disgrace, etc.
And we have the, “Genesis never says” line.
I had previously told Chris Bell this based on what’s posted on his website:
As for “Did Adam & Eve’s Children Marry Each Other?” I find asking subjective questions premised on our modern-day experience only results in removing the issue from its context.
Asking “Would you want your son and daughter to marry each other? Would they even be willing to? Even the mere thought of it is sheer horror! How much more our Holy God would not want this for His creation!” is removing the question from its historical and cultural context and you offered no reasons to think they may not have been unwilling to nor that it was even imagined that it was some sort of sheer horror now why our Holy God wouldn’t want that for His, original, creation.
Likewise with “Was it somehow too difficult for God to create more people? Was our all-powerful God limited to creating only one human couple? Would He create others to avoid breaking His own rules and disgraceful incest marriages?”
See, you’re importing rules from millennia after the fact backward in time and are using anachronism to then ask gotcha questions about God.
There’s no indication whatsoever that close family marrying/mating was wrong in any sense—not ethically nor genetically. Indications are that at the point that generics deteriorated enough that it would be a problem, God forbade it but that was millennia after the fall.
Thus, what we are told is enough to conclude that Adam was the only human created from the dust of the Earth, Eve was the only human created from his side, they were the only humans created by God, no other people of any description were created by God, and Eve being the mother of all living refers to that all humans, all peoples, are related to Adam and Eve in a God blessed manner which didn’t even hint at any wrongdoing—regardless of what laws had to be put into place millennia later.
His view barely makes a blip on the historical interpretive radar: he’s either one of the greatest Bible scholars in all human history or he’s mistaken.
Scripture tells us these things, all we have to do is listen.
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
A plea: I have to pay for server usage and have made all content on this website free and always will. I support my family on one income and do research, writing, videos, etc. as a hobby.
If you can even spare $1.00 as a donation, please do so: it may not seem like much but if each person reading this would do so, even every now and then, it would add up and really, really help out.
Here is my donate/paypal page.
You can comment here and/or on my Twitter/X page, on my Facebook page, or any of my other social network sites all which are available here.
Leave a Reply