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[RedKing]

Adam and Eves children were both male. Then one of them upped and left for the land of Nod and found a wife. So, either they were not truly the first, or God just went and made an entire nation on the side while Adam and Eve did all that snake related fruit poaching.

Or the events in Genesis aren't chronological, which happens here and there in the Bible.

That still doesn't solve the problem. Even if Cain's departure for Nod was hundreds of years later, where did the wife come from? An unmentioned sister? A descendant of Abel's? (who, as far as we can tell, was murdered before he bore offspring). Rabbinic tradition actually does say that Cain's wife was a sister.

[BFEL]

Adam and Eves children were both male. Then one of them upped and left for the land of Nod and found a wife. So, either they were not truly the first, or God just went and made an entire nation on the side while Adam and Eve did all that snake related fruit poaching.

Alternate explanation: The one who left just had sex with a monkey. This somehow worked. EVOLUTION TIE IN!

[RedKing]

Adam and Eves children were both male. Then one of them upped and left for the land of Nod and found a wife. So, either they were not truly the first, or God just went and made an entire nation on the side while Adam and Eve did all that snake related fruit poaching.

Alternate explanation: The one who left just had sex with a monkey. This somehow worked. EVOLUTION TIE IN!

Ooooh....with the double bonus that those who believe in evolution are saying they mark themselves as descendants of Cain, and therefore cursed. Nice move.

[Il Palazzo]

Well, the bible doesn't say when in their lives was the fratricide commited. So how about if it was when they were e.g., in their 800s? Two cranky old guys hating each other's guts after way too many years of living near each other and their parents.
Then A&E would have had plenty of time to have more children to populate the land with. And these children had their children during that time, and why not Cain and Abel too? Everybody had kids with everybody, like one happy incestous family or an episode of The Bold and the Beautiful.
 
I wonder what was going on through Cain's mind as he went to Nod. "Huh, one day your wife pops out a few kids and the next, what do know, they've built a city and probably invented civilisation."

[Bouchart]

Adam and Eves children were both male. Then one of them upped and left for the land of Nod and found a wife. So, either they were not truly the first, or God just went and made an entire nation on the side while Adam and Eve did all that snake related fruit poaching.

Or the events in Genesis aren't chronological, which happens here and there in the Bible.

That still doesn't solve the problem. Even if Cain's departure for Nod was hundreds of years later, where did the wife come from? An unmentioned sister? A descendant of Abel's? (who, as far as we can tell, was murdered before he bore offspring). Rabbinic tradition actually does say that Cain's wife was a sister.

An unmentioned sister is most likely.  From the time of Eve until Noah, there really isn't any mention of women at all except to say that Lamech (the Lamech descended from Cain, not Seth) had two wives, Adah and Zillah.

[RedKing]

Well, the bible doesn't say when in their lives was the fratricide commited. So how about if it was when they were e.g., in their 800s? Two cranky old guys hating each other's guts after way too many years of living near each other and their parents.
Then A&E would have had plenty of time to have more children to populate the land with. And these children had their children during that time, and why not Cain and Abel too? Everybody had kids with everybody, like one happy incestous family or an episode of The Bold and the Beautiful.
 
I wonder what was going on through Cain's mind as he went to Nod. "Huh, one day your wife pops out a few kids and the next, what do know, they've built a city and probably invented civilisation."

That implies that Cain was having kids out of wedlock, if he had any prior to Nod. Or that he took more than one wife. Or both.

I prefer the Occam's Razor solution: Genesis is a hodge-podge of local traditions and Mesopotamian creation myths, where the rules don't matter and the points don't count.

[Il Palazzo]

Occam's Razor has got nothing on Malleus Maleficarum.

[scrdest]

Occam's Razor has got nothing on Malleus Maleficarum.

Ah, FFS, don't mention that name near my.

God DAMN, now I've got a song stuck in my head forever :<

[Lord Shonus]

It isn't difficult to view Genesis as primarily allegorical, especially given that allegory was the preferred instructional method of Jesus Christ, who spoke almost entirely in fable and parable. Indeed, some of the phrasings aren't that different to the way stellar and planetary formation was taught in the "pre-science" books I read as a kid, and (like much in the Bible), it is fairly easy to look at it as a way of explaining complex concepts to a very primitive people that don't have the scientific foundation to understand the scientific foundation to understand the way things really happened. It is important to remember that strict biblical literalism is a 19th century doctrine. While early scholars treated the Bible as literal fact, that was more because it was their only source for such things, and even in the age of Aquinas that foundation was eroding. (It also doesn't help that Christianity inherited a lot of junk science from the Romans by way of the Greeks.)

[Cryxis, Prince of Doom]

And on the 3.4 Billionth year god rested
Oh wait humans can't imagine how that would feel

And on the 7th day god rested


Kinda like that?

[Graknorke]

Sounds like a cheap excuse to me.
Keeping people ignorant never helped anyone. I have read children's books that can give a far better description of how early Earth came about.

EDIT: And the thing scrdest said. Measuring days and years is not very easy without a sun to measure from.

[scrdest]

Genesis not being literal has actually been around since... I think earliest they found it was 3rd century.

Something about the seven days not actually being seven days, but being the equivalent for a being that has been around for eternity, so it was probably supposed to be billions of years or something.

IIRC it pretty much stems from the fact that God didn't get around to making SUN until day... four? Or so.

[TheDarkStar]

Genesis not being literal has actually been around since... I think earliest they found it was 3rd century.

Something about the seven days not actually being seven days, but being the equivalent for a being that has been around for eternity, so it was probably supposed to be billions of years or something.

IIRC it pretty much stems from the fact that God didn't get around to making SUN until day... four? Or so.

Each day could simply refer to a time period. Even today, people don't have a good concept for gigantic lengths of time (try imagining what only ten million years is like), so it might have been divisions based on when different things happened (since day is rather hard to define when you don't have a solar system/sun yet).

[Orange Wizard]

If we're going to say that Genesis (and the creation story) isn't a literal retelling of events, why are we then saying that "it was encoded in X manner! each day is two point one seven billion years!"?
Either it's a literal retelling or it's a metaphor/allegory. Not some weird mix of both.

As an aside, seven is a number used in the Bible to represent fullness or completion. So I guess that makes sense.

[Pwnzerfaust]

I find it hard to fathom that anyone takes the Genesis myth with anything approaching seriousness. It's obviously just a creation myth of the same vein as the thousands of others throughout history.