Quote from: CindyJames on May 30, 2011, 03:47:10 AM
Well, just for a change to wander off topic- not that I do often - daily maybe.
So according to those in the religious right there was Adam and Eve. Ok. Then there were babies, I presume. So who did they begat with? And I though incest was a sin.
Oh well
Cindy
I asked this from several groups that claim to believe in the Eden alegory. Of these, all, apart from the Jehovah's Witnesses, refused to answer, either by changing the subject or making a blunt comment in return.
The Jehovah's witnesses pointed out that, according to the alegory, Adam lived for 900 or so years producing a huge number of children. He and they would have inter-bred. But that the physical problems would have been avoided by some divine intervention or perhaps because the genetic distortions which create the physical problems hadn't developed at that time.
There was an interesting twist to the whole notion which I read some years ago, which strangely, doesn't seem to have been taken up.
In the Genesis story, if you take it sequentially, the Earth was already populated by humans before the time of Adam and Eve. That Adam and Eve were not the first man and woman in the literal sense, but rather, the first two to possess an awareness of the holy spirit. Prior, according to that approach, humans were simply soulless animals.
Their children would have married and reproduced with some of the existing humans, pasing their awareness of the holy spirit, certainly onto their off spring, but possibly their partners and other humans as well.
The interesting thing about that approach is that it doesn't damage the alegorical nature, it explains a number of the questions, not least how, two people could have created so many.
The presumption that Adam and Eve were indeed the first humans would have meant that they must have been created on the 6th day. The Jehovah's Witnesses claim that the days are epochs, which allows for the long periods it would have taken to create existance. But they do insist that the epochs are of equal length, which is a problem. Other groups seem to refuse to accept that the days were anything other than days. The few I had the temerity to confront with the Genesis account, that the world was populated by men on the 6th day, refused to accept it and said they didn't need to check!
Not really important I suppose, but just thought I'd put it in pot for what it's worth. The Christian tradition has held, since at least the 1st century, that the story was indeed an alegory. The claims that it is literaly seem to have mostly emerged in 19th century America, along with claims that the rest of the world things the earth is flat.
