The problem of Nod

Dear Readers, I've been a little inactive around the blog lately. But don't go thinking that's because I have given up my role as Community Treasurer and gone back to a quiet, dull yet oddly fulfilling life counting paperclips in different branches of Coleman's. Although, to be honest, I do miss those days.

No, I've been busy with the year end accounts. Always a dangerous activity, especially with the Receipt Shed's habit of spontaneously exploding when you least expect it, or important records being eaten by Llamas or even -on one particularly strange occasion - by a Lama. And how I'm going to explain to HMRC about the Archdruid spending six months in the 19th century, I've no idea. Although I'm sure they've heard worse.

But I have been alerted by Drayton to clayboy's latest foray into the world of creationism, and felt I could add something. Or, at least, I could add something more coherent than Drayton had to say.

The issue is the phenomenon in Genesis 4 that could be referred to as "the problem of Nod". And it is this. Adam and Eve had two sons. One (Cain) killed the other (Abel). As a result Cain was thrown out from the Lord's presence and lives in the Land of Nod. And he sleeps with his wife there. And they have a child called Enoch, at the time that Cain is building a city.

But whence came Cain's wife? And whence came the people who were lurking in the Land of Nod, awaiting a city to be built for them by the first fratricide that should pass by?

So I had a think and a bit of a Google and I have found a few suggestions.

The "other creation" theory - God didn't just make Adam and Eve, he made some other people. Could have been before, could have been after, could have been at the same time. In which case, presumably those people wondered why, when Eve ate the apple, the ground suddenly got cursed for no apparent reason. And Adam and Eve, when they wandered out of Eden, wondered where all these other people had been hiding - or at least Cain did, when he got to Nod.

But Apologetics Press have poured scorn on this theory, effectively cursing it as the proposals of liberals. After all - wasn't Eve the mother of all living?  Instead they prefer the "Cain married his sister" theory. What can I say of the science of all this? Especially the suggestion that marrying your relatives was OK before the Flood, because it was the Flood (or the sunlight released by losing the Earth's natural cloud cover) that caused a rapid increase in genetic mutations. While biblestudy.org suggests that eating prawns, pork and hoopoe may be the problem. Best to say little, I think. Or I may begin to rant, and you know how that crumples the pinstripe.

answers.com suggests that Cain could have married his brother's daughter. But this doesn't really remove the incest issue, particularly as that means Abel (or one of Adam's other sons) must have married one of Adam's daughters.

I have to say that the argument on the Christian Answers page can safely be ignored.  They say God cannot have created other people, as Adam is the father of all who are saved. Even on their own terms, this seems quite daft. Because, if we follow their logic, and accept the inerrancy and historicity of Genesis, then we know that all the men on the Ark were descendants in the direct male line of Adam. And so there could have been other people before the flood - as we know that the generation after the Flood would all have been descendants of Adam.  Their claim that when Adam looked around the garden he could not find a mate does not hold water. Obviously he couldn't see the other women - he was stuck in the Garden, wasn't he?
Christian Answers also say that there was no sin in incest because Moses had not yet given the law. But living in New Testament times, presumably they believe the Mosaic Law was superseded.  I have to reflect that maybe Christian Answers is hosted in a remote and mountainous area of the United States. Especially after reading their section on genetics. Oh, boy.

There is another, pragmatic answer to all this. This would be to suggest that Genesis is telling a number of creation and foundation myths. Not that there is no history at all in there - Abraham and Moses could well be historical figures, revered down generations. But the names "Adam" and "Eve" - isn't there a clue there? The cosmological Genesis 1 myth; the appropriated and polemic Flood myth; it all adds up.  And if that's the case, then there's no problem with the People of Nod or Cain's wife. Put simply, it doesn't matter where they came from. They're just there as a narrative plot device. They are - if you'll excuse the comment - a deus ex machina. The important thing is the story, not the consistency. And the story says - maybe among other things - we reckon the world should be good, and we should know what right and wrong are, but the world goes wrong and so do we - why?

Drayton tells me the last suggestion is heretical, deviant and liberal. He may be right. And I don't like it either. I don't enjoy allegory, myth and suggestion - you never know where you are. So I'm going with the "other creation" theory. It fits, it works, the Flood sorts out any objections, and nobody has to sleep with their own sisters. All in all, it's got to be the best answer. Simple is always good.