Bibliography:

Davis, John J.  Paradise to Prison: Studies in Genesis.  Grand Rapids: Baker Book House, 1975; Hamilton, Victor P.  The Book of Genesis: Chapters 1-17.  Grand Rapids: Wm. B. Eerdmans, 1990; From The New International Commentary on the Old Testament, R. K. Harrison, editor; SailHamer, John H.  The Pentateuch as Narrative.  Grand Rapids: Zondervan Publishing House, 1992; Youngblood, Ronald F.  The Book of Genesis: An Introductory Commentary.  2nd. ed.  Grand Rapids: Baker Book House, 1991.

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 Humans Before Adam & Eve?

     Another notion that comes up from time to time (suggested by people who assume evolution is true and want to figure out new ways to s-t-r-e-t-c-h the Bible so that it agrees) is that humans were around long before Adam and Eve.  The first verse that seems to “open the door” for this notion is in Genesis 4:16-17 and the question is “Did Cain go to the Land of Nod and find an already existing group of people (not descended from Adam) and build a “city” for them?  Let’s take a closer look at this.

Then Cain went out from the presence of the Lord, and settled in the land of Nod, east of Eden.  Cain had relations with his wife and she conceived, and gave birth to Enoch; and he built a city, and called the name of the city Enoch, after the name of his son.  (Genesis 4:16-17)

     Cain moved east of Eden, to the land of "Nod" (the land of Misery - away, far from God).

     For those who don’t grasp that Adam named his wife “eve” because she would the mother of all humans (Genesis 3:20) and feel the need to postulate another group of pre-/non-Adamic people, it is safe to assume and Jewish tradition did so, that Cain took along a sister for his wife (Josephus’ Antiquities I:i:59).^[1]  Whereas those with a liking for evolutionary time and mechanics will balk at such incest and not take serious the idea of originally "pure genes" and the viability of such a possibility, the Egyptian Pharaohs did this regularly for centuries (after all, deity cannot interbreed with commoners) without always having deformities and genetic problems in the offspring.

     Somewhere the idea arose that Cain’s "building a city" (Genesis 4:17) implies a sizeable population of people already living where Cain wound up.  It is also suggested that such a major project as “building a city” would seem pointless if only Cain's little family is in view (cf. Youngblood, p. 65).  Thus, Cain supposedly hired himself out as a "building contractor" and built a city for an assumed group of humans already living elsewhere and not descended from Adam.  Those trying to appease evolutionary beliefs find such an imaginative and speculative explanation appealing, but the notion seems to strain not only the text and context, but fails to explain why those who hired him would let him name it after his own son!!!

     Cain "built" (banah - more literally, "he was building") and named what he built after his son, suggesting that he is not building a city for others, as a contractor, but is the leading figure doing it for himself and his own family.  The magnificence of the project does not need to be exaggerated because this "building" is rooted in a word used for smaller projects (Genesis 2:22; 8:20; Proverbs 14:1) as well as major cities and fortifications.  The word for "city" (ir/ayar)" is a very common word for city, town, abode of men, or just a fortified high place of any size.^[2]  See the Theological Wordbook of the Old Testament (II:664) article on the word and its confirmation that the word means "permanent settlement" without reference to size or claims.  The main distinction between Cain’s project and a "village" (chatser) is that an ir/ayar generally had a wall around it.  Since "walls" were the major distinctive for a "city," Cain may have simply been "fortifying" his own home against the revenge he expected.^[3]  Many western prairie towns began with a family or two settling somewhere, naming the place after themselves, and more people later accumulated there.  In Europe, there were times when single family dwellings or a few dwellings would be surrounded by a wall, for protection against wolves, enemies, etc. that might come in small numbers.  The “building contractor” and “non-Adamic population” notions are little more than imaginative speculation “overly anxious" to accommodate the evolutionary orthodoxy of our age.

Charles E. McCoy  /  11/09/2005

A Ministry of Severn Christian Church (Severn, Maryland)

Unless otherwise noted, all material produced by Charles E. McCoy

All Scripture citations/quotations from New American Standard Bible

To send a question to Chuck: chuck@severnchristian.org