Questions in Genesis.
 

(A brief explanation.)
 

There are many questions asked about the pre flood world.

Where did Cain get his wife from?
Where there other people on the earth before Adam and Eve?
How could men live to hundreds of years?
Where there really giants on the earth?
How old is the earth?

These are only a sample of questions that cause readers of Genesis to question the validity of the scriptures,

First of all, one must understand that the world before the world wide flood of Noah was completely different to the world we know today.

The only way that we can find out the answers to these questions is to search the scriptures.

If we can accept the very first statement of the bible.” In the beginning, God created the heavens and the earth”, one should have no problem believing the rest of scripture.

If God can, as the bible says, create all that exists out of nothing, by the word of His mouth, and as the scriptures also state, that nothing is impossible with God. We should have no problem believing the rest of scripture.

Let us begin with the state of the heavens and the earth as God created them.

Genesis 1:1 In the beginning God created the heaven and the earth.

God spoke everything into existence. Beginning at Gen 1:3 and through to verse 29, we are told that ”God said” and it was.
 

Gen 1:3  And God said, Let there be light: and there was light. 

God created the earth as a sphere.

Isaiah 40:22 22  It is he who sits above the circle of the earth, and its inhabitants are like grasshoppers; who stretches out the heavens like a curtain, and spreads them like a tent to dwell in;
 

Also in the book of Job 26:7 it says that the earth hangs on nothing.

                                           

The bible says that there was a firmament of water above the heavens and below the heavens.
 

Gen 1:6  And God said, Let there be a firmament in the midst of the waters, and let it divide the waters from the waters. 

Gen 1:7  And God made the firmament, and divided the waters which were under the firmament from the waters which were above the firmament: and it was so. 
 

The water canopy would have made the earth like a greenhouse and the sun’s rays would have been distributed around the globe. There would have been no ice caps and the whole earth and its vegetation would have been watered by a mist.

Gen 2:5  And every plant of the field before it was in the earth, and every herb of the field before it grew: for the LORD God had not caused it to rain upon the earth, and there was not a man to till the ground. 
Gen 2:6 But there went up a mist from the earth, and watered the whole face of the ground.
 

 

This enabled mankind to live longer because the ultra violet rays were not directly on the bodies of humans.
 

This would have changed after the flood, when the water canopy fell to the earth as part of the flood. The sun then would be on the backs of men and the rays of the sun would cause changes in men’s bodies.
We are told that after the flood, man’s life span began to reduce from almost a 1000 years to 120 years and less.

We must remember that Adam was to live eternally and it was only due to sin that he died, both spiritually and physically.

There would also be a lack of disease at this early time. Since Adam and Eve fell from a perfect state, it would have taken some time for disease to increase. This lack of disease could have also contributed to the longevity of the patriarchs.

Then the increase of disease would affect his life span.
Adam who lived 930 years, to Noah who lived 950 years and Seth lived 912 years.

We do see in scripture the span of life decreasing and settling around 120 years.

Arphaxad 438  Genesis 11:12–13 – Shelah 433 Genesis 11:14–15 – Eber 464 Genesis 11:16–17 – Peleg 239 Genesis 11:18–19 – Reu 239    Genesis 11:20–21 – Serug 230 Genesis 11:22–23.
 

This could also have been due to multiple things, atmospheric changes in oxygen levels, it could have been due to ultra violet rays and harmful radiation. It could have been a continuing degeneration, because of sin, as man began to die.

What happened at the flood?

Man became increasingly evil and God decided to completely clean the earth of this evil.

Gen 6:5 Then the Lord saw that the wickedness of man was great in the earth, and that every intent of the thoughts of his heart was only evil continually.
Gen 6:6  And it repented the LORD that he had made man on the earth, and it grieved him at his heart. 
Gen 6:7  And the LORD said, I will destroy man whom I have created from the face of the earth; both man, and beast, and the creeping thing, and the fowls of the air; for it repenteth me that I have made them. 

Gen 6:8  But Noah found grace in the eyes of the LORD. 

God told Noah to build an Ark and fill it with animals, two of each kind.

Gen 7:10  And it came to pass after seven days, that the waters of the flood were upon the earth. 

Gen 7:11  In the six hundredth year of Noah's life, in the second month, the seventeenth day of the month, the same day were all the fountains of the great deep broken up, and the windows of heaven were opened. 

Gen 7:12  And the rain was upon the earth forty days and forty nights. 

The water that was under the earth came up and the canopy of water surrounding the earth fell and all the earth was flooded.

This was when all the continents were created and the mountain ranges, by the upheaval, the earth’s crust was displaced and when the waters receded, the earth was left with mountain ranges and oceans and new continents.

Of course this is when a rainbow first appeared.
A rainbow is caused by sunlight and atmospheric conditions. Light enters a water droplet, slowing down and bending as it goes from air to denser water. The light reflects off the inside of the droplet, separating into its component wavelengths--or colors. When light exits the droplet, it makes a rainbow.
This became God’s promise, never to flood the earth again.

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Where did Cain’s wife come from?
Adam lived till he was 930 years old and had many children.

Gen 5:4  And the days of Adam after he had begotten Seth were eight hundred years: and he begat sons and daughters: 

Before the flood, there were less genetic defects. The law of Moses had not yet been given and God had told man to go forth and multiply.

Men and women would very soon multiply and would come together to produce offspring.
Cain obviously married one of his relations. Whether his sister or a niece, we don’t know but it would have been one.
The Bible, which is Christianities only source of teaching, does not tell us..
However, the book of Jubilees, a second-century B.C.E. retelling of Genesis, calls Eve’s daughter Awan; and the first-century C.E. writer Pseudo-Philo mentions a daughter named Noaba. It was common practice for early Jewish writers to supply names for female characters who were unnamed or outright missing in the biblical texts.

From a Christian perspective, the truth is that we just do not know.

After the flood, genetic defects would increase and during the time of Moses, God gave the law that men must not marry close relatives.

 

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Where there other people on the earth prior to Adam and Eve?

 

According to the bible, the answer is No.
1 Cor 15:45 And so it is written, The first man Adam was made a living soul; the last Adam was made a quickening spirit.

Could there have been other creatures, like man on the earth before Adam?
Again, according to the bible. No.

The Bible shows that it does not allow for the possibility for pre-Adamic humanity.
The Bible says that Adam was the first man.
 

Genesis 1:26, 2:7 Then God said, Let us make man in Our image, according to Our likeness . . . And the Lord God formed man out of the dust of the ground, and breathed into his nostrils the breath of life; and man became a living being .

Paul in the New Testament said:

1 Corinthians 15:45 And so it is written, the first man Adam became a living being .

According to these verses, there were no humans before Adam and Eve. The first created humans were Adam and Eve. The Bible gives no hint that any pre-Adamic race was created before them.

We are also told that there was not any human death until after the creation of Adam.
 

Romans 5:12,14 Therefore, just as through one man sin entered the world, and death through sin, and thus death spread to all men, because all sinned . . . Nevertheless death reigned from Adam to Moses.

Because there was no death of human beings until after Adam, this seems to rule out any race existing before him.
Some argue that because man was told to “Replenish” the earth, that that must have meant that there was humans before Adam.

Genesis 1:28 Be fruitful and multiply, and replenish the earth .

Why would the earth have to be replenished? Does this not assume a race existed previously? The answer lies in the verb the King James translators rendered as replenish. The Hebrew word maleh means fill. There is no idea of replenishing something that was already there. The New King James Bible properly translates the verse in this manner:
 

Genesis 1:28 KJV Then God blessed them, and God said to them, 'Be fruitful and multiply and fill the earth and subdue it' .

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Were there really giants in the bible?

Gen 6:1  And it came to pass, when men began to multiply on the face of the earth, and daughters were born unto them, 
Gen 6:2  That the sons of God saw the daughters of men that they were fair; and they took them wives of all which they chose. 
Gen 6:3  And the LORD said, My spirit shall not always strive with man, for that he also is flesh: yet his days shall be an hundred and twenty years. 
Gen 6:4  There were giants in the earth in those days; and also after that, when the sons of God came in unto the daughters of men, and they bare children to them, the same became mighty men which were of old, men of renown. 
Gen 6:5  And GOD saw that the wickedness of man was great in the earth, and that every imagination of the thoughts of his heart was only evil continually. 
Gen 6:6  And it repented the LORD that he had made man on the earth, and it grieved him at his heart. 
Gen 6:7  And the LORD said, I will destroy man whom I have created from the face of the earth; both man, and beast, and the creeping thing, and the fowls of the air; for it repenteth me that I have made them. 
Gen 6:8  But Noah found grace in the eyes of the LORD. 
 

The strange events recorded in Genesis 6 were understood by the ancient rabbinical sources, as well as the Septuagint translators, as referring to fallen angels procreating weird hybrid offspring with human women, known as the "Nephilim."
It was also understood by the early church fathers that the Nephilim refer to fallen angels.

These bizarre events are also echoed in the legends and myths of every ancient culture upon the earth: the ancient Greeks, the Egyptians, the Hindus, the South Sea Islanders, the American Indians, and virtually all the others.

However, there were others of which Augustine was one, that believed that the “sons of God” referred to the sons of Seth.
 

There are two main views regarding the Nephilim.

1. The Sethite view:
In this view, the sons of God are understood as the sons of the righteous son of Noah, who was Seth.

Offspring of Seth: The first references to the offspring of Seth rebelling from God and mingling with the daughters of Cain are found in Christian and Rabbinic literature from the second century CE onwards e.g. Rabbi Shimon bar Yochai, Augustine of Hippo, Julius Africanus, and the Letters attributed to St. Clement.
It is also the view expressed in the modern canonical Amharic Ethiopian Orthodox Bible.
In Judaism "Sons of God" usually refers to the righteous, i.e. the children of Seth.

It is said that these sons married the daughters of Cain.

There are problems with this view.
The term translated "the Sons of God" is, in the Hebrew, B'nai HaElohim, "Sons of Elohim," which is a term consistently used in the Old Testament for angels, and it is never used of believers in the Old Testament, meaning, the sons of Adam.

If the sons of God were just sons of Seth, they would have been ordinary men. If they copulated with the daughters of Cain who also were ordinary women, then why would they produce a race of giants?

It is quite clear from scripture that these women were daughters of men.

Genesis 6:1 And it came to pass, when men began to multiply on the face of the earth, and daughters were born unto them,
 

It is clear from the text that these daughters were not limited to a particular family or subset, but were, indeed, from “the Benoth Adam”, "the daughters of Adam”. “The daughters of men”.

Nephilim were the offspring that were born from sexual union between fallen angels and human women. Gen 6:2 "Sons of God" in Hebrew is "Bene HaElohim" which means that which God has directly created.

Only angels and Adam were created directly by God.
"Daughters of man" in Hebrew is "benoth adam" which is that these were descendants of Adam.

It is important to understand that the "sons of God" are not human.
We see these referred to in Jude and 2 Peter:
 

Jud 1:6  And the angels which kept not their first estate, but left their own habitation, he hath reserved in everlasting chains under darkness unto the judgment of the great day. 
 

Leaving their first estate is referring to the angels leaving their original form and taking on a new form.
 

2Pe 2:4  For if God spared not the angels that sinned, but cast them down to hell, and delivered them into chains of darkness, to be reserved unto judgement; 
2Pe 2:5  And spared not the old world, but saved Noah the eighth person, a preacher of righteousness, bringing in the flood upon the world of the ungodly; 
 

The sin that these angels committed was leaving their first estate and making union with human women.

The Nephilim were considered to be giants, incredibly strong and tall and often feature in heroic tales. Goliath and his 4 brothers were considered Nephilim. There are those that believe that the Greek gods, such as  Altas and Hercules, creatures such as Cyclops etc are a result of these hybrids. However, there is no Biblical evidence for this.
However these stories are found in folklore of many races on the earth.
 
2. The sons of God were fallen angels who looked on the daughters of men and saw that they were fair and took whoever they chose to wife. Genesis 6.
In v4 giants translated in English is the Hebrew “nephil” meaning “fallen”. (fallen ones).
 

Job 1:6  Now there was a day when the sons of God came to present themselves before the LORD, and Satan came also among them. 

The words used here are "Bene HaElohim" “Sons of God” and is referring to angels, who were created beings.
 

Job 2:1  Again there was a day when the sons of God came to present themselves before the LORD, and Satan came also among them to present himself before the LORD. 
 

Again here, "Bene HaElohim".  So, whenever this term is used in scripture, it refers to angels as Sons of God.

When Lucifer was cast out of heaven, he took a third of the angels with him.

Revelation 12:4 His tail swept down a third of the stars of heaven and cast them to the earth.
 

How this happened, we are not told. Whether the angels manifested themselves in the flesh, as they did when they met Abraham and ate and drank with him. Or took on human form, as they did in Sodom, when the Sodmites wanted to rape them, is not clear but however it happened, the result was a hybrid race of giants, known as the Nephilim, that were human/spirit beings.

Whatever they were, they were giants and they were evil and this evil multiplied on the earth.
They obviously quickly populated the whole earth and this is why God needed a worldwide flood, not just a local flood.

Gen 6:5  And GOD saw that the wickedness of man was great in the earth, and that every imagination of the thoughts of his heart was only evil continually. 

The Bible does not reveal much about this hybrid race but there are scriptures that refer to them and their offspring.

Not only did the Nephilim exist prior to the flood of Noah but they appeared again after the flood.
 

Gen 6:4  There were giants in the earth in those days; and also after that,

Again, how this happened, the Bible is not clear and any idea can only be conjecture.
We do know from the Bible that all life apart from Noah and his family were destroyed.
So, none of the Nephilim survived the deluge.
However, we know from scripture that there are references to giants after the flood.
Either, the same thing happened again with more fallen angels leaving their first estate and doing the same thing as before, or, it was through the wives of Noah’s sons that the gene was passed on.
Again I say, the Bible does not make this clear.

We only know from scripture that the giants did appear again after the flood, in somewhat reduced size.
We read in the scriptures that there were different names of giant races:
Nephilim – Gen 6,
Rephaim - Deuteronomy 3:11,
Anakim - Deuteronomy 2:10, 11, 21; Joshua 11:21, 22; 14:12, 15; called "sons of Anak," 
Emin - a warlike tribe of the ancient Canaanites. They were "great, and many, and tall, as the Anakims" Genesis 14:5; Deuteronomy 2:10, 11.
Zamzummim - Deuteronomy 2:20 so called by the Amorites.

Gibbor -  Job 16:14, a mighty one,
 

These all existed after the flood of Noah.

Numbers 13:33 And there we saw the Nephilim (the sons of Anak, who come from the Nephilim), and we seemed to ourselves like grasshoppers, and so we seemed to them.”
 

Deuteronomy 3:11  For only Og the king of Bashan was left of the remnant of the Rephaim. Behold, his bed was a bed of iron. Is it not in Rabbah of the Ammonites? Nine cubits was its length, and four cubits its breadth, according to the common cubit.

2 Samuel 21:20 And there was again war at Gath, where there was a man of great stature, who had six fingers on each hand, and six toes on each foot, twenty-four in number, and he also was descended from the giants.

2 Samuel 21:18  After this there was again war with the Philistines at Gob. Then Sibbecai the Hushathite struck down Saph, who was one of the descendants of the giants.

Deuteronomy 3:13  The rest of Gilead, and all Bashan, the kingdom of Og, that is, all the region of Argob, I gave to the half-tribe of Manasseh. (All that portion of Bashan is called the land of Rephaim).

 

Whilst the Bible does not give a tremendous amount of information, concerning the fallen angels, or the Nephilim. The book of Enoch, an apocryphal book, not included in the canon of scripture but a book that was used as a source of teaching and quoted by the Apostles, gives some detail.

Enoch CHAPTER 7.
1 And they took wives for themselves and everyone chose for himself one each. And they began to go into them and were promiscuous with them. And they taught them charms and spells, and they showed them the cutting of roots and trees.
2 And they became pregnant and bore large giants. And their height was three thousand cubits.
(Genesis 6:1-4), (Numbers 13:30-33), (Deuteronomy 2:10-12), (Deuteronomy 2:19-21),
(Deuteronomy 3:11), (2 Samuel 21:16), (2 Samuel 21:18-22), (Baruch 3:24-28)
3 These devoured all the toil of men; until men were unable to sustain them.
4 And the giants turned against them in order to devour men.
(Psalm 14:4), (Micah 3:3)
5 And they began to sin against birds, and against animals, and against reptiles, and against fish, and they devoured one another’s flesh, and drank the blood from it.
(Jeremiah 12:4)
6 Then the Earth complained about the lawless ones.
(Genesis 6:5-13)

Whether we use the book of Enoch as a source is immaterial. All we need to know is that according to the Bible these fallen angels did take daughters of men to wife and produced the Nephilim, a race of giants.
When God saw the wickedness, He said that He would destroy the earth with a flood.

Gen 6:8  But Noah found grace in the eyes of the LORD. 

Conclusion:

The Bible supports the teaching that some of the fallen angels that followed Lucifer after he was cast down to the earth, left their first estate and manifested themselves in such a way, that they could copulate with human women and produce a hybrid race of creatures, known as the Nephilim.
These Nephilim continued to spread and created havoc and great evil in the earth.
Because of this, God destroyed the earth and all life except Noah and seven others. He also saved numerous animal and bird and reptile life.
The earth was repopulated and sometime later the Nephilim re appeared.

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Questions about the age of the earth.

How old is the earth?

There are old earth believers and young earth believers.

 

The bible says. Gen 1:1  In the beginning God created the heaven and the earth. 

Gen 1:2  And the earth was without form, and void; and darkness was upon the face of the deep. And the Spirit of God moved upon the face of the waters. 

The original word for “was” is “hâyâh”, which means “became”.
So, the verse would read Gen 1:2  And the earth became without form, and void;

Some take this to mean that the earth was not created without form and void but became without form and void.

According to this, the earth could have been created with form and not void.
This is known as “the Gap Theory”. That there was a gap between Genesis 1:1 and Gen 1:2.

We have already shown that no humans inhabited the earth prior to Adam but is it possible that the earth in its original state was occupied by other beings.
There are those that believe that when Lucifer was cast down to the earth.

Isaiah 14:4–17 that mentions the "son of the morning" who had "fallen from heaven" and was "cast down to the earth". 

It is said that Lucifer and all the angels that fell with him, occupied the earth and that God destroyed the earth making it without form and void.

This would answer the arguments concerning the age of the earth. However, according to scripture, the earth as we know it is a young earth and the genealogy of man is only 6000 years.

We know that Satan is called “The god of this world”. We also know that Satan in the guise of a serpent was found in the Garden of Eden.

 

Whether the earth is an old earth and is 13.7 billion years old or whether the earth is a young earth and is only 6,000 years old, it has no bearing on the truths taught in the Bible.  As Christians, we are to seek out the truth, no matter what it may be.  The true findings of science will never contradict the Word of God, so we should engage with science and enjoy the discoveries that lie ahead of us.  We have nothing to fear!!

Science is constantly proving the Bible to be true.

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There are many more questions that are raised re the Book of Genesis.
For me, I have no problem with any of them. I believe that God is who He says He is. I believe the Bible is God’s revelation to us and I have no problem taking the Word of God in its literal sense.

I agree that the scriptures contain allegory, types, motifs, parables and symbols, but none of these replace the simple straight forward literal truth

 

 

 

 

 

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