Path: utzoo!utgpu!news-server.csri.toronto.edu!cs.utexas.edu!swrinde!zaphod.mps.ohio-state.edu!wuarchive!ukma!seismo!dimacs.rutgers.edu!aramis.rutgers.edu!athos.rutgers.edu!christian From: ok@goanna.cs.rmit.oz.au (Richard A. O'Keefe) Newsgroups: soc.religion.christian Subject: Re: no title given Message-ID: Date: 27 Mar 91 02:26:21 GMT Sender: hedrick@athos.rutgers.edu Organization: Comp Sci, RMIT, Melbourne, Australia Lines: 33 Approved: christian@aramis.rutgers.edu Cindy Smith, writing on "Cain's wife", said > For what it's worth, I remember from my Sunday School class that Cain > obtained a wife in the same way that Adam did -- from his rib. God > caused a deep sleep to come up on Cain, removed his rib, and created > Cain's wife, who dwelt with him in the land of Nod. This is a > tradition of the Church and seems to me to be the most plausible > explanation. For what it's worth, in Jubilees 4, 9 we find "And Cain took his sister 'Awan as a wife, and she bore for him Enoch at the end of the fourth Jubilee. ..." Surely there has never been any problem about *Cain*'s wife? Cain was, after all, a murderer, so how bothersome would it be if he had committed incest as well? The problem is *Seth*'s wife. There again, Jubilees 4, 11 says "And in the fifth week of the fifth jubilee, Seth took 'Azura his sister as a wife. And in the fourth year of that week, she bore for him Enos. He was the first to call the name of the LORD upon the earth." The book of Jubilees is not part of the Hebrew canon, nor do Catholics accept it, but it does date back to -100 at least. As for whether it was wrong for Seth to marry his sister at that time, Cindy Smith of all people should be aware of how thoroughly Augustine discussed that one. (Nothing of Augustine's that I've read indicates any awareness of the tradition that Cindy Smith relates, but Augustine wrote vastly more than I've yet managed to read.) -- Seen from an MVS perspective, UNIX and MS-DOS are hard to tell apart.