Adam and Eve

God begat Adam and Eve. The Genesis story is very clear. Adam is Hebrew for 'Man'. There are two accounts; in the first God created mankind male and female, and they were vegetarians. In the other, Eve was created from Adam's side and helped him to name things. Adam was therefore 'son of God', in 'the image of God' as a son is in the image of his father (Genesis 5). Adam and God were therefore kin. What this means is of course uncertain.

God created the world in 6 days, and rested on the 7th. So said Genesis 1 -2:4. The humans, created on day 6, were to subdue the world and rule over it. In Genesis 2-3, God created woman out of the side of man to give him companionship, to be a helper. The woman tempted him to eat the forbidden fruit and was tempted by the sepent. As a result, women will, it is asserted, cleave to her husband and give birth in pain. The marriage relationship which diminishes the woman is the result of the first sin. Equally we might say, the first sin was caused by Adam satisfying his stomach without due reflection. These chapters are an attempt to explain the tensions of marriage, the sexual attraction, the danger and pain of childbirth, and the power relationship of husband as master. This is the root of kinship. Legitimacy is created by marriage, preserving the family line which goes back to God himself.

Adam and Eve have wo sons, Cain and Abel, the first a farmer, the second a pastoralist. Cain killed Abel, the farmer killed the nomad. "Am I my brother's keeper?". This points to ancient hostility. The farmer carries on, marrying women 'out there', far away. Abel, the faithful and pious pastoralist, lies dead, his blood crying from the ground. Cain's family is not the chosen family. They are not kin. Intermarriage has taken away his inheritance rights. It implies of course that there were human women quite separate from this divinely created and
chosen family. He represented humanity other than the Hebrews.

The new chosen line was Seth. A generalogy is given, with some extraordinary ages and including Enoch who was taken to God without dying. "The Lord took him". This line brings up nearly to Noah, the ancestor at the time of flood.

One further incident begs our attention. The bene elim, the "sons of the gods" saw that the daughters of men were fair and took them to wife (Genesis 6-1-6). They gave birth to a race of heroes and giants. This was a prelude to the flood when God decided to clean out the sin of the world and to preserve only the family of Noah. Whatever the age of this detail, the legitimacy agenda mean that such ambigious individuals had to be eliminated. The chosen family were ordinary, human, and fallible. No heroes. No giants. This was the history of everyman, not an extraordinary group.