Alice C. Linsley
Genesis appears to present contradictory views about Cain's father. In one view, Cain is Adam's son, born of Eve. Genesis 4:1 says, "Adam knew/lay (yadah) with his wife Eve, and she became pregnant and gave birth to Cain."
It should be noted that the Hebrew and the Greek versions do not explicitly name Adam in this verse. Instead they read, "The man knew his wife Eve, and she conceived and bore Cain."
Contrast this with Genesis 4:25 which says "Adam knew his wife again, and she gave birth to a son whom she named Seth."
Why is Adam not named as Cain's father in Genesis 4:1 while Adam is explicitly named as Seth's father in Genesis 4:25?
It is likely that the biblical writers were aware of another tradition which suggests that Cain lived long after the first created Man and Woman. This tradition is supported by the kinship data in Genesis, the etiology of Cain's name, and the technology attributed to him. We will consider each of these separately.
The Kinship Data
Analysis of the Genesis 4 and 5 King Lists reveals that Cain married a woman who named their first-born son Enoch. No etymological etiology is given for the name Enoch since such explanations are offered for the names Cain (Gen. 4: 2) and Seth (Gen. 4:25). This seems strange since the name Enoch appears in both the Genesis 4 and 5 king lists, so the name pertains to both Cain's clan and Seth's clan. Enoch appears to be a Semitic form of the African name Nok. The Nok civilization extended from northern Nigeria into Niger, Chad and the Sudan. Here we find the ancient settlements of Nok and Kano. Kano is likely the African version of the name Kayan/Qayin.
This is also the region where we must look for the meaning of the name Enoch. It is likely derived from anochi which means "one who replaces." Enoch is then a royal title.
What is the significance of Cain's wife naming their first-born son Enoch or Nok? If she named her son after her father, as did Naaman, a later descendant of Cain, we may conclude that she was Cain's cousin or niece wife. It was the cousin of niece wives who named their first-born sons after their fathers. This would mean that Cain's father-in-law was called Enoch. Enoch the Elder would have been Cain's father's brother. This could not be Adam, since the Bible insists that Adam represents the first human created. As such, Adam would have lived millions of years ago. The oldest human fossils are about 3.4 million years.
So according to the information in Genesis, Cain was either the son of Adam and Eve and lived millions of years ago, or he was the son of Enoch's brother and lived around 3400 BC, about 400 years before the Kushite ruler Meni/Menes united the Nile Valley.
How are we to resolve this apparent contradiction? One approach is to investigate the meaning of the name Cain and its related cognates.
Etiology of the name Cain
As E.A. Speiser noted that the name Cain - Qany(ty) or Qan itti - shows close affinity to the Akkadian itti (as in itti šarrim which means "with the king" or possibly "against the king.") Akkadian was the language of the empire during Nimrod's time (BC 2290-2215). There is evidence that biblical Nimrod is the historical Sargon the Great. Genesis 10 tells us that Nimrod was a Kushite, so it is not surprising to find that Akkadian shares many words with Nilotic languages. Among the Oromo of Ethiopia and Somalia, itti is attached to names. Examples include Kaartuumitti, Finfinneetti and Dimashqitti. That itti is associated with Nilotic rulers is evident in the name Nefertitti.
Cain as warrior and metal worker
Shalom E. Holtz (Yeshiva University, New York) has demonstrated, itti can mean "against" as is evidenced from its appearance in numerous cases of adversarial relationships in the Old Testament. Since the meaning of Cain is "spear" and he is associated with metal work, we might take Cain to be a metalworking warrior. Genesis 4:22 indicates that his clan forged various implements of copper and iron, although the iron mentioned here was beja (bja), the ancient Egyptian word for meteroric iron (metal from heaven). Beja corresponds to the Sanskrit word bija, meaning semen or seed. Meteoritic iron was used in the fabrication of iron beads in Nubia 6000 years ago. These beads were likely perceived as seeds from heaven which brought divine power to the wearer.
This certainly places Cain in history before the bronze age and long after the first humans tread the verdant hills of Eden. This resolves the problem of dating Adam and Eve and Cain. The first are ahistorical representations of the first humans created by God, made fully human and in the divine image. These would have lived at least 3.4 million years ago. Cain and Seth, on the other hand, can be placed in history between 4000 and 3000 B.C. This corresponds to the Copper Age (3500 -2300 B.C.) During the Copper Age the warriors were of high social rank. Copper mining and the fabrication of copper tools and weapons gave rise to new a social hierarchy. At the top, were the warriors who protected their communities.
Conclusion
So who was Cain's father? Clearly not Adam. If Adam was the first man created by God - and the Bible permits no other explanation - then he cannot have been Cain's father. Cain married a cousin and analysis of the King Lists of Genesis 4 and 5 shows that there was an established pattern of marriage and ascendency among the lines of Cain and Seth. In other words, royal lines, established territories, metal technologies and law codes existed in Cain and Seth's time. These did not exist in Adam and Eve's original small community 3.4 million years ago.
Given the period in which Cain lived, his social rank as a ruler, and his place in the ancestry of Abraham, we must assume that he was a Kushite. His father was likely the brother of Enoch the Elder, Cain's father-in-law. This would explain why Cain's wife named their first-born son after her father, as was the pattern for cousin wives among Abraham's Kushite ancestors.
Related reading: Afro-Asiatic Metal Workers; Who Were the Kushites?; Cain as Ruler; Was the Land of Nod Enoch's Territory?; Sub-Saharan DNA of Jews
Genesis appears to present contradictory views about Cain's father. In one view, Cain is Adam's son, born of Eve. Genesis 4:1 says, "Adam knew/lay (yadah) with his wife Eve, and she became pregnant and gave birth to Cain."
It should be noted that the Hebrew and the Greek versions do not explicitly name Adam in this verse. Instead they read, "The man knew his wife Eve, and she conceived and bore Cain."
Contrast this with Genesis 4:25 which says "Adam knew his wife again, and she gave birth to a son whom she named Seth."
Why is Adam not named as Cain's father in Genesis 4:1 while Adam is explicitly named as Seth's father in Genesis 4:25?
It is likely that the biblical writers were aware of another tradition which suggests that Cain lived long after the first created Man and Woman. This tradition is supported by the kinship data in Genesis, the etiology of Cain's name, and the technology attributed to him. We will consider each of these separately.
The Kinship Data
Analysis of the Genesis 4 and 5 King Lists reveals that Cain married a woman who named their first-born son Enoch. No etymological etiology is given for the name Enoch since such explanations are offered for the names Cain (Gen. 4: 2) and Seth (Gen. 4:25). This seems strange since the name Enoch appears in both the Genesis 4 and 5 king lists, so the name pertains to both Cain's clan and Seth's clan. Enoch appears to be a Semitic form of the African name Nok. The Nok civilization extended from northern Nigeria into Niger, Chad and the Sudan. Here we find the ancient settlements of Nok and Kano. Kano is likely the African version of the name Kayan/Qayin.
This is also the region where we must look for the meaning of the name Enoch. It is likely derived from anochi which means "one who replaces." Enoch is then a royal title.
What is the significance of Cain's wife naming their first-born son Enoch or Nok? If she named her son after her father, as did Naaman, a later descendant of Cain, we may conclude that she was Cain's cousin or niece wife. It was the cousin of niece wives who named their first-born sons after their fathers. This would mean that Cain's father-in-law was called Enoch. Enoch the Elder would have been Cain's father's brother. This could not be Adam, since the Bible insists that Adam represents the first human created. As such, Adam would have lived millions of years ago. The oldest human fossils are about 3.4 million years.
So according to the information in Genesis, Cain was either the son of Adam and Eve and lived millions of years ago, or he was the son of Enoch's brother and lived around 3400 BC, about 400 years before the Kushite ruler Meni/Menes united the Nile Valley.
How are we to resolve this apparent contradiction? One approach is to investigate the meaning of the name Cain and its related cognates.
Etiology of the name Cain
As E.A. Speiser noted that the name Cain - Qany(ty) or Qan itti - shows close affinity to the Akkadian itti (as in itti šarrim which means "with the king" or possibly "against the king.") Akkadian was the language of the empire during Nimrod's time (BC 2290-2215). There is evidence that biblical Nimrod is the historical Sargon the Great. Genesis 10 tells us that Nimrod was a Kushite, so it is not surprising to find that Akkadian shares many words with Nilotic languages. Among the Oromo of Ethiopia and Somalia, itti is attached to names. Examples include Kaartuumitti, Finfinneetti and Dimashqitti. That itti is associated with Nilotic rulers is evident in the name Nefertitti.
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| The Oromo, a Kushitic people |
Cain as warrior and metal worker
Shalom E. Holtz (Yeshiva University, New York) has demonstrated, itti can mean "against" as is evidenced from its appearance in numerous cases of adversarial relationships in the Old Testament. Since the meaning of Cain is "spear" and he is associated with metal work, we might take Cain to be a metalworking warrior. Genesis 4:22 indicates that his clan forged various implements of copper and iron, although the iron mentioned here was beja (bja), the ancient Egyptian word for meteroric iron (metal from heaven). Beja corresponds to the Sanskrit word bija, meaning semen or seed. Meteoritic iron was used in the fabrication of iron beads in Nubia 6000 years ago. These beads were likely perceived as seeds from heaven which brought divine power to the wearer.
This certainly places Cain in history before the bronze age and long after the first humans tread the verdant hills of Eden. This resolves the problem of dating Adam and Eve and Cain. The first are ahistorical representations of the first humans created by God, made fully human and in the divine image. These would have lived at least 3.4 million years ago. Cain and Seth, on the other hand, can be placed in history between 4000 and 3000 B.C. This corresponds to the Copper Age (3500 -2300 B.C.) During the Copper Age the warriors were of high social rank. Copper mining and the fabrication of copper tools and weapons gave rise to new a social hierarchy. At the top, were the warriors who protected their communities.
Conclusion
So who was Cain's father? Clearly not Adam. If Adam was the first man created by God - and the Bible permits no other explanation - then he cannot have been Cain's father. Cain married a cousin and analysis of the King Lists of Genesis 4 and 5 shows that there was an established pattern of marriage and ascendency among the lines of Cain and Seth. In other words, royal lines, established territories, metal technologies and law codes existed in Cain and Seth's time. These did not exist in Adam and Eve's original small community 3.4 million years ago.
Given the period in which Cain lived, his social rank as a ruler, and his place in the ancestry of Abraham, we must assume that he was a Kushite. His father was likely the brother of Enoch the Elder, Cain's father-in-law. This would explain why Cain's wife named their first-born son after her father, as was the pattern for cousin wives among Abraham's Kushite ancestors.
Related reading: Afro-Asiatic Metal Workers; Who Were the Kushites?; Cain as Ruler; Was the Land of Nod Enoch's Territory?; Sub-Saharan DNA of Jews
4 comments:
Sorry, have to divide this into multiple posts.
1
"So who was Cain's father? Clearly not Adam. If Adam was the first man created by God - and the Bible permits no other explanation - then he cannot have been Cain's father....
Why is Adam not named as Cain's father in Genesis 4:1 while Adam is explicitly named as Seth's father in Genesis 4:25?"
I gave a possible answer to that on Again and Again: "There was only one man at the time. By the time Seth is born, who knows how many other male children Adam and Eve might have had that are unnamed for us. Naming Adam as father of Seth shows us that it isn’t one of the other males running around at the time."
But since you seem certain that Cain's father is not Adam
reading this I gather that:
1) Eve had multiple partners - an unnamed man who was the father of Cain (the first birth mentioned in the Bible), and who can say, possibly a different man who was the father of Abel. (Was Abel a full brother or a half brother?) as well as Adam the father of Seth (amazing that Eve had all those children with other men before having one with the man God had given her to!)
2) We also can "know" that, IF she named her children after her father, (as you suppose Cain's wife did simply because someone later did the that), that Eve was the daughter of someone named Cain. (That "if" is a big word! and since you use it to draw amazing conclusions, I figure I can, too.)
3) The idea that there was a man other than Adam who impregnated Eve allows for other humans, as yet unnamed, who are living at the same time as Adam and Eve. While we do not believe in inherited guilt from Adam's sin, we do believe (as I understand) that we inherit the tendency to sin. These other people, who have no biological ties with Adam, must not have had that tendency to sin and therefore, if they intermarry, would produce a race of humans who do not have the tendency to sin.
4) So, could these non-sinful people be either the Sons of God or the daughters of men we read about in Genesis 6? Did sin then enter the ENTIRE human race not because of Adam, but because these sinless people intermarried with the decendants of Adam?
(In addition, Genesis says that Adam knew his wife "again," meaning this wasn't the first time. But it would seem that if you are right, either there were no prior children, or they weren't named.)
2
Other questions remain. If Eve is "the mother of all living" (Gen 3:20) was she somehow the mother of these other men? Was she impregnated by the Holy Spirit like Mary to bring forth the father of Cain?
You seem to believe that because naming patterns exist later, they must apply earlier. Everything had a beginning. At one time there were no names and they had to be created. You imply that the name Enoch came from the African name Nok rather than allowing that perhaps Nok came from the name Enoch. Which came first?
Every human is not named in the Bible. Adam and Eve could have had many children (be fruitful and multiply) and Cain's wife could very well have been his sister. The same is true for Able, Seth, and any other people, although by the time Seth is born (Cain and Abel were mature at the time of Abel's death before Seth's birth), there could be cousins to marry. I don't understand why you say that Cain has to be the son of Enoch's brother based on the supposition that because a naming pattern was done centuries later, it had to apply to him. That would be like saying because my family has a tradition of something, my ancestors must have had it. Maybe they didn't!
This reminds me of the Darwin's ideas that what we see now is the way it has always been. We see that water wears away rocks and so it takes thousands, perhaps millions of years to produce the Grand Canyon. Yet, the Grand Canyon COULD be explained by a flood of Noah's proportions. In fact, after Mt. St. Helen's erupted, a 1/40 scale model of the Grand Canyon was produced in just 10 years. Imagine the water from Noah's flood - how quickly could it form the Grand Canyon? Let's see, 1/40 = 10 years so 400 years? Not the millions geologists currently say. They base that on what they see now, ignoring that things have not always been exactly as they are now.
Your work is certainly interesting, and there is a lot to learn from it, but you seem to start with your research and try to apply it to the Bible instead of letting the Bible speak first. Perhaps it is my old Protestant upbringing getting in the way, but it seems to me that one should accept at face value what is clear in Scripture.
One has to remember that although the Bible gives history, it is not a history book. It is His-story we are reading. The story of how man came to need a Savior and how God so graciously from the very beginning promised, (foreshadowed over and over again) and sent a Rescuer.
As you do your analysis, you must think where the conclusions you make would logically take you. The idea that Eve had multiple partners that there were other people no affected by Adam's fall, even for a nano-second, that Adam was not the "first father" is abhorrent to me. And yet all those are logical trains of thought if you accept that "So who was Cain's father? Clearly not Adam."
You are far more well versed on African culture than I. And you are likely far more intelligent than I. I doubt that you would ever see things the way I do. I am simple and see things simply. I try not to read between the lines or put more into something than exists. So when the Bible says, "The man knew his wife Eve, and she conceived and bore Cain" (I am taking your word here that it is "the man" and not "Adam"), since I only know of one man, I believe it to be he (Adam). I see no reason to think otherwise (and lots of reasons not to).
Hello, Anam Cara. It is nice to read your comments here at Just Genesis. I remember having interesting conversations with you in the early days of this blog.
Eve does represent the "mother of all living" as Adam represents the first created man. Together Adam and Eve represent the first created humans. Since the oldest human fossils date to about 3.5 million years, we must place Adam and Eve back that far.
I don't believe that there is any conflict between science and Scripture on this question. Also, it is evident that the final editors of Genesis recognized that the rulers listed in Gen. 4 (Cain's line) and Gen. 5 (Seth's line) intermarried, as did the lines of Ham and Seth, and Abraham and Nahor. The kinship pattern is consistent from Cain and his cousin wife to Joseph and MAry (his cousin wife), proof that Jesus is the fulfillment of the promise made in Eden to Abraham's ancestors. Genesis isn't about human origins as much as it is about the origins of Messianic expectation.
Anam Cara,
Where in my writings do I say that Eve had multiple partners? You seem to be attributing to me something that I have never said, nor do I believe is true.
Also, you stated that "you seem to start with your research and try to apply it to the Bible instead of letting the Bible speak first." This is exactly what I don't do. Over the years I have set aside my preconceived ideas about what Genesis says and have investigated what it actually says.
Again, there is a discrepancy between the narrative which claims Cain to be born of the first created couple and the king lists of Genesis 4 and 5 which indicate that Cain's wife named her first-born son Enoch after her father. The material in Genesis 4 and 5 is the older material.
It is also possible that the name "Enoch" is a royal title. It is probably related to the Nilotic word "anochi" which means "one who replaces." See this http://biblicalanthropology.blogspot.com/2011/11/is-enoch-royal-title.html
Best wishes to you.
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