Millions of Years Between Gen 4:1 and Gen. 4:17

Alice C. Linsley

Queen Nefertiti
Note her red skin tone.

There are numerous gap theories but none has been so specific as my theory that, if Adam represents the first created human, there must be millions of years between Genesis 4:1 and Genesis 4:17. This is the only possible conclusion since humans have been on the surface of the Earth for over 3 million years.

If Eve is the first created female, there are millions of years between Genesis 4:1 and Genesis 4:17. However, this is not likely what is intended by the Genesis text.

If we look carefully at how Genesis only presents human origins, we come to the conclusion that the word Adam is used different ways. In Genesis 1 it simply refers to humans. In Genesis 3 Adam refers to to the founding father of the people who today we would identified with the Nilotic Ainu/Anu and with Haplogroup R1b. They are known for their distinctive red skin tone.

Support for this view, is found with the narrative of Eve giving birth to the first ruler. Eve is represented as the first mother of the Yahweh followers. In Genesis 4:1 (in Proto-Hebrew), Cain's mother declares, "Ka-niti (Qaniti); I have gotten a man, as has YHWH."

This is a Messianic reference. Kaniti is a reference to king (as Kandake is a reference to queen). This is the second time in the Bible that a woman of Abraham's bloodline is connected to the Messiah. The first is Genesis 3:15, which refers to the "Woman" and not Eve, as Eve is not named until Genesis 3:20.

Qanyty or Qanitti comes from Nilo-Saharan languages like Luo, Oromo and ancient Egyptian. These languages share many phonemes with ancient Akkadian, the language of Nimrod's kingdom. Nimrod was the son of Kush, according to Genesis 10. The Akkadian itti, as in itti šarrim, means "with the king" or "for the king." It is attached to the names of royalty. Even today the Oromo and the Luo attach itti to names: Onditi, Kaartuumitti, Finfinneetti and Dimashqitti. That itti is associated with Nilotic rulers is evident in the name of the great Egyptian queen Nefertitti.

Kain has many linguistic equivalents: Qayan, Cain, and Kahn, as in Genghis Kahn, and the female variant is Candace or Kandake. All these words refer to a king/queen or ruler. The first kings named in the Genesis King Lists are Kain and his brother Seth. They were Middle Bronze Age rulers as is evidenced by the technologies mentioned in Genesis 4-6. They were not the first people on earth. The oldest human (fully human) fossils are about 3 .6 million years. Even if the dating is wrong by 50%, these humans still would have lived long before Kain and Seth.

Clearly there is a gap of millions of years between the creation of the first humans and the rulers listed in Genesis 4 and 5. The Bible tells us very little about that span of time. However, it does trace Messianic expectation beginning with the red people of the Upper Nile. Abraham of Edom was related to those red people as were his Horite kinsmen of Edom whose royal lines are named in Genesis 36 (diagram below.)

Obodas, the first ruler of Petra in Edom, took his title from the Edo (Benin) name for ruler which is Oba. The prophet Obadiah was from Edom, according to the Talmud, and said to have been a friend of the Horite ruler Job of Uz. Genesis 36 lists the Horite ruling family of Edom. Among them were two Horite rulers named Esau, as shown in the diagram.

Adam is the first man in Biblical parlance, and he was a red man. The Biblical writers recognized that the people among them with red skin were of an ancestral line of extreme antiquity. Kain is the archetype of the worldly ruler. Jude's epistle (c. 68 AD) warns those who might abandon Christ because of their suffering and false teachers that God punishes those who rebel against Him. He uses three men as examples: Cain the ruler, Balaam the prophet, and Korah the priest. These were the three most sacred offices among Abraham’s people.

Note that the Holy Name YHWH appears in the text. The point of origin of YHWH has been traced to the Upper Nile, the area from which Abraham's Kushite ancestors came (Gen. 10). The Kushite dispersion out of Africa has been confirmed by DNA studies and linguistic studies.

Related reading:  Solving the Ainu Mystery; Genesis: On Gaps and Overlaps; A Scientific Timeline of Genesis; Cain as Ruler; Kushite Kingdom Building; The Nubian Context of YHWH; The Genesis Record of Horite Rule; Is Scientific Dating Reliable?; Gap Theory or Gap Fact?; Nimrod was a Kushite Ruler; Languages of Africa