Inbreeding and Genetics - Cain's Wife

One of the most frequent questions I have heard in rebuttal to the Bible is: where did Cain get his wife? I want to address this but also address the issue of genetics, since atheists do tend to claim that inbreeding would have not created viable offspring because of a polluted gene pool.

We assume Cain and Abel were the first two children of Adam and Eve but the Bible is not clear on this. We assume Cain is the first son and the Bible says Abel was the second son, not second child. The Bible does say that Adam and Even had more children and within these births, there would have been daughters.

“The second thing one notices is Cain's seeming paranoia about being found and revenge being taken against his for killing Abel. The only way this makes sense is if the brothers and sisters of Abel were upset that Cain had killed their brother.”

In those days, the only viable wives were the sisters or nieces of Cain and Abel. Many like to point out that this creates theological problems, since marrying siblings is not allowed under Jewish law. We have to remember that these events happened before the law was given. At this present moment, Adam and Eve sinned but the law was not given until the time of Moses in Leviticus 18:6-18. “According to the Apostle Paul, when there is no law, there can be no violation of the law or sin. So, since the law against incest was not given until thousands of years later, there was no theological problem with Cain marrying his sister.” This practice is not unheard of nor is it ancient history. Remember that Abraham was married to his half-sister (Genesis 20:12). Also in more recent times, in the 1800s, it was quite customary to marry a cousin.

Now on to the genetic problems: we have to also keep in mind that these is the first and second human being: Adam and Eve. They have absolutely pristine DNA, without any mutations that would create problems amongst the siblings intermarrying and having children. Though today inbreeding does lead to the expression of detrimental recessive mutations, back then, there were no hidden or recessive mutations that could be expressed with inbreeding. Adam and Eve had no genetic defects and the defects from inbreeding would not occur until many generations later, given rise to spontaneous mutations that accumulate over time. “At that point, God instituted laws against incest to minimize the expression of genetic mutations that had developed within our species.” By the time the law was given to Moses, there would have been sufficient mutations accumulated within the population to pose a significant risk to inbreeding but of course, by that time, it was not necessary either as the Earth had been increasingly populated.

Eve is the “mother of all living” as stated in Genesis 3:20 and recent mitochondrial DNA research spectacularly supports a single maternal human ancestor. 

See references: 

Carter, R. 2007. Mitochondrial diversity within modern human populations. Nucleic Acids Research 35:3039-3045 

Carter, R, D. Criswell, and J. Sanford. 2008. The “Eve” Mitochondrial Consensus Sequence. Sixth International Conference on Creationism (pages 111–116). Pittsburgh, PA: Creation Science Fellowship and Dallas, TX: Institute for Creation Research.

It really is this simple! 

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