HOW MANY CHILDREN DID ADAM AND EVE HAVE?
Anyone who has any familiarity with the Bible will know the story of Cain and Abel. The story of the first ever murder is famous in Judeo-Christian culture. And of course, we are all also aware of the fact the Bible tells us we are all descended from two people – Adam and Eve.
But how do these two stories relate to each other? How can a population of three men and one woman give rise to the 8 billion humans we are today?
Particularly as Abel was murdered and Cain banished to the land of Nod? – Genesis 4:16
Even more confusing is Genesis 4:17 “Cain lay with his wife, and she became pregnant and gave birth to Enoch. Cain was then building a city and he named it after his son, Enoch”.
Who is Cain’s wife? And who are all the people living in the city of Enoch?
We seem to be missing a lot of information here and the answer to the puzzle lies in the question ‘How many children did Adam and Eve have?”.
Genesis 5:3 tells us “When Adam had lived 130 years he had a son in his own likeness, in his own image, and he named him Seth.”
And Genesis 5:4 “After Seth was born, Adam lived 800 years and had other sons and daughters.”
So here we have a partial answer to our mystery. Cain, Abel and Seth are the only children of Adam and Eve named in Genesis – but there are more. How many more we will come to, but this partly explains how the founding human population came about.
There is probably some overlap of the timelines (given Adam’s 930-year lifespan) and so possibly Cain’s mysterious wife was one of Adam and Eve’s other daughters.
But, now, sitting here with our 21st century morals and rose-tinted spectacles, does this not lead us to think that the initial humans were incestuous?
Not so.
The key word I want you to bear in mind here is “begat”.
A curious linguistic quirk has muddied the water over time.
In the New International Version of the Bible Genesis 5:4 claims that Adam and Eve “had” other sons and daughters.
The King James Version however says that Adam and Eve “begat” sons and daughters.
This is an important difference. We know that Cain, Abel and Seth were born in a natural way as we read that Adam “lay” with Eve and she became pregnant.
In some texts, the word “Begat” has become synonymous with natural birth. But there’s more to it than that.
Let me explain.
The Catholic Mass has a prayer “We believe in one Lord, Jesus Christ, the only Son of God, eternally begotten of the Father, God from God, Light from Light, true God from true God, begotten, not made, of one Being with the Father.”
“Begotten, not made”
Do we have a clue here as to how some of the early humans came about? Other than Adam and Eve’s direct natural-born children were other human beings “begotten” and raised by Adam and Eve so as to found the human race?
Given this, it is quite possible that Adam and Eve had many hundreds, if not thousands, of children over their 930 years.
Why, after all, did the Lord grant Adam such an unnaturally long life if it wasn’t for the purpose of populating the Earth?
Other Genesis characters such as Enoch (905 years) and Kenan (910 years) also had long lives and, when you think about it, this would have been necessary to keep the human race going as there were so few adults around at the time.
And as many of the people were ‘begotten’ and not directly born of Eve then this would mean they were not incestuous.
This would also explain the mysterious appearance of Cain’s wife in Genesis 4:17.
So, the answer to the question “How many children did Adam and Eve have?” is partly answered in the hundreds if you count the begotten founding fathers of humanity.
However, this answer leaves us a little unsatisfied. It doesn’t feel like a precise enough number to me.
So, let’s have a think about the natural-born children of Eve. Of which there must, of course, been a much smaller number.
For that we must look outside of Genesis.
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