Creationism Series Part One

What We Know of Adam’s First Offspring

Was Cain born in the Garden of Eden?

Creationism Series Part Two

Khen Lim




Image source: strangelyprogressive.wordpress.com

Virtually everyone who reads the Bible will believe, without any shadow of doubt, that the first two children born to Adam and Eve were Cain and Abel. But is that really the case?

Genesis 3:23-4:1 says:

“So the Lord God banished them from the Garden of Eden and He sent Adam out to cultivate the ground from which he had been made. After sending them out, the Lord God stationed might cherubim to the east of the Garden of Eden. And He placed a flaming sword that flashed back and forth to guard the way to the Tree of Life.

“Now Adam had sexual relations with his wife, Eve, and she became pregnant. When she gave birth to Cain, she said, ‘With the Lord’s help, I have produced a man!” (NLT)

In the NASB translation uses the word ‘manchild’ (sic) and not ‘man.’ Google’s online dictionary defines a ‘man-child’ as “an immature man,” which we can take to assume that the child was born physically mature – as in a man – but spiritually and possibly, mentally, immature – as in a child. 

It is this combination that we may understand the term ‘manchild’ as used in the NASB version. Therefore, we may be safe to presume that Eve somehow – defiance of science as we know it – gave birth to a fairly fully-grown Cain at least in the physical sense.

Secondly, some scholars point to the NASB and NLT’s use of the word ‘now’ as contentious as KJV replacing it with ‘and’ instead. The NIV translation uses neither and simply begins by saying, “Adam made love to his wife Eve and she became pregnant and gave birth to Cain. She said, ‘With the help of the Lord, I have brought forth a man’” (4:1-2).

This brings up the question of whether Adam consummated his relationship with Even before or after they were banished from the Garden. By simple grammatical construction and the sentence flow, we may believe that the sexual relationship commenced after and not before. 

But the way NASB uses the word ‘now’ and KJV, ‘and’ does not necessarily imply any similarity with how we use ‘then’ as in following on from that event thereafter.

Maybe we can use Genesis 1:2 as an appropriate point of comparison:

“Now the earth was formless and empty, darkness was over the surface of the deep, and the Spirit of God was hovering over the waters.” (NIV)

The use of ‘now’ here may imply the same point in time as what verse 1 purports, which is “in the beginning” when “God created the heavens and the Earth.”

“And the earth was without form and void; and darkness was upon the face of the deep. And the Spirit of God moved upon the face of the waters.” (KJV)

In this translation, KJV faithfully uses ‘and,’ which again ties verses 1 and 2 together. Its use doesn’t appear to imply ‘then.’ If it did, then we could read the two verses as a flow in time. As it is, it may be the same time frame.

“The earth was formless and empty, and darkness covered the deep waters. And the Spirit of God was hovering over the surface of the waters.” (NLT)

Using simpler street vernacular, the NLT dispenses with both ‘now’ and ‘and.’ And by doing so, the reading from verses 1 to 2, gives a strong impression that we’re dealing with the same time frame.

None of this makes it any clearer that Cain was born before or after his parents were driven out of the Garden. Maybe we can try to see this from a slightly different standpoint. Firstly, that can be no doubt that Cain had a sinful nature. 

Just as Romans 5:12 tells us, like Cain, each and every one of us received the same flawed nature from Adam. We can then take that to imply fairly certainly that Cain was conceived after Adam had sinned, which is how he inherited his father’s nature.



An impression of what the Garden of Eden could look like (Image source: goodform0thing.deviantart.com

Then Genesis 3 shows us that God acted with a sense of urgency to evict Adam and Eve from the Garden in order to prevent them from eating from the Tree of Life (3:23-24). In other words, once God discovered that they had sinned, He did not want them to possess that sin and still be capable of living forever and to do that, He had to kick them out and lock up the Garden to prevent them from returning.

If we can establish that Cain was their first child, what about Abel? Was he necessarily the second child? Could he be the second son but not necessarily the second child? In other words, could there have been a daughter as their second child? Of course Scripture doesn’t affirm it directly but then in Genesis 4:2, it says:

“Later, she gave birth to his brother and named him Abel.” (NLT)

We can’t get any more certain than that. The word ‘later’ used in the NLT version is concurrent with ‘again’ used in the NASB and ‘and’ in the KJV. All of them allude to the fact that Abel was an addition to the family, meaning that he came after Cain. 

But of course, while all this is true, it does not mean that just because Abel came after Cain that he was necessarily the second child. For all we may know, Abel might already have had not just a brother in Cain but also one if not more sisters.

However here is what we do know – because Abel’s name was mentioned, he was certainly a child of significance. If he wasn’t the second child – though second son – then we may accept that he might have had a sister or two but because they weren’t mentioned by name in the Bible, they might not have had that same sense of importance in the larger scheme of things. 

We know all this for a fact because of the events that unfolded in Chapter Four. Hence, we can confirm that there is absolutely no certainty that Abel was the second child directly after Cain but we are assured that no matter what, he was important to the story God wants told.

Then we come to Seth. Again, the way Genesis was written, we often take it that Cain was first, Abel was second and now, Seth was third and that no other children came in between this order of offspring:

“Adam had sexual relations with his wife again, and she gave birth to another son. She named him Seth, for she said, ‘God has granted me another son in place of Abel, whom Cain killed.” (Gen 4:25, NLT)

We are clear on one thing with the above verse; that God had intended Seth to be a replacement for having lost Abel who was murdered by Cain. In other words, Seth was an appointed birth with a sense of purpose and that purpose is to be the descendant of the promised Seed. In order to have a better idea of how old Seth was, it would be ideal if we knew Cain’s and Abel’s age when the former killed the latter. 

We know that at the time of the murder, Cain was a farmer who worked the land while the younger Abel was a herder and breeder. This means that both were sufficiently young and capable and physically matured enough to hold down jobs that demand toiling.

In light of Cain and Abel likely being in the twenties, would it then be possible for them to have other brothers and sisters by then? In the twenty-or-so years of their existence, could Adam and Eve have added more children to their family? 



Cain and Abel (Image source: slideshare.net)

Although the Bible is mute on this, we could reasonably assume that both were obedient enough to fulfil God’s earlier mandate to “be fruitful and multiply” (1:28). The other assumption we can make is that unlike today with the myriad diseases we are embattled with, Adam and Eve would have been born as genetically perfect as it would get and with that, they would not have any fertility issues.

Given that then, the likelihood that they would have more than just the three sons should be very high especially in the 130-year space of time prior to Seth’s birth (5:3). And remember also that Cain had later taken one of his sisters as his wife (Gen 4:17) although Scripture doesn’t give us a name for her. Given that this is true, this sister would have to be someone around Cain’s age but very possibly younger than Seth. 



Next week: Adam and Eve's Time in the Garden (Part Two)