The "Cultural Context" Excuse

[Rev. Rye]

Well, let's take all three verses one by one:

• Genesis 3:14-5: "And the Lord God said unto the serpent, ...  I will put enmity between thee and the woman, and between thy seed and her seed." Notice that, while it does say the serpent does have a seed (it doesn't actually say that this seed existed yet; it is still consistent with the idea of a future seed), the verse takes pains to separate the Serpent's seed and Eve's seed, essentially saying that they are two separate things. There is no reason to assume from this verse that they shared seed. It is also worth noting that, in the verse before it, Eve's words heavily imply that it the temptation was not, in fact, sexual in nature: "And the Lord God said unto the woman, What is this that thou hast done? And the woman said, The serpent beguiled me, and I did eat."
  
• Genesis 5:1-5: "This is the book of the generations of Adam. In the day that God created man, in the likeness of God made he him;Male and female created he them; and blessed them, and called their name Adam, in the day when they were created.And Adam lived an hundred and thirty years, and begat a son in his own likeness, and after his image; and called his name Seth:  And the days of Adam after he had begotten Seth were eight hundred years: and he begat sons and daughters: And all the days that Adam lived were nine hundred and thirty years: and he died." Where, exactly, does it say that these geneologies must be of the firstborn son like you say so? Bloodlines do not have to follow the firstborn son. Granted, they are usually given preferential treatment, but this isn't usually an iron law in cases like this. Even if things were as you say, why couldn't, after Cain spent his life walking the earth, Adam have considered Seth a de facto firstborn son, since Abel was dead, and Cain was elsewhere?
  
• 1 John 3:12: "Not as Cain, who was of that wicked one, and slew his brother. And wherefore slew he him? Because his own works were evil, and his brother's righteous." Why can this not be a metaphor? It's pretty well established that the Hebrews in those days would call any sufficiently righteous man "a Son of God," without actually implying any real divine parentage. Indeed, it was fairly common to use 'Sons of God' as shorthand for the offspring of Seth. Why is it so impossible to believe that saying Cain was 'of that wicked one' is a similar metaphor? I've asked this question before and have not received an answer.
  

Also, note that, in any mentions of Cain in the Bible, none imply any other parentage. One would expect that Cain and Abel having separate fathers would be mentioned at some point; it would certainly give Cain a more interesting motivation. But, of course, you just said God is willing to hide crucial so they can only be found using insane troll logic like yours. In this case, I may ask: what would be the point of even bothering to make claims like this that require some really wonky ways of looking at things just to understand what the evidence is meant to be? A wise man once said 'The invisible and non-existent look very alike.'


You see, Huggy Bear, there's a reason I didn't bother talking about the other two verses. It's very difficult for me to see how they could square with your interpretation. I have read writings by people who claim that governments are corporations, people are legally equivalent to boats, and you can get a 'get out of the Rule of Law free card' with semantics and putting random punctuation in your name, and they still make more sense than your arguments.