Atheist Bible Study 1: Genesis

[GrandizerII]

Let's see what Dr. Price thinks of this Genesis horseshit.

Cain is known today as the first murderer and, even more famously, for apparently pulling his wife out of thin air. Fundamentalists have never been able to answer the old stumper, “Where did Cain get his wife?” But the blinders they wear prevent them from seeing the answer, or, rather, that, as so often, they are asking the wrong question. The key thing is to realize that some editor or compiler has done his best to stitch together the disparate fragments of legends and stories available to him. These bits and pieces seem to be remnants of what must have been an extensive body of Cain material. But the J compiler has come onto the scene too late; most of the Cain lore had already been forgotten, so he had no connected narrative to pass on to us.

 (p. 22)

And the key note there is that the J version was compiled from earlier folklore and mythology into one big, steaming, pile of mythology.

I mean, it makes a lot of sense. And it explains why, in my last reading of the story of Cain, I had this perception that there was poor flow from the story of Adam and Eve to the story of Cain, almost as if the fall (as depicted in the Adam and Eve story) never happened per the story of Cain (and almost as if Adam and Eve were all of a sudden not the only first parents of the human race).