Where Did Cain Get His Wife

WHERE DID CAIN GET HIS WIFE?**

Have you ever noticed how ignorant most people are about the Bible, that pillar of Western Civilization and cornerstone of our own Constitution? It’s bad enough that according to statistics, whole bunches of John Does and Jane Plains (as my pastor calls them) can’t find Iraq on a map. We’re even more clueless about the Bible.

Up until three years ago, I thought I knew a decent amount about the Bible, having attended Catholic catechism classes until I was 18. Of course, the Catholics aren’t big on Bible literacy, relying instead on church tradition which often contradicts what the Bible says (i.e. the teaching that Jesus was an only child, when the Bible clearly states he had brothers -- at least 4, and sisters -- at least 2). I knew about Adam and Eve, Cain and Abel, Noah and the ark, maybe a bit about Moses and the Ten Commandments. I wasn’t encouraged to read the Bible for myself and we didn’t have one in our home.

Why didn’t somebody tell me about the wisdom and truth contained therein (what a great Biblical word)? Even the ability to communicate that you get from immersing yourself in the Bible has been lost.

When I became a Christian, I jumped into Bible reading with both feet. My first year I read the entire Bible through... twice! What a revelation!

One of the more surprising things I learned, was that Christianity is based on reason. We’re supposed to think about what we believe, something that was NOT encouraged in my Catholic youth and which caused me to rebel against anything remotely resembling a Christian church for many years.

Many a person has set out to disprove the Bible. One guy back in the 1800’s, Sir William Ramsey, spent 15 years trying to undermine the history of Luke’s gospel and thus refute the reliability of the New Testament. His quest failed and he ended up a believer. More recently, Palestinian terrorist Walid Shoebat set out to prove to his Christian wife the Bible was a total fake and ended up a Christian himself.

We Christians have nothing to fear from the truth. The Bible is NOT riddled with errors as so many people claim (even the ones who’ve never read a word of it for themselves). Those who think they’ve discovered a mistake haven’t done their homework. If you need a quick fix to the doing-your-homework scenario, check out The Big Book of Bible Difficulties by Norman Geisler and Thomas Howe. What a terrific tool for any Christian’s apologetics arsenal. It answers questions I didn’t even know I had. As the authors point out, just because something is unexplained, doesn’t mean it’s unexplainable. That’s how science has worked through the centuries -- it’s only fair to apply those same principles to the Bible.

** So where did Cain get his wife? He either married one of his sisters or his nieces. People lived hundreds of years in those days (a question which is also answered in the book). Plus Adam begot other sons and daughters beside Cain, Abel, and Seth. Corrupted genes weren’t a problem back then, in case you were wondering; they occurred gradually, after the Fall.