Finding Cain's Wife

It's amazing the stuff you can learn if you really take a good look at a subject. In fact, it's almost like the walks in the woods I would take in the summertime. The deciduous trees and sparse aggregations of wildflowers were easy to spot, but when I got down on my hands and knees and started peering under rocks, a whole new world came to light. Such is my continuing enfatuation with any number of subjects, especially in light of the ping-pong-esque debates I've had on here recently; the more rocks I turn over in the search for information, the more interesting stuff there is to learn. I'm probably losing memories from my childhood, cramming all this new stuff into my brain, but somehow I can't resist. So, the question of Cain's wife is one that has continuously bothered me. Where did Cain (of Biblical infamy) get his wife from? Where there other people around or did he (shudder) marry his sister?

The question of where Cain got his wife from is one of the most common questions about the Bible, and the most common answer is that, being Adam and Eve were the first people, that Cain married his sister. How many sisters Cain had, which sister, what the age difference was, etc. isn't known, but most Christian websites I've seen on the subject (just do a search for Cain + wife + Bible on Google and you'll get an idea of how many there are) say logically Cain must have married his sister because no other females were around (other than Eve of course, and I'm sure Freud would have a field day with the relationship of the 1st mother and one of the 1st sons).  Still, there's something nagging at the back of my head that the Bible mentions other people being around, so I set off in order to try and find out what the reference was and if there was any historical record.

The first thing that caught me as interesting are the verses of Genesis 4:13-14. After God discovered Cain had killed Abel and told Cain that he will be a "restless wanderer of the earth", the Bible says

13 "Cain said to the LORD, "My punishment is more than I can bear. 14 Today you are driving me from the land, and I will be hidden from your presence; I will be a restless wanderer on the earth, and whoever finds me will kill me." 

Hmm. Interesting. If Adam and Eve were the first humans beings, giving birth to the only other people on the planet, who is Cain talking about? If it was just his mother and father, why didn't he say "My father will kill me" instead of "whoever finds me will kill me"? To me, this suggests that there already other people in existence. Since we're not told how old Adam and Eve were when they had Cain and Abel, nor if they had more children when Cain and Abel were growing up (remember, both were old enough to farm and shepard), so it can only be assumed that Adam, Eve, Cain, and Abel were the only people alive during the time of the murder. Is it so impossible to think there could be people in other lands? Is it possible that Adam and Eve were the first of God's people (the Jews) and not for all of humanity? Is it possible that the entire story was pieced together from other religions and myths? I don't know the answer to that question, but there seems to be more to the story than can be absorbed by reading Genesis as historically accurate in plain language.

The other part of the story that intruiges me is this. God banishes Cain, and Cain goes to the "land of Nod" (or of "wandering" dependening on your translation) to live, and THEN it says he sleeps with his wife and has Enoch. The verses (Genesis 4:15-17) are as follows:

"15 But the LORD said to him, "Not so; if anyone kills Cain, he will suffer vengeance seven times over." Then the LORD put a mark on Cain so that no one who found him would kill him. 16 So Cain went out from the LORD's presence and lived in the land of Nod, east of Eden.  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."

So what happened? Did Cain bring his sister with him? Did he run home, avoiding his fathers presence, and steal away with his wife in the night into the wilderness? I doubt it, and it would be a pretty big omission if it did occur in such a fashion. The chronology is clear; Cain was banished, settled in Nod, and then "lay with his wife." It could be argued that Cain was married to his sister prior to his banishment, but it seems like a pretty big omission, and if Cain had other siblings the Bible leaves them out. Also of interest, according to the Wikipedia.org entry on Cain, there were a group of people called Kenites (Qayin in Hebrew, which essentially points right to Cain), and the "Mark of Cain" might have been an identifying attribute of the tribe. They might have even had a policy of avenging slain members of their tribe (the sevenfold curse on whomever harmed Cain), although this seems purely hypothetical. Speaking of the "Mark of Cain", it's interesting to know that some Christians considered dark skin to be the cursed mark and used it as a justification for racism and slavery, the most fair-skinned white men being the most pure (like Abel). This is especially interesting when one sees depictions of Cain and Abel, being Cain is often looks like a minority or has strong ethnic characteristics, but Abel is the fair-skinned Gentile Christian. Puts a whole new spin on Christian art now, doesn't it?

In any case, it seems to me that there were other people around at the time, and the story of Adam and Eve is allegory to explain the origins of one particular group of people. I could be very wrong, of course, but I simply can't accept the argument of "Cain must have married his sister because if we admit there were other people, our interpretation of Scripture falls flat, and because we must defend the Bible we can't allow for such ideas." There seems to be much more to the story than most people know, and I don't think putting blinders on is the way to go about enlightening people.