A few mornings ago just before my wife and I began our morning meditation, my daughter sent us a text with a question posed by my six-year-old granddaughter:
“Olivia asked me if Adam and Eve were everyone’s mom & dad and how all the families were created. So really, who had all these babies if they only had three sons?”
Hmm. I thought we’d only get the Santa questions, at least this month. This one was actually simpler than some of the Santa questions, but neither of us was immediately ready to deal with the creation myth story.
Still, like Santa Claus, the question assumed acceptance of the myth as fact. We’re not the kind of grandparents to shatter that. Yet.
We postponed and meditated. Then I did the research.
The answer that seemed simplest is, of course, in the Bible. Specifically, Genesis, Chapter Five, Verse Four: And the days of Adam after he had begotten Seth were eight hundred years: and he begat other sons and daughters.
But it wasn’t all that simple, since we had just explained to our granddaughter that brothers and sisters aren’t allowed to marry each other. I dug deeper.
First, I went to the Talmud, because there is no question so difficult that the Talmud can’t complicate it further. The website aish.com says: “The Talmud… explains that brothers did marry sisters in that generation. This was a one-time exception God made to the normal laws of incest (one of the Seven Noahide Laws) in order to populate the world.” Chabad.org concurs by saying, “Indeed, Cain and Abel had to marry their sisters, considering that there were no other women around.” Then, there’s this whole Midrashic commentary that gets very complicated involving twin brothers and sisters, and… watch out for that rabbit hole! Let’s move on.
What do the Christians say? At billygraham.org, I found this: “The usual assumption is that Cain and Abel married their sisters. (Later, this was forbidden by the Old Testament, but was necessary at the beginning of the human race.)” That is immediately followed by a pivot so sharp it could snap your neck: “Don’t be sidetracked by questions like this, however — because the story of Cain and Abel is an important one…” etc., etc. Let’s just keep it about the fratricide! Sisters? Don’t worry; nothing to see here, keep it moving.
The Catholics have their say. In his classic, The City of God, St. Augustine wrote, “…as there were no human beings except those who had been born of these two, men took their sisters for wives,—an act which was as certainly dictated by necessity in these ancient days as afterwards it was condemned by the prohibitions of religion . . . and though it was quite allowable in the earliest ages of the human race to marry one’s sister, it is now abhorred as a thing which no circumstances could justify.” How did it go from ‘quite allowable’ to abhorred? As George Carlin’s priest said, “Well, it’s a mystery.”
So, the rabbis, ministers, priests, and saints roll their eyes, shake their heads, and say, “ Yes, they did that then, but don’t even think about it now.”
What about Islam? Well, the interpretations of the Quran certainly rival the Midrashic/Talmudic commentaries. I found, at thequrancourses.com, this: “In light of the mention of Adam and Eve’s children, More than one scholar has claimed that Allah, may He be glorified, commanded Adam (peace be upon him) to marry his daughters to his sons, thereby allowing him to marry the female from one pregnancy to the male from another.” That echoed the commentaries in the Talmud. Other sites claim that there were female djinns involved, avoiding the incest question entirely.
Of course, we’re not explaining any of this to a six-year-old (even though she’s brilliant). I gave my daughter a brief summary of my research and then dodged the bullet.
To explain, the Chandogya Upanishad says, “Only that which is, was in the beginning, one only, without a second. It thought, ‘may I be many, may I grow forth’.” Or here’s an oversimplified explanation from the Alan Watts classic, The Book On The Taboo Against Knowing Who You Are: “In the Vedanta philosophy, nothing exists except God. There seem to be other things than God, but only because he is dreaming them up and making them his disguises to play hide-and-seek with himself.”
As my Guru explains it, God said, “I am one: I shall become many.”
But that’s not going to fly in Olivia’s first-grade class here in North Carolina.
Then my wife, after meditating, responded with the best answer: “The idea is, if God is omnipotent, omnipresent, etc, then the vastness of His (Her) creation cannot possibly be contained in just a book. The human mind is limited and can only process things within that frame of reference. Further, the writers of ancient texts and scriptures, while inspired by God, may not have been fully realized, and so the concepts went through the human filter. The vastness of God and all creation is certainly not a detailed account written anywhere.
“So the simple response is ‘there is more to the story and we’ll have to ask God all about it!’”
Grandpa is smart. Grandma is wise.
Beautiful! She may then ask to meet God, which is not a bad thing at all, and soon enough she’ll realize God is within her itself. Grandpa and grandma are both divine!
This was endearing and thoughtful. It was also great advice for grandparents everywhere. Nicely done.