One of the greatest mysteries of all time is the Creation as documented in Genesis. According to this ancient text, God created the Universe and subsequently Man. That man is commonly called Adam because that name actually means ‘man’. God put Adam in charge of the Earth to take care of it and to follow his edicts. Eventually God gave Adam a companion named Eve and they had three sons; Cain, Abel and Seth. Seth was born after God banished Cain away from his family for slaying his brother Abel and lying about it. This is where the first mysteries of the Bible comes about.
Following the murder of Abel, Cain was exiled from his family and went to the Land of Nod which is said to be to the East of the area of Eden. After going to Nod, Cain took a wife and bore children with her. If you are a literal believer in the Word, then you must also wonder where the inhabitants of Nod came from. When this came about in Sunday School, I would always bring this up and because of the Southern Baptist culture I was told to not question anything the Bible said. I tried in vain to explain that I wasn’t questioning as much as wanting to understand who these people were because I had just been taught that God made Adam and Eve and it is implied that they are the only man on Earth.
However, this mystery really isn’t that mysterious. I’ve always found that trying to go as far back and close to the source of information is the best way to understand things like this. Knowing that the King James Bible and the literally thousands of subsequent variations are based upon the select texts approved by the Church of England, I chose to go and read the earliest known translations of the Old Testament. Time for a history lesson…
There is a version of the Old Testament called ‘The Septuagint’ that is based upon writings that were transcribed by 72 Jewish scholars sometime around 250BC. That’s a whole 1400 years before the King James version. This version of what Christians call ‘The Old Testament’ has some interesting variations on the story of Creation. The story of the Septuagint is rather fascinating in itself… the Egyptian King or Pharaoh at the time was Ptolemy II Philadelphus. Ptolemy was the Son of Alexander the Great’s top general that succeeded him in ruling the Greek Empire in Egypt and North Africa. Ptolemy II was a very well-educated man and had devoted a lot of resources to build the great library at Alexandria.
In building this grand center of knowledge, Ptolemy II commissioned a group of 70 Jewish scholars to independently translate the Torah into Greek. These men did so in 72 days and produced 70 identical versions. This translation was attributed as being one of the earliest and most complete versions of the Torah at the time and is still used today on Greek Orthodox churches. The Septuagint also contains some writings that were excluded by latter translations such as the Codex Vaticanus which is what almost all modern Christian bibles are based upon.
But let’s get back to the mystery at hand… if Adam and Eve were the first people in God’s creation; where did the People of Nod come from?
In the creation story… man is created in Genesis 1:26-27 and in the Septuagint it reads like this:
“26 And God said, Let us make man according to our image and likeness, and let them have dominion over the fish of the sea, and over the flying creatures of heaven, and over the cattle and all the earth, and over all the reptiles that creep on the earth.
27 And God made man, according to the image of God he made him, male and female he made them.
28 And God blessed them, saying, Increase and multiply, and fill the earth and subdue it, and have dominion over the fish of the seas and flying creatures of heaven, and all the cattle and all the earth, and all the reptiles that creep on the earth.”
The creation of man is also mentioned in Chapter 2 Verse 7: “7 And God formed the man dust of the earth, and breathed upon his face the breath of life, and the man became a living soul.” And then the addition of Woman in Verse 21-23: “21 And God brought a trance upon Adam, and he slept, and he took one of his ribs, and filled up the flesh instead thereof. 22 And God formed the rib which he took from Adam into a woman, and brought her to Adam.
23 And Adam said, This now is bone of my bones, and flesh of my flesh; she shall be called woman, because she was taken out of her husband. 24 Therefore shall a man leave his father and his mother and shall cleave to his wife, and they two shall be one flesh”
And they were… Adam and Eve bore a son named Cain and then another named Abel. But Cain was of a jealous type and decided to murder his brother after feeling slighted by God because of sacrifices made to him. In Chapter 4, God banishes Cain: “16 So Cain went forth from the presence of God and dwelt in the land of Nod over against Edem.”
The rest of Chapter 4 details the lineage of Cain and then Chapter 5 details the lineage of Adam and Eve who bore another sone named Seth. What’s obvious is that there were other people on the Earth other than Adam and Eve. But where or whom did they come from?
In an interesting note… the Hebrew word used in Genesis 4:16 for ‘NOD’ means to wander. But it is also a common belief amongst scholars that the ‘Land of Nod’ existed to the East of Edem. Because of the geography described in Genesis 2:10-14, the most likely location for Edem is at the headwaters to the modern day ‘Persian Gulf’. The ancient historian Josephus in his book, The Antiquity of the Jews, wrote that Cain continued his ungodly ways and even expounds upon the story of the Bible’s first people outside of Edem.
“AND WHEN Cain had travelled over many countries, he, with his wife, built a city named Nod, which is a place so called, Cain in the land of Nod.and there he settled his abode; where also he had children. However, he did not accept of his punishment in order to amendment, but to increase his wickedness; for he only aimed to procure everything that was for his own bodily pleasure, though it obliged him to be injurious to his neighbours. He augmented his household substance with much wealth by rapine and violence; he excited his acquaintance to procure pleasures and spoils of robbery, and became a great leader of men into wicked courses. He also introduced a change in that way of simplicity wherein men lived before, and was the author of measures and weights. And whereas they lived innocently and generously while they knew nothing of such arts, he changed the world into cunning craftiness. He first of all set boundaries about lands; he built a city, and fortified it with walls, and he compelled his family to come together to it; and called that city Enoch,”
But none of this answers the mystery of the existence of these people. So I turned to some study guides and various internet resources to see what biblical scholars said about the topic. Reading some of that stuff really was a challenge to say the least. From suggesting that genetic purity made incest acceptable to the aspect that Cain had procreated with a lesser species, the stances taken are seemingly very far-fetched. But then again… nothing is really all that far-fetched when it comes to how God does anything.
What this all boils down to for me is that We will never know all the mysteries of God’s creation and that’s Okay because God IS in charge. Despite all the evil that We are seeing in today’s world, believers know that there’s a better existence beyond the earthly. We are told this numerous times by God and the ones that he anointed to carry his message throughout time.
Stay Strong!