sbm@purdue.UUCP (Steve Munson) (01/22/86)
Someone in net.religion.christian asked the question > Genesis 4 ... who were Cain and Seth's wives? > Did God create them? He was wondering, if incest was against the Law, why could Cain and Seth do it? I answered his question in that newsgroup, and thought readers of this newsgroup would be interested in reading it. Since I am Christian, I probably slipped into Christianisms. I quoted Romans to determine what sin meant, but I could have found that in the Hebrew Scriptures, too. Anyway, this article is a followup to that one, so, if your news reader has a command to read the parent article, you don't have to thumb through all the articles in net.religion.christian to read it. Its subject line is "Incest (Re: confused)". -- Steve Munson sbm@Purdue.EDU sbm@Purdue.CSNET
meth@csd2.UUCP (Asher Meth) (01/29/86)
Steve Munson writes :
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Someone in net.religion.christian asked the question
> Genesis 4 ... who were Cain and Seth's wives?
> Did God create them?
He was wondering, if incest was against the Law, why could Cain and Seth
do it?
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The Talmud, Sanhedrin 58b, says : Why did Adam not marry his daughter ? So that
Kayin (Cain) would be able to marry his sister; as it says (Tehillim/Psalms
89:3) "Ki amarti olam chessed yibaneh" - for I said that the world is built on
kindness; in all other cases, such a union is forbidden.
RaSHI (R. Solomon ben Isaac, one of the "early" commentaries, circa late 1000's
to 1100's) comments on the pasuk (verse) in the portion of Acharei-Mos
(Vayikra/Leviticus 20:17) "and a man who takes his sister, daughter of his
father or of his mother ... it is a kindness (chessed)" - that which was
permitted to Kayin (to marry his sister) was a kindness I (G-d) granted to him.
i.e., The rules were suspended for Kayin, so that the world could continue to
function, for the purpose of the propagation of the human race. But the general
rule is that such acts are forbidden.
Asher Meth ....... meth@nyu-csd2.arpa ....... allegra!cmcl2!csd2!meth