Adam lived for 930 years. The Bible mentions that Adam and Eve had two children called Cain and Abel. According to Jewish tradition they had 56 children fulfilling God's command to be fruitful and to multiply throughout the earth. The Bible does not mention any specific number of children of Adam—only that he "had other sons and daughters"—but does say that Adam and Eve did have another son named Seth, when Adam was 130 years old. He is mentioned as taking the place of Abel who had been murdered by Cain.
Traditional Christian thought considers Adam and Eve to be the father and mother of the human race and as such the first marriages originally occurred between brothers and sisters. It is believed this would not cause a difficulty from a genetic standpoint because it would take many generations for mutations degrading the human genetic code from God's perfect creation to accumulate sufficiently to be a problem. It was not until the time of Moses that the Bible records any prohibition on close relatives marrying.
Adam and Eve originally lived in the Garden of Eden, a virtual paradise on earth, but after Eve had eaten of the tree of the Knowledge of Good and Evil and had Adam eat as well, they were banished from the garden. Adam toiled the land thereafter. Little else is known of Adam's life.
Generations of Adam from the Biblical Account
- Terry Mortenson, PhD (2016). Searching for Adam: Genesis & the Truth About Man's Origin. Green Forest, Arkansas: Master Books. ISBN: 9780890519752.
Syncretistic attack on Genesis by Gender ideology
Gender ideology that exhibits the gnostic traits attempts, under the banner of so-called "Theology of Gender," to penetrate into genuine Christian doctrines by radical reinterpretation of Biblical data, i.a. on nature of Adam. In an example of such Gnostic text by Susan Durber there is a claim:
- "What is much clearer in the original Hebrew language in which this story is written, is that the first creature that God made was simply an ‘earthling’ (this is what Adam means in Hebrew, a creature from the earth). It is only when the second creature is made, when the first one is divided to make two, that new words for ‘man’ and ‘woman’ are used. In our translations we can easily assume that this story suggests that God first made a man, and then made a woman, out of the man. But in fact something different is being revealed, a creation of one creature who then becomes two."
Martin Luther, a professor of biblical interpretation at the University of Wittenberg in Germany, already in the 16th century refuted such tale as sophistry. According to him, Lyra and Plato related this kind of a Jewish tale "that in the beginning man was created bisexual and later on, by divine power, was, as it were, split or cut apart, as the form of the back and of the spine seems to prove. Others have expanded these ideas with more obscene details." Luther concludes that the second chapter of Genesis refutes "these babblers" and that these "Talmudic tales" have to be mentioned "so that we might see the malice of devil, who suggests such absurd ideas to human beings." He points out that "these men who make malicious statements and ridicule a creature of God in which God Himself took delight as in a most excellent work, moreover, one which we see created by special consel of God." Luther names these ideas "pagan" and as showing "that reason cannot establish anything sure about God and the works of God but only thinks up reasons against reasons and teaches nothing in a perfect and sound manner."
- Genesis 5:5 (NASB)
- Whiston, William, in footnote 8 of his translation of Josephus, Flavius, Antiquities of the Jews - Book I.
- Genesis 1:28 (NASB)
- Genesis 5:4 (NASB)
- Genesis 5:3 (NASB)
- "Cain's wife—who was she?", Chapter 8 of The Revised and Expanded Answers Book, (Master Books).
- (July 2014) Of the Same Flesh: exploring a theology of gender. Christian Aid. Retrieved on 6 Jan 2018.
- (1958) "ONE", in Jaroslav Pelikan: Luther's works: Lectures on Genesis: Chapters 1-5. Concordia Publishing House, 69–70. ISBN 978-0-5700-6401-5.