raugust at ptd.net wrote:
>> Ok, Bob, here goes.
>> Josh McDowell was in college and dating a young lady. As a Christian, she
> challenged him to disprove the Holy Bible in all its aspects, historical and
> spiritual. Mr. McDowell tried in every way to disprove Holy text, using
> historical records, maps, biological records, evolution, revolution, and
> everything else on which he could lay hands.
>http://www.caw.org/articles/otherpeople.html
A few excepts:
I innocently remark: "But none of that applies to us. We have no need
for salvation because we don't have original sin. We are the Other
People."
16 Cain left the presence of Yahweh and settled in the land of Nod, east
of Eden.
We can assume that the phrase "left the presence of Yahweh" implies
that Yahweh is a local deity, and not omnipresent. Now Eden, according
to Gen. 2:14-15, was situated at the source of the Tigris and Euphrates
rivers, apparently right where Lake Van is now, in Turkey. "East of
Eden," therefore, would probably be along the shores of the Caspian Sea,
right in the Indo-European heartland. Cain settled in there, among the
people of Nod, and married one of the women of that country. Here, for
the first time, is specifically mentioned the "other people" who are not
of the lineage of Adam and Eve. I.e., the Pagans.
So let's look at this story from another viewpoint: There we were,
around six thousand years ago, living in our little farming communities
around the Caspian Sea, in the land of Nod, when this dude with a
terrible scar comes stumbling in out of the sunset. He tells us this
bizarre story, about how his mother and father had been created by some
god named Jahweh, and put in charge of a beautiful garden somewhere out
west, and how they had gotten thrown out for disobedience after eating
some of the landlord's forbidden magic fruit of enlightenment. He tells
us of murdering his brother, as the god of his parents would only accept
blood sacrifice, and of receiving that scar as a mark so that all would
know him as a fratricide.
Now it doesn't mention here where Seth's wife came from. Another woman
from Nod, possibly, or maybe someone from another neolithic community
downstream in the Tigris-Euphrates valley. But her folks also, cannot be
of the lineage of Adam and Eve, and must also be counted among "the
other people."
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