CONCLUSION - Cain's Wife and the Penalty of Incest

In conclusion, it seems to me that the circumstances surrounding the identity of Cain's wife have a significance in the light of Christian faith for the following reasons.   First, we know from modern genetics why incestuous relations are most likely to be damaging to the offspring.   But we also know that by chance such relations may not be damaging, a fact which demonstrates clearly that under certain circumstances brother-sister marriage might be not merely acceptable but greatly to be preferred from certain points of view.

Second, our present understanding of the processes of mutation, whereby the gene make-up of two proposed marriage partners has become damaged, also allows us to extrapolate backward into the past and say, with some measure of assurance, that the further back we go, the less likely are the offspring to suffer the consequences of inbreeding.

Third, the Bible supplies us with a piece of historic information -- namely, the account of the Flood and how the world's population was reduced to eight souls -- which provides a key to the sudden loss of vitality in terms of longevity which Scripture states immediately followed the re-peopling of the world.

Fourth, the events recorded in the first few chapters of Genesis indicate that inbreeding was either comparatively harmless or was carried out with decreasing frequency as the centuries rolled by from Adam to Noah.   In the case of Cain and his sister, both of whom were siblings in Adam and Eve's family, the amount of genetic damage carried in the genes must have been very small indeed.   At least this is true if we believe, as I do, that Adam and Eve themselves were created perfect at first, with no damaged genes.

In short, the circumstances are all of a piece.   If we allow the record to speak for itself, and if on the basis of this record we draw these quite reasonable conclusions, there is a ring of truth which accords perfectly with the assured findings of modern human genetics; and this is illuminatingly illustrated from the subsequent history of, not only single families, but whole tribes of both civilized and primitive peoples, in both modern and more distant times.

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