This page was migrated in August 2022 from my older website, biblicalambiguities.net.
2 August 2022 Navigate 'up to the Genesis index: index-genesis.
Behold, you have driven me out today from upon the face of the ground, and I will be hidden from your face, and I will be a fugitive and wanderer on the earth, and then whoever finds me will kill me.
If we follow the preceding story carefully, we'll find just four humans alive at the beginning of this story: Adam, Eve, Cain, and Abel. After the death of Abel, the only other man on earth is Adam. Does it make sense for Cain to fear that "whoever finds me will kill me"? Are these the words of a man concerned only about dying at the hand of his father?
It would seem that this wording presupposes more people on the earth. Likewise, the origin of Cain's wife is left a mystery by the plain wording of the text, and how can we account for whatever number of people are needed to help when Cain builds a city?
These features are strange if we are to assume that Genesis is the product of a single writer, producing it from scratch. These features are less strange if Genesis is the product of various stories later put together into a whole that is in some ways a coherent narrative, but with all sorts of hints left throughout of its earlier, more scattered, nature.
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