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Explore this question of Pre-Flood Population
Question: The question usually goes something like this, if God created just Adam and Eve, how could Seth have someone to marry or how could Cain have had a wife?
Keep in mind that the Bible tends to record only the sons (males), and typically only the first-born sons through whom the lineage is tracked and not the daughters. You should also note that in almost every case in which the lineage from Adam and Eve are tracked, after recording the first-born son, it says “he had other sons and daughters” (Gen 5:4,7, 10…). So, the Bible does not record all of Adam and Eve’s children, not even all their sons but it does say Eve “was the mother of all the living.” And, most importantly it says “God blessed them and God said to them “Be fruitful and multiply and fill the earth.””
So how many children did Adam and Eve have? Well, the Bible doesn’t say. What we do know is that the current record for births is by a Russian woman between 1725 to 1765 who had 69 children according to Guiness Book of World Records. The amazing thing is that she never had a single child. How is that possible, because she had 27 deliveries but 0 singles. Instead, she had 16 twins, 7 triplets and 4 quadruplets or (16×2)+(7×3)+(4×4)=69.
So, let’s do a little math to calculate the potential population growth after creation. This is as an example of how rapidly populations can grow but does not mean this was the actual population. To do so we have to make some assumptions about the rate of child birth, age at start and ending of child birthing. Keep in mind, Abraham and Sarah, who lived well after mutations were accumulating in the genetic code and the environment had also deteriorated to the point that people rarely lived over 100, had children after 100 years of age. In fact Abraham had numerous children after 100 years old. So Adam and Eve having children till 250 years old is very reasonable. Afterall, Eve was the mother of all the living.
Thought Provoking Assumptions
1
Fill The Earth
Adam and Eve and their descendants just had a child every other year and only had singles. It is more likely that God would have made Eve much more fertile than this given it says He blessed them and told them to multiply and fill the earth.
2
Fully Mature
Adam and Eve were made fully mature from the day of creation as other living things were made and thus started having children in year one but their off-spring did not start having children until age 20.
3
Pure Genetics
Adam and Eve could continue having children until 250 years old. Because of the purity of their genes (no mutations) and their environment, they lived to over 900 years
4
Off-Spring
50% of the off-spring were male and 50% female and they married (5 new couples every 20 years from A&E) plus after 20 years these off-spring couples had off-spring at this same rate.
Now for some calculations. The Table above is a simple spread sheet calculation of the population growth based upon the assumptions stated.
Just as an explanation of our assumption, 20 years after creation there would be Adam and Eve (2 people) plus 10 children for 12 people total (far right column). After 20 more years, Adam and Eve would have had 10 more children and the first 5 couples would have each had 10 children each for 2(A&E) + 20 (A&E’s children) + 50 (A&E’s grandchildren) = 72 total after just 40 years.
If you don’t agree with the assumption of the Off-Spring having children at age 20, the Table above is a simple spread sheet calculation of the population growth assuming the offspring start having children at age 50. Still the population by the time of Seth would be over 1,000.
While this does not take into account the death rate, and we know there was death because Cain killed Abel (Gen 4:8), and Lamech admits to killing a man and a boy (Gen 4:23), we do know that according to the ages that are recorded in the Bible, people lived exceedingly long lives (generally over 900 years) so the death rate was MUCH lower than today.
This simple calculation makes a clear point, by the time Seth is born (130 years) there could have been over 1000 to 50,000 females from whom Seth could choose a wife depending on the age that they married and started having children.
Even if we take a MUCH more conservative approach and assume that they did not start marrying and having children until age 100, Seth would have had over 250 women to choose from. Yes, they were marrying sisters and cousins but this was not prohibited by God at this time nor was this considered morally or medically wrong. Remember, the flood was over 1500 years after creation and Abraham was some 500 years after the flood and yet he married his half-sister. God neither prohibited this nor was this a health concern because mutations had not accumulated to the point that this was a problem. If we do these same simple calculations with death added it would lower the population growth rate. But we could also add the more likely reproduction rates of occasionally having twins, triplets and quadruples or having children every year which would significantly raise the population rate. We do not know what the population was at the flood (1556 years) but with either scenario of marrying at age 20 or age 100, it could easily have been the same as our population today of over 7 billion people.
Clearly Cain had no problem finding a wife and by the time of Seth (130 years) the population would be over 100,000.
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The question of how could Cain or Seth have had a wife unless God created other men and women is simply non-sensical.
The Bible is consistent with Science. Simple math confirms the Bible account.