Scholars, believers and skeptics all tend to have the same questions about the Bible.

At times, we come across things that are puzzling or even hard to believe. Those folks with a deep faith most likely are under conviction, and they accept the Bible cover to cover. Bible scholars have studied and searched and proven things about the Bible that often shatter the ideas of the skeptics.  

Still, most of us still ask the same questions. They make for interesting conversations – regardless of your degree of belief or faith.

I can’t begin to cover all the “frequently asked questions” of the Bible, but it’s cool to know I can come back to them when I’m done complaining about things in life or getting my feelings hurt about something. And heck, what better way to get away from teaching and retirement topics than to crack open the Bible?

Did you ever wonder about Adam and Eve’s family? In those days, during the pre-Flood era, the world was definitely a much different place. People were healthier for many reasons.  There was a “water canopy” in the atmosphere that helped keep the climate at a superb level. Oxygen was pure, of course, because there was no pollution. Food was pure, with no preservatives. Healthy living, at least on a physical level, was pretty good.  

No wonder people lived so long. This was on purpose, as populating the earth was of great importance.

There’s even been some speculation that multiple births were common. Cain and Abel might have been twins?  

The gene pool of Adam and Eve was free of genetic decay, and as strange and uncomfortable as it sounds to us today, Adam and Eve’s large family included siblings who married one another. Cain and Abel married their sisters.

Let’s talk about that a little further. The Bible, of course, mentions Cain, Abel and Seth as sons of Adam. Yet in the genealogy of Genesis 5, we hear how long Adam lived: 930 years! He “begat” those boys mentioned, but it also says he had other sons and daughters during his lifetime.

OK, so how many would that have been? Long ago, oral histories of families were passed down, generation after generation, and the early writer Josephus (fascinating guy; Google him) reported at one time that the sons of Adam numbered 33 and the daughters of Adam numbered 20-something. So, whether that is true or not, it’s highly possible Adam and Eve, who lived hundreds of years, could have had a family of over 50 kiddos.

Mercy.

This means that the two of them could have birthed and raised several generations of children, some of whom probably didn’t know one another at all. These children grew up and went their separate ways, spreading out over their land.

If you figure that even half of those children got married and had families like their parents, Adam, during his lifetime, could have seen over one million descendants.

Mind boggling, and the skeptics have a heyday with that one.

It’s pretty likely more than half of Adam and Eve’s children got married and had large families. So, that means that by the time of Noah and the Flood, the world might have had seven billion inhabitants.

Let’s go on even further with the Noah connection.  Noah could have known and spoken with Adam’s grandchildren, and maybe even some of his actual children. Who knows?

Here’s my point: Even though generations of people could have known and talked to Adam and Seth, who were early worshippers and had witnessed the power and providence of God, we still had the rapid decline of society and a descent into wickedness.  

Even though folks should have known better, they chose debauchery and foolishness many times over what God wanted.

So, it wasn’t that the decay of pre-Flood society was due to error or even ignorance. Those folks had the references. They had the people and the immediate families of those people to show and tell about God’s power and such.

Their disobedience was willful.

Hard to believe. But evidence of “humans being humans” is scattered throughout the Bible, even in the midst of miracles and outstanding, first-hand evidence of God’s power.

We can only do so much with our humanness. But people have been trying to do it on their own without God for a long, long time.