I usually chalk it up to "Gods operate on a totally different biology than we do". Still weird to me though.
Look at Adam and Eve, whom the latter is a clone of the former. Adam should have just put his ego aside and stayed with Lilith as equal partners, at least then there is one instance where human intercourse is truly 100% incest-free.
Afaik Lilith is apocryphal in Christianity and in Judaism and is mostly relevant in some occult Jewish traditions. She's not part of the main stream religion or theology in either case.
I've never seen anything to indicate that ancient Hebrews were particularly concerned with the question of who ended up marrying Cain, Able, and their descendants. There are lots of putative genealogies out there, so you could look up some of the old ones, but I think the Genesis narrative just didn't consider the question of where the wives of the first generation came from to be important to the narrative.
Eh. For the Greeks at least the Gods were pretty weird. Athena was born fully armed and armored from Zeus's thigh. Aphrodite was born from sea-foam, I think, which might contextually have been Poseidon's spunk? I wouldn't make assumptions about what people believed about the biology of the gods without looking for ancient primary sources. They were believed to be sustained entirely by nectar and ambrosia, for instance.
Plus I'm not even clear if a concept akin to "genetic disease" existed. I'm pretty sure people were aware that certain traits were heritable, but I don't think there was anything like an awareness of genetics and lots of things were still believed to be the result of supernatural forces.
I usually chalk it up to "Gods operate on a totally different biology than we do". Still weird to me though.
Look at Adam and Eve, whom the latter is a clone of the former. Adam should have just put his ego aside and stayed with Lilith as equal partners, at least then there is one instance where human intercourse is truly 100% incest-free.
Afaik Lilith is apocryphal in Christianity and in Judaism and is mostly relevant in some occult Jewish traditions. She's not part of the main stream religion or theology in either case.
I've never seen anything to indicate that ancient Hebrews were particularly concerned with the question of who ended up marrying Cain, Able, and their descendants. There are lots of putative genealogies out there, so you could look up some of the old ones, but I think the Genesis narrative just didn't consider the question of where the wives of the first generation came from to be important to the narrative.
Cain and their other kids though get up to some unspecified trouble though
It doesn't even have to be that different. They just have to have "perfect" genes, i.e. no genetic diseases.
Eh. For the Greeks at least the Gods were pretty weird. Athena was born fully armed and armored from Zeus's thigh. Aphrodite was born from sea-foam, I think, which might contextually have been Poseidon's spunk? I wouldn't make assumptions about what people believed about the biology of the gods without looking for ancient primary sources. They were believed to be sustained entirely by nectar and ambrosia, for instance.
Plus I'm not even clear if a concept akin to "genetic disease" existed. I'm pretty sure people were aware that certain traits were heritable, but I don't think there was anything like an awareness of genetics and lots of things were still believed to be the result of supernatural forces.