In the opening chapters of Genesis, the Bible says that Cain was afraid of
others who might take vengeance upon him. Where did these people come
from??? They could not have been his brothers for there is hardly enough
time for procreation to have resulted in a population large enough for
Cain to be concerned of this. Also, the same chapters make reference to
cherubim and giants and other mythical beings. Doesn’t this show that the
Bible is wrong if it is referencing creatures that did not exist?

You ask at least three questions here, so let me take one on
at a time. First, the Bible describes each of the early generations of
descendents of Adam and Eve living for several hundreds of years. If one
can assume that this is true, then Adam and Eve could have had dozens of
children, each of whom could have had dozens of children and so forth.
Doing a little math based on this assumptions leads to the possibility
that by the time Cain and Abel were, say, three hundred years old, there
might have been thousands of direct descendants of Adam and Eve. Of
course, you will have to decide on the inspiration of the Bible for
yourself, but for one who simply accepts the accuracy of the statements in
the Bible concerning the age of the early humans, the question is answered
fairly easily.

Some have proposed as an alternative explanation that Adam and
Eve were not the first people, but were the first ones to have a soul and
spirit, and therefore to be the first humans in the spiritual sense. That
would explain the statements in Genesis about Cain you ask. In my
opinion, this is not likely to be an accurate interpretation of Genesis,
as it seems, at least on the face of it, to be a contradiction of the
obvious literal sense of Genesis, but I do not absolutely rule it out,
trying to remain open-minded.

Cherubim, as described by the Bible are angels, not people.
They are spiritual beings. To be honest, I cannot prove the existence of
angels as a scientist, but I accept their reality simply because they are
described in the Bible which I have accepted, based on extremely solid
evidence, to be the inspired word of God. I believe in angels, basically,
on faith in the Bible. The giants described in Genesis may simply be very
large people. Goliath was about eight or nine feet tall, and is described
as a giant in 1 Samuel. It is possible that “giants” in the book of
Genesis are a separate race of peoples, but I personally do not believe
this is the case. I certainly do not believe that Genesis is a myth. It
meets several criteria for being inspired scripture based on my personal
study. I will leave it to you to look at the evidence for inspiration of
the Bible, and especially of the book of Genesis. At this web site, you
will find a lot of that. I suggest you go to the section of articles
labeled “Bible” as a beginning point for discussing the evidence for
inspiration. I believe that, contrary to many intellectuals beliefs. the
Bible is the Word of God and is definitely not myth. Of course, it is
your right and privledge to reach your own conclusion on this particular
question, but that is how I see it.

John Oakes, PhD