Cain and Abel
Encyclopedia
In the Hebrew Bible
, Cain and Abel (Hebrew: הבל ,קין , Qayin, Hevel) (Arabic: هابيل ,قابيل - Qābīl and Hābīl) are two sons of Adam and Eve
. The Qur'an
mentions the story, calling them the two sons of Adam (Arabic: إبني آدم) only.
In the Greek New Testament, Cain is referred to as ἐκ τοῦ πονηροῦ. In at least one translation this is rendered "from the evil one", while others have "of the evil one." Some interpreters take this to mean that Cain was literally the son of the serpent in the Garden of Eden
. A parallel idea can be found in Jewish tradition, that the serpent (Hebrew nahash נחש) from the Garden of Eden was father to firstborn Cain.
In all versions, Cain is a crop farmer and his younger brother Abel is a shepherd. Cain is portrayed as sinful, committing the first murder by killing his brother, after God has rejected his offerings of produce but accepted the animal sacrifices brought by Abel.
The oldest known copy of the Biblical narration is from the 1st century Dead Sea Scrolls
. Cain and Abel also appear in a number of other texts, and the story is the subject of various interpretations. Abel, the first murder victim, is sometimes seen as the first martyr
; while Cain, the first murderer, is sometimes seen as an ancestor of evil
. A few scholars suggest the pericope
may have been based on a Sumer
ian story representing the conflict between nomadic shepherds and settled farmers. Others think that it may refer to the days in which agriculture
began to replace the ways of the hunter-gatherer
.
Allusion
s to Cain and Abel as an archetype
of fratricide
persist in numerous references and retellings, through medieval art
and Shakespearean works up to present day fiction.
of the Hebrew
names Qayin and Havel . The original text did not provide vowels.
Abel's name is composed in Hebrew of the same three consonants as a root
speculated by people to have originally meant "breath", because Rabbis postulated one of its roots thus, also "waste", but is used in the Hebrew Bible primarily as a metaphor for what is "elusive", especially the "vanity" (another definition by the Rabbis of medieval France, Rashi in specific from his translation into Old French) of human beauty and work e.g. Hevel Hayophi (He-vel Ha-yo-fi) vanity is as beauty from the Song of Songs of Solomon.
Julius Wellhausen
, and many scholars following him, have proposed that the name is independent of the root.
Eberhard Schrader
had previously put forward the Akkadian (Old Assyrian dialect) ablu ("son") as a more likely etymology.
In the Islam
ic tradition, Abel is named as Hābīl (هابيل), while Cain is named as Qābīl (قابيل). Although their story is cited in the Quran, neither of them is mentioned by name. Cain is called Qayen in the Ethiopian version
of Genesis.
The Koine Greek
of the New Testament
refers to Cain three times,
using two syllables ka-in for the name.
More recent scholarship has produced another theory, a more direct pun. Abel is here thought to derive from a reconstructed word meaning "herdsman", with the modern Arabic cognate
ibil, now specifically referring only to "camels". Cain, on the other hand, is thought to be cognate to the mid-1st millennium BC
South Arabian
word qyn, meaning "metal smith"
.
This theory would make the names merely descriptions of the roles they take in the story—Abel working with livestock
, and Cain with agriculture
—and would parallel the names Adam ("man") and Eve ("life", Chavah in Hebrew).
The name Abel has been used in many European languages as both surname
and first
name. In English
, however, even Cain features in 17th century, Puritan
-influenced families, who had a taste for biblical names, sometimes despite the reputation of the original character.
Contrary to popular belief, the surname McCain
does not mean "Son of Cain" in Gaelic
, rather it is a contraction (also McCann) of Mac Cathan. Gaelic cathan means "warrior", from cath "battle".
Religious sources of the Cain and Abel story can be found in Genesis (950 to 450 BC) in the Hebrew Bible
, Sura 5 (Al-Ma'ida
) of the Qur'an
(early 7th century) and Pearl of Great Price (1851).
The Septuagint has a different verse 7:
and the Conflict of Adam and Eve with Satan
both record that the real motive involved the desire of women. According to Midrashic tradition, Cain and Abel each had twin sisters, whom they were to marry. The Midrash records that Abel's promised wife was the more beautiful. Cain would not consent to this arrangement. Adam proposed to refer the question to God by means of a sacrifice. God rejected Cain's sacrifice, signifying His disapproval of his marriage with Aclima, and Cain slew his brother in a fit of jealousy.
In Latter-day Saint extra-Biblical scripture, the Book of Moses
contains an expanded account of the story of Cain and Abel. In this account, Cain murders Abel as a result of a covenant of murder with Satan
. Following the murder, Cain exclaims, "I am free; surely the flocks of my brother falleth into my hands" (Pearl of Great Price
, Moses 5:33) indicating that coveting Abel's possessions was another motive for Cain's action.
In Christianity
, comparisons are sometimes made between the death of Abel and that of Jesus
, the former thus seen as being the first martyr
: in , Jesus speaks of Abel as righteous; and the Epistle to the Hebrews
states that The blood of sprinkling ... [speaks] better things than that of Abel . The blood of Jesus is interpreted as bringing mercy; but that of Abel as demanding vengeance (hence the curse and mark).
Abel is invoked in the litany
for the dying in Roman Catholic Church
, and his sacrifice is mentioned in the Canon of the Mass
with those of Abraham
and Melchizedek
. The Coptic Church commemorates him with a feast day on December 28.
, located west of Damascus
, in Syria
.
(at 22:7), the soul of Abel is described as having been appointed as the chief of martyrs, crying for vengeance, for the destruction of the seed of Cain. This view is later repeated in the Testament of Abraham
(at A:13 / B:11), where Abel has been raised to the position as the judge of the souls:
According to the Coptic
Book of Adam and Eve (at 2:1-15), and the Syriac Cave of Treasures
, Abel's body, after many days of mourning, was placed in the Cave of Treasures, before which Adam and Eve, and descendants, offered their prayers. In addition, the Seth
ite line of the Generations of Adam
swear by Abel's blood to segregate themselves from the unrighteous.
There is Hadith in Al-Bukari that tells of the consequences Qabil shall take because of slaying his brother:
' Oth) could mean a sign, omen, warning, or remembrance. In the Bible, the same word is used to describe the stars as signs or omens, circumcision
as a token of God's covenant with Abraham
, and the signs performed by Moses
before Pharaoh
.
The word Ot (hard t) in Hebrew also means "a letter" (of the alphabet). Jewish mysticism, among other ancient lores, assigns spiritual ideas or powers to written letters and verses. The Mark of Cain may be a letter, a verse, a message, or a talisman
.
The Bible makes reference on several occasions to Kenite
s, who, in the Hebrew, are referred to as Qayin, i.e. in a highly cognate
manner to Cain (Qayin). Some therefore believe that the Mark of Cain referred originally to some very identifying mark of the Kenite tribe, such as red hair, or a ritual tattoo of some kind, which was transferred to Cain as the tribe's eponym. The mark is said to afford Cain some form of protection, in that harming Cain involved the harm being returned sevenfold. This is hence seen as some sort of protection that membership of the tribe offered, in a form such as the entire tribe attacking an individual who harms just one of their number.
Baptist
and Catholic
groups both consider the idea of God cursing an individual to be out of character, and hence take a different stance. Catholics officially view the curse being brought through the ground itself refusing to yield to, not being in harmony with, Cain, whereas some Baptists view the curse as Cain's own aggression, something already present that God merely pointed out rather than added. There are several theories; in the Catholic world one example has been put forth that rather this mark is one of grace, and that perhaps the mark is that of Abel's blood, by which God is saying, "This man is still mine. Vengeance is mine. I will repay. Hands off!" As the heart of God is always ready to show mercy. This view supports Abel as a Christ figure in paralleling Christ’s sacrifice; here a blood sacrifice which acknowledges guilt and counting himself as guilty seeks atonement (this is in contrast to Cain's sacrifice)
In Judaism
, the mark is not a punishment but a sign of God's mercy. When Cain was sentenced to be a wanderer he did not dispute the punishment but only begged that the terms of his sentence be altered slightly, protesting "Whoever meets me will kill me!" For unspecified reasons, God agrees to this request. He puts the mark on Cain as a sign to others that Cain should not be killed. Lamech, Cain's descendant, refers poetically to the "mark of Cain" in , in a passage which has been subject to several interpretations.
. According to some Islamic sources, such as al-Tabari
, Ibn Kathir
and al-Tha'labi
, he migrated to Yemen
.
Though variations on these traditions were strong in medieval times, with several claims of sightings being reported, they have generally gone out of favour. Nevertheless, the Wandering Cain theme has appeared in Mormon folklore
—a second-hand account relates that an early Mormon leader, David W. Patten
, encountered a very tall, hairy, dark-skinned man in Tennessee
who said that he was Cain. The account states that Cain had earnestly sought death but was denied it, and that his mission was to destroy the souls of men. The recollection of Patten's story is quoted in Spencer W. Kimball
's The Miracle of Forgiveness, a popular book within The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints. This widespread Mormon belief is further emphasized by an account from Salt Lake City in 1963 which stated that "One superstition is based on the old Mormon belief that Cain is a black man who wanders the earth begging people to kill him and take his curse upon themselves (M, 24, SLC, 1963)."
Despite these later traditional beliefs of perpetual wandering, according to the earlier Book of Jubilees (chapter 4) Cain settled down, marrying his sister, Awan, resulting in his first son, Enoch (considered to be different from the more famous Enoch
), approximately 196 years after the creation of Adam. Cain then established the first city, naming it after his son, built a house, and lived there until it collapsed on him, killing him in the same year that Adam died.
A medieval legend used to say that at the end, Cain arrived at the Moon, where he eternally settled with a bundle of twigs. This was originated by popular fantasy interpreting the shadows on the Moon face
. An example of this belief can be found in Dante Alighieri
's Inferno (XX, 126) where the expression "Cain and the twigs" is used as a kenning
for "moon".
, particularly in 16th century Germany
, Cain is depicted as a stereotypical ringleted
, bearded Jew, who killed Abel the blonde, European gentile
symbolizing Christ. This traditional depiction has continued for centuries in some form, such as James Tissot
's 19th century Cain leads Abel to Death.
Another view is taken in Latter-day Saint theology, where Cain is considered to be the quintessential Son of Perdition
, the father of secret combinations (i.e. secret societies and organized crime
), as well as the first to hold the title Master Mahan
meaning master of [the] great secret, that [he] may murder and get gain.
The treatise on Christian Hermeticism, Meditations on the Tarot: A journey into Christian Hermeticism
, describes the Biblical account of Cain and Abel as a myth, i.e. it expresses, in a form narrated for a particular case, an "eternal" idea. It shows us how brothers can become mortal enemies through the very fact that they worship the same God in the same way. According to the author, the source of religious wars is revealed. It is not the difference in dogma or ritual which is the cause, but the "pretention to equality" or "the negation of hierarchy".
", viewing Cain as symbolic of a sanguinary temperament, provoked by Abel's hypocrisy and sanctimony.
In Dante
's Purgatory Cain is remembered by the souls in Purgatory
in Canto XIV (14) on page 153, verse 133 saying "I shall be slain by all who find me!", Cain is facing the punishment that God has visited upon him for the sin of Envy, which is a similar play on the words in where he says, "I shall be a fugitive and a wanderer on the earth, and whoever finds me will kill me." John Steinbeck
's novel East of Eden retells the Cain and Abel story in the setting of the late 19th and early 20th century western migration towards California
. Also, his novelette Of Mice and Men
draws elements from the story. Baudelaire is more sympathetic to Cain in his poem "Abel et Caïn" in the collection Les Fleurs du mal
, where he depicts Cain as representing all the downtrodden people of the world. The poem's last lines exhort, "Race de Caïn, au ciel monte/Et sur la terre jette Dieu!" (In English: "Race of Cain, storm up the sky / And cast God down to Earth!")
Miguel de Unamuno
's Abel Sánchez (1917) is a study on envy.
Abel receives everything undeservingly, while his friend Joaquín is despised by God and society and envies him.
In Thornton Wilder
's play The Skin Of Our Teeth
(1942), it is stated that Henry Antrobus' real name is Cain and he accidentally killed is brother Abel with a stone.
Kane and Abel
is a modern adaptation, a 1979 novel by British author Jeffrey Archer. In 1985, it was made into a CBS
television miniseries
titled Kane & Abel, starring Peter Strauss
as Rosnovski and Sam Neill
as Kane. In A Time For Everything (2004) by Karl Ove Knausgård
, the story of Cain and Abel is retold with a focus on Cain - an introvert and troubled man who gets the reader's sympathy. In this version, God's favouring of Abel is simultaneously a curse for sneaking into Eden
past the Cherubs
guarding the gate. It is suggested that Abel in fact wants Cain to kill him, or at least this is what Cain believes - though he later regrets his act, and takes his punishment willingly.
Hermann Hesse
briefly discussed the story of Cain and Abel from a non-orthodox point of view in his novel Demian
where he also referred to the gnostic group called the Cainites
. In Ishmael
, Daniel Quinn
puts forth the idea of the story of Cain and Abel being an allegory describing the conflict between agricultural and pastoral peoples in the Fertile Crescent
.
The author of Dracula
, Bram Stoker
, revisits the biblical tragedy in his story "The return of Abel Behena" about a fraternal friendship gone awry.
Some form of legacy or curse of the name is often seen in literature: the monster Grendel
in Beowulf
is a descendant of Cain. In the epilogue
to Agatha Christie
's novel And Then There Were None
, the author refers to the Mark of Cain in laying out the clues. There is a Stephen King
short story titled Cain Rose Up
, in which a college student goes on a killing spree while ruminating on the story of Cain and Abel. In the DC Comics
(Vertigo division) universe
, Cain and Abel
are a pair of fictional characters based on the Biblical Cain and Abel. Cain is constantly killing off his brother, despite the fact they are both immortal
s.
In White Wolf
's Vampire: The Masquerade
RPG
, an altered version of Cain's story, sees Cain(e) visited by three angels on separate occasions while wandering the earth, each of whom ask that he repent for his sins, and each of whom curses him (and all his Progeny
) when he refuses. Those curses being: weakness to fire and sunlight, a need to drink of the blood of man, and an inner beast to forever torment him from within, thus making him the Progenitor
of all Vampire
kind, known among themselves as Cainites.
Cain was traditionally considered to have red hair; the expression "Cain-coloured beard" is used in Shakespeare
's The Merry Wives of Windsor
. In addition, Shakespeare also references Cain and Abel in Act III Scene iii of Hamlet
when Claudius says, "It hath the primal eldest curse upon't/ A brother's murder!" (Lines 40-41).
Their names are often used in works of fiction simply as a reference, also. In Waiting for Godot
by Samuel Beckett
, the character of Estragon
tries to guess the names of two other characters. He guesses Abel and Cain. One of Jason Bourne's many names in The Bourne Identity and its sequels was Cain, an operative name in the Treadstone 71 program.
In Masami Kurumada
's comic book Saint Seiya Next Dimension, characters inspired in the biblical story have been recently introduced: The Gemini Gold Saints in the 18th century are named Cain and Abel, both representing good and evil, respectively.
In 2009, Portuguese writer José Saramago
wrote a novel entitled Cain, which tells an alternative version of the murder of Abel and the life of Cain afterwards.
Echo
, a self-published comic-book series by Terry Moore
following the Phi-project
, features as an early antagonist a character who claims to be the original, biblical Cain. He spends much of his time speaking to God and frequently screams biblical and religious-themed quotations in his interactions with other characters. After his death, the character Ivy Raven had one of his fingers sent to a laboratory for carbon dating which revealed that he was approximately 25,000 years old, offering the first substantive proof to support the character's claims. Ivy later performs further research on the history of the story of Cain and Abel, and at one point visits Wikipedia
; this portion of the comic includes verbatim quotations from this page.
Fantasy author Karl Edward Wagner
wrote a series of novels and stories about an immortal red-bearded warrior named Kane
, who is clearly modeled on the biblical Cain. In Wagner's story there is a moral inversion where God is an evil ancient astronaut performing genetic experiments on early humans. Kane's brother accepts God's authority, but Kane rises up in heroic defiance, murders his brother, and rejects God. He is cursed with blue eyes that seem to literally glow with hatred and insanity. The Kane stories mostly take place in a fantasy age of Earth's past and are made distinctive by the presence of both magic and alien technology. Wagner wrote several stories that bring the immortal character into the 20th century and which imply that at some point he succeeded in his quest to kill God.
Hebrew Bible
The Hebrew Bible is a term used by biblical scholars outside of Judaism to refer to the Tanakh , a canonical collection of Jewish texts, and the common textual antecedent of the several canonical editions of the Christian Old Testament...
, Cain and Abel (Hebrew: הבל ,קין , Qayin, Hevel) (Arabic: هابيل ,قابيل - Qābīl and Hābīl) are two sons of Adam and Eve
Adam and Eve
Adam and Eve were, according to the Genesis creation narratives, the first human couple to inhabit Earth, created by YHWH, the God of the ancient Hebrews...
. The Qur'an
Qur'an
The Quran , also transliterated Qur'an, Koran, Alcoran, Qur’ān, Coran, Kuran, and al-Qur’ān, is the central religious text of Islam, which Muslims consider the verbatim word of God . It is regarded widely as the finest piece of literature in the Arabic language...
mentions the story, calling them the two sons of Adam (Arabic: إبني آدم) only.
In the Greek New Testament, Cain is referred to as ἐκ τοῦ πονηροῦ. In at least one translation this is rendered "from the evil one", while others have "of the evil one." Some interpreters take this to mean that Cain was literally the son of the serpent in the Garden of Eden
Garden of Eden
The Garden of Eden is in the Bible's Book of Genesis as being the place where the first man, Adam, and his wife, Eve, lived after they were created by God. Literally, the Bible speaks about a garden in Eden...
. A parallel idea can be found in Jewish tradition, that the serpent (Hebrew nahash נחש) from the Garden of Eden was father to firstborn Cain.
In all versions, Cain is a crop farmer and his younger brother Abel is a shepherd. Cain is portrayed as sinful, committing the first murder by killing his brother, after God has rejected his offerings of produce but accepted the animal sacrifices brought by Abel.
The oldest known copy of the Biblical narration is from the 1st century Dead Sea Scrolls
Dead Sea scrolls
The Dead Sea Scrolls are a collection of 972 texts from the Hebrew Bible and extra-biblical documents found between 1947 and 1956 on the northwest shore of the Dead Sea, from which they derive their name...
. Cain and Abel also appear in a number of other texts, and the story is the subject of various interpretations. Abel, the first murder victim, is sometimes seen as the first martyr
Martyr
A martyr is somebody who suffers persecution and death for refusing to renounce, or accept, a belief or cause, usually religious.-Meaning:...
; while Cain, the first murderer, is sometimes seen as an ancestor of evil
Evil
Evil is the violation of, or intent to violate, some moral code. Evil is usually seen as the dualistic opposite of good. Definitions of evil vary along with analysis of its root motive causes, however general actions commonly considered evil include: conscious and deliberate wrongdoing,...
. A few scholars suggest the pericope
Pericope
A pericope in rhetoric is a set of verses that forms one coherent unit or thought, thus forming a short passage suitable for public reading from a text, now usually of sacred scripture....
may have been based on a Sumer
Sumer
Sumer was a civilization and historical region in southern Mesopotamia, modern Iraq during the Chalcolithic and Early Bronze Age....
ian story representing the conflict between nomadic shepherds and settled farmers. Others think that it may refer to the days in which agriculture
Agriculture
Agriculture is the cultivation of animals, plants, fungi and other life forms for food, fiber, and other products used to sustain life. Agriculture was the key implement in the rise of sedentary human civilization, whereby farming of domesticated species created food surpluses that nurtured the...
began to replace the ways of the hunter-gatherer
Hunter-gatherer
A hunter-gatherer or forage society is one in which most or all food is obtained from wild plants and animals, in contrast to agricultural societies which rely mainly on domesticated species. Hunting and gathering was the ancestral subsistence mode of Homo, and all modern humans were...
.
Allusion
Allusion
An allusion is a figure of speech that makes a reference to, or representation of, people, places, events, literary work, myths, or works of art, either directly or by implication. M. H...
s to Cain and Abel as an archetype
Archetype
An archetype is a universally understood symbol or term or pattern of behavior, a prototype upon which others are copied, patterned, or emulated...
of fratricide
Fratricide
Fratricide is the act of a person killing his or her brother....
persist in numerous references and retellings, through medieval art
Medieval art
The medieval art of the Western world covers a vast scope of time and place, over 1000 years of art history in Europe, and at times the Middle East and North Africa...
and Shakespearean works up to present day fiction.
Etymology
Cain and Abel are traditional English renderingsTransliteration
Transliteration is a subset of the science of hermeneutics. It is a form of translation, and is the practice of converting a text from one script into another...
of the Hebrew
Hebrew language
Hebrew is a Semitic language of the Afroasiatic language family. Culturally, is it considered by Jews and other religious groups as the language of the Jewish people, though other Jewish languages had originated among diaspora Jews, and the Hebrew language is also used by non-Jewish groups, such...
names Qayin and Havel . The original text did not provide vowels.
Abel's name is composed in Hebrew of the same three consonants as a root
Root (linguistics)
The root word is the primary lexical unit of a word, and of a word family , which carries the most significant aspects of semantic content and cannot be reduced into smaller constituents....
speculated by people to have originally meant "breath", because Rabbis postulated one of its roots thus, also "waste", but is used in the Hebrew Bible primarily as a metaphor for what is "elusive", especially the "vanity" (another definition by the Rabbis of medieval France, Rashi in specific from his translation into Old French) of human beauty and work e.g. Hevel Hayophi (He-vel Ha-yo-fi) vanity is as beauty from the Song of Songs of Solomon.
Julius Wellhausen
Julius Wellhausen
Julius Wellhausen , was a German biblical scholar and orientalist, noted particularly for his contribution to scholarly understanding of the origin of the Pentateuch/Torah ....
, and many scholars following him, have proposed that the name is independent of the root.
Eberhard Schrader
Eberhard Schrader
Eberhard Schrader , was a German orientalist primarily known for his achievements in Assyriology.-Biography:He was born at Braunschweig, and educated at Göttingen under Ewald. In 1858 he won a university prize for a treatise on the Ethiopian languages, and in 1863 became professor of theology at...
had previously put forward the Akkadian (Old Assyrian dialect) ablu ("son") as a more likely etymology.
In the Islam
Islam
Islam . The most common are and . : Arabic pronunciation varies regionally. The first vowel ranges from ~~. The second vowel ranges from ~~~...
ic tradition, Abel is named as Hābīl (هابيل), while Cain is named as Qābīl (قابيل). Although their story is cited in the Quran, neither of them is mentioned by name. Cain is called Qayen in the Ethiopian version
Ethiopian Orthodox Tewahedo Church
The Ethiopian Orthodox Tewahedo Church is the predominant Oriental Orthodox Christian church in Ethiopia. The Ethiopian Church was administratively part of the Coptic Orthodox Church until 1959, when it was granted its own Patriarch by Coptic Orthodox Pope of Alexandria and Patriarch of All...
of Genesis.
The Koine Greek
Koine Greek
Koine Greek is the universal dialect of the Greek language spoken throughout post-Classical antiquity , developing from the Attic dialect, with admixture of elements especially from Ionic....
of the New Testament
New Testament
The New Testament is the second major division of the Christian biblical canon, the first such division being the much longer Old Testament....
refers to Cain three times,
using two syllables ka-in for the name.
More recent scholarship has produced another theory, a more direct pun. Abel is here thought to derive from a reconstructed word meaning "herdsman", with the modern Arabic cognate
Cognate
In linguistics, cognates are words that have a common etymological origin. This learned term derives from the Latin cognatus . Cognates within the same language are called doublets. Strictly speaking, loanwords from another language are usually not meant by the term, e.g...
ibil, now specifically referring only to "camels". Cain, on the other hand, is thought to be cognate to the mid-1st millennium BC
1st millennium BC
The 1st millennium BC encompasses the Iron Age and sees the rise of many successive empires, and spanned from 1000 BC to 1 BC.The Neo-Assyrian Empire, followed by the Achaemenids. In Greece, Classical Antiquity begins with the colonization of Magna Graecia and peaks with the rise of Hellenism. The...
South Arabian
Yemen
The Republic of Yemen , commonly known as Yemen , is a country located in the Middle East, occupying the southwestern to southern end of the Arabian Peninsula. It is bordered by Saudi Arabia to the north, the Red Sea to the west, and Oman to the east....
word qyn, meaning "metal smith"
Smith (metalwork)
A metalsmith, often shortened to smith, is a person involved in making metal objects. In contemporary use a metalsmith is a person who uses metal as a material, uses traditional metalsmithing techniques , whose work thematically relates to the practice or history of the practice, or who engages in...
.
This theory would make the names merely descriptions of the roles they take in the story—Abel working with livestock
Livestock
Livestock refers to one or more domesticated animals raised in an agricultural setting to produce commodities such as food, fiber and labor. The term "livestock" as used in this article does not include poultry or farmed fish; however the inclusion of these, especially poultry, within the meaning...
, and Cain with agriculture
Agriculture
Agriculture is the cultivation of animals, plants, fungi and other life forms for food, fiber, and other products used to sustain life. Agriculture was the key implement in the rise of sedentary human civilization, whereby farming of domesticated species created food surpluses that nurtured the...
—and would parallel the names Adam ("man") and Eve ("life", Chavah in Hebrew).
The name Abel has been used in many European languages as both surname
Abel (surname)
-Arts:* Alan Abel , American actor* Alfred Abel , German film actor, director, and producer* Bernhard, Arnold, and Florian Abel, two sculptors and a painter in the 16th century* Carl Friedrich Abel , German classical composer...
and first
Abel (disambiguation)
Abel is a younger brother of Cain in the Bible. They were the first mentioned sons of Adam and Eve. Cain's murder of Abel resulted in Abel being the first person to die.Abel may also refer to:-Fictional characters:...
name. In English
English language
English is a West Germanic language that arose in the Anglo-Saxon kingdoms of England and spread into what was to become south-east Scotland under the influence of the Anglian medieval kingdom of Northumbria...
, however, even Cain features in 17th century, Puritan
Puritan
The Puritans were a significant grouping of English Protestants in the 16th and 17th centuries. Puritanism in this sense was founded by some Marian exiles from the clergy shortly after the accession of Elizabeth I of England in 1558, as an activist movement within the Church of England...
-influenced families, who had a taste for biblical names, sometimes despite the reputation of the original character.
Contrary to popular belief, the surname McCain
McCain (surname)
McCain is an Hiberno-Scottish or Irish family name, The name is extraordinarily like the anglicised Mac Anna name McCann. This name derives from Ulster Irish descent and is a contraction of Mac Cathan, "son of warrior", history strongly suggests that emigration to Scotland started new variations...
does not mean "Son of Cain" in Gaelic
Goidelic languages
The Goidelic languages or Gaelic languages are one of the two branches of the Insular Celtic languages, the other consisting of the Brythonic languages. Goidelic languages historically formed a dialect continuum stretching from the south of Ireland through the Isle of Man to the north of Scotland...
, rather it is a contraction (also McCann) of Mac Cathan. Gaelic cathan means "warrior", from cath "battle".
Murder and motive
For convenience, the story can be considered in two sections — 1. murder and motive and 2. confrontation and consequences.Religious sources of the Cain and Abel story can be found in Genesis (950 to 450 BC) in the Hebrew Bible
Hebrew Bible
The Hebrew Bible is a term used by biblical scholars outside of Judaism to refer to the Tanakh , a canonical collection of Jewish texts, and the common textual antecedent of the several canonical editions of the Christian Old Testament...
, Sura 5 (Al-Ma'ida
Al-Ma'ida
Sura Al-Ma'ida is the fifth chapter of the Qur'an, with 120 verses. It is a Madinan sura. The sura's main topics are Isa's and Moses' missions, as well as the claim that their messages are distorted by non-believing Jews and Christians.-Animals:...
) of the Qur'an
Qur'an
The Quran , also transliterated Qur'an, Koran, Alcoran, Qur’ān, Coran, Kuran, and al-Qur’ān, is the central religious text of Islam, which Muslims consider the verbatim word of God . It is regarded widely as the finest piece of literature in the Arabic language...
(early 7th century) and Pearl of Great Price (1851).
Biblical account (Judeo-Christian)
The Septuagint has a different verse 7:
Motives
Though Genesis depicts Cain's motive in killing Abel as simply being one of jealousy concerning God's favour for Abel, this is not the view of many extra-biblical works. The MidrashMidrash
The Hebrew term Midrash is a homiletic method of biblical exegesis. The term also refers to the whole compilation of homiletic teachings on the Bible....
and the Conflict of Adam and Eve with Satan
Conflict of Adam and Eve with Satan
The Conflict of Adam and Eve with Satan is a Christian pseudepigraphical work found in Ge'ez, translated from an Arabic original and thought to date from the 5th or 6th century AD....
both record that the real motive involved the desire of women. According to Midrashic tradition, Cain and Abel each had twin sisters, whom they were to marry. The Midrash records that Abel's promised wife was the more beautiful. Cain would not consent to this arrangement. Adam proposed to refer the question to God by means of a sacrifice. God rejected Cain's sacrifice, signifying His disapproval of his marriage with Aclima, and Cain slew his brother in a fit of jealousy.
In Latter-day Saint extra-Biblical scripture, the Book of Moses
Book of Moses
The Book of Moses is part of the scriptural canon of Mormonism dictated by founder Joseph Smith, Jr. It is an amalgamation of the "Vision of Moses," which Smith dictated in June 1830, the "Book of Enoch," dictated December 1830, and material deriving from Smith's revision of the Book of Genesis in...
contains an expanded account of the story of Cain and Abel. In this account, Cain murders Abel as a result of a covenant of murder with Satan
Satan
Satan , "the opposer", is the title of various entities, both human and divine, who challenge the faith of humans in the Hebrew Bible...
. Following the murder, Cain exclaims, "I am free; surely the flocks of my brother falleth into my hands" (Pearl of Great Price
Pearl of Great Price (Mormonism)
The Pearl of Great Price is part of the standard works of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints and some other Latter Day Saint denominations....
, Moses 5:33) indicating that coveting Abel's possessions was another motive for Cain's action.
Abel's death
Christianity
Christianity is a monotheistic religion based on the life and teachings of Jesus as presented in canonical gospels and other New Testament writings...
, comparisons are sometimes made between the death of Abel and that of Jesus
Jesus
Jesus of Nazareth , commonly referred to as Jesus Christ or simply as Jesus or Christ, is the central figure of Christianity...
, the former thus seen as being the first martyr
Martyr
A martyr is somebody who suffers persecution and death for refusing to renounce, or accept, a belief or cause, usually religious.-Meaning:...
: in , Jesus speaks of Abel as righteous; and the Epistle to the Hebrews
Epistle to the Hebrews
The Epistle to the Hebrews is one of the books in the New Testament. Its author is not known.The primary purpose of the Letter to the Hebrews is to exhort Christians to persevere in the face of persecution. The central thought of the entire Epistle is the doctrine of the Person of Christ and his...
states that The blood of sprinkling ... [speaks] better things than that of Abel . The blood of Jesus is interpreted as bringing mercy; but that of Abel as demanding vengeance (hence the curse and mark).
Abel is invoked in the litany
Litany
A litany, in Christian worship and some forms of Jewish worship, is a form of prayer used in services and processions, and consisting of a number of petitions...
for the dying in Roman Catholic Church
Roman Catholic Church
The Catholic Church, also known as the Roman Catholic Church, is the world's largest Christian church, with over a billion members. Led by the Pope, it defines its mission as spreading the gospel of Jesus Christ, administering the sacraments and exercising charity...
, and his sacrifice is mentioned in the Canon of the Mass
Canon of the Mass
Canon of the Mass is the name given in the Roman Missal, from the first typical edition of Pope Pius V in 1570 to that of Pope John XXIII in 1962, to the part of the Mass of the Roman Rite that begins after the Sanctus with the words Te igitur...
with those of Abraham
Abraham
Abraham , whose birth name was Abram, is the eponym of the Abrahamic religions, among which are Judaism, Christianity and Islam...
and Melchizedek
Melchizedek
Melchizedek or Malki Tzedek translated as "my king righteous") is a king and priest mentioned during the Abram narrative in the 14th chapter of the Book of Genesis....
. The Coptic Church commemorates him with a feast day on December 28.
Burial
According to Shi'a Muslim belief, Abel is buried in Nabi Habeel MosqueNabi Habeel Mosque
Nabi Habeel Mosque is located on the west mountains of Damascus, near the Zabadani Valley, overlooking the villages of the Barada river , in Syria. This mosque is believed to contain the grave of Abel , son of Adam as believed by Muslims, who are frequent visitors of this mosque for ziyarat...
, located west of Damascus
Damascus
Damascus , commonly known in Syria as Al Sham , and as the City of Jasmine , is the capital and the second largest city of Syria after Aleppo, both are part of the country's 14 governorates. In addition to being one of the oldest continuously inhabited cities in the world, Damascus is a major...
, in Syria
Syria
Syria , officially the Syrian Arab Republic , is a country in Western Asia, bordering Lebanon and the Mediterranean Sea to the West, Turkey to the north, Iraq to the east, Jordan to the south, and Israel to the southwest....
.
Underworld
In classical times, as well as more recently, Abel was regarded as the first innocent victim of the power of evil, and hence the first martyr. In the Book of EnochBook of Enoch
The Book of Enoch is an ancient Jewish religious work, traditionally ascribed to Enoch, the great-grandfather of Noah. It is not part of the biblical canon as used by Jews, apart from Beta Israel...
(at 22:7), the soul of Abel is described as having been appointed as the chief of martyrs, crying for vengeance, for the destruction of the seed of Cain. This view is later repeated in the Testament of Abraham
Testament of Abraham
The Testament of Abraham a pseudepigraphic text of the Old Testament. Probably composed in the 1st or 2nd century CE, it is of Jewish origin and is usually considered to be part of the apocalyptic literature. It is not regarded as scripture by Jews or any Christian group...
(at A:13 / B:11), where Abel has been raised to the position as the judge of the souls:
According to the Coptic
Coptic Christianity
The Coptic Orthodox Church of Alexandria is the official name for the largest Christian church in Egypt and the Middle East. The Church belongs to the Oriental Orthodox family of churches, which has been a distinct church body since the Council of Chalcedon in AD 451, when it took a different...
Book of Adam and Eve (at 2:1-15), and the Syriac Cave of Treasures
Cave of Treasures
The Cave of Treasures, sometimes referred to simply as The Treasure, is a book of the New Testament apocrypha.-Origin:This text is attributed to Ephrem Syrus, who was born at Nisibis soon after AD 306 and died in 373, but it is now generally believed that its current form is 6th century or...
, Abel's body, after many days of mourning, was placed in the Cave of Treasures, before which Adam and Eve, and descendants, offered their prayers. In addition, the Seth
Seth
Seth , in Judaism, Christianity and Islam, is the third listed son of Adam and Eve and brother of Cain and Abel, who are the only other of their children mentioned by name...
ite line of the Generations of Adam
Generations of Adam
"Generations of Adam" is a concept in in the Hebrew Bible. It is typically taken as name of Adam's line of descent going through Seth. Another view equates the generations of Adam with material about a second line of descent starting with Cain in Genesis 4, while Genesis 5 is taken as the...
swear by Abel's blood to segregate themselves from the unrighteous.
Confrontation and consequences
Bible
Qur'an and Sunnah
The story with the motives and the aftermath of the killing is mentioned in Surat Al-Ma'ida Verse 27 - 32:There is Hadith in Al-Bukari that tells of the consequences Qabil shall take because of slaying his brother:
Mark of Cain
Much has been written about the curse of Cain, and associated mark. The word translated as mark (Circumcision
Male circumcision is the surgical removal of some or all of the foreskin from the penis. The word "circumcision" comes from Latin and ....
as a token of God's covenant with Abraham
Abraham
Abraham , whose birth name was Abram, is the eponym of the Abrahamic religions, among which are Judaism, Christianity and Islam...
, and the signs performed by Moses
Moses
Moses was, according to the Hebrew Bible and Qur'an, a religious leader, lawgiver and prophet, to whom the authorship of the Torah is traditionally attributed...
before Pharaoh
Pharaoh
Pharaoh is a title used in many modern discussions of the ancient Egyptian rulers of all periods. The title originates in the term "pr-aa" which means "great house" and describes the royal palace...
.
The word Ot (hard t) in Hebrew also means "a letter" (of the alphabet). Jewish mysticism, among other ancient lores, assigns spiritual ideas or powers to written letters and verses. The Mark of Cain may be a letter, a verse, a message, or a talisman
Amulet
An amulet, similar to a talisman , is any object intended to bring good luck or protection to its owner.Potential amulets include gems, especially engraved gems, statues, coins, drawings, pendants, rings, plants and animals; even words said in certain occasions—for example: vade retro satana—, to...
.
The Bible makes reference on several occasions to Kenite
Kenite
Kenites or Cinites , according to the Hebrew Bible, were a nomadic clan in the ancient Levant, sent under Jethro a priest in the land of Midian. They played an important role in the history of ancient Israel. The Kenites were coppersmiths and metalworkers. Moses' father-in-law, Jethro, was a...
s, who, in the Hebrew, are referred to as Qayin, i.e. in a highly cognate
Cognate
In linguistics, cognates are words that have a common etymological origin. This learned term derives from the Latin cognatus . Cognates within the same language are called doublets. Strictly speaking, loanwords from another language are usually not meant by the term, e.g...
manner to Cain (Qayin). Some therefore believe that the Mark of Cain referred originally to some very identifying mark of the Kenite tribe, such as red hair, or a ritual tattoo of some kind, which was transferred to Cain as the tribe's eponym. The mark is said to afford Cain some form of protection, in that harming Cain involved the harm being returned sevenfold. This is hence seen as some sort of protection that membership of the tribe offered, in a form such as the entire tribe attacking an individual who harms just one of their number.
Baptist
Baptist
Baptists comprise a group of Christian denominations and churches that subscribe to a doctrine that baptism should be performed only for professing believers , and that it must be done by immersion...
and Catholic
Roman Catholic Church
The Catholic Church, also known as the Roman Catholic Church, is the world's largest Christian church, with over a billion members. Led by the Pope, it defines its mission as spreading the gospel of Jesus Christ, administering the sacraments and exercising charity...
groups both consider the idea of God cursing an individual to be out of character, and hence take a different stance. Catholics officially view the curse being brought through the ground itself refusing to yield to, not being in harmony with, Cain, whereas some Baptists view the curse as Cain's own aggression, something already present that God merely pointed out rather than added. There are several theories; in the Catholic world one example has been put forth that rather this mark is one of grace, and that perhaps the mark is that of Abel's blood, by which God is saying, "This man is still mine. Vengeance is mine. I will repay. Hands off!" As the heart of God is always ready to show mercy. This view supports Abel as a Christ figure in paralleling Christ’s sacrifice; here a blood sacrifice which acknowledges guilt and counting himself as guilty seeks atonement (this is in contrast to Cain's sacrifice)
In Judaism
Judaism
Judaism ) is the "religion, philosophy, and way of life" of the Jewish people...
, the mark is not a punishment but a sign of God's mercy. When Cain was sentenced to be a wanderer he did not dispute the punishment but only begged that the terms of his sentence be altered slightly, protesting "Whoever meets me will kill me!" For unspecified reasons, God agrees to this request. He puts the mark on Cain as a sign to others that Cain should not be killed. Lamech, Cain's descendant, refers poetically to the "mark of Cain" in , in a passage which has been subject to several interpretations.
Wanderer
As Abel's murderer, Cain was commanded to wander the earth in punishment, a tradition arose that this punishment was to be forever, in a similar manner to the (much later) legends of the Flying Dutchman or the Wandering JewWandering Jew
The Wandering Jew is a figure from medieval Christian folklore whose legend began to spread in Europe in the 13th century. The original legend concerns a Jew who taunted Jesus on the way to the Crucifixion and was then cursed to walk the earth until the Second Coming...
. According to some Islamic sources, such as al-Tabari
Muhammad ibn Jarir al-Tabari
Abu Ja'far Muhammad ibn Jarir al-Tabari was a prominent and influential Sunni scholar and exegete of the Qur'an from Persia...
, Ibn Kathir
Ibn Kathir
Ismail ibn Kathir was a Muslim muhaddith, Faqih, historian, and commentator.-Biography:His full name was Abu Al-Fida, 'Imad Ad-Din, Isma'il bin 'Umar bin Kathir, Al-Qurashi, Al-Busrawi...
and al-Tha'labi
Tafsir al-Thalabi
Al-Kashf wa-l-bayān ʿan tafsīr al-Qurʾān or Tafsir al-Thalabi is a classical Sunni Quran commentary by Islamic scholar Ahmad ibn Muhammad al-Thalabi. -Editions:...
, he migrated to Yemen
Yemen
The Republic of Yemen , commonly known as Yemen , is a country located in the Middle East, occupying the southwestern to southern end of the Arabian Peninsula. It is bordered by Saudi Arabia to the north, the Red Sea to the west, and Oman to the east....
.
Though variations on these traditions were strong in medieval times, with several claims of sightings being reported, they have generally gone out of favour. Nevertheless, the Wandering Cain theme has appeared in Mormon folklore
Mormon folklore
Mormon folklore is a body of expressive culture unique to The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints and its members. It includes tales, oral history, popular beliefs, customs, music, jokes, and other traditions....
—a second-hand account relates that an early Mormon leader, David W. Patten
David W. Patten
David Wyman Patten was an early leader in the Latter Day Saint movement and an original member of the Quorum of the Twelve Apostles...
, encountered a very tall, hairy, dark-skinned man in Tennessee
Tennessee
Tennessee is a U.S. state located in the Southeastern United States. It has a population of 6,346,105, making it the nation's 17th-largest state by population, and covers , making it the 36th-largest by total land area...
who said that he was Cain. The account states that Cain had earnestly sought death but was denied it, and that his mission was to destroy the souls of men. The recollection of Patten's story is quoted in Spencer W. Kimball
Spencer W. Kimball
Spencer Woolley Kimball was the twelfth president of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints from 1973 until his death in 1985.-Ancestry:...
's The Miracle of Forgiveness, a popular book within The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints. This widespread Mormon belief is further emphasized by an account from Salt Lake City in 1963 which stated that "One superstition is based on the old Mormon belief that Cain is a black man who wanders the earth begging people to kill him and take his curse upon themselves (M, 24, SLC, 1963)."
Despite these later traditional beliefs of perpetual wandering, according to the earlier Book of Jubilees (chapter 4) Cain settled down, marrying his sister, Awan, resulting in his first son, Enoch (considered to be different from the more famous Enoch
Enoch (ancestor of Noah)
Enoch is a figure in the Generations of Adam. Enoch is described as Adam's greatx4 grandson , the son of Jared, the father of Methuselah, and the great-grandfather of Noah...
), approximately 196 years after the creation of Adam. Cain then established the first city, naming it after his son, built a house, and lived there until it collapsed on him, killing him in the same year that Adam died.
A medieval legend used to say that at the end, Cain arrived at the Moon, where he eternally settled with a bundle of twigs. This was originated by popular fantasy interpreting the shadows on the Moon face
Man in the Moon
The Man in the Moon is an imaginary figure resembling a human face, head or body, that observers from some cultural backgrounds typically perceive in the bright disc of the full moon...
. An example of this belief can be found in Dante Alighieri
Dante Alighieri
Durante degli Alighieri, mononymously referred to as Dante , was an Italian poet, prose writer, literary theorist, moral philosopher, and political thinker. He is best known for the monumental epic poem La commedia, later named La divina commedia ...
's Inferno (XX, 126) where the expression "Cain and the twigs" is used as a kenning
Kenning
A kenning is a type of literary trope, specifically circumlocution, in the form of a compound that employs figurative language in place of a more concrete single-word noun. Kennings are strongly associated with Old Norse and later Icelandic and Anglo-Saxon poetry...
for "moon".
Legacy and symbolism
In medieval Christian artMedieval art
The medieval art of the Western world covers a vast scope of time and place, over 1000 years of art history in Europe, and at times the Middle East and North Africa...
, particularly in 16th century Germany
Germany
Germany , officially the Federal Republic of Germany , is a federal parliamentary republic in Europe. The country consists of 16 states while the capital and largest city is Berlin. Germany covers an area of 357,021 km2 and has a largely temperate seasonal climate...
, Cain is depicted as a stereotypical ringleted
Ringlet (haircut)
A ringlet is a type of hairstyle. It is achieved by wrapping a lock of hair around the length of a thin curling iron or can be sported naturally by people with sufficiently tightly curled hair...
, bearded Jew, who killed Abel the blonde, European gentile
Gentile
The term Gentile refers to non-Israelite peoples or nations in English translations of the Bible....
symbolizing Christ. This traditional depiction has continued for centuries in some form, such as James Tissot
James Tissot
James Jacques Joseph Tissot was a French painter, who spent much of his career in Britain.-Biography:Tissot was born in Nantes, France. In about 1856, he began study at the École des Beaux-Arts in Paris under Hippolyte Flandrin and Lamothe, and became friendly with Edgar Degas and James Abbott...
's 19th century Cain leads Abel to Death.
Another view is taken in Latter-day Saint theology, where Cain is considered to be the quintessential Son of Perdition
Son of perdition (Mormonism)
Son of perdition is a phrase used in The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints and by Mormon fundamentalists to describe a person who will not take part in the glory of God in the afterlife...
, the father of secret combinations (i.e. secret societies and organized crime
Organized crime
Organized crime or criminal organizations are transnational, national, or local groupings of highly centralized enterprises run by criminals for the purpose of engaging in illegal activity, most commonly for monetary profit. Some criminal organizations, such as terrorist organizations, are...
), as well as the first to hold the title Master Mahan
Master Mahan
In the religious texts of the Latter Day Saint movement, Master Mahan is a title assumed first by Cain and later by his descendant Lamech. The title indicates that Cain and Lamech were each the "master" of a "great secret" whereby they covenanted with Satan to kill for personal gain...
meaning master of [the] great secret, that [he] may murder and get gain.
The treatise on Christian Hermeticism, Meditations on the Tarot: A journey into Christian Hermeticism
Meditations on the Tarot
Meditations on the Tarot: A Journey into Christian Hermeticism is a book published posthumuously and anonymously in 1985. It was originally written in French and translated into English by Robert A. Powell of the Sophia Foundation....
, describes the Biblical account of Cain and Abel as a myth, i.e. it expresses, in a form narrated for a particular case, an "eternal" idea. It shows us how brothers can become mortal enemies through the very fact that they worship the same God in the same way. According to the author, the source of religious wars is revealed. It is not the difference in dogma or ritual which is the cause, but the "pretention to equality" or "the negation of hierarchy".
Literature
As the first murderer and first murder victim, Cain and Abel have often formed the basis of tragic drama. Lord Byron rewrote and dramatized the story in the poem "CainCain (poem by Byron)
Cain is a dramatic work by Byron published in 1821. In Cain, Byron attempts to dramatize the story of Cain and Abel from Cain's point of view. Cain is an example of the literary genre known as closet drama...
", viewing Cain as symbolic of a sanguinary temperament, provoked by Abel's hypocrisy and sanctimony.
In Dante
Dante Alighieri
Durante degli Alighieri, mononymously referred to as Dante , was an Italian poet, prose writer, literary theorist, moral philosopher, and political thinker. He is best known for the monumental epic poem La commedia, later named La divina commedia ...
's Purgatory Cain is remembered by the souls in Purgatory
Purgatory
Purgatory is the condition or process of purification or temporary punishment in which, it is believed, the souls of those who die in a state of grace are made ready for Heaven...
in Canto XIV (14) on page 153, verse 133 saying "I shall be slain by all who find me!", Cain is facing the punishment that God has visited upon him for the sin of Envy, which is a similar play on the words in where he says, "I shall be a fugitive and a wanderer on the earth, and whoever finds me will kill me." John Steinbeck
John Steinbeck
John Ernst Steinbeck, Jr. was an American writer. He is widely known for the Pulitzer Prize-winning novel The Grapes of Wrath and East of Eden and the novella Of Mice and Men...
's novel East of Eden retells the Cain and Abel story in the setting of the late 19th and early 20th century western migration towards California
California
California is a state located on the West Coast of the United States. It is by far the most populous U.S. state, and the third-largest by land area...
. Also, his novelette Of Mice and Men
Of Mice and Men
Of Mice and Men is a novella written by Nobel Prize-winning author John Steinbeck. Published in 1937, it tells the tragic story of George Milton and Lennie Small, two displaced migrant ranch workers during the Great Depression in California, USA....
draws elements from the story. Baudelaire is more sympathetic to Cain in his poem "Abel et Caïn" in the collection Les Fleurs du mal
Les Fleurs du mal
Les Fleurs du mal is a volume of French poetry by Charles Baudelaire. First published in 1857 , it was important in the symbolist and modernist movements...
, where he depicts Cain as representing all the downtrodden people of the world. The poem's last lines exhort, "Race de Caïn, au ciel monte/Et sur la terre jette Dieu!" (In English: "Race of Cain, storm up the sky / And cast God down to Earth!")
Miguel de Unamuno
Miguel de Unamuno
Miguel de Unamuno y Jugo was a Spanish essayist, novelist, poet, playwright and philosopher.-Biography:...
's Abel Sánchez (1917) is a study on envy.
Abel receives everything undeservingly, while his friend Joaquín is despised by God and society and envies him.
In Thornton Wilder
Thornton Wilder
Thornton Niven Wilder was an American playwright and novelist. He received three Pulitzer Prizes, one for his novel The Bridge of San Luis Rey and two for his plays Our Town and The Skin of Our Teeth, and a National Book Award for his novel The Eighth Day.-Early years:Wilder was born in Madison,...
's play The Skin Of Our Teeth
The Skin of Our Teeth
The Skin of Our Teeth is a play by Thornton Wilder which won the Pulitzer Prize for Drama. It opened on October 15, 1942 at the Shubert Theatre in New Haven, Connecticut, before moving to the Plymouth Theatre on Broadway on November 18, 1942...
(1942), it is stated that Henry Antrobus' real name is Cain and he accidentally killed is brother Abel with a stone.
Kane and Abel
Kane and Abel (novel)
Kane and Abel is a 1979 novel by British author Jeffrey Archer. The title and story is a play on the Biblical brothers, Cain and Abel.Released in the United Kingdom in 1979 and in the United States in February 1980, the book was an international success. It reached No...
is a modern adaptation, a 1979 novel by British author Jeffrey Archer. In 1985, it was made into a CBS
CBS
CBS Broadcasting Inc. is a major US commercial broadcasting television network, which started as a radio network. The name is derived from the initials of the network's former name, Columbia Broadcasting System. The network is sometimes referred to as the "Eye Network" in reference to the shape of...
television miniseries
Miniseries
A miniseries , in a serial storytelling medium, is a television show production which tells a story in a limited number of episodes. The exact number is open to interpretation; however, they are usually limited to fewer than a whole season. The term "miniseries" is generally a North American term...
titled Kane & Abel, starring Peter Strauss
Peter Strauss
Peter Strauss is an American television and movie actor, known for his roles in several television miniseries in the 1970s and 1980s.-Personal life:...
as Rosnovski and Sam Neill
Sam Neill
Nigel John Dermot "Sam" Neill, DCNZM, OBE is a New Zealand actor. He is well known for his starring role as paleontologist Dr Alan Grant in Jurassic Park and Jurassic Park III....
as Kane. In A Time For Everything (2004) by Karl Ove Knausgård
Karl Ove Knausgård
Karl Ove Knausgård is a Norwegian author, who has sold over 200 000 books.Born in Oslo, Knausgård was raised on Tromøya in Arendal and in Kristiansand, and studied arts and literature at the University of Bergen...
, the story of Cain and Abel is retold with a focus on Cain - an introvert and troubled man who gets the reader's sympathy. In this version, God's favouring of Abel is simultaneously a curse for sneaking into Eden
Garden of Eden
The Garden of Eden is in the Bible's Book of Genesis as being the place where the first man, Adam, and his wife, Eve, lived after they were created by God. Literally, the Bible speaks about a garden in Eden...
past the Cherubs
CHERUBS
CHERUBS is a Non-Profit Organization. It was founded in February, 1995 for families of children born with Congenital Diaphragmatic Hernia, a severe and often lethal birth defect. It was founded and currently led by Dawn M...
guarding the gate. It is suggested that Abel in fact wants Cain to kill him, or at least this is what Cain believes - though he later regrets his act, and takes his punishment willingly.
Hermann Hesse
Hermann Hesse
Hermann Hesse was a German-Swiss poet, novelist, and painter. In 1946, he received the Nobel Prize in Literature...
briefly discussed the story of Cain and Abel from a non-orthodox point of view in his novel Demian
Demian
Demian: The Story of Emil Sinclair's Youth is a Bildungsroman by Hermann Hesse, first published in 1919; a prologue was added in 1960. Demian was first published under the pseudonym "Emil Sinclair", the name of the narrator of the story, but Hesse was later revealed to be the author.-Plot summary...
where he also referred to the gnostic group called the Cainites
Cainites
The Cainites, or Cainians, were a Gnostic and Antinomian sect who were known to worship Cain as the first victim of the Demiurge Jehovah, the deity of the Tanakh , who was identified by many groups of gnostics as evil...
. In Ishmael
Ishmael (novel)
Ishmael is a 1992 philosophical novel by Daniel Quinn. It examines mythology, its effect on ethics, and how that relates to sustainability. The novel uses a style of Socratic dialogue to deconstruct the notion that humans are the end product, the pinnacle of biological evolution...
, Daniel Quinn
Daniel Quinn
Daniel Quinn is an American writer described as an environmentalist. He is best known for his book Ishmael , which won the Turner Tomorrow Fellowship Award in 1991....
puts forth the idea of the story of Cain and Abel being an allegory describing the conflict between agricultural and pastoral peoples in the Fertile Crescent
Fertile Crescent
The Fertile Crescent, nicknamed "The Cradle of Civilization" for the fact the first civilizations started there, is a crescent-shaped region containing the comparatively moist and fertile land of otherwise arid and semi-arid Western Asia. The term was first used by University of Chicago...
.
The author of Dracula
Dracula
Dracula is an 1897 novel by Irish author Bram Stoker.Famous for introducing the character of the vampire Count Dracula, the novel tells the story of Dracula's attempt to relocate from Transylvania to England, and the battle between Dracula and a small group of men and women led by Professor...
, Bram Stoker
Bram Stoker
Abraham "Bram" Stoker was an Irish novelist and short story writer, best known today for his 1897 Gothic novel Dracula...
, revisits the biblical tragedy in his story "The return of Abel Behena" about a fraternal friendship gone awry.
Some form of legacy or curse of the name is often seen in literature: the monster Grendel
Grendel
Grendel is one of three antagonists, along with Grendel's mother and the dragon, in the Anglo-Saxon epic poem Beowulf . Grendel is usually depicted as a monster, though this is the subject of scholarly debate. In the poem, Grendel is feared by all but Beowulf.-Story:The poem Beowulf is contained in...
in Beowulf
Beowulf
Beowulf , but modern scholars agree in naming it after the hero whose life is its subject." of an Old English heroic epic poem consisting of 3182 alliterative long lines, set in Scandinavia, commonly cited as one of the most important works of Anglo-Saxon literature.It survives in a single...
is a descendant of Cain. In the epilogue
Epilogue
An epilogue, epilog or afterword is a piece of writing at the end of a work of literature or drama, usually used to bring closure to the work...
to Agatha Christie
Agatha Christie
Dame Agatha Christie DBE was a British crime writer of novels, short stories, and plays. She also wrote romances under the name Mary Westmacott, but she is best remembered for her 66 detective novels and 14 short story collections , and her successful West End plays.According to...
's novel And Then There Were None
And Then There Were None
And Then There Were None is a detective fiction novel by Agatha Christie, first published in the United Kingdom by the Collins Crime Club on 6 November 1939 under the title Ten Little Niggers which was changed by Dodd, Mead and Company in January 1940 because of the presence of a racial...
, the author refers to the Mark of Cain in laying out the clues. There is a Stephen King
Stephen King
Stephen Edwin King is an American author of contemporary horror, suspense, science fiction and fantasy fiction. His books have sold more than 350 million copies and have been adapted into a number of feature films, television movies and comic books...
short story titled Cain Rose Up
Cain Rose Up
"Cain Rose Up" is a short story by Stephen King. It was originally published in the Spring 1968 issue of Ubris magazine, and collected in King's Skeleton Crew in 1985. It deals with a depressed and homicidal college student, Curt Garrish, who goes on a murderous sniper rampage from his dorm room....
, in which a college student goes on a killing spree while ruminating on the story of Cain and Abel. In the DC Comics
DC Comics
DC Comics, Inc. is one of the largest and most successful companies operating in the market for American comic books and related media. It is the publishing unit of DC Entertainment a company of Warner Bros. Entertainment, which itself is owned by Time Warner...
(Vertigo division) universe
Fictional universe
A fictional universe is a self-consistent fictional setting with elements that differ from the real world. It may also be called an imagined, constructed or fictional realm ....
, Cain and Abel
Cain and Abel (comics)
Cain and Abel are a pair of fictional characters in the DC Comics universe based on the Biblical Cain and Abel. They are key figures in DC's "Mystery" line of the late 1960s and 1970s, which became the mature-readers imprint, Vertigo, in 1993....
are a pair of fictional characters based on the Biblical Cain and Abel. Cain is constantly killing off his brother, despite the fact they are both immortal
Immortality
Immortality is the ability to live forever. It is unknown whether human physical immortality is an achievable condition. Biological forms have inherent limitations which may or may not be able to be overcome through medical interventions or engineering...
s.
In White Wolf
White Wolf
White Wolf is a publisher of role-playing games, notably the World of Darkness.White Wolf may also refer to:*White Wolf , a location in Yosemite National Park*White Wolf , a Canadian heavy metal band...
's Vampire: The Masquerade
Vampire: The Masquerade
Vampire: The Masquerade is a role-playing game. Created by Mark Rein·Hagen, it was the first of White Wolf Game Studio's World of Darkness role-playing games, based on the Storyteller System and centered around vampires in a modern gothic-punk world....
RPG
Role-playing game
A role-playing game is a game in which players assume the roles of characters in a fictional setting. Players take responsibility for acting out these roles within a narrative, either through literal acting, or through a process of structured decision-making or character development...
, an altered version of Cain's story, sees Cain(e) visited by three angels on separate occasions while wandering the earth, each of whom ask that he repent for his sins, and each of whom curses him (and all his Progeny
Offspring
In biology, offspring is the product of reproduction, of a new organism produced by one or more parents.Collective offspring may be known as a brood or progeny in a more general way...
) when he refuses. Those curses being: weakness to fire and sunlight, a need to drink of the blood of man, and an inner beast to forever torment him from within, thus making him the Progenitor
Ancestor
An ancestor is a parent or the parent of an ancestor ....
of all Vampire
Vampire
Vampires are mythological or folkloric beings who subsist by feeding on the life essence of living creatures, regardless of whether they are undead or a living person...
kind, known among themselves as Cainites.
Cain was traditionally considered to have red hair; the expression "Cain-coloured beard" is used in Shakespeare
William Shakespeare
William Shakespeare was an English poet and playwright, widely regarded as the greatest writer in the English language and the world's pre-eminent dramatist. He is often called England's national poet and the "Bard of Avon"...
's The Merry Wives of Windsor
The Merry Wives of Windsor
The Merry Wives of Windsor is a comedy by William Shakespeare, first published in 1602, though believed to have been written prior to 1597. It features the fat knight Sir John Falstaff, and is Shakespeare's only play to deal exclusively with contemporary Elizabethan era English middle class life...
. In addition, Shakespeare also references Cain and Abel in Act III Scene iii of Hamlet
Hamlet
The Tragical History of Hamlet, Prince of Denmark, or more simply Hamlet, is a tragedy by William Shakespeare, believed to have been written between 1599 and 1601...
when Claudius says, "It hath the primal eldest curse upon't/ A brother's murder!" (Lines 40-41).
Their names are often used in works of fiction simply as a reference, also. In Waiting for Godot
Waiting for Godot
Waiting for Godot is an absurdist play by Samuel Beckett, in which two characters, Vladimir and Estragon, wait endlessly and in vain for someone named Godot to arrive. Godot's absence, as well as numerous other aspects of the play, have led to many different interpretations since the play's...
by Samuel Beckett
Samuel Beckett
Samuel Barclay Beckett was an Irish avant-garde novelist, playwright, theatre director, and poet. He wrote both in English and French. His work offers a bleak, tragicomic outlook on human nature, often coupled with black comedy and gallows humour.Beckett is widely regarded as among the most...
, the character of Estragon
Estragon
Estragon is one of the two main characters from Samuel Beckett's Waiting for Godot. His name is the French word for tarragon.- The impulsive misanthrope :...
tries to guess the names of two other characters. He guesses Abel and Cain. One of Jason Bourne's many names in The Bourne Identity and its sequels was Cain, an operative name in the Treadstone 71 program.
In Masami Kurumada
Masami Kurumada
is a Japanese manga artist and writer, known for specializing in fighting manga featuring bishōnen and/or mahō shōnen. He is famous as the creator/author of popular manga, such as Ring ni Kakero, Fūma no Kojirō, Saint Seiya and B't X. His male protagonists are a reflection of the classical and...
's comic book Saint Seiya Next Dimension, characters inspired in the biblical story have been recently introduced: The Gemini Gold Saints in the 18th century are named Cain and Abel, both representing good and evil, respectively.
In 2009, Portuguese writer José Saramago
José Saramago
José de Sousa Saramago, GColSE was a Nobel-laureate Portuguese novelist, poet, playwright and journalist. His works, some of which can be seen as allegories, commonly present subversive perspectives on historic events, emphasizing the human factor. Harold Bloom has described Saramago as "a...
wrote a novel entitled Cain, which tells an alternative version of the murder of Abel and the life of Cain afterwards.
Echo
Echo (comic book)
Echo is an American comic book independently-published by Terry Moore under his Abstract Studio imprint. The first issue was released on March 5, 2008 with silver foil accents not to be included on future printings....
, a self-published comic-book series by Terry Moore
Terry Moore (comics)
Terry Moore is a comic book author, graphic novelist and illustrator.He created the popular series Strangers in Paradise, and was involved in the founding of Homage Comics.-Biography:...
following the Phi-project
Golden ratio
In mathematics and the arts, two quantities are in the golden ratio if the ratio of the sum of the quantities to the larger quantity is equal to the ratio of the larger quantity to the smaller one. The golden ratio is an irrational mathematical constant, approximately 1.61803398874989...
, features as an early antagonist a character who claims to be the original, biblical Cain. He spends much of his time speaking to God and frequently screams biblical and religious-themed quotations in his interactions with other characters. After his death, the character Ivy Raven had one of his fingers sent to a laboratory for carbon dating which revealed that he was approximately 25,000 years old, offering the first substantive proof to support the character's claims. Ivy later performs further research on the history of the story of Cain and Abel, and at one point visits Wikipedia
Wikipedia
Wikipedia is a free, web-based, collaborative, multilingual encyclopedia project supported by the non-profit Wikimedia Foundation. Its 20 million articles have been written collaboratively by volunteers around the world. Almost all of its articles can be edited by anyone with access to the site,...
; this portion of the comic includes verbatim quotations from this page.
Fantasy author Karl Edward Wagner
Karl Edward Wagner
Karl Edward Wagner was an American writer, editor and publisher of horror, science fiction, and heroic fantasy, who was born in Knoxville, Tennessee and originally trained as a psychiatrist. His disillusionment with the medical profession can be seen in the stories "The Fourth Seal" and "Into...
wrote a series of novels and stories about an immortal red-bearded warrior named Kane
Kane (fantasy)
Kane is a literary character created by Karl Edward Wagner in a series of sword and sorcery novels and short stories between 1970 and 1985. The stories are set in a grim, pre-medieval world which is nonetheless ancient and rich in history...
, who is clearly modeled on the biblical Cain. In Wagner's story there is a moral inversion where God is an evil ancient astronaut performing genetic experiments on early humans. Kane's brother accepts God's authority, but Kane rises up in heroic defiance, murders his brother, and rejects God. He is cursed with blue eyes that seem to literally glow with hatred and insanity. The Kane stories mostly take place in a fantasy age of Earth's past and are made distinctive by the presence of both magic and alien technology. Wagner wrote several stories that bring the immortal character into the 20th century and which imply that at some point he succeeded in his quest to kill God.
See also
- BibleBibleThe Bible refers to any one of the collections of the primary religious texts of Judaism and Christianity. There is no common version of the Bible, as the individual books , their contents and their order vary among denominations...
- TorahTorahTorah- A scroll containing the first five books of the BibleThe Torah , is name given by Jews to the first five books of the bible—Genesis , Exodus , Leviticus , Numbers and Deuteronomy Torah- A scroll containing the first five books of the BibleThe Torah , is name given by Jews to the first five...
- Qur'anQur'anThe Quran , also transliterated Qur'an, Koran, Alcoran, Qur’ān, Coran, Kuran, and al-Qur’ān, is the central religious text of Islam, which Muslims consider the verbatim word of God . It is regarded widely as the finest piece of literature in the Arabic language...
- SumerSumerSumer was a civilization and historical region in southern Mesopotamia, modern Iraq during the Chalcolithic and Early Bronze Age....
- The First MourningThe First MourningThe First Mourning is an oil on canvas painted in 1888 by William-Adolphe Bouguereau. Its dimensions are: 79 7/8 × 99 1/8 inches...
- Balbira & KalmanaBalbira & KalmanaAccording to the Seder Hadorot, Balbira and Kalmana were the respective wives and twin sisters of Cain and Abel. In an effort to explain where Cain and Abel acquired wives, some traditional sources write that each child of Adam and Eve was born with a twin who became their mate...
External links
- Torah, Genesis, Chapters 1-6
- King James Version
- Story of Cain and Abel in Sura The Table (Al Ma'ida)
- Qaheen / Cain and Hevel / Abel
- Parallel voweled Hebrew and King James Version
- Rashi on Genesis, Chapter 4, by RashiRashiShlomo Yitzhaki , or in Latin Salomon Isaacides, and today generally known by the acronym Rashi , was a medieval French rabbi famed as the author of a comprehensive commentary on the Talmud, as well as a comprehensive commentary on the Tanakh...
- Baudelaire's poem in French with English translations underneath