Cain and Abel
In the biblical Book of Genesis, Cain[a] and Abel[b] are the first two sons of Adam and Eve.[1] Cain, the firstborn, was a farmer, and his brother Abel was a shepherd. The brothers made sacrifices, each from his own fields, to God. God regarded Abel's offering, but not Cain's. Cain killed Abel and God cursed Cain, sentencing him to a life of transience. Cain then dwelt in the land of Nod (נוֹד, 'wandering'), where he built a city and fathered the line of descendants beginning with Enoch.
This article is about the first and second sons of Adam and Eve. For other uses, see Cain and Abel (disambiguation).In the Qur'an, Cain and Abel are known as Qābīl (Arabic: قابيل) and Hābīl (هابيل), respectively. The events of the story in the Qur'an are virtually the same as the Hebrew Bible narrative. Both brothers were asked to offer individual sacrifices to God; God accepted Abel's sacrifice and rejected Cain's; out of jealousy, Cain slew Abel – the first ever case of murder committed upon the Earth. In Judaism and in Islam, the story of Cain and Abel serves as an admonition against murder, and promotes the sanctity of human life.
Origins[edit]
Etymology[edit]
Cain and Abel are traditional English renderings of the Hebrew names. It has been proposed that the etymology of their names may be a direct pun on the roles they take in the Genesis narrative. Abel (hbl) is thought to derive from a reconstructed word meaning 'herdsman', with the modern Arabic cognate ibil now specifically referring only to 'camels'. Cain (qyn) is thought to be cognate to the mid-1st millennium BCE South Arabian word qyn, meaning 'metalsmith'. This theory would make the names descriptive of their roles, where Abel works with livestock, and Cain with agriculture—and would parallel the names Adam (אדם, 'dm, 'man') and Eve (חוה, ḥwh, 'life-giver').[4][5]
Context of the story[edit]
The story has 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. Some scholars suggest the pericope may have been based on a Sumerian story representing the conflict between nomadic shepherds and settled farmers. Modern scholars typically view the stories of Adam and Eve and Cain and Abel to be about the development of civilization during the age of agriculture; not the beginnings of man, but when people first learned agriculture, replacing the ways of the hunter-gatherer.[6] It has also been seen as a depiction of nomadic conflict, the struggle for land and resources (and divine favour) between nomadic herders and sedentary farmers.[7][8]
The academic theologian Joseph Blenkinsopp holds that Cain and Abel are symbolic rather than real.[9] Like almost all of the persons, places and stories in the primeval history (the first eleven chapters of Genesis), they are mentioned nowhere else in the Hebrew Bible, a fact that for some scholars suggests that the history is a late composition attached to Genesis to serve as an introduction.[10] The date is also disputed: the history may be as late as the Hellenistic period (first decades of the 4th century BCE)[11] or as early as the 9th-8th centuries BCE,[12] but the high level of Babylonian myth behind its stories has led others to date it to the Babylonian exile (6th century BCE).[13][14] A prominent Mesopotamian parallel to Cain and Abel is Enlil Chooses the Farmer-God,[15] in which the shepherd-god Emesh and the farmer-god Enten bring their dispute over which of them is better to the chief god Enlil,[16] who rules in favor of Enten (the farmer).[17]