The twelfth episode of the second season of the Retelling the Bible Podcast is posted today (September 26, 2018). You can listen to the episode and subscribe to the podcast by following one of these links or by searching for the podcast on your favourite platform:

SHOW NOTES

This episode is based on Genesis 4:1-24 in the Old Testament of the Bible. (Click the references to read the original story). Any direct biblical quotations in the episode are taken from the New Revised Standard Version of the Bible.

Here are a few of my thoughts on the episode.

What is the story of Cain and Abel about?

The story of Cain and Abel and the story of Cain’s distant descendant, Lamech, is somewhat difficult to fit into the overall narrative of Genesis. Cain and Abel are introduced as the first and second children of Adam and Eve and thus as only the third and fourth human beings on the face of the earth. But then their story unfolds in what seems to be a well-populated earth. In particular, Cain readily finds a wife when he wants one. (And, yes, I do realize that she could be his sister, but you would think that maybe Genesis would mention that fact if that was the case.) Cain then moves onto an already established land called “Nod” and builds a city, something that cannot exist or function without a substantial population.

In addition, we are told that, between them, Cain and Abel make several advances in human development. They invent agriculture with domesticated crops, animal herding, burnt offering, organized religion and civilization. These are all developments that were only achieved over many human generations, yet Genesis portrays them all as happening within one lifetime.

These issues make it impossible for me to read this story as a straightforward historical account of two brothers. It just makes more sense to read it as a mythological account.

When you call a story a myth in modern discourse, that is often taken to mean that it is simply untrue. That is not what I mean. Myths, as I understand them, are stories that both ancient and modern people use to understand the deeper truths about their society and their world. In this case, the myth of Cain and Abel, was used to understand the problems of sin and violence (the story includes the first reference to sin in the entire Bible) and the often rocky relationships between different tribes who live in different ways — particularly between settled agricultural societies and nomadic herders.

That herders and farmers clashed in the ancient world hardly seems surprising. They naturally approached issues of the use and ownership of land in very different ways. Farmers needed to be able to settle down and control large pieces of land for extended periods of time. Herders wandered far and were only too happy to ignore other people’s claims to own property in order to feed their animals. That is why I have assumed that the animosity between Cain and Abel is about more than just God’s response to the different sacrifices that they bring. I have chosen instead to see the two sacrifices that are offered as a part of an attempt to settle the differences between the two groups, an attempt that clearly fails.

Genesis never says what it was that made Abel’s sacrifice more acceptable to God than Cain’s. The assumption has often been made that God prefers the meat of Abel’s animals to Cain’s vegetables (I mean, who likes vegetables?), but the text never says that. It also doesn’t say how the worshippers knew what God thought about the sacrifices. Seeking auspices and omens in religious events was a common practice in the ancient world and I can just felt that whole sacrifice narrative made more sense if the warring factions were using the sacrifices to consult the God in their dispute and seeking messages from the God in the smoke and other incidental phenomena that accompanied the sacrifices.

Seeing the other side of the story

As in most stories that are told of clashes between groups, this story is told from the point of view of one side — Abel’s side. Cain is presented as the aggressor and his actions are written off as motivated by jealousy and anger. But, if this story does represent the real clashes as they played out between rival groups, it does not seem to be a big stretch to think that the other group would have told the story a bit differently. I was fascinated by the way in which the story implies the guilt of Cain but leaves the story open to alternate interpretations.

For example, the story says that Cain confronted Abel in a field. This is usually read as a secretive sneak attack (because, when God shows up later, God appears to know nothing about it), but the Bible doesn’t actually say that the killing was done in secret. To say “Let us go out to the field,” can actually be read as a formal challenge to a duel upon a piece of ground that is in dispute, and I imagine that ancient farmers, people like Cain, would have been more inclined to read it like that.

Revenge is at the heart of the story

People often tend to stop reading the story of Cain and Abel once Abel is dead and Cain is banished, but I would suggest that the story is not complete until we get to Lamech’s tale. Lamech informs us that the root problem of the story has to do with vengeance. The threat of retaliatory violence is first raised in the aftermath of Cain’s killing of Abel. Cain is afraid that, without the security of land ownership so necessary to agriculturalists, his enemies will kill him:

Today you have driven me away from the soil, and I shall be hidden from your face; I shall be a fugitive and a wanderer on the earth, and anyone who meets me may kill me.” (Genesis 4:14)

But God reassures Cain that the threat of retributive violence will keep this danger at bay:

Not so! Whoever kills Cain will suffer a sevenfold vengeance.” (Genesis 4:15b)

God then marks Cain so that all will be aware of this threat. But this marking (which has its own, often very racist, history of interpretation) does not mean that God is the one who will be avenging anyone for killing Cain. The vengeance clearly falls to Cain’s tribe — as the story of Lamech makes quite clear.

Lamech’s incident also makes it clear that the threat of violence does not succeed in preventing violence. Far from preventing killing, the threat of sevenfold vengeance only leads to violence spiraling out of control until, in Lamech’s generation, it has become seventy-seven times and there is no end in sight. In fact, the Book of Genesis strongly implies that the only thing that stopped the spiraling violence of the antediluvian world was the opportunity to begin human civilization all over again after the flood.

A New Testament Antidote

As noted in the episode, the theme of Lamech’s song is taken up again in the Gospel of Matthew:

Then Peter came and said to him, “Lord, if another member of the church sins against me, how often should I forgive? As many as seven times?” Jesus said to him, “Not seven times, but, I tell you, seventy–seven times. (Matthew 18:21-22)

The passage is clearly intended to draw on the story of Lamech, that is why we see the same progression from seven to seventy-seven — and the same confusion between the numbers seventy-seven and seventy times seven (see the footnote in the biblical text) that plagued Greek translations of the Hebrew story. Matthew, the gospel writer, clearly wants us to make a connection between the vengeance of Lamech and the forgiveness of Jesus. He must be saying that multiple forgiveness is the only thing that can overcome the destructive power of multiplying vengeance and violence.

We seem to have given Lamech’s proposed solution to the violence of this world multiple chances to prove it’s effectiveness. I wonder, is it time to give Jesus’ suggestion a whirl?

MUSIC IN THIS EPISODE

“AhDah” Kevin MacLeod (incompetech.com)

Licensed under Creative Commons: By Attribution 3.0 License

http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/3.0/