Gods, Myths and Heroes - Part 28

 Cain and Abel

Today we look at the Biblical story of Cain and Abel.  This 1576 engraving by Johan Sadeler illustrates the story as it is told in Genesis.  According to the Bible (King James version):

Abel was a keeper of sheep, but Cain was a tiller of the ground ... Cain brought of the fruit of the ground an offering to the Lord.  And Abel, he also brought of the firstlings of his flock and of the fat thereof.

Note Abel's burnt offering of a sheep at the right, and Cain's vegetable offering at the left.

And the Lord had respect unto Abel and his offering.  But unto Cain and his offering he had not respect.

Note the figure in the background at left being blazed at from above.  Presumably this is God disrespecting Cain.

Cain rose up against Abel his brother, and slew him.  And the Lord said unto Cain, Where is Abel thy brother?  And he said, I know not: Am I my brother's keeper?

In the foreground, Cain, goaded by God's disrespect, kills Abel.  This artist showed him using the old "jawbone of an ass" as a weapon.  The Bible doesn't actually say what weapon he used.

In this 1511 woodcut by Albrecht Dürer, Cain uses an axe to kill Abel.

Note that in both artworks, and in the others below, Cain and Abel are naked.  This is after Adam and Eve became ashamed that that they were naked, and after God clothed them (Genesis 3:21) and then banished them from the Garden of Eden.

So, the question is, if Adam and Eve are clothed and are ashamed to be naked, why are their sons Cain and Abel running around naked?  You'd think Adam and Eve would have given them clothes.  The answer is, because artists like to portray naked people.

Of course, like so many things in the Bible, the whole story doesn't make sense.  Why does God respect Abel's burnt meat offering but not Cain's veggie offering?  Cain gets wroth (angry) about this, and God says:

If thou doest well, shalt thou not be accepted? and if thou doest not well, sin lieth at the door.  And unto thee shall be his desire, and thou shall rule over him.

This is almost incomprehensible, but the first statement is clearly false (Cain DID do well, raising his veggies, and he offered them to God, and he was NOT accepted), and the remainder of it (if thou doest not well ...) is irrelevant.  The only reasonable conclusion is that God is a lying asshole.

(Above: Murder of Abel by Abraham Bloemaert, 1590s.)

By the way, it is made clear in numerous other places in the Bible that God likes the smell of a burnt animal sacrifice.  For example, in Genesis 8, at the end of the story of Noah's Ark, God decides not to kill everything on Earth any more.  Why?  Because Noah makes a burnt offering, and God smells it, and is pleased.

(Above: Cain killing Abel by Cornelis van Haarlem, c. 1591)

The idea of a God who is hovering up there in the clouds and can smell a burnt offering should strike you as totally ludicrous, but the people who wrote the Bible believed in that kind of God.  For some reason, people who believe the Bible today are respected as being religious, when they should be ridiculed or pitied or undergo psychiatric treatment, because they are either stupid, ignorant, or insane.

(Above: Cain and Abel, Dutch, 17th Century, Metropolitan Museum)

The next part of the story of Cain and Abel is about the "mark of Cain."  Above is Cain by Julius Paulsen, 1891.  After Cain kills Abel, God curses him to be a fugitive and a vagabond, and Cain says to God:

"My punishment is greater than I can bear ... it shall come to pass, that everyone that findeth me shall slay me."  ...  And the Lord set a mark upon Cain, lest any finding him should kill him.

Note 1: At this time, there are only two other people on Earth, Adam and Eve, so this business about "everyone that findeth me" makes no sense at all.

Note 2: Joseph Smith, founder of the Mormon Church, said that the mark of Cain was that God turned his skin black, and black people were descendants of Cain.  For this reason, black men were not allowed to become Mormon priests until 1978, when church leaders finally reversed the ban.

Note 3: In the story of Noah's Ark, all people on earth except Noah's family were killed in the Flood, which would have included any descendants of Cain.  Therefore, if you believe the Bible, black people couldn't possibly be descendants of Cain.  So, Joseph Smith was stupid or insane or a con man, perhaps some combination of all three.

More recent artists continued to portray Cain and Abel naked.  Above is Cain and Abel by Marc Chagall, 1911.

This is Cain and Abel by contemporary artist Jean Pierre Bergoeing.

We end with Cain Slays Abel by Edward Knippers, 2002.

We found a lot of faults with the story of Cain and Abel, but isn't it at least a source of moral guidance (like: it's wrong to kill)?  Not really.  For one thing, it's morally ambiguous.  If you want to assign blame, God started the whole thing by disrespecting Cain for no reason.  And to top it off, this chapter in Genesis ends with Lamech, a descendant of Cain, boasting that he killed a man, which apparently is perfectly OK.

My problem is that I'm expecting it to make sense.  Of course it doesn't make any sense; it's religion.