Cain and Abel

This is an accepted version of this page In the biblical Book of Genesis, Cain[a] and Abel[b] are the first two sons of Adam and Eve.

Cain then dwelt in the land of Nod (נוֹד, 'wandering'), where he built a city and fathered the line of descendants beginning with Enoch.

Both brothers offered individual sacrifices to God; God accepted Abel's sacrifice and rejected Cain's; out of jealousy, Cain slew Abel – the first case of murder committed on Earth.

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."

Some scholars suggest the pericope may have been based on a Sumerian story representing the conflict between nomadic shepherds and settled farmers.

[citation needed] 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.

[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.

[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).

Through this he received approval as righteous, God himself giving approval to his gifts; he died, but through his faith he still speaks.The story of Cain and Abel appears in the Quran 5:27–31:[19] [Prophet], tell them the truth about the story of Adam's two sons: each of them offered a sacrifice, and it was accepted from one and not the other.

I fear God, the Lord of all worlds, and I would rather you were burdened with my sins as well as yours and became an inhabitant of the Fire: such is the evildoers' reward.'

Abdullah ibn Mas'ud reported that Muhammad said in a hadith:[20] No soul is wrongfully killed except that some of the burden falls upon the son of Adam, for he was the first to establish the practice of murder.Muslim scholars were divided on the motive for Cain's murder of Abel, and why the brothers were obliged to offer sacrifices to God.

Both Cain and Abel desired to marry their sister, Adam's beautiful daughter, Aclima (Arabic: Aqlimia').

This suggested to some scholars, such as Sa'id ibn al-Musayyib, that the sons of Adam, as mentioned in the Quran, are actually two Israelites, not Cain and Abel.

[24] In the Apocryphon of John, a work used in Gnosticism, Cain and Abel are Archons, being the offspring of the lesser god or Demiurge called Yaldabaoth, placed over the elements of fire, wind, water and earth.

[26][27] Allusions to Cain and Abel as an archetype of fratricide appear in numerous references and retellings, through medieval art and Shakespearean works up to present day fiction.

[28] The serpent seed explanation for Cain being capable of murder is that he may have been the offspring of a fallen angel or Satan himself, rather than being from Adam.

In an attempt to prevent the prophecy from happening the two young men are separated and given different jobs.

[35] The 2008 Danish stage play Biblen discusses and reenacts various Biblical stories, including Abel's murder by Cain.

[39][40] Author Daniel Quinn, first in his novel Ishmael (1992) and later in The Story of B (1996), proposes that the story of Cain and Abel is an account of early Semitic herdsmen observing the beginnings of what he calls totalitarian agriculture, with Cain representing the first 'modern' agriculturists and Abel the pastoralists.

[42] More direct references include the appearance of Cain and Abel as characters in DC Comics since the 1950s.

In 1989, Neil Gaiman made the two recurring characters in his graphic novel series The Sandman.

[46] American heavy metal band Avenged Sevenfold has a song called Chapter Four (2003) which is based on the story of Cain and Abel.