Cain & Abel
Brothers
Topics covered in this document:
Introduction
These two brothers, Cain and Abel, never got along. But there just
might be political undertones to the story that you hadn't noticed
before.
Tribal Fighting
The Biblical story of Cain and Abel has been told and retold countless
times. It's a well-known story that probably has more to do with two ancient
tribes fighting over possession of the same piece of land than it does with
telling the story of Adam and Eve's first children ... or even the first
murder recorded in the Bible.
Farmers and Sheep Herders
About six millennia ago (give or take), farmers and sheep herders lived
side by side in Canaan. Each group undoubtedly struggled to justify their
claim to the resources found in the nearly barren land.
The farmers didn't like the sheep, who kept eating the crops. And the
shepherds didn't like the farmers, who took away the scarce grazing areas.
They probably fought often and sometimes violently.
The Hebrews, of course, wanted the land for their flocks.
And let's not forget that their former masters, the Egyptians, were
farmers who routinely offered food as a sacrifice to their gods. The
Hebrews certainly didn't want to be spiritually like the Egyptians in
any way.
Severe Drought: c.2200 BC
Though still debated, recent discoveries by paleoclimatologists
(scientists who study ancient climatic conditions) seem to indicate
that there might have been a severe drought beginning about 2200 BCE
and lasting for about 300 years ... a very long time for a drought.
What does this have to do with Cain and Abel?
Well, Moses lived about 1250 BCE. So when he wrote the account of
Cain and Abel in Genesis (if in fact he was the author), memory of the
long drought might still have been very much a part of his society's
collective memory (just as the stories of Greece and Rome are still
part of the collective memory of western Europeans).
The drought affected a wide region stretching from the island of Crete
on the west to the Indus valley (in present-day Pakistan) on the east.
Of course, the land of the ancient Hebrews was smack in the middle of
this region.
Without rain, crops would have been sparse or failed altogether.
Imagine brush fires breaking out in the dry grasses. Picture miles
wide dust storms blowing sand everywhere.
Cain as the Bad Guy
Who would you blame for this natural disaster? Would you decide that
the crop failures pointed a righteous finger at the farmers, who were
being punished by God for some infraction of spiritual law? Could this
be the reason the Hebrews believed the earth was cursed outside the Garden?
And why Cain, as a farmer, would be blamed for all the ills that befell
the Hebrews living in this parched land?
Still, no matter what the reason was behind the story, the legend of
Cain and Abel makes an enchanting story in its own right and one that has
a lot more going on behind the scenes than is covered in most sermons.
Hebrew Claim on the Land
In the story, Cain is always cast as the bad guy ... and Abel as the
innocent victim. That's to be expected, of course, since the itinerant
Hebrew shepherds wanted to enhance their claim on the land over the
well-ensconced Canaanite farmers who had established themselves centuries
earlier.
Revisionist History
The practice of rewriting history to shed a better light on the
newcomers to a territory is as old as history itself. I can think of
many cases where a new population has entered an area, and written their
history to cast a bad light on the native population.
Three examples off the top of my head are the Europeans who arrived
in Africa and rewrote "African history," the immigrants to North America
who created an artificial history of the Native people here, and the
histories of nearly every east European country.
Summary
After thinking about the story of Cain and Abel, my question is: "What
was the underlying fact behind the fiction (myth)?" My impression is that
it's not a simple story of one brother with bad blood versus another more
sensitive brother. Rather, I think it's a story about the struggle of two
ways of life to stake their claim on the same plot of land. The migratory
Hebrews with their flocks of sheep arrived in Canaan to find an indigenous
population of farmers.
In the story, the farmers became the descendants of the unworthy brother
while the shepherds became the descendants of the righteous brother. The
descendants of Cain were responsible for the sins of their "supposed"
forebear and, therefore, had only a tenuous claim to the land.
Abel's sacrifice of the best of his flock was acceptable to God. Cain's
sacrifice of the fruits of the harvest was rejected by God. Therefore, God
had chosen the Hebrews as the rightful heir of the land.
Divine politics.
What Next?
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