AI n Cable (See Who Made Who) :P
Seriously, I've thought on this matter, and even though it could entirely be a metaphor toward brotherly love and against hostile aggression (most stories have an ulterior motive), I have a theory.
I suspect that this story really happened in an isolated community (tribe of people, maybe even earlier hominids), and it was so horrific that it was seared into a collective consciousness. It also reeks of the pushes and pulls tied tot the transition of human societies from hunter gatherer structure to agricultural and domesticated life, where animals were kept and butchered and used, bringing our source of meat to a very up front and personal place (which the industrial age and large scale meat production has removed from our days as carnivores, just like the Jewish religion set itself up as the source of carnage).
So here's my take on the story...
Cain and Able
We all know that Cain was a tender of grain - Cain, Grain, an easy mnemonic. Likely, some time after we stopped our nomadic ways of hunter gathering, the production of grains became very important to a new agricultural society. Yet we also know that most domesticated animals also became domesticated around the fertile crescent by early humans starting after this point in time when we started tending crops (Just as Able came shortly after Cain in the story). In this society, and as omnivores who love meat, the raising and slaughter of animals, kept in close association with humans made meat and the slaughter of kept animals a thing which was much too close for some, especially those with a high degree of empathy for animals, which would obviously lead to the formation of deep bonds.
I think that Cain stuck to grain because he was simply unable to deal with the slaughter of things he loved so deeply. I think Cain was largely a vegetarian, given the situation of his surroundings. I think he became an opponent of the slaughter and the rituals meant to justify it within his society.
Religion is usually simply an excuse to do things a culture wants to justify and do.
Although seen as sacrilege, I think he sincerely put his grain on the alter to show the people that they could offer something else instead of dead animals and still keep their sacred rituals. But the people would not have it - they wanted blood, they wanted the meat, just like many hooked on fast food today, so soaked in animal based calories. Cain's action defied and threatened the security of things being as they always were. Like threatening your meat lover's pizza, or right to pile the meat and cheese high on your burger, the placing of plant based nutrition on the alter, to be blessed for human consumption challenged a sacred paradigm. It defied the logic of obtaining God's approval and sanctification in the "sacrifice" of another sentient life, slaughtered and prepared to nourish the people - it mocked the cult of blood. It mocked a mechanism of meat production and dispersal among the early Jewish people.
These humans loved their ritual sanctifying the slaughter of animals for "clean" consumption. Like marauding chimps whose primary primate purpose of incursion into another troop is to kill and eat the flesh of their young ones, the rituals were meant to give killing the sanction of their god.
Cain's placing grain on the sacrificial alter was likely a huge blasphemy at the time. In the story, the Lord (likely Adam) rejects his offering and then proceeds to lecture him about doing the right thing.
Able, on the other hand, was a popular and prominent person in the group. He was able to raise the animals for kill (sacrifice), and eating without much of the act making inroads to his conscience. His position and the esteem it gave him facilitated that - he was giving the people what they wanted, and they exalted him above Cain for that. Cain was the firstborn. I'm sure knowing birth order dynamics (especially with the Jews - this IS a Jewish story) that this went over like a lead balloon, and was a huge slight. Cain's offerings were out of favor, and Able's were much in favor. I'm sure Cain could see where this one way train was going. He couldn't win against such societal forces.
At a certain point (the story jumps right into it), no longer able to take it anymore - it being the killing of things he loved so dearly - Cain was at a tipping point. Who knows what it was that tipped him, but this story, the story of how our food is made and provided, is a recipe for conflict, and ripe with the justification of dire deeds, and giving the people what they want. As the story goes Cain invited Able into his fields and killed him. How or with what we do not know since the text simply says he attacked and killed him.
In medieval imagery and texts, Cain is frequently portrayed as beating Abel with the jawbone of an ass (This however may be a confabulation with Sampson - a glorified psychopath of aggression and murder - ironic - eh? Purposeful libel to paint Cain as a debauched murderer by association? Maybe).
Did Cain premeditate this? I propose, that he did not. I think it was a crime of passion, of rage and violence. I suspect an argument took place in the field that day. Cain, as an older brother, may have been trying to persuade his younger brother to stop killing the animals, to walk away from all the blood and take up work in the fields with him.
At some point in the conflict I think words became escalated and fists began to fly. Killing Able with the jawbone of an ass would certainly be poetic justice, even more-so if that ass was one of Cains close pets (workmates) that was sacrificed as it got older and unable to pull a plow. Maybe this was the source of Cain's angst against a system so steeped in blood and murder.
The Jewish community, so shocked and horrified by this "first" homicide among the children of Adam and Eve (I highly doubt that, but well keep rolling), Able became an outcast, cursed to wander the land, and was given a mark they say. He traveled Eastward to the land of Nod.
Again, knowing a little bit about anthropology, the story gets the evolution of dark skin backwards. And from that I propose that the mark of Cain was actually whiteness - maybe an extreme case of vitiligo. We know that white skin is a mutation, and isn't it wonderfully ironic that we've reversed that, and created this lie of white or fair skinned people as the original race?
If so, white people are the true descendants of Cain - but the shock and horror of that with this far spread horrific story of the villain may have caused them, these fair abberations to flip the script over time.
From Anthropology, given the climate of our early hominid ancestors, we know that were all originally black, or very dark skinned, and much more hairy. Humans became white as we moved northward into winter climes which necessitated covering up - piling on clothing to survive, to which our bodies responded by removing melanin to survive that condition. The lightening of the skin is the survival response of the skin trying to maximize the production of vitamin D as more and more surface area is covered, and the days are shorter (sunlight exposure is lessened).
At any rate, it could just as easily be that this is the crux of the story regarding Cain and his perspective and motivations. I certainly think he got a bad rap, as well as all of those people we've used this story against to vilify them.
According to the story, god (i.e. the Lord - who I think is actually Adam in the story) forgave Cain and sent him away - most likely because he knew in their tit-for-tat culture (eye for an eye), that he would be murdered too - and that this murder would only implicate someone else in the story for acting too harshly, for responding in an over the top type of vengeance that we are so good at doing as apes as we increase insult upon each other, while still thinking we are acting tit-for-tat, according to the justice of our perceived wrongs, those perpetrated always mentally ameliorated in the light of those suffered.
The story about humanity and the punishment we should hand out is shown by the love of a parent for their child. In every act of justice we should remember that relationship most. Treating others as we would treat our own child may be a tall order, but in my opinion, a better ruler of measure than "treating others as I would like to be treated", since most adults can handle a lot of shit from others, and very harsh conversations, even hearing and saying things that would crush tender hearts - In conversations as these, it is quite easy to identify those who are still stuck in their child-like emotions and need for polite and gentle conversations - conversations that are not too challenging to their concept of self ...
The moral here by twisting or reinterpreting this famous story is, "Don't judge a story by its teller." - the tellers are usually heavily biased, and have a dog in the fight. We are lying apes at heart. We are apes who punish, and do so severely at times. I offer this version, if only to show that there is always two sides to every story.
Long live Cain and his love for all of Life! Long live Able, and the karma of just desserts. I wonder what he came back as .... Maybe Balaam's Ass? :P
And why's that Able bodied boy so skinny and anemic? - I thought his diet was supposed to put meat on yer bones!
#PlantBasedDiet
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