The story of Cain and Abel is as old as the hills and well known to most on this board. As Jehovah's Witnesses we swallowed the narrow adventist line and the regular brain numbing sessions never allowed free headspace to think critically about what this bible story is really saying. Recently I got into a discussion with a neighbour about the curse of Cain (Neville said he always asked bible toting door knockers where Cain got his wife from .. easy .. the land of Noddy ;)
Anyway I had a quick re read of it and was struck by it's simplicity as a story of sibling rivalry caused by a father heartlessly playing favorite. Jealousy and competition amoungst brothers and sisters for a parents affection is as natural and as inevitable as the summers comming storms. A little can generate healthy self development. A lot can create pain and destructive behaviour within families.
===bible quote:
Adam and Eve had two sons. Abel, the younger, was a shepherd.* Cain cultiivated the earth. There came a time when they both made offerings to God. Cain offered a portion of his crops, the fruits of the field, while Abel made his offering from the finest and fattest of his flock'n sheep.
Jehovah was well pleased with Abels offering, but not with Cain's.** And as Cain could discern no reason for this favoritism, he grew angry, bitter and twisted toward both God and his younger brother Abel.
Jehovah, taking his chariot for a spin, looked down, percieved his anger and called out "why are you angry? You will succeed if you work hard. If you don't, stiff cheese .. off now, there's a good lad, bring me one o' yer dads spare ribs, it's nearly my supper time"
But this didn't soothe Cain and he started laying down queer plans. His anger kept growing. However, as it is not wise to be angry with a big meat eating, fat guzzling God, Cain turned his anger toward Abel. He followed Abel into the fields and there attacked and murdered him.
"Hey Cain, where's your brother" Jehovah said one day, munching on a pickled beef sandwich ... "I don't know" said Cain "am I my brothers keeper?" .. "Why have you done this terrible thing?" said Jehovah, picking his teeth with a twig "your brothers blood is crying out to me from the ground, like a voice calling for revenge. I am placing you under a curse; you will no longer till the sod. If you try to grow crops, the soil won't respond. You will be a homeless wanderer on the earth .. baarrrp"
Cain then pleaded with God "I cannot bear this punishment, you are driving me off the land and out of your presence. I will be an outcast and anyone*** who finds me will kill me"
Jehovah then bellows: "NO. If anyone kills you seven lives**** will be taken in revenge"
So Jehovah wipes his greasy right hand on his nightshirt and slaps a mark on Cains forehead to warn anyone he met not to kill him and bids him farewell. Cain, head aching and sore trudged away from Jehovah and went to marry big ears in the land of Nod, far to the east of Eden.
end of bible lesson 13.===
Those here of a fundamentalist bent will probably not question the dubious morality of this yarn but if we consider the story carefully we may well wonder why Jehovah favors Abel when Cain displays just as much devotion. There is no fairness in Gods judgment. Each brother gives the best of what he produces; Cain cannot offer sheep because he doesn't have any.
Here we glimpse the echos of an all too common family dynamic: the rivalry between siblings which erupts when a parent favors one child over another. Poor old Cain can see no reason for being rejected by Jehovah and his anger, viewed objectively, is quite justified. Yet he cannot vent his anger against Jehovah any more than a a child can against an overwhelmingly powerful parent. Anger exhibited against Jehovah might see you on tommorrows menu and wether we like it or not children have a deep archetypal fear of thier parent, not necessarily because the parents are unfeeling callous bastards like Jehovah but simply because that mother and father are Godlike figures in a childs psyche and weild the power of life and death.
So, because of this, Cain's anger is directed toward his brother. This is often the result when we're frightened of exhibiting our rage toward someone we love or fear. It gets displaced onto the sibling who seems to have won all the parents love (thank God my parents hated all 7 of us equally ;) Most times little Jock Sporen doesn't murder Debbie and big Joanne doesn't club WC in the fields but a subtler form of killing is common place. Coldness and spite as a result of sibling rivalry sometimes explodes into verbal and physical violence even in the best of families.
Surely the key to the Cain and Abel story is not the rivalry between brothers but a deity who displays a favoritism based on his personal tastes. Jehovah preferes dead sheep to Corn so Cain is rejected. A vegetarian might question Jehovahs preference, i'll go further and question his sanity. Jehovah clearly has deep psycological problems coupled wiith poor people skills. He caused and later fueled Cains jealousy to the point Cain killed his brother, just like some ego maniac father playing his children off one against the other.
We see this sort of thing everyday in the man who favors his artistic son over his athletic one, the mother who shows preference for her musical daughter over her studious one but we expect more of Gods (oops i'm slipping into christian baiting again..)
The Cain and Abel story reminds us that life, like families, is unfair. Unlike the standard Hollywood movie, this tale has no resolution. Cain is made homeless and outcast. Yet God, perhaps feeling a twinge of guilt, spares him.
In family life there may be a resolution to conflict but this can only come if the warring siblings put down thier clubs and honestly talk with one another about where the real hurt lies, that is if the injured one can consciously recognise his or her anger toward the offending parent. The greatest responsibility lies with us as parents who, like ol'Jehovah may, without inner reflection, behave in a distinctly irrational way. Jehovah got away with his behaviour but surely we can't.
Re visiting this story we find the Watchtower Bible and Tract Society once again fed us crap of thier own blinkered making .. the sibling rivalry in the Cain and Abel story doesn't spring from innate antipathy between siblings, it was generated by the complex dynamics of the family itself and a God playing childish games.
May we be emotionally strong enough to raise happy children free of the mark of Cain. Luckily I seem to have managed that with my girls, they used to see me as a God but lately I'm hearing names like "ol' stinky" ;)
unclebruce, with help from the mythic journey, the bible and a selfish little god called yahweh.
*why the hell Abel was raising and slaughtering sheep before the Noahcian flood is anybody's conjecture (con-lecture? ;)
**My guess is that Jehovah has always represented the earth bound male meat eating God of the Egyptians (whereas Baal is mother moon, the Caananiite vegetable muncher)
***who these 'anyone' are is never explained either in scripure or by biblenuts throughout the ages.
****these seven are never explained either .. lol @ the literalists .. sorry you fundies don't have a stranglehold on understanding and appreciating the bible as classic literature.