Cain

Cain and Abel.

Cain, sculpted by Giovanni Dupre (Museum of St. Petersburg

Cain (pronounced In the Bible

It is with Abel and Seth one of three children of Adam and Eve. Farmer, the farm that is offering to God is not approved, unlike that of Abel, a shepherd (the firstborn of his flock and their fat). Cain is angry, God reproaches him, and invites him to change his attitude. Cain kills his brother in a fit of jealousy.

God, reading the human heart , knew the bad habit of Cain, which became clearly evident as soon as his offering was rejected. Cain immediately began to practice dispute or jealousy, fits of anger .

Cursed by God and be obliged to ban the ground, he claims that his punishment is too heavy and in danger of being killed by the first comer. God, to signify the seriousness of his act was declared protected (by marking the "mark of Cain"), leaving him in his fugitive status until his death. The sign in question was likely the solemn decree of God. Cain took the road of exile and settled in the land of the leak, East of Eden (in the Land of Nod ) There, he found one who became his wife . The Bible does not specify the origin of the woman . After the birth of Enoch , Cain began to build a city, he called after the name of his son. Under the current criteria, this city has been a fortified village, and the scriptures do not say more about the time she was finished. His descendants are listed in part and are characterized by a nomadic life of herders, but also by the handling of musical instruments in hammering tools, and the practice of polygamy and violence. The lineage of Cain ended at the Flood in the days of Noah.

The Christian symbolism of the story of Cain, Abel and Seth in the Bible

Cain fled with his family. Orsay Museum, Paris (1880)
Fernand Cormon.

Abel is a victim of high symbolic value and is just the type of persecution, and a figure of Christ. His blood speaks with God, but that of Jesus is more (Hebrews 11:4, 12:24). Seth is the third son of Eve that God granted him to replace Abel killed by Cain. Seth was born when Adam was 130 years . It is the descendants of Seth, which leads to Sem, David and Joseph the father of Jesus.

As for Cain, for his murder, he reveals the hatred which, from Genesis, lives in the heart of man is the kind of bad, one who hates the right. Abel was a righteous man who believed God's promise which is fulfilled by the offering of blood.

Cain in the Quran

The Koran also tells the story of the son of Adam , without characterizing them by their profession as the Bible presents as Pastor Abel and Cain as a farmer. In contrast to Muslim tradition gives them names: Hbyl for Abel and Cain for Qain.

The Koran says that while each of the two brothers had made an offering, God ( Allah ) only accepted that of Abel. Out of jealousy, Cain then promised to kill his brother replied: "Allah accepts the offering from the piles. If you stretch out thy hand to kill me, I will not extend to you my hand to kill thee: for I fear Allah, the Lord of the Universe "

Despite this speech, Cain kills Abel. According to the text, a very deep feeling of remorse came over then, and he became a loser. Cain remains dismayed at the corpse of his brother, not knowing what to do. Allah then sent him a crow begins to scratch the ground to show him how to bury the corpse of his brother. He said: "Woe is me! I've been unable to be like this crow and to hide the indecent spectacle of my brother? "

"It became one of those who regret . "

Biblical and Koranic traditions therefore have Cain as the first murderer. The Koran says that he is the first to have buried a corpse .

The myth of the brothers competing in several civilizations

This myth refers to other present on all continents, which suggests he has very ancient origins as well (in the Qur'an) that the invitation to bury the dead , often presented as an index of onset civilization of prehistoric humans. The opposition between two brothers (occasionally twins) is widespread in myths, tales and legends. Ethnologists and historians note that in these myths, one of the two brothers often kills the other, becoming the strain after a strain; include for example twin Siberian and Native American myths, Osiris and Seth in Egyptian mythology The brothers of Yao and Shun Chinese mythology and finally Remus and Romulus in the myth of the founding of Rome. So Cain could represent evil and the good Abel, a duality that also evokes a sense of guilt in relation to a mythical original sin.

Bibliography

• Xavier Tilliette , philosophers read the Bible , Cerf, 2001, Cardinal Grente price of the French Academy

Other interpretations

Other symbolic interpretations were discussed other assumptions, without confirmation or possible history to date:

• The myth of Cain and Abel might be what remains of the expression of an adversarial relationship or a strong cultural differentiation between men of Neanderthal and Cro-Magnon (then represented respectively by the Cain and Abel myth), the latter , who ended up replacing the former, that would mean the symbol of murder in the myth, which does not imply willingness or genocidal reality (there was no evidence of lethal relationships or interactions between these two types of hominids, and many controversies persist on the number and importance of relationships among warring tribes prehistoric), and between the two types of hominids, which seem to have lived locally after the arrival of Cro-Magnon up to 29,000 years ago or so, then the gradual disappearance and unexplained Neanderthals.

• This myth could also be the trace relict of ancient conflicts between cultures like hunter-gatherers or pastoralists nomads in the face of new crops in developing nations to settle with the agriculture and a farming non-nomadic. Cain is in fact presented by the Bible as a farmer. And he "kills" his brother presented by the Bible as a pastor. The myth could describe symbolically that prohibits the farmer to his brother nomadic access to land (and water) the richer, now increasingly and exclusively dedicated to agriculture , the fish and cut wood and the Forestry ... at the expense of vital roaming nomads roaming herds and owners).
  We could then see in this myth parallel opposition between on the one hand the new crop of space privatized (marked by fences , contracts, property management and defensive space) and other crops shared space (managed by custom and other modes of conflict management). More broadly still this myth could evoke the opposition between " culture "and" nature "or between" streamlined operating environment "and" recognition of the naturalness "of Man and its relationship to Nature.

• It could also be the last trace of a mythical culture shock even older people who opposed hunter-gatherers roaming (represented by Abel) and the first nomadic herders (the offspring of Cain is presented by the Bible as a nomad). It may be noted that in the myth, God accepts Abel and his offering, and later in the New Testament, the pastor and the importance of the sacrifice of the lamb will remain important and recurring themes, Christ himself being frequently presented as a pastor (who is this time sacrificed Himself) and his people like a flock of lambs.

• If you make a psychoanalytic reading or just literal text, it appears that the cause of the tragedy of Cain is that he believes to be the son of God told his mother:

"Adam is entering his wife Hava. Cain speaker she gives birth. She said" I had a man with IHVH. "(G 4, 1) But not with God that she had sex c ' Adam is with his companion, the details are given the most thought so that there is no doubt about it. We know from psychoanalysis and in particular Dolto ("Psychoanalysis and pediatrics (the published text of his thesis Medicine), ed. Threshold (1971) "Where Dominique", ed. Threshold (1971), the importance of the desire of parents, mostly unconscious desires that attach to the child, denial of paternity or projections proxy and the identity or unconscious meaning assigned to them. Cain illustrates the difficult renunciation of one of our most cherished fantasies: "to believe God." What in the previous episode (Tree of Knowledge), was the promise of the serpent "and ye shall be as gods" proves true. The mistake is to believe and forget the "as" the snake. Eve are believed. The episode of Cain shows what we get when we believes, therefore it follows "The Fall." In the desire to accredit a fantasy, including that of another, to forge the bonds of bigotry as identification and registration in the outhouse. Cain appears as its figurehead, when it is born, the germ, the unit somehow. We can consider that the Bible writer has developed this drama about the first ritual gesture, and early Bible, to form a sort of "foreword" in search of faith or wisdom ... "Especially since in terms of psychic development every child goes through a phase of" reconstruction of the family novel "in which the fantasy that" my parents would not be my true parents and I'm actually the son of a king and a queen. "See the book Cain, the enigma of the first criminal Jacques Laffitte Wind Boom Editions Reed May 2011.

• In addition, Cain is often depicted wearing an animal skin as Hercules / Heracles , who can evoke the animal, the hunter, or a character "wild" and even violence potentially explanatory of this myth of the first murder, the first son of Adam and Eve. The myth could then - from that point of view - to be both an expression of guilt repressed (see the wrath of God, the Eye of God, etc..), and two interior trends - individual and collective - that humans still stand and the civilized sedentary and itinerant (doubly repressed under this interpretation of the myth).

Literature and popular culture

Books and poems directly inspired by Cain

• Cain by Lord Byron.
• Cain (novel) (es) (2009), by Jos Saramago
• Victor Hugo , in a poem of The Legend of centuries entitled Consciousness, devotes a hundred verses on the guilt of Cain, pursued by an omnipresent eye. Protected by her children, nomads, behind the walls of tents, bronze and granite, Cain going to bury, but nothing can stop not only the eye of God, but also the eye of guilt, the eye of consciousness, Cain and any man can escape his conscience: "The eye was in the tomb, watching Cain."
• Baudelaire wrote to his hand, Abel and Cain, a poem of his collection Les Fleurs du mal in the section entitled Revolt. The race of Cain, hardworking and hungry, overwhelmed by secular punishment against her, rubs shoulders with the race of Abel, who fattens indefinitely in the grace of God. But Baudelaire's poem ends by announcing the revolt of the disinherited divine, winning the Sky God and sweeping his favorites. It is difficult not to see the influence in 1848, its ideals betrayed by a republic gentrified, and nascent socialism.
• Dante gives the name of Cain to one of its layers of Hell , the Cana.
• Guillevic in " Proses or drink in secret caves "Cain called his second text, emphasizing the irreparable's first murder and the guilt it engenders.
• The writer of science fiction Yann Quero Cain has made his main character in the novel era of Cain (2004), in which the hero crosses the great ages of human history, to finally ask if this he thinks he has lived reality or only a schizophrenic frenzy.

Other works

• Kaori Yuki , his work in Earl Cain , of Cain named his hero, to respect the fact that England, where the plot goes, is the Kingdom of the alphabet without accent, hence the title , Count Cain, and not Count Cain. But this story of Cain is a direct reference to the Cain of the Bible.
• In Hamlet , William Shakespeare, Prince compares the murder of his father, Old Hamlet, Claudius by his brother in the first fratricide.
• Steinbeck in "East of Eden at."
• Robert Ludlum , In the trilogy of Jason Bourne "The Bourne Identity," "The Bourne Supremacy," "The Bourne Ultimatum", Bourne is called "Cain" against his rival Carlos.
• Hermann Hesse , titled the second chapter of his Demian , Cain.
• Literature revolving around the universe of role playing to give Cain the central role of father of the original vampires. Its status would be the famous vampire mark of God. He met Lilith in the Land of Nod , the first wife of Adam in the Jewish Kaballah, which would have initiated its new powers.
• In Waiting for Godot , by Samuel Beckett , the character of Pozzo, who became blind and grounded, is successively called Abel by Cain and Estragon and Vladimir, after he was struck by it.
• The cartoon "The Cain Syndrome", by Tackian and Red, features the character of Cain myth associated with the wandering Jew. Holder of knowledge millennium, immortal, Cain is here the first alchemist and book men know unorthodox for which they tear each other apart.

Music

• "Lullaby for Cain", Sinead O'Connor, used as the main theme of the movie "The Talented Mr. Ripley," Anthony Minghella.

As a reference in the music

• The song "The Ghost Of Cain Bruce Dickinson from the album Accident of Birth.
• The song When you're in the desert of Jean-Patrick Capdevielle.
• The song Cain Said to Abel group Bloc Party
• The name of the band Avenged Sevenfold
• The song Nothing Michel Sardou
• The song Am I my brother's keeper? Of Sefyu
• The songs "The Chronicle Cainian Part I, II, III and IV" from the album The Cainian Chronicle , the black metal band Ancient.

Cain and Abel in other stories fratricidal

Many stories and myths about the siblings are brothers "enemies" or "opposed" that can be compared to Cain and Abel:

• Enoch
• Osiris and Seth in Egyptian mythology
• Shun and Yao in Chinese mythology
• Jacob and Esau in the Bible
• Remus and Romulus in the myth of the founding of Rome
• Eteocles and Polynices in Greek mythology
• Richard the Lion Heart and John Lackland , etc..
• Galerians , Rion and Cain twins
• Citizen Kane , with Orson Welles
• Kane , author Karl Edward Wagner
• Mufasa and Scar in The Lion King
• The Archangel Michael and the Archangel Lucifer in Hebrew mythology.

Notes

• Portal religions and beliefs
• Bible Portal

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