Cain & Abel

This article looks at Cain's city, Noah's Ark and the Babel tower and understands the latter in the context of the first two. It concludes that 'the Babel Tower stands as a monument to God’s faithfulness'. It Explains ‘nothing they plan to do’ in the light of Gen 6.5 .

Whatever sources may lie behind the narratives in Gen 2-4, it is recognized that these chapters have undergone purposeful editing designed to impose continuity and thematic coherence. Notwithstanding, there is still much debate about their purpose within their specific context in the primeval history. This essay addresses these matters by examining how Gen 2-4 might be read as paradigmatic texts relating to exile. Read together, Gen 2-4 illustrate how exile is the inevitable consequence of violating YHWH's basic demands of compliance with his injunctions and upholding essential social norms. I suggest that the placement of these narratives together at the opening of the primeval history was intended to provide a key for understanding the unfolding of the Pentateuchal narrative. In addition, I consider how technical aspects of scroll production contribute to understanding their placement. Moreover, in as much as they foreshadow the conclusion of the DtrH in 2 Kgs 25:21, they play a central role constructing a thematic frame for reading Gen – Kgs as an Enneateuch or Primary History. This view holds implications not only for understanding the purpose of Gen 2-4, but for the historical context of their composition. In addition, I engage the question of whether the concept of an Enneateuch is a deliberate literary construct, or whether it is a reading strategy for uncovering a significant message within a set authoritative scrolls.

Exegetical insight in Gen 6:4–8 reveals that the common translation of "Sin crouching at the door" is better understood as "An animal to be offered as a sacrifice for sin is right now laying in the doorway." This paper serves as an exegetical commentary of all clauses of Gen 6:4–8.

I focus on the claim that the myth of the Wandering Jew was two-sided even its early stages. The approach reflected in this reading is that the figure of the Wandering Jew is a shared creation of Jews and Christians; both Christians and Jews had a part in the shaping of this myth.

Genèse 4. Drôle de titre, dira-t-on, pour une pièce de théâtre ! Mais le théâtre contemporain n'en est pas à une bizarrerie près, s'empressera-t-on d'ajouter ! Pourtant, à considérer les choses avec attention, il n'y a rien de vraiment étrange dans ce titre, sinon qu'on l'attendrait peut-être d'un travail d'exégète, appliqué à déchiffrer le texte biblique, en l'occurrence le quatrième chapitre du livre de la Genèse. C'est que la pièce de Bastien Fournier se présente en effet comme une relecture, sobre et forte, du texte biblique. Commençons donc par là; commençons par nous arrêter sur ce texte fondateur, qui a cristallisé tant d'interrogations, de commentaires et d'interprétations au cours des siècles qu'une bibliothèque ne suffirait à en rendre compte.

Visually expanded tenth-anniversary edition.
Also see:
"Lacrimae rerum"
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"Tragedy's Forgotten Beauty"
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"The Superstes"
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This dissertation engages with two recent debates in Philonic studies, namely did the Allegorical Commentary exhibit an identifiable structure, and did the exegete make systematic use of typology. 
Chapter One demonstrates Philo’s unique position as an exegete. It is shown that the Allegorical Commentary utilised concepts and ideas from both Hellenism and Judaism, though the two cultures were subsumed within Philo’s core purpose of decoding Torah allegorically.  Although Philo used Torah to explain Torah, the chapter demonstrates the exegete’s predilection for specific passages within Genesis. 
An assessment of the Allegorical Commentary’s structure, in Chapter Two, reveals that arguments proposing a rhetorical framework are not persuasive. Rather, it is shown that Philo relied on Torah to explain Torah. Examples, selected from the three treatises under consideration, demonstrate Philo’s use of the Main Biblical Lemma as an anchor around which he constructed his exegetical framework. The chapter illustrates the symbiotic relationship between the Main Biblical Lemma and the supporting Secondary and Tertiary Biblical Lemmata.
The application of this approach is displayed in Chapter Three, which provides a detailed critique of Philo’s exegesis of Genesis 4.1-8. It is argued that Cain and Abel’s characters were developed to illustrate the two extremes of the human capacity for good and evil. It is also established that Philo made extensive use of soul-types (typology) in a systematic manner.
Chapter Four concludes by demonstrating that Philo’s Allegorical Commentary exhibits a logical framework based on the use of Biblical lemmata, makes extensive use of Hellenistic philosophical concepts intermingled with traditional Jewish approaches, and offers a widespread application of typology.

Genesis 4:17 presents the exegete with a problem regarding the identification of the builder of the first city. Is Cain or is Enoch the subject of the verbs? What does the syntax have to contribute to this discussion and how does it relate to the accompanying context?

[1] The relationship of gender and the environment is a uniquely modern question fraught with an underlying essentialism that women have a special relationship with nature. Nature, for example, is viewed as feminine -compare such expressions as "mother earth" or "mother nature," "virgin soil," and "rape of the land" -and women's lived experiences, especially those involving birth and childcare, are viewed as closer to nature. Paradoxically, this "special relationship" has both positive and negative consequences for women. On the one hand, women's lived experiences provide a repository for insights on how men might better live in harmony with nature. On the other hand, women, as closer to nature, are subsumed into the (male) domination of nature.

Genesis ist ein Buch von Familiengeschichten, welche durchgehend von Konflikten geprägt sind. Insbesondere gilt dies für Rivalitäten zwischen Brüdern. Häufige Vertauschungsepisoden und weitere Katalysatoren entfachen Konflikte, die die familiäre Kontinuität stets gefährden. Die Geschwisterrivalitäten wurden in der Forschung ausgiebig behandelt, doch die Analyse verbindender und wiederkehrender literarischer Motive zwischen den Erzählungen wurde bisher nicht ausreichend erforscht. Daher untersucht die vorliegende Studie drei Hauptrivalitäten zwischen Brüdern in ihren literarischen Verbindungen: Kain und Abel, Jakob und Esau sowie Josef und seine Brüdern. Dabei werden besonders die Abschnitte analysiert, die den Ausgangspunkt, die Eskalation und die Auflösung dieser Konflikte behandeln. Als Ergebnis der Studie werden lexikalische und thematische Motive, sowie Motive im Handlungsverlauf zwischen den Erzählungen erarbeitet. Die beschriebenen Motive stellen ein dicht verwobenes literarisches Netzwerk zwischen den Erzählungen dar. Sie zeigen einen narrativen Spannungsbogen auf, der vom urgeschichtlichen Brudermord zur Bruder-Vergebung geht und sich im Verlauf stets am Rande eines Brudermords bewegt

Genesis is a book of family histories which are marked throughout by conflict. This applies in particular to rivalry between brothers. Frequent episodes of reversals and other catalysts ignite conflicts which continually endanger family continuity. Although sibling rivalry has been extensively addressed by the academic research, the analysis of interconnected and recurrent literary motifs among the stories has not yet been sufficiently explored. Therefore, the present study investigates the literary connections among three principal rivalries: Cain and Abel, Jacob and Esau and Joseph and his brothers. This includes, in particular, the analysis of those texts which deal with the origin, escalation and resolution of these conflicts. As a result of this study, lexical and thematic motifs, as well as motifs of plot development among the stories are worked out. These motifs present a tightly interwoven narrative network among the stories. They reveal a narrative arc of suspense which ranges from the primeval fratricide to fraternal forgiveness, teetering continually on the brink of fratricide

In this paper, I show how the Garden story of Gen 3 and Cain’s story in Gen 4 illustrate a condition necessary for ethical behavior—the ability to choose based on an ability to anticipate consequences, make value judgments, and determine alternative courses of action.  In addition, the halakic legislation of Deuteronomy assumes that people can choose to ignore or choose to adopt the covenant, which is the reason each generation must be careful to transmit the moral codes found therein. Thus Torah stories not only provide an example of cultural transmission of morality, but also emphasize original choice, not original sin.

A pesar de los grandes avances técnicos de las últimas décadas, las cuestiones antropológicas que el ser humano se plantea son las mismas de siempre. Una de las más acuciantes es la que interroga al hombre individual, y a la sociedad en su conjunto, sobre el mal, la violencia, la muerte. Estas cuestiones también están en el interior de la Biblia. Desde sus primeras páginas ofrece respuestas a esas preguntas. La historia de Caín y Abel es un buen ejemplo. Esta monografía realiza un análisis detallado que inicia su recorrido en el texto hebreo de Gn 4,1-16, analiza las primeras traducciones, sigue la pista de la transmisión del pasaje a lo largo de la historia y considera el modo en el que se insertó en el Nuevo Testamento a la luz de la literatura judía intertestamentaria. Por último realiza el estudio de la recepción de la historia de Caín y Abel en el seno de la Iglesia primitiva a través de los textos de sus principales autores. Estos autores partieron de la primera lectura cristiana del pasaje y constituyeron los primeros eslabones en su transmisión en el seno de la comunidad cristiana.

Le récit biblique de Caïn et Abel a suscité de nombreuses et diverses réutilisations. Or, pour pouvoir interroger l'histoire des reprises, interprétations et détournements des fratries bibliques dans les littératures occidentales, il est essentiel de se pencher d'abord sur le texte biblique lui-même et ses harmoniques internes. Cet article propose d'aborder le récit en déployant une démarche d'exégète, et ce faisant à la fois de présenter le texte biblique et d'exposer une façon de l'interroger.

Le Tristan en prose, dont on situe généralement la date de composition entre 1225 et 1230, reprend les données de la légende de Tristan et Iseut, telles que nous les connaissons, entre autres, par les versions en vers de Béroul et de Thomas. Le matériau mythique et poétique y est intégré à la matière arthurienne, c'est à dire à un monde qui a déjà sa cohérence propre. La technique de l'entrelacement permet de maintenir un lien narratif entre ces deux matières, de faciliter le va-et-vient d'un récit à l'autre, et de conserver aux deux récits leur cohérence. La mort de Tristan et Iseut constitue toutefois un épisode parfaitement original : elle fait l'objet d'un remaniement complet lors de son intégration dans le cycle arthurien 1 , remaniement sans équivalent dans la tradition tristanienne.

Genesis  4,1-7  has  received  diverse  and  creative  interpretations.  The  biblical  account possesses many “silences” that lead interpreters to multiples readings. Nonetheless, the focus should not be on what have not been written but rather on the plot described in the narrated events. Therefore, the plot of the narrative emerges from the text itself through events that, as concise as they may be, are relevant for the construction of the story. To interpret the nature of the conflict and the plot of this passage, we  must  conduct  a  close reading of the  acts,  events,  characters,  statements,  actions and reactions introduced in the narrative and the pattern they are arranged in. In this f irst article, we will study verses 1 to 5.

In 2011, White Wolf Publishing released the 20th Anniversary edition of Vampire: the Masquerade. The limited edition, black, leather-bound tome celebrates two decades of cooperative narratives told by people all around the world centered in White Wolf’s original World of Darkness setting. In the second edition of the Vampire core rule book, Mark Rein•Hagen, designer of the roleplaying game, described this setting as: “not our world – at least not quite. It is a Gothic-Punk vision of our world, a place of extremes – monolithic, majestic and altogether twisted. The government is corrupt, the culture is bankrupt, and the decadent mortals revel in the flames of the final days.”  In this dark and twisted vision of our world, players take on the role of vampires struggling to retain their humanity while fighting the bestial urges inherent to the bloodline of Cain, the first murderer.
Cain’s murder of his brother and subsequent exile has been expanded and explored at various times within English literature. From Grendel and Grendel’s mother, to poems by Coleridge and drama by Lord Byron, writers have sought to appropriate the Biblical Cain and explore his motivations and presentation as a character, despite Cain’s condemnation by religious scholars throughout the Christian era. In creating Vampire: the Masquerade, Mark Rein•Hagen created an interactive, fictive, world where groups collaboratively tell stories that pull from the same narrative cloth as these much older works.
The aim of this paper is to explore Vampire: the Masquerade’s appropriation of the Cain mythology as the seed of its fictive culture. As such this paper will present both the history of roleplaying games, in order to situate Vampire within its cultural context and then work to understand how the biblical appropriation enables players to re-code the narrative and regain agency and power in the face of moral outrage surrounding the hobby of roleplaying by using Dick Hebdige’s work on subcultures.

Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein, or The Modern Prometheus (1818) has become a cornerstone of contemporary Critical Animal Studies due to its underlying vegetarian themes, which are largely drawn from Romantic Promethean and Miltonic archetypes. The ethical “Fall” of the novel’s famous creature—from vegetarian innocence into murderous corruption—has often been read as analogous to that of Satan in John Milton’s Paradise Lost (1667), which the creature reads as a “true history” (M. Shelley 104).  However, there is another, often overlooked, Romantic archetype invoked by both Milton and Mary Shelley, which is equally important to the cultural implications of meat-eating, which is that of Cain—the first murderer in the Abrahamic book of Genesis—whose fall is inspired by his creator’s rejection of his vegetarian offering. By comparing the Fall of Frankenstein’s creature with that of the generations of Cain’s progeny (who become increasingly carnivorous) in Genesis and Paradise Lost, I assert an identification between Frankenstein’s creature and Cain that implies a carnivorous cause for his moral failing and an unrecognised ethical inheritance from Percy Shelley’s influential “Vindication of Natural Diet.”

The article summarizes and deepens two issues that, in the exegetical and representative traditions of the biblical text, have triggered a myriad of semiotic intelligences. First, the nature of the face of Cain at the moment of the sacrifice refused by the Lord, a face variously interpreted as angry, sad, dejected, depressed, dark. Second, the nature of the sign imposed by God on Cain after Abel’s fratricide. Having explored Jewish and Christian, ancient and modern exegeses, with some references to contemporary narrative versions (and especially to Saramago’s Cain), the article dwells on the issue whether this kind of exegetical questions can be part of the objects of a discipline like semiotics, the modern science of signs. The answer is affirmative, but only on the condition of developing a semiotics of exegetical cultures.

Öz: Aile, her bir üyesi için en güvenli ortam olmasına rağmen bazen şiddet ve istismar, kişiye bizzat aile fertlerinden gelebilir. Şiddet, insanlar arasında var olan diğer tüm ilişkilerde olduğu gibi aile ilişkilerinin de bozulmasına neden olur. Aile içi şiddetin bir türü olarak kardeş şiddeti, bazen ailenin parçalanmasına, kardeşlerden birinin ölümüne veya uzun süreli kaybolmasına neden olabilecek kadar vahim sonuçlar doğurabilir. Bu çalışmada aile ilişkilerine bu denli zarar verebilme potansiyeline sahip olan kardeş şiddeti, Kur’ân’daki iki kıssa bağlamında ele alınacaktır. İslam’ın aileyi derinden etkileyen bu şiddet karşısındaki tutumu ve Kur’ân’ın kardeş şiddetine sunduğu çözüm yolları incelenerek bu konuda çalışma yapan diğer ilim dallarına katkı sunmak amaçlanmaktadır. Kur’ân’daki bu kıssalar, kardeşin kardeşi öl-dürmesiyle sonuçlanan bir şiddet hadisesini anlatan Hz. Âdem’in iki oğlu kıssası ve uzun süreli kayıpla sonuçlanan kardeş şiddetini anlatan Hz. Yûsuf ve kardeşleri kıssasıdır. Her iki kıssa da kardeş şiddetinin nedenlerinin ve mağdur olan kardeşin olayların gelişimindeki davranışları ışığında şiddetin önlenebilmesinin ipuçlarını barındırmaktadır. Ayrıca bu kıssalar, peygamber ailesinde gerçekleşmiş olması hasebiyle insanlara kardeş şiddetinin her zaman ve her ailede olabileceği mesajını vermektedir.

Recensione pubblicata su Between, vol. VI, n. 12, 2016
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I temi della colpa e dell’esilio, del vagabondaggio sono condivisi non solo nell’ambito limitato della cultura occidentale. Paola Di Gennaro lo dimostra, insieme a molti altri aspetti rilevanti, in questo suo libro che vuole analizzare l’attore archetipico dei due temi: Caino.

In my chapter I address Saramago’s re-telling of the Biblical “Sacrifice of Isaac” in his 2009 novel Cain both on account of its narratological and philosophical implications. Consequently, the theological-metaphysical Biblical events shall not be conceived as the progressive fulfilment of divine premises, but rather the convulsed history of humans, who are struggling with and against to a “lower-case God”—irrational and unpredictable. I will show how Saramago has filled some narratological blanks the Biblical “Sacrifice of Isaac” suffers from, comparing his text with another one: the Jewish midrash of this very Biblical passage. I will maintain that Saramago intends to tell the story of the “Sacrifice of Isaac” from the perspective neither of the perpetrators (God and Abraham) nor the victim (Isaac)—rather from the perspective of humanity.

Al cubrirse con la sangre de Cristo le estás dando categoría de amuleto. Es invocar maldición sobre ti. Es algo que no hicieron los apóstoles ni ningún otro personaje en la Biblia.  Cristo derramó su sangre para derrotar a Satanás en la cruz, limpiar nuestros pecados y confirmar el Nuevo Pacto.  La buena noticia es que estamos bajo el Evangelio de la gracia. Cualquier equivocación, pecado, ignorancia en la forma de orar o hablar pueden ser perdonados. Hemos dicho o hecho cosas que creemos que son buenas por costumbre, pero el conocimiento de la palabra nos va cambiando. Aprópiate de esa victoria reconociendo a Cristo como tu señor y salvador, recibe la limpieza por tus faltas y guarda sus preceptos para alcanzar la vida eterna.

The double duet on the biblical myth of Cain and Abel that Roberto Zappalà and Nello Calabrò created with Liederduett (2018), is a warning about the misfortune of every return of the father figure. In the first part of the choreography, the bodies of the two dancers translate an exhortation to rethink a type of brotherhood capable of illuminating life outside the shadow of the (figure of the) father. In the second part, the choreography assumes the dissolution of the dependence bonds on an original violence, and the dancers' bodies are settled according to a new configuration, in affirmative terms, of the brotherhood as a symbiotic way to being together. In Caïn, la dieresi che segna la i corrisponde a una specie di ghigno, un apparire di fauci che mette allo scoperto due canini appuntiti che spiccano sugli altri denti. Michel Leiris, Biffures Quando mi sono affacciato alla finestra, sul tetto di fronte c'era un corvo con la testa rientrata, nella pioggia, e non si muoveva. Un sentimento di fratellanza mi ha invaso e il cuore mi si è riempito di solitudine. Werner Herzog, Sentieri nel ghiaccio 1. Svuotare il sacco Nessun giudice, nessun arbitro, nessun padre. Solo due lottatori. Lasciati soli sul ring. Lasciati soli a negoziare la propria (in)dipendenza. Nel tempo dei loro gong, tra le urla e i fischi di una platea invisibile. Forse perché nella trasgressione di un divieto, sulla scena dell'origine, non si può che agire soli. https://vimeo.com/302593076 Il doppio duetto sul mito biblico di Caino e Abele che Roberto Zappalà e Nello Calabrò hanno realizzato con Liederduett (Bolzano, luglio 2018), convergendo le due parti, già au-tonome, «in un nuovo allestimento con nuove musiche e un nuovo set scenico», di Corpo a corpo (Catania, marzo 2018) e Come le Ali (Viagrande, maggio 2018), è un monito sulla sventura di ogni ritorno della figura del padre. Il coreografo catanese è persona devota, penso anche religiosa in senso minimamente osservante ma, almeno nei suoi lavori, pure in quelli maggiormente legati alla spiritualità della sua terra (fra tutti, per esempio, A. semu tutti devoti tutti? del 2009), senza alcuna rivendicazione confessionale. Anzi. In un precedente lavoro, La Nona (dal caos, il corpo) 35 n. 12, luglio-dicembre 2018

El presente trabajo parte de la obra de dos poetas de la posguerra española, Carmen Conde (1907-1996) y Ángela Figuera Aymerich (1902-1984), cuya labor poética fue fundamental para la instauración de una tradición literaria femenina en la que pudieran apoyarse autoras coetáneas y posteriores. El enfoque planteado para esta aproximación es cuanto menos diferente, ya que se centra en un aspecto muy particular de la poesía de ambas autoras: la subversión del lenguaje bíblico. Tanto Conde en Mujer sin Edén (1947) como Figuera en buena parte de su obra poética reinterpretaron, desde una perspectiva femenina rompedora a la par que necesaria, buena parte de los principales mitos bíblicos, tan citados y utilizados por el franquismo. Para ello, este artículo se centrará en dos figuras o elementos fundamentales de dicha cosmogonía, que aparecen con cierta frecuencia en la poesía de estas autoras: la Eva pecadora (por oposición a la Virgen redentora) y el cainismo, aplicado a la Guerra Civil pero revisitado desde la perspectiva antibelicista de la madre. De este modo, se quiere poner en valor una poesía que no solo respondía a unas circunstancias sociopolíticas adversas, sino que, a través de un complejo trabajo de reformulación lingüística y temática, también reivindicó la búsqueda de una identidad femenina propia.