The clue to the deeper meaning of the story of Cain and Abel perhaps rests on two aspects of the narrative: the offering to God which Cain produces, and God is displeased with and the clues provided by the etymologies of the two brothers’ names. But what does the story mean? It’s often taken to be an injunction against murder, but that doesn’t get us very far, beyond a fairly self-evident moral point. So, these two accounts must belong to different traditions. In other words, the Cain and Abel story probably originated in a separate source from the story of Adam and Eve, but was grafted on later, with the inconsistencies in the two stories left unresolved. So who, then, are these other people Cain is worried about? And where did his wife come from? Yet Cain tells God that ‘every one that findeth me shall slay me’ (Genesis 4:14).
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