The World According to Genesis: Other peoples

This is the last section I will discuss in detail. It is, of course, the story of Cain and Abel. Cain is a farmer, and Abel is a herdsman. Both of these are agrarian pursuits, in the new agricultural period. But YHWH (just the single name now) seems to value meat more than crops, for when Abel brings him an offering, YHWH treats it with respect (sha'ah, meaning to gaze upon), but not Cain's. Since YHWH is still around chatting to the folk, he is still a physical deity, so I guess he needs his meat. His greens, not so much.

After Cain does the deed of murdering his brother in jealousy (obviously having a high ranked individual like YHWH pleased with you is something to be desired a lot. Anyway, Cain gets sent to the "Land of Nod", which is further east of the Garden. One presumes it is at the furthest extremity of our flat earth.

YHWH knows that Abel has been killed because Abel's blood calls out form the earth. This implies that YHWH has some direct connection to the earth (adamah, like Abel's father's name). It also implies that blood is life, a view that is elsewhere often expressed in the Hebrew writings.

This causes the ground to not be fruitful when Cain tills it. Obviously, morality and the fecundity of the ground are tightly tied together. So Cain can't be a farmer any more, but falls back into the foraging nomadic lifestyle that the writer doesn't see as the ancestral state, but instead as an undesirable second choice. Because nomads lack the protection of their settled neighbours, he is fair game, and can be killed. This is odd, because as there are no other peoples according to this narrative, why would Cain think this? Has there been a declaration from YHWH that nomads are fair game? It certainly cannot be from experience. Anyway, Cain gets a mark or sign, presumably some kind of tattoo, to warn of YHWH's vengeance if anybody slays Cain.

This is intriguing to say the least. Cain needs to have the mark or sign of being part of a tribe, so to speak, so that he is subject to retributive justice if slain. This is not something we would expect if Cain was a member of the only family in existence at the time - YHWH would merely need to tell Adam's family to leave Cain alone - no mark would be needed. But the next sentence (v17) tells us that not only does Cain have a wife, but that there are enough people around for Cain's son Enoch to found a city within a generation.

This story, the J narrative, is clearly not about the origins of all humanity. It is about the origins of those who owe their allegiance to YHWH. Adam's family and his descendants are created by YHWH. Other people exist who presumably were created by their deities. This is where the wives come from, and the rules about what happens to wanderers. Various of Adam's children's children start common lifestyles - Jabal is the father of those who live in tents (the Bedouin of the day), Jubal of those who play the lyre and pipe. Now it is not likely that one inherits lyre and pipe playing even in the period of the author of J, so what they are are the founders of these practices. They are cultural heroes, like Prometheus. And Tubal-Cain is perhaps the most significant - he is the founder of bronze and iron working. Why is this significant? Because in the Judges narrative, it is clear that YHWH is the deity of a bronze culture, being defeated by those who have iron shod chariots, and in the Book of Joshua, the sons of Joseph are in the hill country because the Canaanites have chariots of iron.

So one has to wonder if "and iron" was added later, when the changeover from the Bronze age to the Iron age was completed. And the obvious henotheism of the text has been softened by the redactor.

Henotheism is a funny sort of religious term. It means "god among others". The echoes of the pre-monotheism henotheism of the Israelites are scattered through the Pentateuch, but for now it is enough to realize that the text is in fact presupposing that not only are there other gods, but they are powerful in their own ways. YHWH is not all-powerful in this early text. He has, as we have seen, physical presence, is not omniscient, and while he can do a lot and has a special bond with the ground, he is not the deity we normally associate with the Bible.

About now, according to the text, people start to "call on the name of YHWH." This implies that YHWH is no longer immediately around, for people to bump into, but that his Name has power to invoke him. It's the standard view of the magic of names - they have power over others, even deities. In the next post, we'll revise everything we have learned about the world according to Genesis, and then look at some of the succeeding narratives for more information about the world.

[I didn't intend to publish this yet, so I have finished it up and added some categories. Sorry - wrong button and all that...]