Lazy Atheism?

[The Grand Nudger]

The cain and abel thing is fun.  That's about the pastoralist source telling us that god likes his way of life better than the other guys.  Literally translated it's the story of Farmer and Herdsmen and according to magic book - there was a city on earth at the time.  

Robert L. O'Connell in The Soul of the Sword (a history of human weaponry, writ short) suggests that the divide between farmers and herdsmen may be one source of organized warfare, in that the two groups were fighting over land, one to use that land for crops, the other for pasturage. It's only supposition, which he makes clear in the book, but I think it's an interesting thought.

When we frame the fable of Cain and Abel in that light, it sure looks allegorical ... but again, that's supposition, on my part this time.

It's less important that we frame it in that light as that the authors themselves chose to do so.  It would not be the only way they communicated their values in the narrative.  The prohibition against pork, the poly-blend clothe bit, and what would calcify into overt and exhaustively described ethnic replacement theory by the yahwist period are all variations on this same recognizable theme of internecine conflict. You could spill alot of ink..and alot of ink has already been spilled, observing the many ways in which the establishment myths of a given society do seem to speak to at least some of the starting conditions of that society as we can find them in the archeological record. How we find a pre and post urban narrative in genesis..and a fairly accurate description of late bronze and early iron age warfare in judges and kings even though nothing else about the respective narratives seem to reflect any reality that can be found outside their pages. These observations are always the first victims of any revision to apologetic needs based on the ideological and/or historical differences and disputes between abrahamic subsects.

Go out into the pacific and everything starts with boats - because it did. In mesoamerica..the cenotes - because it did.