Quote:Only after he deliberately decided one man's burnt offering was better than the other
The point of this otherwise stupid story lies in the basis of what later evolved into Israelite-Judahite cultures. With the exodus story of outside conquest having been dismissed as pious fiction by archaeologists the Theory of Indigenous Origins has been accepted by every non-bible-thumper and the bible-thumpers can safely be relegated to the realm of idiots. These cultures arose at the end of the Late Bronze Age
What remains in dispute, perhaps best personified by William Dever and Israel Finkelstein is where did the population which later became Israelite and Judahite ( as well as Edomite and Moabite!) come from? Both men cite the Sea People devastations of the coastal region as a primary cause. In Finkelstein's case, he sees the pastoral nomads of the Eastern highlands being forced to settle down and begin to grow their own grain because their trading partners had been overrun. Dever makes the claim that the population arose from refugees fleeing the Sea People and that these people had the technological know-how to farm successfully. In truth, both men make such good points that what probably happened was some sort of synthesis wherein the nomads supplied the meat and other animal products needed to survive while the farmers brought the knowledge of how to farm going forward. This must have produced some tension within the communities. People tend to look for artificial differences between themselves anyway. But what the absurd bible story tells us is that by "god" accepting the gift of the pastoralist and rejecting the gift of the farmer that it was the pastoralists who had the upper hand in those settings. Otherwise, if the farmers had been running the show, "Cain's sacrifice" would have been accepted and Abel told to go fuck himself.
By the way, how come "god" didn't know what would happen when he pulled that little stunt? God comes off as a second rate detective in a sleepy town instead of of omnipotent ruler of the universe.
