RE: Cain and Abel: Explanation Please. Pretty Pretty Please!
September 4, 2014 at 10:13 am
(This post was last modified: September 4, 2014 at 10:22 am by The Grand Nudger.)
(September 4, 2014 at 9:44 am)Drich Wrote: What in the bible makes you believe that God is all loving?Nothing, of course. Specifically, it's firmly established in earlier narratives that the people who invented your god saw agriculture as a curse, and agricultural settlements as places of inequity (though they just couldn't help but claim them....somehow, with their "mark of cain" bullshit - I guess deep down, under all that goatfuckeriness, the cities had allure even to them). They certainly had no love for farming or farmers. Of course the proceeds of a curse were never going to be suitable offerings to a god who clearly detested ag. It wouldn't have mattered what sort of fruits and veggies Cain offered up for sacrifice, he was fucked from the word go.
Back in reality, this describes the ideological bias thre authorsd had, but also the (still common) experience of conflict between herdsmen or grazers and agriculture. Ag was wining at that period in time, it was "murdering" the shepherd (that's why those cities get such explicit mention in the subsequent narrative). Did the same out in the american west, thousands of years later. There's a fundamental conflict of interest between the two groups of people. I think the story makes for wonderful allegory, but I think that the authors were talented - not just scribbling "notes from the front". "Law and Order", not the minutes of a courtroom, eh?
We have a story here about one of the most pressing social and economic issues of the time, complete with fratricide - and ghosts! Let me get my popcorn popped.
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