Caïn

Caïn (the Hebrew word qayin can mean “blacksmith” or, using the qnh root “I acquired” (cf Gn 4,1).) is a character of the Bible and Coran. Oldest son of Adam and Eve, it is regarded by the Judeo-Christians as the first murderer of the history by killing by jealousy his younger brother, Abel.

In the Old Testament

It is with Abel and Seth one of the three children of Adam and Eve. Farmer, the agricultural offering that it makes with God is not approved, unlike that of Abel (of first-born of its herd and their grease). Caïn is irritated by it, God reproaches him, and invites it to change attitude. However Caïn kills his/her brother in an excess of jealousy.

The Writings do not indicate how God stated that it approved an offering and rejected the other: at all events, that had to be obvious for Caïn and Abel. God, reading in the heart of the man, knew the bad habits of Caïn, which became clearly manifest at once that God had rejected his offering. Caïn was put at once to practice the quarrel or the jealousy, excesses of anger.

Cursed by God and constrained with the banishment of the ground, it clamp which its punishment is too heavy and which it is likely to be killed by the come first. God, to mean the gravity of his act to him declared protected it (by marking it of the “sign of Caïn”), leaving it under his condition of fugitive until his death. The sign in question was probably the solemn decree of God. Caïn took the way of the exile and was fixed at the country of the escape, in the east of Eden; it took along with him his wife, a not named girl of Adam and Eve. After the birth of Hénoch, Caïn started to build a city, that it called according to the name of his son. According to the current criteria, this city could be only one strengthened village, and the Writings do not say more as for the time when it was completed. Its descents are quoted partly and are characterized by a life from nomads and stockbreeders from herds, but also by the handling of musical instruments, in the hammering of tools, and in practice of the Polygamie and violence. The line of Caïn ended at the time of the Déluge at the time of Noah.

Christian symbolic system of the history of Caïn, Abel and of Seth in the Old Testament

Abel is a victim of high value symbolic system, it is the type of the persecuted Juste, and a figure of the Christ. Its blood is eloquent near God, but that of Jesus is more still (Hebrew 11:4; 12:24). Seth is the third wire of Eve that God granted to him to replace Abel killed by Caïn. Seth was born when Adam was 130 years old. It is the descent of Seth which leads to Sem… David… and Joseph the " père" of Jesus. As for Caïn, by its murder, it reveals the hatred which, as of the Genesis, lives the heart of the man; it is the type of bad, that which hates the Juste, his brother. Abel is the Juste who believed the promise of God who achieves himself by the offering of blood.

Caïn in Coran

The Coran tells also the history of wire of Adam, without characterizing them by their profession as in the Bible which introduces Abel like Pasteur and Caïn as farmer. On the other hand the Moslem tradition their gives name Hâbîl for Abel and Qâbîl for Caïn .

Coran tells that whereas each of the two brothers had made an offering (or a sacrifice), God (Allah) accepted only that of Abel. By jealousy, Caïn then promised to kill his/her brother, but this one answered: Allah accepts the offering only on behalf of the piles. If you extend towards me your hand to kill me, me, I will not extend towards you my hand to kill you: because I fear Allah, the Lord of the Universe.

Qâbîl kills nevertheless Hâbîl. According to the text, a very deep feeling of remorse invades it then, and it became thus among the losers. Qâbîl remains dismayed in front of the corpse of his/her brother, knowing only to make. Allah then sends a corbel to him which starts to scrape the ground to show him how to bury the corpse of his/her brother. He says: Misfortune with me! Was I thus unable to be like this corbel and to hide the indecent spectacle of my brother?

“It was thus among repenting.

The two biblical and Koranic traditions thus present Caïn like the first murderer, the repenting first. Coran adds that it is the first to have buried a corpse.

The recurring myth of the rival brothers, present in several civilizations

This myth evokes other present of them on all the continents, which lets think that it has an old origin, in the same way (in the coran) that the invitation with to bury deaths , often presented like an index of appearance of civilization at the prehistoric Man.
L' opposition between two brothers (sometimes twin) is very widespread in the myths, tales and legends. Ethnologists and historians note that in these accounts mytic often, one of the two brothers kills the other, becoming thus the stock of a posterior line, for example with the twins of Siberian and Amerindian myths, Osiris and Seth in the Egyptian Mythologie, the Shun brothers and Yao of the Chinese Mythologie and finally for the famous Romulus and Rémus in the myth of the foundation of Rome. Thus Caïn could represent the evil and Abel the good, in a duality which evokes also a culpability related to mythical a Original sin.

Other interpretations

Among other interpretations symbolic systems, other assumptions were evoked, without possible confirmation or historical invalidation to date:
  • the Mythe of Caïn and Abel could be what remains expression of a conflict relation or strong cultural differentiation between the men of Néandertal and Cro-magnon (then respectively represented by Abel and Caïn in the myth), the seconds, having finished by supplanting the first, which would mean the symbol of the murder in the myth, which implies genocidary will by no means neither reality (one does not have indices of relations loophole nor of interactions between these two types of Hominides, and of many controversies persist on the number and the importance of the warlike relations within the prehistoric tribes, and enters two types of Hominides, which locally seem to have cohabited after the arrivals of the men of Cro-Magnon, until approximately 29.000 years, time ago of the progressive and unexplained disappearance of the man of Néandertal.
  • the myth could also be the relictuelle trace of old conflicts between cultures of the type Chasseur-cueilleur or stockbreeders Nomade S, vis-a-vis the new cultures developing among people sédentarisant itself thanks to the Agriculture and with a breeding not nomad. Caïn is indeed presented by the Bible as being farmer. And it “ keep silent ” his/her brother introduced by the Bible like Pasteur. The myth could describe the fact symbolically that the farmer prohibits with his wandering brother the access to the grounds (and water) richest, from now on more and more exclusively held and dedicated to the Agriculture, the Pisciculture and the cut of wood then to the Sylviculture… with the detriment of the vital itinérance to the nomads and owners of itinerant herds).
    On could then in parallel see in this myth the opposition between on the one hand the new cultures of space privatized (marked by the Clôture S, the contracts of property and a defensive management of space) and on the other hand the cultures of shared space (managed according to the habit and other management styles of the conflicts). More largely still this myth could evoke the opposition between “ Culture ” and “ Nature ” or between “rationalized exploitation of the environment” and “recognition of the Naturalité” of the Man and of its relation to Nature.
  • It could finally also act of the mythical trace of a cultural shock even older having opposed people itinerant hunters-gatherers (represented by Abel) and the first stockbreeders wandering (the descent of Caïn is presented by the bible like nomad). One can note that in the myth, God approved Abel and his offering, and later, in the new will, Pasteur and the importance of the sacrifice of the lamb will remain topics récurents and important, Christ himself being frequently presented as Pasteur (which this time sacrifices itself) and his people like a herd of lambs.

  • In addition, Caïn will be often represented vêtu of a skin of animal, like Hercules/Heracles, which can evoke the animal, the hunter, or a wild character “ ”, even the potentially explanatory Violence of this myth of the first murder, by the first wire of Adam and Eve. The myth could then - from this point of view - be at the same time the expression of a culpability driven back E (cf the anger of God, the Eye of God, etc), and of two interior tendencies - individual and collective - which at the man are still opposed; the civilized sedentary one, and the itinerant (doubly driven back according to this interpretation of the myth).

Like reference in the literature and the fiction

  • Kaori Yuki, in its work Count Cain, gave the name of Cain to its hero, in order to respect the fact that England, where the intrigue occurs, is the Royaume of the alphabet without accent , from where the title, Count Cain , and not Count Caïn . But the Cain directly refers to the Caïn of the Bible.
  • Victor Hugo, in a poem of the the Legend of the Centuries entitled the Conscience , devotes a hundred worms on the remorse of Caïn, continued by an omnipresent eye. Protected by his/her children, nomads, behind walls of fabrics of tents, bronze and granite, Caïn goes until burying themselves, but nothing can stop the eye of God: “The eye was in the tomb, and looked at Caïn”.
  • Baudelaire will write for its part Abel and Caïn , poem of its collection the Flowers of the evil in the section entitled Révolte . The race of Caïn, hard and famished, crushed by the secular punishment weighing on it, there côtoie the race of Abel, who fattens himself indefinitely in the grace of God. But Baudelaire finishes the poem by announcing the revolt of disinherited divine, gaining the Sky by sweeping God and his favorites. It is difficult not to see there the influence of 1848, its ideals betrayed by a embourgeoized republic, and incipient socialism.
  • Dante gives the name of Caïn to the one of the layers of sound Enfer, Caïna.
  • Caïn of Lord Byron.
  • Steinbeck in “In the East of Eden”.

See too

Many stories and myths on the phratries represent brothers " ennemis" or opposite;

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