associating Cain with the higher levels of nomadism apply with full force to his identification with this particular tribe. When we consider, further, that the Ḳenites are nearly everywhere on friendly terms with Israel, and that they seem to have cherished the most ardent attachment to Yahwism, it becomes almost incredible that they should have been conceived as resting under a special curse.
4. It is very doubtful if any form of the nomadic or Ḳenite theory can account for the rise of the legend as a whole. The evidence on which it rests is drawn almost exclusively from vv.13-16. Sta. justifies his extension of the theory to the incident of the murder by the analogy of those temporary alliances between Bedouin and peasants in which the settled society purchases immunity from extortion by the payment of a fixed tribute to the nomads (cf. 1 Sa. 252ff.). This relation is spoken of as a brotherhood, the tributary party figuring as the sister of the Bedouin tribe. The murder of Abel is thus resolved into the massacre of a settled pastoral people by a Bedouin tribe which had been on terms of formal friendship with it. But the analogy is hardly convincing. It would amount to this: that certain nomads were punished for a crime by being transformed into nomads: the fact that Cain was previously a husbandman is left unexplained.—Gu., with more consistency, finds in the narrative a vague reminiscence of an actual (prehistoric) event,—the extermination of a pastoral tribe by a neighbouring agricultural tribe, in consequence of which the latter were driven from their settlements and lived as outlaws in the wilderness. Such changes of fortune must have been common in early times on the border-land between civilisation and savagery;[1] and Gu.'s view has the advantage over Sta.'s that it makes a difference of sacrificial ritual an intelligible factor in the quarrel (see p. 105 f.). But the process of extracting history from legend is always precarious; and in this case the motive of individual blood-guilt appears too prominent to be regarded as a secondary interest of the narrative.
The truth is that in the present form of the story the figure of Cain
represents a fusion of several distinct types, of which it is difficult to
single out any one as the central idea of the legend. (1) He is the
originator of agriculture (v.2). (2) He is the founder of sacrifice, and
(as the foil to his brother Abel) exhibits the idea that vegetable offerings
alone are not acceptable to Yahwe (see on v.3). (3) He is the
individual murderer (or rather shedder of kindred blood) pursued by the
curse, like the Orestes, Alcmæon, Bellerophon, etc., of Greek legend
(v.8ff.). Up to v.12 that motive not only is sufficient, but is the only
one naturally suggested to the mind: the expression (
Hebrew characters) being merely
the negative aspect of the curse which drives him from the ground.[2]
- ↑ Instances in Merker, Die Masai, pp. 3, 7, 8, 14, 328, etc.
- ↑ For a Semitic parallel to this conception of Cain, comp. Doughty's description of the wretched Harb Bedouin who had accidentally slain his antagonist in a wrestling match: "None accused Aly; nevertheless the mesquin fled for his life; and he has gone ever since thus armed, lest the kindred of the deceased finding him should kill him" (Ar. Des. ii. 293, cited by Stade).
