Cain, Ishmael, David...

As a result, it was decided that Abel would marry Aclima. Cain, on the other hand, would marry her less beautiful sister. Blinded by anger and lust for Aclima, Cain sought to get revenge on Abel and escape with Aclima. According to another tradition, the devil appeared to Cain and instructed him how to exact revenge on Abel. After the murder, the devil hurried to Eve shouting: Cain has murdered Abel!

Eve did not know what murder was or how death felt like. She asked, bewildered and horrified, "Woe to you! He does not drink. He does not move [That's what murder and death are]", answered the Devil. Eve burst out into tears and started to wail madly. She ran to Adam and tried to tell him what happened. However, she could not speak because she could not stop wailing. Since then, women wail brokenheartedly when a loved one dies. After burying Abel and escaping from his family, Cain got married and had children.

They died in Noah's flood among other tyrants and unbelievers. Some Muslim scholars puzzled over the mention of offerings in the narrative of Cain and Abel. Offerings and sacrifices were ordained only after the revelation of the Torah to Moses. This led some scholars, such as Said ibn al-Musayyib , to think that the sons of Adam mentioned in the Quran are actually two Israelites, not Cain and Abel.

Cain and Abel

Shi'a are frequent visitors of this mosque for ziyarat. The mosque was built by Ottoman Wali Ahmad Pasha in Allusions to Cain and Abel as an archetype of fratricide appear in numerous references and retellings, through medieval art and Shakespearean works up to present day fiction. A medieval legend has Cain arriving at the Moon, where he eternally settled with a bundle of twigs.

This was originated by the popular fantasy of interpreting the shadows on the Moon as a face. An example of this belief can be found in Dante Alighieri 's Inferno XX, [63] where the expression "Cain and the twigs" is used as a kenning for "moon". A treatise on Christian Hermeticism, Meditations on the Tarot: A journey into Christian Hermeticism , describes the biblical account of Cain and Abel as a myth, i. It shows us how brothers can become mortal enemies through the very fact that they worship the same God in the same way. According to the author, the source of religious wars is revealed.

It is not the difference in dogma or ritual which is the cause, but the "pretention to equality" or "the negation of hierarchy". In Latter-day Saint theology , Cain is considered to be the quintessential Son of Perdition , the father of secret combinations i. In Mormon folklore — a second-hand account relates that an early Mormon leader, David W. Patten , encountered a very tall, hairy, dark-skinned man in Tennessee who said that he was Cain.

The account states that Cain had earnestly sought death but was denied it, and that his mission was to destroy the souls of men.

Cain and Abel - Wikipedia

Freud's theory of fratricide is explained by the Oedipus or Electra complex through Carl Jung 's supplementation. There were other, minor traditions concerning Cain and Abel, of both older and newer date. The apocryphal Life of Adam and Eve tells of Eve having a dream in which Cain drank his brother's blood. In an attempt to prevent the prophecy from happening the two young men are separated and given different jobs. The author Daniel Quinn , first in his book " Ishmael " and later in " The Story of B ", proposes that the story of Cain and Abel is an account of early Semitic herdsmen observing the beginnings of what he calls totalitarian agriculture, with Cain representing the first 'modern' agriculturists and Abel the pastoralists.

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia. This article is about the first and second sons of Adam and Eve. For other uses, see Cain and Abel disambiguation.

For other uses, see Abel disambiguation , Cain disambiguation , and My Brother's Keeper disambiguation. Curse and mark of Cain. This section contains weasel words: Such statements should be clarified or removed. Icon of Abel by Theophanes the Greek. Cain and Abel in Islam and Al-Ma'ida. The Legends of the Jews Vol I: Journal of Biblical Literature.

And he [Cain] was begotten into adultery, for he was the child of the serpent. Tent work in Palestine. A record of discovery and adventure Vol. The Mandaeans of Iraq and Iran. Genesis, Volume One , translated by Rabbi Dr. Kim, "Cain and Abel in the Light of Envy: The Dictionary of Phrase and Fable reprint of ed. Psychoanalysis and the Challenge of Islam. U of Minnesota Press. The Dante Dartmouth Project contains the original text and centuries of commentary. Yesternight The moon was round.

But tell, I pray thee, whence the gloomy spots Upon this body, which below on earth Give rise to talk of Cain in fabling quaint? Smoot , quoted in Lycurgus A.

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Life of David W. Apostle and Martyr Springville, Utah: Feeling he must discover the ad's publisher, he follows its address, surprisingly finding himself in a room with a live gorilla.

On the wall is a sign with a double meaning: The novel continues from this point mainly as a dialogue between Ishmael and his new student. Ishmael's life began in the African wilderness, though he was captured at a young age and has lived mostly in a zoo and a menagerie before living permanently in a private residence , which caused Ishmael to start thinking about ideas that he never would have in the wild, including self-awareness, human language and culture, and what he refers to as the subject he specifically teaches: The man frequently visits Ishmael over the next several weeks, and Ishmael proceeds to use the Socratic method to deduce with the man what "origin story" and other "myths" modern civilization subscribes to.

At first, the narrator is certain that civilized people no longer believe in any "myths", but Ishmael proceeds to gradually tease from him several hidden but widely accepted premises of "mythical" thinking being enacted by the Takers: Ishmael points out to his student that when the Takers decided all of this, especially the idea that there is something fundamentally wrong with humans, they took as evidence only their own particular culture's history: Not a reasonable sample on which to base such a sweeping conclusion". Together, Ishmael and his student identify one set of survival strategies that appear to be true for all species later dubbed the "law of limited competition": In other words, you may compete but you may not wage war".

All species inevitably follow this law, or as a consequence go extinct; the Takers, however, believe themselves to be exempt from this law and flout it at every point, which is therefore rapidly leading humanity towards extinction. To illustrate his philosophy, Ishmael proposes a revision to the Christian myth of the Fall of Man. Ishmael's version of why the fruit was forbidden to Adam and Eve in the Garden of Eden is: The fruit nourishes only the gods, though.

If Adam "humanity" were to eat from this tree, he might think that he gained the gods' wisdom without this actually happening and consequently destroy the world and himself through his arrogance. Ishmael makes the point that the myth of the Fall, which the Takers have adopted as their own, was in fact developed by Leavers to explain the origin of the Takers. If it were of Taker origin, the story would be of liberating progress instead of a sinful fall.

Ishmael and his student go on to discuss how, for the ancient herders among whom the tale originated, the Biblical story of Cain killing Abel symbolizes the Leaver being killed off and their lands taken so that it could be put under cultivation. To begin discerning the Leavers' story, Ishmael proposes to his student a hypothesis: The Takers, by practicing their uniquely envisioned form of agriculture dubbed by Quinn " totalitarian agriculture " in a later book produce enormous food surpluses, which consequently yields an ever-increasing population , which itself is leading to ecological imbalances and catastrophes around the world.

Ishmael finishes his education with the student by saying that, in order for humanity to survive, Takers must relinquish their arrogant vision in favor of the Leaver humility in knowing that they do not possess any god-like knowledge of some "one right way to live". Ishmael tells his student to teach a hundred people what he has learned, who can each pass this learning on to another hundred.

The student becomes busy at work, later discovering that Ishmael has fallen ill and died of pneumonia. Returning to Ishmael's room one day, he collects Ishmael's belongings. Among them he discovers that the sign he saw before "With man gone, will there be hope for gorilla?

Ishmael proposes that the story of Genesis was written by the Semites and later adapted to work within Hebrew and Christian belief structures. He proposes that Abel's extinction metaphorically represents the nomadic Semites' losing in their conflict with agriculturalists. As they were driven further into the Arabian peninsula, the Semites became isolated from other herding cultures and, according to Ishmael, illustrated their plight through oral history, which was later adopted into the Hebrew book of Genesis. Ishmael proposes that the story of Genesis was written by the Semites and later adapted to work within Hebrew and Christian belief structures.

He proposes that Abel's extinction metaphorically represents the nomadic Semites' losing in their conflict with agriculturalists. As they were driven further into the Arabian peninsula, the Semites became isolated from other herding cultures and, according to Ishmael, illustrated their plight through oral history, which was later adopted into the Hebrew book of Genesis.

Ishmael denies that the Tree of Knowledge of Good and Evil was forbidden to humans simply to test humans' self-control. Instead, he proposes that eating of the Tree would not actually give humans divine knowledge but would only make humans believe they had been given it, and that the Tree represents the choice to bear the responsibility of deciding which species live and which die.

This is a decision agricultural peoples i. Takers make when deciding which organisms to cultivate, which to displace, and which to kill in protection of the first. Ishmael explains that the Fall of Adam represents the belief that, once mankind usurps this responsibility—historically decided through natural ecology i.

He cites as fulfillment of this prophecy contemporary environmental crises such as endangered or extinct species, global warming, and modern mental illnesses. A gorilla who was captured from the West African wild when young and sent to an American zoo. After the zoo sold him to a menagerie, Walter Sokolow bought him and discovered he could communicate with him through his mind.

Ishmael, learning he can talk telepathically with humans, begins teaching humans a subject he calls "captivity. A middle-aged white American man who sought a teacher to show him how to save the world when he was younger, during the turbulent and idealistic s.

Now an adult, he finds an ad looking for a pupil who wants to save the world. Intrigued because his childhood question may be answered, but skeptical because he has never found answers in the past, he goes and finds Ishmael, who teaches him, as promised, about how to save the world. The narrator never reveals his name in Ishmael , though it is revealed in My Ishmael to be Alan Lomax. A wealthy Jewish merchant who is mentioned only in Ishmael's back story but has died by the time of the main story. His family was killed in the Holocaust, during which he migrated to the United States.

While visiting a menagerie, he comes across a gorilla called Goliath Ishmael's given alias at the menagerie. Sokolow buys Ishmael from the zoo and after he figures out that he and Ishmael can mentally speak to each other, the two study a vast array of subjects together. He is the one who gives the gorilla the new name of "Ishmael".

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Daughter of Walter Sokolow. She becomes Ishmael's benefactor after her father dies. She supports Ishmael for a span of time, but her death ends Ishmael's financial support. Eddie Vedder of Pearl Jam has cited the book as an influence on their album, Yield. The song "The Taker Story" on Chicano Batman 's album Freedom is Free describes the global colonization of the "Taker" societies based on the use of the term in Ishmael.

The following is a list of the fictional events in the interrelated time frame of Ishmael published in , The Story of B , and My Ishmael Much of the chronology remains ambiguous in the former two, though is specified in much more detail in My Ishmael.