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Cain and Abel is a compelling story and there are a lot of ways to read it. Here's an option that sees the characters as archetypes of human social development. Let me know what you think.
Sermons from Commons Church. Intellectually honest. Spiritually passionate. Jesus at the centre. Since 2014.
Let's talk about Cain and Abel. First off, thanks for joining us here on the channel. If you're not already subscribed, then hit that button and you can keep up to date with the conversation that's unfolding here at Commons. But on Sunday, Scott walked us through the stories of Cain and Abel. I want to talk today another way to think about this story in terms of archetypes, in terms of representative figures that show us a bit of a window into human development and some of the tension that that creates as we move through those different stages.
Speaker 1:In the early chapters of Genesis, once we get through the formation of the cosmos in the world, which we talked about in the first two weeks of this series, We are introduced to a four characters, Cain and Abel, but also their parents, Adam and Eve. And there's this really interesting frame to look at these stories from if you just step back a couple feet to look at the bigger picture. Adam and Eve are the first humans on the earth, and they are given all the trees of the garden to eat from except for one that they're told to stay away from. This is essentially a hunter gatherer culture where there is no need to cultivate or produce agriculture. There is just simply an abundance of food that's available when it's needed.
Speaker 1:You take what you need and you eat. However, there is this one warning for them not to eat from the tree of the knowledge of good and evil. This warning that, look, you can have whatever you want, but don't go too crazy. Don't get too greedy or eventually you will consume your environment, everything that's around you. And this is a very real part of hunter gatherer cultures in ancient human development.
Speaker 1:But even today, you have to manage your desire to gather what you need without overtaxing your environment and leaving it unable to keep up with you. The next two characters that come along are Cain and Abel, their children. And Abel, we're told, is a nomadic pastoralist. Basically what that means is he gathers and tends to flocks. And this is, we know, the next development in human societal evolution.
Speaker 1:We move from hunter gatherer cultures that took what they needed from the environment to cultures that began to raise animals, flocks, and move with them through the environment. They would take them to grazing areas when they devastated or, you know, finished out the grass in that area. They would move to another area, bring their tents, bring their community, set up shop for a time there, and then move on to the next place. So nomadic pastoralists that were raising flocks. And then we move into agrarian societies where we stop actually moving from place to place with the flocks of animals, but we set up shop and we settle down.
Speaker 1:And maybe we keep some animals, some flocks, but really the attention shifts away from raising flocks to raising crops. And that's a much more demanding lifestyle. You actually have to cultivate the land. You have to invest in the time it takes to plant and then raise those crops before you ever see any return on your investment. And it's also the first time in human societal development that we begin formulating these ideas of ownership of property and land.
Speaker 1:And now this area of land is where I have cultivated, and I have planted, and I have worked hard, and so I have to defend my area to make sure that I'm able to reap the rewards of all the work that I've put in. And in the Genesis story, you see this tension between these two brothers, the one that raises flocks and moves from place to place, and the other that is now saying, this is my area, my land that I have invested in, and now I need to make sure that I reap the rewards of that. In fact, we're actually told that Cain kills his brother in his fields. Is this a story about trespassing? Is this a story about Abel allowing his flocks to graze on land that Cain has worked really hard to cultivate?
Speaker 1:Is this attention between Abel, who raises flocks and provides the food and the meat, and ultimately the skins that become the clothing that allows human societies to continue to develop on the trajectory that we're on. And Cain, who is working really hard to till the land and plant the seeds and has not yet seen the fruits of all of his labor yet. These tensions between the developments of human society, moving from hunter gatherer, where we take what we want, but we struggle to not overburden the land that we're on to nomadic pastoralists that raise flocks and move from place to place once we have cleaned it out, and agrarian societies that begin to develop and invest and plan long term for a future that they have not yet seen. These are steps in the evolution of the human story, from hunter gatherer to nomadic pastoralists to agrarian societies, and we see this happen in pretty much every human society that we study through the archaeological record. Does this mean that the writers of Genesis had in mind a story that outlined the development of human society?
Speaker 1:Well, no, I don't think so. Let's take a walk. The way to think about this is not that an anthropologist looked back and tried to gather up the stages of human societal formation. The way to think about this is that at each stage in our formation, the memories and the learnings of that were gathered and narrativized into a character or an archetype, and that story was held onto. Over time, those characters were then pitted against each other to show the conflict that arose as humans and different societies and tribes challenged each other as they changed and grew.
Speaker 1:And over time, those stories were then collected, redacted by the writers of Genesis, and used in their purpose, which again is not to track human development and it's not into certainly not to tell us about the formation of the universe, but it's to help us understand where we are and how we got here, and how that might then help us face into the challenges that we face as human beings today. There may be this very primeval, primitive memory of human development embedded in this Genesis narrative. And what we're seeing in Genesis is this continued call to push back against this tendency to want to preserve our own resources and to move forward, still progressing because that's part of the human story and part of the narrative arc of the Bible, but to do that in ways that doesn't pit us against each other. When our progress as a society comes at the expense of believing that others are trespassing on our land, infringing on our wealth, and there's no room for us to allow our prosperity to result in generosity, then God looks on even what we bring to God with disdain, saying, The welcome that we extend to our neighbor, to our brother, to our family, to those near us trumps the pure expression of religious worship.
Speaker 1:And that story has profound implications for all of us, and continually we are drawn back to this idea that our progress and our blessing has to involve those near us and those we might be willing to leave behind.