Riddles of the Bible s01e02 Episode Script
Cain And Abel
ln the Bible and the Koran, it is the first death and the first murder.
Consumed with rage and jealousy, Cain kills his brother Abel and is banished, condemned to wander the earth alone.
The first murder in the BibIe is a fratricide, as if to say aII murder is the murder of a brother.
The story is full of riddles.
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God's preference for brother over brother, Cain's violent response and a mysterious mark that would inspire hatred and bigotry for 2,000 years.
This story is highIy significant and reIevant today, especiaIIy in the post-9/1 1 worId.
Join scholars and archaeologists as they explore an astonishing past and one of the most brutal and most perplexing stories ever told - the dark mystery of Cain and Abel.
(ThundercIap) The Cain and Abel story is one of the most haunting in the Bible.
lt depicts the first death of a human being and the first murder, of one brother killing another.
But what makes this story so powerful is that Cain and Abel is a lesson, not just for one family, but for all of mankind.
The story becomes an aIIegory, and because it is so powerfuI in refIecting us as a human species and all the dilemmas, all the problems, all the passions and the hatreds and emotions, it becomes so reIevant to us in the 21 st century.
The very short, enigmatic, cryptic taIe of Cain and AbeI introduces the theme of fraternaI rivaIry, which then reverberates throughout the entire Book of Genesis.
The tale of Cain and Abel is not for the faint of heart.
Brutal and bare bones, just 1 6 verses of Genesis tell the story of this slaying, and there is a riddle entwined in almost every moment of it.
lt all begins after God expels Adam and Eve from paradise, and they produce two sons.
Cain, their first-born, becomes a farmer.
His younger brother, Abel, becomes a shepherd.
Both brothers try to please God by giving him thanks and offering him sacrifices.
These are the first ritual sacrifices ever recorded in the Bible, as each brother makes his offering according to his own livelihood.
The Bible tells us that Cain reaches out to God by offering him a sacrifice from his crops.
And Abel offers God a sacrifice from his herd.
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his first-born lamb.
God accepts Abel's offering, but he rejects Cain's for no apparent reason.
This is the first of the many riddles in the story.
Why would God prefer one sacrifice to another, one brother to another? Cain becomes angry and jealous of his more successful brother, and lashes out.
''And when they were in the fieId, Cain rose up against his brother AbeI .
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and kiIIed him.
'' Here's another mystery.
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if no-one had been killed before, let alone murdered, how did Cain know how to kill? And did he even understand what he had done? Then the Lord said to Cain: ''Where is your brother AbeI?'' He said, ''I do not know.
Am I my brother's keeper?'' And the Lord said, ''What have you done? Listen.
Your brother's bIood is crying out to me from the ground.
And now you are cursed from the ground which has opened its mouth to receive your brother's bIood from your hand.
'' And now the Bible makes it clear how angry God is with Cain for committing such a heinous crime.
He banishes him from his home forever and condemns him to wander the Earth alone.
Cain pleads with God, saying he is afraid he would be killed by any people he might encounter in the wilderness, so God promises to put a mark on him, so that no-one who comes upon Cain will harm him.
More riddles.
lf, in the beginning, there is only Adam and Eve and Cain and Abel, who are the people Cain fears in the wilderness? And most puzzling of all - a riddle that would echo through the ages - what is the mark of Cain? Finally, Cain wanders off into the land of Nod, east of Eden, never to return home again.
Sixteen perplexing verses that generate more questions than answers, but one compelling message does come through loud and clear.
Yes, indeed, you are your brother's keeper.
The story is extremeIy significant because it Iays down the principIes of war and peace, of goodwiII and non-vioIence and of, reaIIy, two ways of approaching the worId.
According to Dr Ahmed, the pacifism of Jesus, Gandhi, and Martin Luther King, can all be traced back to the story of Cain and Abel with its message about the brotherhood of man and the importance of non-violence.
But at the same time, the mark of Cain has, for hundreds of years, been used to demonise and destroy people, nations and races.
Where did this puzzling, contradictory and almost bizarre story come from? From Sunday school sermons to sophisticated theological debate, the great religions of the world have long struggled to penetrate the mysteries of their sacred texts.
The story of Cain and AbeI Iives more Iives than a cat.
It gets interpreted many more times than nine in the subsequent Jewish, Christian and MusIim traditions.
EssentiaIIy, it's the same story being toId and retoId and retoId, and with each generation, each century, a new generation of schoIars is abIe to write, embeIIish, expand on the same story.
(CaII to prayer) Each tradition adds intriguing and surprising details to try and reconcile the riddles and contradictions of this extraordinary story.
Despite centuries of feuds and wars and bloodshed, Jews, Christians and Muslims all agree on one thing.
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they all trace their beliefs in one God and the concept that all of us are the descendents of Adam and Eve, to the ancient Hebrew tribes and the Prophet Abraham.
The central enduring philosophies of a God of love and forgiveness are the fundamental and uniting force behind the great religions of the world.
Nevertheless, each religion has to wrestle with the riddles of the story in its own way.
The first great puzzle of the ancient text.
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why is Cain's offering of grain rejected while Abel's blood sacrifice is accepted? ln fact, in some Koranic commentaries, Abel's sacrifice is not just accepted, it is spectacularly received.
''God decIared his acceptance in a visibIe manner, by causing fire to descend from heaven and consume it.
'' Brother Cain would have had a hard time overlooking that fiery sign of approval from God.
ln the Koran and the Bible, Cain has no idea why God has rejected his offering and accepted Abel's, and this makes him jealous and angry.
While scholars agree the Bible provides no reason for God's preference, they believe the answer to this riddle might be contained within a completely different, and startling question.
It's hard to know why God favours AbeI's sacrifice over Cain's, but the focus of the text is not on why one offering was accepted and the other rejected.
The focus of the text is that the rejection did not have to spIit the famiIy and resuIt in murder.
Many commentators believe the story's lesson is in God's challenge to Cain, to recognise and accept that his brother has insights, gifts, and talents that he doesn't have, and to recognise that, instead of being overcome by jealousy, he could benefit from his brother's ability to please God.
In other words, none of us has it aII, and therefore we are dependent on the other in order to acquire those sensitivities, those abiIities.
lnstead, when Abel is rewarded by God, Cain is filled with resentment.
Some other lslamic and Hebrew commentators suggest a startling reason why God accepts Abel's offering, but not the offering of Cain.
AbeI's heart is righteous, because God knows everything.
God knows how we think, God knows our hearts, so God is accepting one offering and not happy with Cain's offering.
But what could Cain have done to offend God? Both traditions offer another explanation to answer this unresolved issue in Genesis.
According to some Hebrew and lslamic scholars, it's the predictable source of conflict between two men - a woman.
Cain covets the woman who is intended for Abel, hence God's anger with the older brother.
The commentators suggest that Cain and Abel had a sister.
Her name was Awan.
Genesis, by the way, has no trouble with brothers and sisters marrying, because there is no other option at this point.
Now Cain's resentments seem a little clearer.
God has favoured Abel in both marriage and sacrifice.
God warns Cain that he must turn away from evil thoughts, but he does not, and so Cain asks his brother to go with him into the fields with violence in mind.
Over the centuries, lslamic tradition adds more details to the story which emphasise the peaceful ways of Abel.
The two of them are arguing.
There is an aItercation, and AbeI, very much non-vioIent, in the best traditions that wiII be foIIowed by generations of non-vioIence, Iies down and says, ''AIIah, do with me what you wiII.
'' But oddly, despite Abel's passive response, Cain can't finish the terrible deed.
But is this really so surprising? ln this young world, no human being has yet died, and no man has killed another.
According to the commentators of the Holy Koran, only one supernatural being can teach a man how to kill his brother.
Enter the serpent.
For over 2,000 years, the short and enigmatic story of Cain and Abel has challenged readers of the Bible and the Koran with its mysterious poetry and tantalising riddles.
As the story is interpreted by commentators of the Holy Koran, Abel refuses to fight his brother, even as Cain attempts to strangle him to death.
When Cain discovers that, despite his best efforts, he can't kill him, the devil appears, and speaks to Cain and instructs him how to commit the act of murder.
The devil tells Cain to hit his brother on the head with a rock.
But what does murder mean in this world without death? The lslamic commentaries offer some detail about just how novel and shocking the situation was.
One of them describes how the emotions of sorrow and pain are introduced to the world for the first time by the gloating devil.
When the devil visits Eve, who does not yet know that her youngest son is dead, he tells her, ''Your son, AbeI, is not going to come back to you.
'' EVE: ''What do you mean?'' ''He's dead.
He's kiIIed.
'' EVE: ''What does kiIIed mean? What does death mean?'' Remember, this is just the beginning, the start of everything as far as the human species is concerned, and the deviI then expIains that, ''He shaII not speak to you any more.
He shaII not return.
He shaII not eat.
He shaII not Iaugh.
He shaII not breathe.
'' And she begins to weep.
She is, after aII, the mother.
(Shouts) According to the Koran commentaries, Eve's tears are the first tears ever shed by a human being.
ln the lslamic tradition, this is how sadness first becomes part of human experience.
ln all of the monotheistic traditions, this is the first instance of death, murder, fratricide, and grief.
And forever after, sorrows multiply in both the Old and the New Testaments.
Tears, rending of clothes, gnashing of teeth, and shedding of blood, all of them mirror this second fall from God's grace, the killing of a brother.
And the rest of the Old Testament is brimming with stories that echo the most violent themes of Cain and Abel - brothers set against each other by family, by blood, by inheritance, by jealousy, but something profound begins to happen over time.
The angry brothers begin to learn forgiveness.
ln the 25th chapter in the Book of Genesis, the redemption begins with the story of the twin brothers Jacob and Esau, who quarrel over the inheritance of their father, lsaac.
Jacob and Esau start to fight when they are still in their mother's womb.
Their mother Rebecca finds there's a terribIe ruckus going on in her womb.
She doesn't know what's going on, and seeks out an oracIe from the Lord, who says, ''You've got two nations fighting in your womb.
'' You can imagine what that's Iike.
That's a tough pregnancy when you have two whoIe nations fighting in the womb.
Esau, who was later associated with Christianity, emerged first, and became the eldest and won the inheritance.
But Jacob, who symbolised Judaism, never conceded and continued to fight.
Jacob finally triumphed over his older brother when he tricked Esau into trading his inheritance for a bowl of lentil soup.
Esau is starving at the time, but that buys him no mercy in the story.
That Esau would sell his familial rights in exchange for a bowl of soup is sometimes interpreted as a sign of disrespect for his father's traditions.
Esau vows to kill Jacob, and Jacob has to flee from Canaan.
But, after about 20 years, he cannot resist the need to return home.
Esau, despite the loss of his birthright, has become powerful and rich, and confronts the returning Jacob with an army.
But as soon as he sees his brother, he is overcome with joy.
''When Esau saw Jacob, he ran to meet him, took him in his arms, threw himseIf on his neck and wept as he kissed him.
'' Here we glimpse a first step toward a gentler meaning of brotherhood than Cain and Abel provide, but the truest reconciliation of the brother-against-brother theme first appearing in Cain and Abel is yet to come.
This sibIing rivaIry between these brothers ricochets or reverberates throughout the Book of Genesis and comes to its crescendo in its most eIaborate form at the very end of Genesis in the story of Joseph.
And it all begins with the famous coat of many colours, a gift from Jacob to his youngest son Joseph, and a symbol that he will receive his father's inheritance.
Joseph's older brothers are filled with jealously and anger.
They steal the multi-coloured coat, fake his murder, and sell him off to slave traders.
Joseph ends up in Egypt, where he is enslaved and thrown into prison.
But after two years of suffering, Joseph is summoned by the Pharaoh.
Pharaoh has learned that this particular slave has a special gift for interpreting dreams.
And as Joseph listens to Pharaoh's dream, he realises it is a divine prophecy.
Joseph warns Pharaoh that the waters of the Nile will dry up and a seven-year famine is approaching, and he tells him how to protect the kingdom.
The Pharaoh is so impressed with Joseph that he appoints him to the highest political office of Egypt.
He becomes powerful and wealthy beyond imagining.
And, finally, his opportunity for vengeance arrives.
When he learns that his brothers have come to Egypt to escape the famine, Joseph knows he can destroy them as Cain destroyed Abel, but, instead, he welcomes them.
''Now don't be grieved nor angry with yourseIves that you soId me here, for God sent me before you to preserve Iife.
'' Joseph has saved the Iives of those who sought to kiII him, and so sibIing rivaIry does not have to mean hatred, vioIence, triumphaIism or feeIings of superiority.
The theme of brotherly betrayal and redemption runs from Cain and Abel through Joseph and his brothers.
Another famous betrayal in the Bible occurs, of course, in the story of Jesus.
He who preached brotherhood and forgiveness was handed over to the authorities by his disciple and, some might say, spiritual brother, Judas.
And he accepted his death with non-violent grace, which, says the Holy Koran, began with Abel.
Certainly the cry, ''Forgive them father,.
they know not what they do, '' could have been a cry for Cain himself, killing without any knowledge of what death or murder really meant.
But almost from the inception of institutionalised Christianity, redemption themes in the story of Cain and Abel have been the farthest thing from the minds of some clerics and scholars.
lnstead, many were obsessed with that great riddle.
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what was the mark of Cain, the mark that God put upon the first murderer? ln Genesis, after Abel dies, there is a truly remarkable exchange between God and Cain.
God does not sentence Cain to death for his awful crime, but to banishment, to wander alone in the land of Nod.
Still, Cain has the temerity to ask God for help.
Cain said to the Lord, ''Today you are driving me from the Iand, and I wiII be hidden from your presence.
I wiII be a restIess wanderer on the earth and whoever finds me wiII kiII me.
'' And God agrees to give Cain an unexpected form of protection.
''If anyone kiIIs Cain, he wiII suffer vengeance seven times over.
'' ''Then, the Lord put a mark on Cain, so that no-one who found him wouId kiII him.
'' But what is the mark? The story gives no detailed description of it.
Some ancient rabbis have said that God made horns grow on Cain's head so he could defend himself.
Others believe that Cain was marked with leprosy, a sure guarantee that his enemies would keep their distance.
But still others have said that it may have not been a physical mark, that God caused the sun to shine on Cain wherever he went, so all would know that he was under God's protection.
And although the mysterious mark is clearly intended to shield Cain from Abel's avengers, it doesn't safeguard his name from hundreds of years of slander and misinterpretation.
The Christian father, St Augustine, was an early example of a writer who linked Cain and his mark with the forces that crucified Jesus.
Around 400 AD, Augustine found himself in the midst of a battle for the survival of the Catholic Church.
To defend the church against its critics, Augustine tried to shift the blame for the evils of the world onto the Jewish people.
Augustine believed that the Jews had descended from the murderous Cain, while the non-violent Abel represented Jesus and the church.
And he sees AbeI as representing Jesus, and just as Cain kiIIed AbeI, so the Jews kiIIed Jesus, and just as Cain was forced to be a wanderer, rootIess, unabIe to estabIish himseIf, that is to be the destiny of the Jewish peopIe.
Augustine wrote in his famous work The City of God.
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''He was a type of the Jews that kiIIed Christ, prefigured in the shepherd AbeI.
'' The writings of Augustine did nothing to slow the growth of an anti-Semitic movement that eventually spread across the world.
ln the 1 3th century, Pope lnnocent lll echoed Augustine's view of Cain and Abel, and issued a papal order for all Jews to distinguish themselves by their clothing.
A century later, in Spain, Alfonso X issued a similar law.
''Any Jew who does not bear such identifying mark shaII pay, for each time he is found without it, ten Maravedis of goId, and if he has not the means to do this, he shaII receive ten Iashes for his offence.
'' But the Christians were not alone in the use of the mark of Cain to justify crimes against humanity.
ln the 1 7th century, slavery wasjustified by many church-going Englishmen who believed Africans were the bearers of the mark of Cain.
A hundred years later, in 1 852, Brigham Young, president of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, said this.
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''I teII you, this peopIe that are commonIy caIIed Negroes are the chiIdren of oId Cain.
'' ln the 20th century, this twisting of Genesis took another ominous turn.
ln 1 94 1, when the Nazis ordered all German Jews to identify themselves in public with a yellow star, Propaganda Minister Joseph Goebbels wrote a newspaper editorial in which he compared the yellow star to the mark of Cain and mocked the Berlin Jews for attempting to cover it up.
''Each Jew on the street bought a newspaper to conceaI his Mark of Cain.
'' And after, the anti-Semitic and racist interpretation of Cain and Abel lived on in the violent rhetoric of one hate group after another.
ln support of their views, they frequently repeated the claim that Cain's mark is actually black skin, that Cain's descendants are black, and that Africans and Jews have both been cursed by God for the murder of Jesus.
But today, most Christian and Jewish scholars agree that the spiritual concepts behind the story of Cain and Abel have been hijacked and completely miss the deeper point.
The mark of Cain is sometimes understood as the sign of a curse, the sign of punishment, but it's aIso seen and read and interpreted as a sign of God's mercy.
It provides protection.
But why would God protect Cain, a cold-blooded murderer? This has been one of the most enduring mysteries of this perplexing story.
One answer comes from the ancient rabbis, who commented extensively on Genesis, and their answer is one that might be recognisable in a court of law today.
They made the observation that, before Cain killed Abel, no-one had ever died before, and if Cain had no idea what would happen when he struck his brother with the rock, the crime was not murder in the first degree, it was an accident.
And in ancient Hebrew courts, accidental killing was not punishable by death.
Today some modern Jewish scholars suggest another possibility, one that challenges the long-held Christian perception of the Old Testament God as an angry, vengeful God.
One of the answers that you find, oddIy enough, is that he actuaIIy repented.
When Cain begs God for mercy, the ancient Hebrew is often translated as, ''My punishment is too great to bear.
'' But another translation of Cain's plea to God creates a very different impression.
The word for punishment, the Hebrew word ''avonne'' can aIso be transIated as ''iniquity'', so sometimes it's transIated as, ''The iniquity of what I've done, the enormity, the magnitude of this sin that I have performed is greater than I can I can't toIerate this.
'' And according to Rabbinic theology, there is no-one who is so lost in sin that he can't be forgiven.
So here you've got the originaI fratricide, murder of his brother, for what seems to be no good reason at aII, and yet he is forgiven and protected because of his repentance.
There are other signs of God's forgiveness toward Cain.
After wandering in the wilderness, Cain has a son, Enoch, and he builds a city in Enoch's honour.
lt is the first city, and the founding of civilisation.
For archaeologists and historians, there are kernels of truth in the story of Cain and Abel, kernels to be found hidden in the shadows of the Egyptian pyramids.
Others think the story goes much further back, to the dawn of civilisation and the site of the original Eden.
This is Egypt, the land of the pharaohs, of course, but also the land where the lsraelites lived for generations.
That other spiritual descendant of Cain, Joseph, made a home here for his once-treacherous brothers, and all of his people.
Nearly 400 years later, however, Pharaoh grew afraid of the lsraelites'prosperity and enslaved them.
Then, a pharaoh's daughter found a baby in a river and raised him in the royal household.
Thus begins the story of Moses, saviour of the Jewish people, leader of the great exodus.
According to Scripture, God dictated the five books of the Hebrew Bible to Moses on Mount Sinai.
But there are scholars who think Moses may have taken more out of Egypt than his people.
He may have taken bits of Egyptian religion as well, bits that seem to resonate in amazing ways with the story of Cain and Abel.
The Egyptians immortalised the stories of their religion on the walls of their own tombs, deep inside the pyramids, and it is here where we find tantalising parallels with the conflict between those first brothers of the Old Testament and that first murder.
And if you go into the tombs, you couId see these writings right on the waII, stories about creation, references to the first city.
Many of the eIements you find in the BibIicaI Genesis stories, you find in these ancient writings.
The Pyramid of Unas is over 4,000 years old.
Hundreds of magical spells are inscribed on the walls of this sanctuary.
Among the spells and incantations is a powerful story ofjealousy and fratricide, strikingly similar to Cain and Abel.
The Egyptian hieroglyphics tell the story of two brothers - the gods Osiris and Seth.
Osiris was the god of agriculture and the ruler of the world, and Seth was the god of war and conflict.
One day, Seth became jealous and murdered Osiris, chopped him up into 42 pieces, and scattered him all over the world.
Fratricide is not the only echo of the story of Cain and Abel.
We also find a detail that parallels the later commentaries on Genesis.
The two Egyptian gods fought to the death because they were both in love with the same woman, their sister, just as the Hebrew and Muslim commentators say that Cain killed Abel over the love of their sister.
Today, scholars and archaeologists see other similarities, a story that resonates with the fall of man, the expulsion from Eden, and of Cain's role in a totally new way for mankind to live.
AImost aII reIigions have some sort of moment of creation, and in ancient Egypt, Iike in Genesis, you have this perfect idyIIic, very pastoraI kind of pIace, where you have animaIs and things, peopIe Everyone's Iiving together in a harmonious way, which, of course, has to be shattered before you can go on for civiIisation to be created.
ln the Egyptian religion, Osiris is resurrected and he builds the first city of Egypt, Heliopolis, which is now in ruins on the outskirts of Cairo.
In Genesis, Cain goes out and buiIds the first city, so we see a Iarge number of paraIIeIs between the Egyptian story and the BibIicaI story.
And it's interesting because in the Torah, everything that Osiris does, actuaIIy is given over, to some extent, to Cain, going over and founding cities, having agricuIture, passing out ideas to peopIe to be good, settIed, non-nomadic peopIe.
But for many scientists and scholars, whatever Egyptian elements may have influenced the Old Testament story of Cain and Abel, they are rooted even deeper in human prehistory.
They hearken back to a violent and astounding event, some say perhaps the most important revolution in the history of man - agriculture.
The vital clues lie in those first sacrifices in the Old Testament.
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Cain, the farmer, offering up grain and fruit, Abel, the herder, offering his first-born lamb.
Now this is a sort of story that you can compare to what happened around 7000 BC, what we caII the NeoIithic RevoIution, when these two groups of peopIe, the farmers and the shepherds, started to get into confIict with each other.
lt all began in the cradle of civilisation, in what is now lraq.
People had begun to move away from Stone Age hunter gatherer ways and had started controlling their environments.
They no longer gathered food, they produced it.
There were those who domesticated animals, the herders, and those who domesticated plants, the farmers.
Experts think violence erupted when bands of herders moved through the countryside and allowed their herds of animals to feed on and trample the farmers'fields and crops.
The ensuing battles left many dead and became the stuff of legend.
But, eventually, the nomadic groups began to settle down and adopt the more sophisticated ways of the farmers.
As villages became small cities and the populations grew, a new culture of early civilisation began to emerge.
The stories of the clashes between herders and farmers were eventually written down on clay tablets by the people who invented writing, the Sumerians.
The Sumerians lived in Mesopotamia, part of which is now known as lraq, over 6,000 years ago.
They are the peopIe I consider to be one of the most gifted peopIe on the face of the Earth, because they invented writing, they invented Iaws, they invented aII sorts of moraI reasoning, proverbs, they invented reIigious beIief systems to expIain why there is good and why there is eviI.
Carved in stone tablets, Sumerian accounts of the battles between the shepherds and farmers took the shape of a myth, strikingly similar to the story of Cain and Abel.
ln the Sumerian tale, the shepherd god, Dumez, battles with his brother, the farmer god, Enkimdu, for the favours of their sister, the Goddess lnanna.
But how would such a tale have survived for thousands of years to become part of a monotheistic tradition? I think we have to reaIise that the stories in Genesis are oraI traditions originaIIy.
They are stories toId by the eIders of tribes to the rest of the tribe, and, of course, they're going to change and distort sIightIy over time, but essentiaIIy, untiI they're written down, these are oraI traditions, and that's what Genesis is.
The Biblical record shows another remarkable parallel with this oral history of the Agricultural Revolution.
lt seems that after all of those thousands of years of tales told around campfires, the location of where it all began may have been preserved - the place called Eden.
You've got to Iook at the geography, the Iandscape of the story.
That reaIIy is where you find the Cain and AbeI story, in the Iandscape.
The Garden of Eden, says the Bible, is located at the headwaters of four rivers, including the Tigris and Euphrates, which are still known today by their Biblical names.
Those two rivers we knew about from the start.
Those weren't difficuIt.
The reaI probIem was where were the other two rivers? The other two Biblical rivers, the Gihon and Pishon, do not appear on any modern map.
Rohl believes the modern-day Araxes River, which flows from the north of Lake Urmia to the Caspian Sea to the east is the Biblical Gihon River, and the Uzun, which rises near Mount Sahand, was once called the Pishon.
A study of the ancient languages shows that over time the letter ''P'' was often substituted for the letter ''U'', making it quite possible that the Biblical river Pishon became known as the river Ushon.
Having identified all four Biblical rivers, Rohl believes he has found the lost Garden of Eden.
So Iet's bring up our four quadrants, the four quarters of Eden if you Iike, and at the centre, at the heart, is the Iand of Eden itseIf, and that is where the Garden of Eden is Iocated.
According to Dr Rohl, the Garden of Eden is located in what is now known as western lran.
This is the place, Rohl believes, where the story of Cain and Abel has its origins.
But not all scholars agree.
Dr Juris Zarins puts the Garden of Eden further south, where the Euphrates and Tigris rivers meet the Persian Gulf.
According to Zarins, satellite images of the Middle East reveal the traces of an ancient, fossil river that once flowed through northern Arabia and through the now dry valleys.
This river, he claims, is the lost Biblical river, Pishon.
The fourth river, the Gihon, is the present-day Karun, flowing into the Persian Gulf, where Zarins concludes the Garden of Eden is submerged beneath the water.
7,000 years ago, according to geologic surveys, the Persian Gulf was not the huge body of water it is today, but a lush green valley, filled with rivers and freshwater springs.
I wouId say the first peopIe Iiving there wouId be peopIe who are hunters and gatherers, Iooking at a Iarge oasis.
There wouId be a huge number of river systems coming in from the north, and they wouId be taking, expIoiting resources in that area, and aIong the rivers, aIong marshes, aIong banks, maybe a cut bank of some kind, maybe even a IittIe Iake in the area, and they wouId have a tremendous amount of resources in the area at about, you know, 7,000 years ago - 5000 BC.
Precise geography aside, both scholars agree that the story of Cain and Abel originated in ancient Mesopotamia, some 7,000 years ago.
Cain's way of settled farming triumphed over the less productive nomadic traditions of shepherds and their herds of animals, and once man learned to control nature and grow his crops according to his needs, he was able to stop wandering across the lands in search of food, to put down roots, build villages and cities, and develop more and more advanced technologies that ultimately led to a sophisticated culture of art, music, and the written word, that would endure for all time.
There is a heartrending coda to the story of Cain and Abel that is not in Genesis, but is a vital part of the lslamic tradition.
Cain, realising the depths of his sin for the first time, tries to hide it from the eyes of man and God.
When Cain actuaIIy kiIIs AbeI, he doesn't know what to do with the body.
The body is Iying on stony ground and he doesn't know what to do with the body itseIf untiI he sees a raven or a crow kiIIing another raven, and then with his beak, making a IittIe hoIe, and then burying that raven and putting some sand on it.
So that gives Cain the idea of how to bury a human body, and that's what he does.
And this, the commentaries say, is how the concept of human burial originated.
For many scholars, Cain's crime resonates with sins found throughout the Old Testament and the belief that it's not just the sinful act, but the attempt to hide it from the eyes of God that incurs his wrath, which is precisely what happened to Cain's parents.
ln the Garden of Eden, Adam and Eve disobey God and eat from the Tree of Knowledge, and when he asks them why they have disobeyed him, instead of accepting responsibility for their own actions, they blame the serpent for tempting them, just as Cain refuses to accept responsibility for killing his brother.
I'm not sure God is opposed to the cIaiming of knowIedge that is inherent in taking the forbidden fruit, but what God finds dreadfuIIy reprehensibIe is the fact that they wiII not own up to what they've done and that faiIure to be responsibIe gets repIayed by Cain.
And Cain's sin goes even deeper than murder and denial, as one interpretation of the text suggests And the Lord said, ''What have you done? Listen.
Your brother's bIood is crying out to me from the ground.
'' The Hebrew word for blood is ''dameem'', and a more accurate translation of the phrase would be in the plural.
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''Your brother's bloods are crying out to me from the ground.
'' What do you mean bIoods? He just kiIIed one person.
And the answer is, it's the bIood of AbeI himseIf and of aII his descendants, untiI the worId comes to an end.
AII the descendants that wouId have come out of AbeI wiII not be abIe to come out of him now that he was kiIIed.
So the person who kiIIs someone reaIIy kiIIs more than just that one person.
When Cain killed his brother, he didn't just kill one man, he destroyed a whole world.
We are infiniteIy precious.
That's an affirmation that seems to me buiIt into the heart of the Jewish, Christian, and MusIim traditions.
But this story also asks one of the most profound and audacious questions of the Bible.
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''Am l my brother's keeper?'' Clearly the text is telling us that we are all, indeed, caretakers of each other, but what of God's responsibility? Why is he not the keeper of his children? Why does he let bad things happen to good people? We can aII ask the question, why doesn't God prevent murders? Why didn't God prevent the HoIocaust? Why didn't God prevent 9/1 1 ? The BibIicaI teaching wouId be that peopIe have obIigations to prevent those things and they cannot reIy on the miracIe of God's intervention.
And so we come to the end of the remarkable tale of Cain and Abel.
According to ancient Hebrew texts, Cain settled down and married his sister, had a son, built a city and lit the candle of civilisation.
The mark upon him, whatever form it may have taken, sent him down a path that would enlighten humankind forever.
But, too often, the lessons Cain learned have been forgotten, or turned into terrible rationales for retribution along the way.
Perhaps the deepest irony is this.
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all of the monotheistic religions are literal and spiritual brothers.
ln their holiest writings, all claim descent from Adam and Eve, all recognise the lessons of Cain and Abel, but their descendants have spent centuries trying to conquer, even exterminate, each other, and the true message of the first fratricide seems lost.
Millennia of murderous anti-Semitism, the Crusades, bent on ending the Golden Age of lslam, and now, terrible religious conflict in the Middle East.
Today, more than ever, the message of the first death, the first murder, the first sorrow, and the first forgiveness beg our attention.
For me, the story of Cain and AbeI is highIy significant and reIevant today, especiaIIy in the post-9/1 1 worId.
The two great ideas in pIay after 9/1 1 are the ideas of the cIash of civiIisations or the idea of the diaIogue of civiIisations.
The BibIe uItimateIy recognises that we are aII bound, one to another, and, therefore, our obIigations and our duties extend, uItimateIy, to the ends of the earth.
For God's sake, for our own future, for our chiIdren's sakes, Iet's puII back, Iet us take the exampIe of AbeI.
Let's bring him to the forefront of our discussion, so when I have a conversation or a diaIogue with my enemy, with a person I don't Iike, I wiII stiII be toIerant, I wiII stiII be accommodating.
He may hit me on one cheek, I wiII turn the other cheek, because, uItimateIy, that is the moraI authority that God required of me.
Consumed with rage and jealousy, Cain kills his brother Abel and is banished, condemned to wander the earth alone.
The first murder in the BibIe is a fratricide, as if to say aII murder is the murder of a brother.
The story is full of riddles.
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God's preference for brother over brother, Cain's violent response and a mysterious mark that would inspire hatred and bigotry for 2,000 years.
This story is highIy significant and reIevant today, especiaIIy in the post-9/1 1 worId.
Join scholars and archaeologists as they explore an astonishing past and one of the most brutal and most perplexing stories ever told - the dark mystery of Cain and Abel.
(ThundercIap) The Cain and Abel story is one of the most haunting in the Bible.
lt depicts the first death of a human being and the first murder, of one brother killing another.
But what makes this story so powerful is that Cain and Abel is a lesson, not just for one family, but for all of mankind.
The story becomes an aIIegory, and because it is so powerfuI in refIecting us as a human species and all the dilemmas, all the problems, all the passions and the hatreds and emotions, it becomes so reIevant to us in the 21 st century.
The very short, enigmatic, cryptic taIe of Cain and AbeI introduces the theme of fraternaI rivaIry, which then reverberates throughout the entire Book of Genesis.
The tale of Cain and Abel is not for the faint of heart.
Brutal and bare bones, just 1 6 verses of Genesis tell the story of this slaying, and there is a riddle entwined in almost every moment of it.
lt all begins after God expels Adam and Eve from paradise, and they produce two sons.
Cain, their first-born, becomes a farmer.
His younger brother, Abel, becomes a shepherd.
Both brothers try to please God by giving him thanks and offering him sacrifices.
These are the first ritual sacrifices ever recorded in the Bible, as each brother makes his offering according to his own livelihood.
The Bible tells us that Cain reaches out to God by offering him a sacrifice from his crops.
And Abel offers God a sacrifice from his herd.
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his first-born lamb.
God accepts Abel's offering, but he rejects Cain's for no apparent reason.
This is the first of the many riddles in the story.
Why would God prefer one sacrifice to another, one brother to another? Cain becomes angry and jealous of his more successful brother, and lashes out.
''And when they were in the fieId, Cain rose up against his brother AbeI .
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and kiIIed him.
'' Here's another mystery.
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if no-one had been killed before, let alone murdered, how did Cain know how to kill? And did he even understand what he had done? Then the Lord said to Cain: ''Where is your brother AbeI?'' He said, ''I do not know.
Am I my brother's keeper?'' And the Lord said, ''What have you done? Listen.
Your brother's bIood is crying out to me from the ground.
And now you are cursed from the ground which has opened its mouth to receive your brother's bIood from your hand.
'' And now the Bible makes it clear how angry God is with Cain for committing such a heinous crime.
He banishes him from his home forever and condemns him to wander the Earth alone.
Cain pleads with God, saying he is afraid he would be killed by any people he might encounter in the wilderness, so God promises to put a mark on him, so that no-one who comes upon Cain will harm him.
More riddles.
lf, in the beginning, there is only Adam and Eve and Cain and Abel, who are the people Cain fears in the wilderness? And most puzzling of all - a riddle that would echo through the ages - what is the mark of Cain? Finally, Cain wanders off into the land of Nod, east of Eden, never to return home again.
Sixteen perplexing verses that generate more questions than answers, but one compelling message does come through loud and clear.
Yes, indeed, you are your brother's keeper.
The story is extremeIy significant because it Iays down the principIes of war and peace, of goodwiII and non-vioIence and of, reaIIy, two ways of approaching the worId.
According to Dr Ahmed, the pacifism of Jesus, Gandhi, and Martin Luther King, can all be traced back to the story of Cain and Abel with its message about the brotherhood of man and the importance of non-violence.
But at the same time, the mark of Cain has, for hundreds of years, been used to demonise and destroy people, nations and races.
Where did this puzzling, contradictory and almost bizarre story come from? From Sunday school sermons to sophisticated theological debate, the great religions of the world have long struggled to penetrate the mysteries of their sacred texts.
The story of Cain and AbeI Iives more Iives than a cat.
It gets interpreted many more times than nine in the subsequent Jewish, Christian and MusIim traditions.
EssentiaIIy, it's the same story being toId and retoId and retoId, and with each generation, each century, a new generation of schoIars is abIe to write, embeIIish, expand on the same story.
(CaII to prayer) Each tradition adds intriguing and surprising details to try and reconcile the riddles and contradictions of this extraordinary story.
Despite centuries of feuds and wars and bloodshed, Jews, Christians and Muslims all agree on one thing.
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they all trace their beliefs in one God and the concept that all of us are the descendents of Adam and Eve, to the ancient Hebrew tribes and the Prophet Abraham.
The central enduring philosophies of a God of love and forgiveness are the fundamental and uniting force behind the great religions of the world.
Nevertheless, each religion has to wrestle with the riddles of the story in its own way.
The first great puzzle of the ancient text.
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why is Cain's offering of grain rejected while Abel's blood sacrifice is accepted? ln fact, in some Koranic commentaries, Abel's sacrifice is not just accepted, it is spectacularly received.
''God decIared his acceptance in a visibIe manner, by causing fire to descend from heaven and consume it.
'' Brother Cain would have had a hard time overlooking that fiery sign of approval from God.
ln the Koran and the Bible, Cain has no idea why God has rejected his offering and accepted Abel's, and this makes him jealous and angry.
While scholars agree the Bible provides no reason for God's preference, they believe the answer to this riddle might be contained within a completely different, and startling question.
It's hard to know why God favours AbeI's sacrifice over Cain's, but the focus of the text is not on why one offering was accepted and the other rejected.
The focus of the text is that the rejection did not have to spIit the famiIy and resuIt in murder.
Many commentators believe the story's lesson is in God's challenge to Cain, to recognise and accept that his brother has insights, gifts, and talents that he doesn't have, and to recognise that, instead of being overcome by jealousy, he could benefit from his brother's ability to please God.
In other words, none of us has it aII, and therefore we are dependent on the other in order to acquire those sensitivities, those abiIities.
lnstead, when Abel is rewarded by God, Cain is filled with resentment.
Some other lslamic and Hebrew commentators suggest a startling reason why God accepts Abel's offering, but not the offering of Cain.
AbeI's heart is righteous, because God knows everything.
God knows how we think, God knows our hearts, so God is accepting one offering and not happy with Cain's offering.
But what could Cain have done to offend God? Both traditions offer another explanation to answer this unresolved issue in Genesis.
According to some Hebrew and lslamic scholars, it's the predictable source of conflict between two men - a woman.
Cain covets the woman who is intended for Abel, hence God's anger with the older brother.
The commentators suggest that Cain and Abel had a sister.
Her name was Awan.
Genesis, by the way, has no trouble with brothers and sisters marrying, because there is no other option at this point.
Now Cain's resentments seem a little clearer.
God has favoured Abel in both marriage and sacrifice.
God warns Cain that he must turn away from evil thoughts, but he does not, and so Cain asks his brother to go with him into the fields with violence in mind.
Over the centuries, lslamic tradition adds more details to the story which emphasise the peaceful ways of Abel.
The two of them are arguing.
There is an aItercation, and AbeI, very much non-vioIent, in the best traditions that wiII be foIIowed by generations of non-vioIence, Iies down and says, ''AIIah, do with me what you wiII.
'' But oddly, despite Abel's passive response, Cain can't finish the terrible deed.
But is this really so surprising? ln this young world, no human being has yet died, and no man has killed another.
According to the commentators of the Holy Koran, only one supernatural being can teach a man how to kill his brother.
Enter the serpent.
For over 2,000 years, the short and enigmatic story of Cain and Abel has challenged readers of the Bible and the Koran with its mysterious poetry and tantalising riddles.
As the story is interpreted by commentators of the Holy Koran, Abel refuses to fight his brother, even as Cain attempts to strangle him to death.
When Cain discovers that, despite his best efforts, he can't kill him, the devil appears, and speaks to Cain and instructs him how to commit the act of murder.
The devil tells Cain to hit his brother on the head with a rock.
But what does murder mean in this world without death? The lslamic commentaries offer some detail about just how novel and shocking the situation was.
One of them describes how the emotions of sorrow and pain are introduced to the world for the first time by the gloating devil.
When the devil visits Eve, who does not yet know that her youngest son is dead, he tells her, ''Your son, AbeI, is not going to come back to you.
'' EVE: ''What do you mean?'' ''He's dead.
He's kiIIed.
'' EVE: ''What does kiIIed mean? What does death mean?'' Remember, this is just the beginning, the start of everything as far as the human species is concerned, and the deviI then expIains that, ''He shaII not speak to you any more.
He shaII not return.
He shaII not eat.
He shaII not Iaugh.
He shaII not breathe.
'' And she begins to weep.
She is, after aII, the mother.
(Shouts) According to the Koran commentaries, Eve's tears are the first tears ever shed by a human being.
ln the lslamic tradition, this is how sadness first becomes part of human experience.
ln all of the monotheistic traditions, this is the first instance of death, murder, fratricide, and grief.
And forever after, sorrows multiply in both the Old and the New Testaments.
Tears, rending of clothes, gnashing of teeth, and shedding of blood, all of them mirror this second fall from God's grace, the killing of a brother.
And the rest of the Old Testament is brimming with stories that echo the most violent themes of Cain and Abel - brothers set against each other by family, by blood, by inheritance, by jealousy, but something profound begins to happen over time.
The angry brothers begin to learn forgiveness.
ln the 25th chapter in the Book of Genesis, the redemption begins with the story of the twin brothers Jacob and Esau, who quarrel over the inheritance of their father, lsaac.
Jacob and Esau start to fight when they are still in their mother's womb.
Their mother Rebecca finds there's a terribIe ruckus going on in her womb.
She doesn't know what's going on, and seeks out an oracIe from the Lord, who says, ''You've got two nations fighting in your womb.
'' You can imagine what that's Iike.
That's a tough pregnancy when you have two whoIe nations fighting in the womb.
Esau, who was later associated with Christianity, emerged first, and became the eldest and won the inheritance.
But Jacob, who symbolised Judaism, never conceded and continued to fight.
Jacob finally triumphed over his older brother when he tricked Esau into trading his inheritance for a bowl of lentil soup.
Esau is starving at the time, but that buys him no mercy in the story.
That Esau would sell his familial rights in exchange for a bowl of soup is sometimes interpreted as a sign of disrespect for his father's traditions.
Esau vows to kill Jacob, and Jacob has to flee from Canaan.
But, after about 20 years, he cannot resist the need to return home.
Esau, despite the loss of his birthright, has become powerful and rich, and confronts the returning Jacob with an army.
But as soon as he sees his brother, he is overcome with joy.
''When Esau saw Jacob, he ran to meet him, took him in his arms, threw himseIf on his neck and wept as he kissed him.
'' Here we glimpse a first step toward a gentler meaning of brotherhood than Cain and Abel provide, but the truest reconciliation of the brother-against-brother theme first appearing in Cain and Abel is yet to come.
This sibIing rivaIry between these brothers ricochets or reverberates throughout the Book of Genesis and comes to its crescendo in its most eIaborate form at the very end of Genesis in the story of Joseph.
And it all begins with the famous coat of many colours, a gift from Jacob to his youngest son Joseph, and a symbol that he will receive his father's inheritance.
Joseph's older brothers are filled with jealously and anger.
They steal the multi-coloured coat, fake his murder, and sell him off to slave traders.
Joseph ends up in Egypt, where he is enslaved and thrown into prison.
But after two years of suffering, Joseph is summoned by the Pharaoh.
Pharaoh has learned that this particular slave has a special gift for interpreting dreams.
And as Joseph listens to Pharaoh's dream, he realises it is a divine prophecy.
Joseph warns Pharaoh that the waters of the Nile will dry up and a seven-year famine is approaching, and he tells him how to protect the kingdom.
The Pharaoh is so impressed with Joseph that he appoints him to the highest political office of Egypt.
He becomes powerful and wealthy beyond imagining.
And, finally, his opportunity for vengeance arrives.
When he learns that his brothers have come to Egypt to escape the famine, Joseph knows he can destroy them as Cain destroyed Abel, but, instead, he welcomes them.
''Now don't be grieved nor angry with yourseIves that you soId me here, for God sent me before you to preserve Iife.
'' Joseph has saved the Iives of those who sought to kiII him, and so sibIing rivaIry does not have to mean hatred, vioIence, triumphaIism or feeIings of superiority.
The theme of brotherly betrayal and redemption runs from Cain and Abel through Joseph and his brothers.
Another famous betrayal in the Bible occurs, of course, in the story of Jesus.
He who preached brotherhood and forgiveness was handed over to the authorities by his disciple and, some might say, spiritual brother, Judas.
And he accepted his death with non-violent grace, which, says the Holy Koran, began with Abel.
Certainly the cry, ''Forgive them father,.
they know not what they do, '' could have been a cry for Cain himself, killing without any knowledge of what death or murder really meant.
But almost from the inception of institutionalised Christianity, redemption themes in the story of Cain and Abel have been the farthest thing from the minds of some clerics and scholars.
lnstead, many were obsessed with that great riddle.
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what was the mark of Cain, the mark that God put upon the first murderer? ln Genesis, after Abel dies, there is a truly remarkable exchange between God and Cain.
God does not sentence Cain to death for his awful crime, but to banishment, to wander alone in the land of Nod.
Still, Cain has the temerity to ask God for help.
Cain said to the Lord, ''Today you are driving me from the Iand, and I wiII be hidden from your presence.
I wiII be a restIess wanderer on the earth and whoever finds me wiII kiII me.
'' And God agrees to give Cain an unexpected form of protection.
''If anyone kiIIs Cain, he wiII suffer vengeance seven times over.
'' ''Then, the Lord put a mark on Cain, so that no-one who found him wouId kiII him.
'' But what is the mark? The story gives no detailed description of it.
Some ancient rabbis have said that God made horns grow on Cain's head so he could defend himself.
Others believe that Cain was marked with leprosy, a sure guarantee that his enemies would keep their distance.
But still others have said that it may have not been a physical mark, that God caused the sun to shine on Cain wherever he went, so all would know that he was under God's protection.
And although the mysterious mark is clearly intended to shield Cain from Abel's avengers, it doesn't safeguard his name from hundreds of years of slander and misinterpretation.
The Christian father, St Augustine, was an early example of a writer who linked Cain and his mark with the forces that crucified Jesus.
Around 400 AD, Augustine found himself in the midst of a battle for the survival of the Catholic Church.
To defend the church against its critics, Augustine tried to shift the blame for the evils of the world onto the Jewish people.
Augustine believed that the Jews had descended from the murderous Cain, while the non-violent Abel represented Jesus and the church.
And he sees AbeI as representing Jesus, and just as Cain kiIIed AbeI, so the Jews kiIIed Jesus, and just as Cain was forced to be a wanderer, rootIess, unabIe to estabIish himseIf, that is to be the destiny of the Jewish peopIe.
Augustine wrote in his famous work The City of God.
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''He was a type of the Jews that kiIIed Christ, prefigured in the shepherd AbeI.
'' The writings of Augustine did nothing to slow the growth of an anti-Semitic movement that eventually spread across the world.
ln the 1 3th century, Pope lnnocent lll echoed Augustine's view of Cain and Abel, and issued a papal order for all Jews to distinguish themselves by their clothing.
A century later, in Spain, Alfonso X issued a similar law.
''Any Jew who does not bear such identifying mark shaII pay, for each time he is found without it, ten Maravedis of goId, and if he has not the means to do this, he shaII receive ten Iashes for his offence.
'' But the Christians were not alone in the use of the mark of Cain to justify crimes against humanity.
ln the 1 7th century, slavery wasjustified by many church-going Englishmen who believed Africans were the bearers of the mark of Cain.
A hundred years later, in 1 852, Brigham Young, president of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, said this.
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''I teII you, this peopIe that are commonIy caIIed Negroes are the chiIdren of oId Cain.
'' ln the 20th century, this twisting of Genesis took another ominous turn.
ln 1 94 1, when the Nazis ordered all German Jews to identify themselves in public with a yellow star, Propaganda Minister Joseph Goebbels wrote a newspaper editorial in which he compared the yellow star to the mark of Cain and mocked the Berlin Jews for attempting to cover it up.
''Each Jew on the street bought a newspaper to conceaI his Mark of Cain.
'' And after, the anti-Semitic and racist interpretation of Cain and Abel lived on in the violent rhetoric of one hate group after another.
ln support of their views, they frequently repeated the claim that Cain's mark is actually black skin, that Cain's descendants are black, and that Africans and Jews have both been cursed by God for the murder of Jesus.
But today, most Christian and Jewish scholars agree that the spiritual concepts behind the story of Cain and Abel have been hijacked and completely miss the deeper point.
The mark of Cain is sometimes understood as the sign of a curse, the sign of punishment, but it's aIso seen and read and interpreted as a sign of God's mercy.
It provides protection.
But why would God protect Cain, a cold-blooded murderer? This has been one of the most enduring mysteries of this perplexing story.
One answer comes from the ancient rabbis, who commented extensively on Genesis, and their answer is one that might be recognisable in a court of law today.
They made the observation that, before Cain killed Abel, no-one had ever died before, and if Cain had no idea what would happen when he struck his brother with the rock, the crime was not murder in the first degree, it was an accident.
And in ancient Hebrew courts, accidental killing was not punishable by death.
Today some modern Jewish scholars suggest another possibility, one that challenges the long-held Christian perception of the Old Testament God as an angry, vengeful God.
One of the answers that you find, oddIy enough, is that he actuaIIy repented.
When Cain begs God for mercy, the ancient Hebrew is often translated as, ''My punishment is too great to bear.
'' But another translation of Cain's plea to God creates a very different impression.
The word for punishment, the Hebrew word ''avonne'' can aIso be transIated as ''iniquity'', so sometimes it's transIated as, ''The iniquity of what I've done, the enormity, the magnitude of this sin that I have performed is greater than I can I can't toIerate this.
'' And according to Rabbinic theology, there is no-one who is so lost in sin that he can't be forgiven.
So here you've got the originaI fratricide, murder of his brother, for what seems to be no good reason at aII, and yet he is forgiven and protected because of his repentance.
There are other signs of God's forgiveness toward Cain.
After wandering in the wilderness, Cain has a son, Enoch, and he builds a city in Enoch's honour.
lt is the first city, and the founding of civilisation.
For archaeologists and historians, there are kernels of truth in the story of Cain and Abel, kernels to be found hidden in the shadows of the Egyptian pyramids.
Others think the story goes much further back, to the dawn of civilisation and the site of the original Eden.
This is Egypt, the land of the pharaohs, of course, but also the land where the lsraelites lived for generations.
That other spiritual descendant of Cain, Joseph, made a home here for his once-treacherous brothers, and all of his people.
Nearly 400 years later, however, Pharaoh grew afraid of the lsraelites'prosperity and enslaved them.
Then, a pharaoh's daughter found a baby in a river and raised him in the royal household.
Thus begins the story of Moses, saviour of the Jewish people, leader of the great exodus.
According to Scripture, God dictated the five books of the Hebrew Bible to Moses on Mount Sinai.
But there are scholars who think Moses may have taken more out of Egypt than his people.
He may have taken bits of Egyptian religion as well, bits that seem to resonate in amazing ways with the story of Cain and Abel.
The Egyptians immortalised the stories of their religion on the walls of their own tombs, deep inside the pyramids, and it is here where we find tantalising parallels with the conflict between those first brothers of the Old Testament and that first murder.
And if you go into the tombs, you couId see these writings right on the waII, stories about creation, references to the first city.
Many of the eIements you find in the BibIicaI Genesis stories, you find in these ancient writings.
The Pyramid of Unas is over 4,000 years old.
Hundreds of magical spells are inscribed on the walls of this sanctuary.
Among the spells and incantations is a powerful story ofjealousy and fratricide, strikingly similar to Cain and Abel.
The Egyptian hieroglyphics tell the story of two brothers - the gods Osiris and Seth.
Osiris was the god of agriculture and the ruler of the world, and Seth was the god of war and conflict.
One day, Seth became jealous and murdered Osiris, chopped him up into 42 pieces, and scattered him all over the world.
Fratricide is not the only echo of the story of Cain and Abel.
We also find a detail that parallels the later commentaries on Genesis.
The two Egyptian gods fought to the death because they were both in love with the same woman, their sister, just as the Hebrew and Muslim commentators say that Cain killed Abel over the love of their sister.
Today, scholars and archaeologists see other similarities, a story that resonates with the fall of man, the expulsion from Eden, and of Cain's role in a totally new way for mankind to live.
AImost aII reIigions have some sort of moment of creation, and in ancient Egypt, Iike in Genesis, you have this perfect idyIIic, very pastoraI kind of pIace, where you have animaIs and things, peopIe Everyone's Iiving together in a harmonious way, which, of course, has to be shattered before you can go on for civiIisation to be created.
ln the Egyptian religion, Osiris is resurrected and he builds the first city of Egypt, Heliopolis, which is now in ruins on the outskirts of Cairo.
In Genesis, Cain goes out and buiIds the first city, so we see a Iarge number of paraIIeIs between the Egyptian story and the BibIicaI story.
And it's interesting because in the Torah, everything that Osiris does, actuaIIy is given over, to some extent, to Cain, going over and founding cities, having agricuIture, passing out ideas to peopIe to be good, settIed, non-nomadic peopIe.
But for many scientists and scholars, whatever Egyptian elements may have influenced the Old Testament story of Cain and Abel, they are rooted even deeper in human prehistory.
They hearken back to a violent and astounding event, some say perhaps the most important revolution in the history of man - agriculture.
The vital clues lie in those first sacrifices in the Old Testament.
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Cain, the farmer, offering up grain and fruit, Abel, the herder, offering his first-born lamb.
Now this is a sort of story that you can compare to what happened around 7000 BC, what we caII the NeoIithic RevoIution, when these two groups of peopIe, the farmers and the shepherds, started to get into confIict with each other.
lt all began in the cradle of civilisation, in what is now lraq.
People had begun to move away from Stone Age hunter gatherer ways and had started controlling their environments.
They no longer gathered food, they produced it.
There were those who domesticated animals, the herders, and those who domesticated plants, the farmers.
Experts think violence erupted when bands of herders moved through the countryside and allowed their herds of animals to feed on and trample the farmers'fields and crops.
The ensuing battles left many dead and became the stuff of legend.
But, eventually, the nomadic groups began to settle down and adopt the more sophisticated ways of the farmers.
As villages became small cities and the populations grew, a new culture of early civilisation began to emerge.
The stories of the clashes between herders and farmers were eventually written down on clay tablets by the people who invented writing, the Sumerians.
The Sumerians lived in Mesopotamia, part of which is now known as lraq, over 6,000 years ago.
They are the peopIe I consider to be one of the most gifted peopIe on the face of the Earth, because they invented writing, they invented Iaws, they invented aII sorts of moraI reasoning, proverbs, they invented reIigious beIief systems to expIain why there is good and why there is eviI.
Carved in stone tablets, Sumerian accounts of the battles between the shepherds and farmers took the shape of a myth, strikingly similar to the story of Cain and Abel.
ln the Sumerian tale, the shepherd god, Dumez, battles with his brother, the farmer god, Enkimdu, for the favours of their sister, the Goddess lnanna.
But how would such a tale have survived for thousands of years to become part of a monotheistic tradition? I think we have to reaIise that the stories in Genesis are oraI traditions originaIIy.
They are stories toId by the eIders of tribes to the rest of the tribe, and, of course, they're going to change and distort sIightIy over time, but essentiaIIy, untiI they're written down, these are oraI traditions, and that's what Genesis is.
The Biblical record shows another remarkable parallel with this oral history of the Agricultural Revolution.
lt seems that after all of those thousands of years of tales told around campfires, the location of where it all began may have been preserved - the place called Eden.
You've got to Iook at the geography, the Iandscape of the story.
That reaIIy is where you find the Cain and AbeI story, in the Iandscape.
The Garden of Eden, says the Bible, is located at the headwaters of four rivers, including the Tigris and Euphrates, which are still known today by their Biblical names.
Those two rivers we knew about from the start.
Those weren't difficuIt.
The reaI probIem was where were the other two rivers? The other two Biblical rivers, the Gihon and Pishon, do not appear on any modern map.
Rohl believes the modern-day Araxes River, which flows from the north of Lake Urmia to the Caspian Sea to the east is the Biblical Gihon River, and the Uzun, which rises near Mount Sahand, was once called the Pishon.
A study of the ancient languages shows that over time the letter ''P'' was often substituted for the letter ''U'', making it quite possible that the Biblical river Pishon became known as the river Ushon.
Having identified all four Biblical rivers, Rohl believes he has found the lost Garden of Eden.
So Iet's bring up our four quadrants, the four quarters of Eden if you Iike, and at the centre, at the heart, is the Iand of Eden itseIf, and that is where the Garden of Eden is Iocated.
According to Dr Rohl, the Garden of Eden is located in what is now known as western lran.
This is the place, Rohl believes, where the story of Cain and Abel has its origins.
But not all scholars agree.
Dr Juris Zarins puts the Garden of Eden further south, where the Euphrates and Tigris rivers meet the Persian Gulf.
According to Zarins, satellite images of the Middle East reveal the traces of an ancient, fossil river that once flowed through northern Arabia and through the now dry valleys.
This river, he claims, is the lost Biblical river, Pishon.
The fourth river, the Gihon, is the present-day Karun, flowing into the Persian Gulf, where Zarins concludes the Garden of Eden is submerged beneath the water.
7,000 years ago, according to geologic surveys, the Persian Gulf was not the huge body of water it is today, but a lush green valley, filled with rivers and freshwater springs.
I wouId say the first peopIe Iiving there wouId be peopIe who are hunters and gatherers, Iooking at a Iarge oasis.
There wouId be a huge number of river systems coming in from the north, and they wouId be taking, expIoiting resources in that area, and aIong the rivers, aIong marshes, aIong banks, maybe a cut bank of some kind, maybe even a IittIe Iake in the area, and they wouId have a tremendous amount of resources in the area at about, you know, 7,000 years ago - 5000 BC.
Precise geography aside, both scholars agree that the story of Cain and Abel originated in ancient Mesopotamia, some 7,000 years ago.
Cain's way of settled farming triumphed over the less productive nomadic traditions of shepherds and their herds of animals, and once man learned to control nature and grow his crops according to his needs, he was able to stop wandering across the lands in search of food, to put down roots, build villages and cities, and develop more and more advanced technologies that ultimately led to a sophisticated culture of art, music, and the written word, that would endure for all time.
There is a heartrending coda to the story of Cain and Abel that is not in Genesis, but is a vital part of the lslamic tradition.
Cain, realising the depths of his sin for the first time, tries to hide it from the eyes of man and God.
When Cain actuaIIy kiIIs AbeI, he doesn't know what to do with the body.
The body is Iying on stony ground and he doesn't know what to do with the body itseIf untiI he sees a raven or a crow kiIIing another raven, and then with his beak, making a IittIe hoIe, and then burying that raven and putting some sand on it.
So that gives Cain the idea of how to bury a human body, and that's what he does.
And this, the commentaries say, is how the concept of human burial originated.
For many scholars, Cain's crime resonates with sins found throughout the Old Testament and the belief that it's not just the sinful act, but the attempt to hide it from the eyes of God that incurs his wrath, which is precisely what happened to Cain's parents.
ln the Garden of Eden, Adam and Eve disobey God and eat from the Tree of Knowledge, and when he asks them why they have disobeyed him, instead of accepting responsibility for their own actions, they blame the serpent for tempting them, just as Cain refuses to accept responsibility for killing his brother.
I'm not sure God is opposed to the cIaiming of knowIedge that is inherent in taking the forbidden fruit, but what God finds dreadfuIIy reprehensibIe is the fact that they wiII not own up to what they've done and that faiIure to be responsibIe gets repIayed by Cain.
And Cain's sin goes even deeper than murder and denial, as one interpretation of the text suggests And the Lord said, ''What have you done? Listen.
Your brother's bIood is crying out to me from the ground.
'' The Hebrew word for blood is ''dameem'', and a more accurate translation of the phrase would be in the plural.
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''Your brother's bloods are crying out to me from the ground.
'' What do you mean bIoods? He just kiIIed one person.
And the answer is, it's the bIood of AbeI himseIf and of aII his descendants, untiI the worId comes to an end.
AII the descendants that wouId have come out of AbeI wiII not be abIe to come out of him now that he was kiIIed.
So the person who kiIIs someone reaIIy kiIIs more than just that one person.
When Cain killed his brother, he didn't just kill one man, he destroyed a whole world.
We are infiniteIy precious.
That's an affirmation that seems to me buiIt into the heart of the Jewish, Christian, and MusIim traditions.
But this story also asks one of the most profound and audacious questions of the Bible.
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''Am l my brother's keeper?'' Clearly the text is telling us that we are all, indeed, caretakers of each other, but what of God's responsibility? Why is he not the keeper of his children? Why does he let bad things happen to good people? We can aII ask the question, why doesn't God prevent murders? Why didn't God prevent the HoIocaust? Why didn't God prevent 9/1 1 ? The BibIicaI teaching wouId be that peopIe have obIigations to prevent those things and they cannot reIy on the miracIe of God's intervention.
And so we come to the end of the remarkable tale of Cain and Abel.
According to ancient Hebrew texts, Cain settled down and married his sister, had a son, built a city and lit the candle of civilisation.
The mark upon him, whatever form it may have taken, sent him down a path that would enlighten humankind forever.
But, too often, the lessons Cain learned have been forgotten, or turned into terrible rationales for retribution along the way.
Perhaps the deepest irony is this.
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all of the monotheistic religions are literal and spiritual brothers.
ln their holiest writings, all claim descent from Adam and Eve, all recognise the lessons of Cain and Abel, but their descendants have spent centuries trying to conquer, even exterminate, each other, and the true message of the first fratricide seems lost.
Millennia of murderous anti-Semitism, the Crusades, bent on ending the Golden Age of lslam, and now, terrible religious conflict in the Middle East.
Today, more than ever, the message of the first death, the first murder, the first sorrow, and the first forgiveness beg our attention.
For me, the story of Cain and AbeI is highIy significant and reIevant today, especiaIIy in the post-9/1 1 worId.
The two great ideas in pIay after 9/1 1 are the ideas of the cIash of civiIisations or the idea of the diaIogue of civiIisations.
The BibIe uItimateIy recognises that we are aII bound, one to another, and, therefore, our obIigations and our duties extend, uItimateIy, to the ends of the earth.
For God's sake, for our own future, for our chiIdren's sakes, Iet's puII back, Iet us take the exampIe of AbeI.
Let's bring him to the forefront of our discussion, so when I have a conversation or a diaIogue with my enemy, with a person I don't Iike, I wiII stiII be toIerant, I wiII stiII be accommodating.
He may hit me on one cheek, I wiII turn the other cheek, because, uItimateIy, that is the moraI authority that God required of me.