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Cain?Able: NBK's version.

Cain and Able: contrast good and evil.
At least that is what we are told.
God does not need burnt offerings.
He does not need activity to make Him happy.
He does not the need the aroma of cooking meet to get His juices' flowing
like some kind of Divine gourmet!
Then what was this all about?
We see no where up to that point where God tells any body what to do to make him happy.
At least not as a religious ceremony.
The story does assume some kind of narrative, that is not written in the Bible, must have occurred before this event. On the face of what we see there is no evidence to indicate the final out come of this story.
Why was Able accepted and Cain not?
As I have gotten older I think the surface concept of the God I grew up with ( and we all have heard most of our lives) is a load of krap.
Maybe God's use of this story is not to give and example of what He wants but, to contrast the silliness of religion with common since?
All religions back to ancient times give this formula for Divine acceptance.
Sacrifice to god and if he is pleased with the offering, he will bless you!
Did the Pagan religions have it correct?
Is this how you get close to God?
Or is this God ( Moses writing) using a pagan formula to demonstrate how silly the entire idea is?
God in this story must be a meat lover, because the vegetables were not acceptable.
Is there really any way the Creator of the universe is pleased with burnt offerings?
Of course not.
This has to be an absurd idea being demonstrated by it's own absurdity.
Of course the reaction to not being accepted was violence. Cain was told " if you do what is right you will be accepted" Not bad advice!
Yet on the surface the question is, BURNT OFFERINGS? Maybe Moses had seen this type of reaction to religion before and again sets up an absurdity to make a point. Violence against another human being over what is a silly idea in the first place.
Why was Cain so negatively affected by this "rejection"? I do not think he thought in terms of murder, yet his reaction was completely over the top.
For this story to be used as an example of correct "Godly " behavior is just ridicules.
Not Cain's, the entire story.
There is something here that is odd, to say the least.
Moses wrote the Book of Genesis.
He was well aware of the religious silliness of Pagan Egypt. His demonstration of the absurdity of the religions( Cain and Able story) was written to wake the Jewish people up from the religious concepts they had seen in Egypt.
Moses saw this in the entire human race.
This story is the demonstration designed to show people how silly religion had become.
Jesus removed that idea from Religion.
He, according to the Bible replaced the burnt offerings with Himself.
Again He also used absurdity to demonstrate how ridicules an idea was!
I think He was hated by religionist because He stated and demonstrated very well the uselessness of religion and it's ceremonies.

I see cain and able as a metaphor or cain was able in that the existence of good and evil is in us all and it is possible for one to destroy the other or at least take dominance.

Sometimes these old stories are just stories.

No hidden meanings......just stories.

The thing I find interesting about this story is that God (unlike many of his followers) apparently didn't believe in capital punishment.

How did this story evolve? I think the Jews adopted and adapted it from existing tales as they needed a base foundation for their Hebrew God.

Why was Abel accepted and Cain not? It's all about the offering. Abel offered the firstlings of his flock, which could have been his firstborn child or an animal. God was a blood thirsty overlord. "Without the shedding of blood there is no remission of sin". God loved the sweet savor of smoking flesh. In Ezekiel it speaks of Israelites offering their children to Molech, and Ezekiel chastizes them for not choosing one God to worship and offer their sacrifices to. It wasn't that the practice of burnt flesh[children] is being argued by the prophet, but that the Israelites were offering their sacrifices to another God.

The NT speaks of the firstfruits unto God, and this indicates those who were assigned inheritance, as the true inheritors. Jesus is reckoned with the priestly class and OT predistined the priests as the elect of God, to be the mouth of God for the people of Israel. However, by the time Jesus came along human sacrifice had ceased being children and Jesus offered himself as an adult to satisfy his blood thirsty God.

Firstfruits and firstlings may have had the same meaning in sacrifical offering. And Abel may have offered the first born in animal or human. My guess is that human sacrifice was the required offering. Cain's offering was of the ground, and not acceptable to the blood thirsty God. "Of the ground" indicates a substitute, an unworthy offering. It may also indicate a sacrifice not from Cains own flock, or that Cain was of the devil and anything he might offer would have been unacceptable to the tribal God. Keeping everything all in the family, so to speak, was high priority for the blood thirsty God at his beginning.

If we consider how ancient people had no qualms about human sacrifice, my guess is that the story of Cain and Abel fits into that form of blood in appeasement to gods worshipped in that pagan, primitive age. We later see Abraham not having any objection to sacrificing his son Isaac to the bible God. There is a sudden shift of thought as the story leaps into another gear and a substitute is offered via a ram in the brushes, which Abraham kills as offering[sacrifice] to his God. God evolves at this point and begins accepting animals instead of humans but the blood-sport continues. Later, the Israelites are seen going back to human sacrifice as they believe human blood is more worthy than animal. Jesus evidently thought the same.

"A sweet savor" in the nostrils of the Hebrew God was always in a blood-thirsty practice, be it animal or human, as long as the Israelites did not offer[sacrifice] anything to other Gods in the land of Canaan they pleased their blood-thirsty God.

Also, the story of Cain and Abel sets the evolving stage for the commandments. And, shows why those commandments were developed for the Israelites alone. "Thou shalt not kill[murder] thy brethren", but a clause is implimented for those who did commit murder against their own kind - "the cities of refuge" for the Israelites. Cain escapes capital punishment but has a mark put on him, so that any finding him would not kill him. The land of Nod may be seen as Cain's city of refuge. As the story evolves, the Isrealites pick up from there and employ a reason for God not to punish them in death.

But I'm speculating. However, the story does seem to reflect on how the excuse developed for God not punishing the Isrealites for killing their own kindren people in sending them to cities of refuge, whereas, Israelites were commanded to kill other people for "offending" them. The other non chosen people in Canaan land received no escape route from the Hebrew God simply because the Hebrew God was not their god. I suppose the Isrealites and Moses expected all the other gods to provide an excuse and escape route for their own people.