18 Facts About Cain

1.

Cain is a Biblical figure in the Book of Genesis within Abrahamic religions.

2.

Cain is the elder brother of Abel, and the firstborn son of Adam and Eve, the first couple within the Bible.

3.

Cain was a farmer who gave an offering of his crops to God.

4.

Out of jealousy, Cain killed his brother, for which he was punished by God with the curse and mark of Cain.

5.

Cain had several children, starting with Enoch and including Lamech.

6.

Some traditional interpretations consider Cain to be the originator of evil, violence, or greed.

7.

The Midrash suggest that although Abel brought the best meat from his flock, Cain did not set aside for God the best of his harvest.

8.

Cain becomes a "fugitive and wanderer", and receives a mark from God - commonly referred to as the mark of Cain - so that no one can enact vengeance on him.

9.

Exegesis of the Septuagint's narrative, "groaning and shaking upon the earth" has Cain suffering from body tremors.

10.

Cain is described as a city-builder, and the forefather of tent-dwelling pastoralists, all lyre and pipe players, and bronze and iron smiths.

11.

Cain then establishes the first city, naming it after his son, builds a house, and lives there until it collapses on him, killing him on the same year of Adam's death.

12.

Christian exegesis of the "evil one" in have led some commentators, like Tertullian, to agree that Cain was the son of the devil or some fallen angel.

13.

Pseudo-Philo, a Jewish work of the first century CE, narrates that Cain murdered his brother at the age of 15.

14.

Cain died at the age of 730, leaving his corrupt descendants spreading evil on earth.

15.

Later, Cain was killed at the hands of his great grandson Lamech, who mistook him for a wild beast.

16.

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

17.

The apocryphal Life of Adam and Eve tells of Eve having a dream in which Cain drank his brother's blood.

18.

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.