Cain, the Murderer? Sure ... along with All Multi Earthers! Ouch!

By the time I was learning the Cain and Abel story in the 20th century, the purpose of the first storytellers centuries earlier had been lost on me. The conflict between nomadic herders and settled farmers had been long forgotten in the history I learned in school and church.

So I was well along in my journey of viewing how history portrays the struggle between Multi Earth and One Earth paradigms when I first began to feel the power that the story of Cain and Abel had originally as a story of the great divorce between the herder-hunter-gather, nomadic way of being in the world and the settled agriculturalist way, between those preferring decentralized power to those eager to concentrate it in cities.

Once I could listen to the story with this awareness of why its first storytellers told it, I realized I was coming to a deeper truth. As I’d heard the story taught, preached, and misused, Cain was presented as the first murderer, a dark example of fallen human nature. Nothing much more. But he and his brother are so much more. Cain and Abel were and are representative characters of a drama that changed how our species lives on Earth. Thinking of them as historical offspring of Adam and Eve could never deliver that truth. 

Question: Ray Anderson, late CEO of Interface Corporation, tells how his change of consciousness toward One Earth living involved recognizing that he’d been a predator. All of us Multi Earthers are, no? How are we murderers? (Sorry to ask such an pleasant question.) 

The Cain-Abel Story? Why It's Great One Earth Mythology

When storytellers first evolved the Cain and Abel story, they were grappling with a world undergoing the disruptive change that came with the evolution of settled agriculture. The new lifestyles, economy, and worldview that went with the settled agriculture way of living tore families and communities apart. Humans, during their previous nearly 200,000 years, had never before lived according to those ways, nor the ideas that went with them. The nomadic herders, hunters, and gatherers who declined the new agricultural ways were chagrined by how agriculture was changing the landscape as well as the people involved. Stories such as Cain and Abel grew up among them to express their feelings and describe what they saw happening. Multi Earthism was being born.

It was not until after 587 B.C., the year Jerusalem and the Temple were destroyed, that Cain and Abel became part of Genesis. At that point, the destructive effects of city-states and empires was added to the character of Cain along with the effects of settled agriculture that he already represented. Genesis, the book or origins, was compiled during that time while Jews were refugees exiled in Babylon and needed stories that countered the ones they heard the Babylonians telling about how their empire was established by the gods and governed by divine right.

This, of course, didn’t sit well with the Jews who’d been forcibly moved from Jerusalem and their homeland to the city of Babylon. Genesis was their answer. And with Cain and Abel they saw Babylon as Cain. Dominating centers of power like Babylon were the cities that grew out of settled agriculture as they saw it. So in Cain, the farmer who became the city-builder, they folded into one cultural myth what they had come to regard as two major negative developments in the human story. The story also served as a goad to the Hebrews to deepen their repentance of their own Cain-like behaviors that they’d been living during their national monarchies up until the Babylonians whipped them. 

The greatness of the myth of Cain and Abel to speak to many cultures across the millennia becomes apparent not only in Steinbeck’s East of Eden, but also in how eloquently they embody the Multi Earth and One Earth ways today.

The Multi Earth Worldview Asks, "Am I My Brother's Keeper?"

Here I go with my own redux of the ancient story of Cain and Abel. As John Steinbeck did in East of Eden, I too see the eloquence of this story in piercing the Multi Earth worldview and how it’s honesty can disarm the grip with which Multi Earth tentacles encircle us. You can read the original version in Genesis 4:1-16.

Abel and Cain were brothers who lived two sharply distinguished worldviews: Abel was a nomadic herder; his brother Cain was a farmer. Though these worldviews may not seem so different to city dwellers today, in the history of our species the move from nomadic herding, hunting, and gathering to settled and surplus farming was a major shift in paradigm.

In the story, Abel and Cain each brought an offering to YHWH, their deity, from their respective lifework. Abel brought some premium cuts of meat from his herd and Cain brought some of his produce. YHWH liked Abel’s offering, but not Cain’s — a clear approval of the nomadic, herding worldview and disapproval of the agricultural worldview.

Cain was not happy. He became angry and depressed. YHWH asked him why, assuring him he could be accepted if he did right, but warning him to be on his guard because evil desired to master him.

At this point Cain invited Abel to go out into the field. There, in the fields that Cain farmed, he killed his herder brother.

YHWH again approached Cain and asked where Abel was. Cain replied, “I do not know,” and added the words for which he’s best known, “Am I my brother’s keeper?” 

What happens next? Stay tuned for the next entry in this blog!