National Geographic: Riddles of the Bible - First Season

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.. 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.

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.. 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?

On this matter, Genesis is mute.

But the story continues.

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...

..and kiIIed him.''

Here's another mystery..

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.

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..

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..

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.''

''What do you mean?''

''He's dead. He's kiIIed.''

''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.

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.''