Cain and Abel, (colorized) Phillip Medhurst
The Evolution of Civilization: The Biblical Story
Reading Cain’s murder of Abel and the account of Cain’s descendants as a metaphor for the trajectory of human development and the change in patterns of human behavior.
Published: October 8, 2015
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Last Updated: October 28, 2026
For a similar claim, see Ziony Zevit’s TABS essay, “Before the Beginning: Appreciating the Thought of an Ancient Cosmologist.”
Mircea Eliade, Myth and Reality (New York, Harper & Row, 1963), 5-6.
It is a bit odd that the text gives Abel’s occupation first even though the Bible records that Cain was born first. Might the biblical scribes be affirming the value of the work of the herder above that of the farmer?
For a different approach to the story which also makes use of a symbolic reading, see, Yoram Hazony, The Philosophy of Hebrew Scripture (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2012), 104-110.
For more on the move to an agrarian society and its consequences, see, Yuval Noah Harari, Sapiens: A Brief History of Humankind (New York: HarperCollins, 2015), and Jared Diamond, Guns, Germs, and Steel: The Fates of Human Societies (New York: W.W. Norton and Company, 1997).
The rabbis make a similar point in parable version in b. Yoma 69b.
Bereshit Rabbah 3:7.
