Cain

76:2.1Less than two years af­ter Cain’s birth, Abel was born, the first child of Adam and Eve to be born in the sec­ond gar­den. When Abel grew up to the age of twelve years, he elected to be a herder; Cain had cho­sen to fol­low agri­cul­ture.

76:2.2Now, in those days it was cus­tom­ary to make of­fer­ings to the priest­hood of the things at hand. Herders would bring of their flocks, farm­ers of the fruits of the fields; and in ac­cor­dance with this cus­tom, Cain and Abel like­wise made pe­ri­odic of­fer­ings to the priests. The two boys had many times ar­gued about the rel­a­tive mer­its of their vo­ca­tions, and Abel was not slow to note that pref­er­ence was shown for his an­i­mal sac­ri­fices. In vain did Cain ap­peal to the tra­di­tions of the first Eden, to the for­mer pref­er­ence for the fruits of the fields. But this Abel would not al­low, and he taunted his older brother in his dis­com­fi­ture.

76:2.3In the days of the first Eden, Adam had in­deed sought to dis­cour­age the of­fer­ing of an­i­mal sac­ri­fice so that Cain had a jus­ti­fi­able prece­dent for his con­tentions. It was, how­ever, dif­fi­cult to or­ga­nize the re­li­gious life of the sec­ond Eden. Adam was bur­dened with a thou­sand and one de­tails as­so­ci­ated with the work of build­ing, de­fense, and agri­cul­ture. Be­ing much de­pressed spir­i­tu­ally, he in­trusted the or­ga­ni­za­tion of wor­ship and ed­u­ca­tion to those of Nod­ite ex­trac­tion who had served in these ca­pac­i­ties in the first gar­den; and in even so short a time the of­fi­ci­at­ing Nod­ite priests were re­vert­ing to the stan­dards and rul­ings of pre-Adamic times.

76:2.4The two boys never got along well, and this mat­ter of sac­ri­fices fur­ther con­tributed to the grow­ing ha­tred be­tween them. Abel knew he was the son of both Adam and Eve and never failed to im­press upon Cain that Adam was not his fa­ther. Cain was not pure vi­o­let as his fa­ther was of the Nod­ite race later ad­mixed with the blue and the red man and with the abo­rig­i­nal An­donic stock. And all of this, with Cain’s nat­u­ral bel­li­cose in­her­i­tance, caused him to nour­ish an ever-in­creas­ing ha­tred for his younger brother.

76:2.5The boys were re­spec­tively eigh­teen and twenty years of age when the ten­sion be­tween them was fi­nally re­solved, one day, when Abel’s taunts so in­fu­ri­ated his bel­li­cose brother that Cain turned upon him in wrath and slew him.

76:2.6The ob­ser­va­tion of Abel’s con­duct es­tab­lishes the value of en­vi­ron­ment and ed­u­ca­tion as fac­tors in char­ac­ter de­vel­op­ment. Abel had an ideal in­her­i­tance, and hered­ity lies at the bot­tom of all char­ac­ter; but the in­flu­ence of an in­fe­rior en­vi­ron­ment vir­tu­ally neu­tral­ized this mag­nif­i­cent in­her­i­tance. Abel, es­pe­cially dur­ing his younger years, was greatly in­flu­enced by his un­fa­vor­able sur­round­ings. He would have be­come an en­tirely dif­fer­ent per­son had he lived to be twenty-five or thirty; his su­perb in­her­i­tance would then have shown it­self. While a good en­vi­ron­ment can­not con­tribute much to­ward re­ally over­com­ing the char­ac­ter hand­i­caps of a base hered­ity, a bad en­vi­ron­ment can very ef­fec­tively spoil an ex­cel­lent in­her­i­tance, at least dur­ing the younger years of life. Good so­cial en­vi­ron­ment and proper ed­u­ca­tion are in­dis­pens­able soil and at­mo­sphere for get­ting the most out of a good in­her­i­tance.

76:2.7The death of Abel be­came known to his par­ents when his dogs brought the flocks home with­out their mas­ter. To Adam and Eve, Cain was fast be­com­ing the grim re­minder of their folly, and they en­cour­aged him in his de­ci­sion to leave the gar­den.

76:2.8Cain’s life in Mes­o­po­ta­mia had not been ex­actly happy since he was in such a pe­cu­liar way sym­bolic of the de­fault. It was not that his as­so­ciates were un­kind to him, but he had not been un­aware of their sub­con­scious re­sent­ment of his pres­ence. But Cain knew that, since he bore no tribal mark, he would be killed by the first neigh­bor­ing tribes­men who might chance to meet him. Fear, and some re­morse, led him to re­pent. Cain had never been in­dwelt by an Ad­juster, had al­ways been de­fi­ant of the fam­ily dis­ci­pline and dis­dain­ful of his fa­ther’s re­li­gion. But he now went to Eve, his mother, and asked for spir­i­tual help and guid­ance, and when he hon­estly sought di­vine as­sis­tance, an Ad­juster in­dwelt him. And this Ad­juster, dwell­ing within and look­ing out, gave Cain a dis­tinct ad­van­tage of su­pe­ri­or­ity which classed him with the greatly feared tribe of Adam.

76:2.9And so Cain de­parted for the land of Nod, east of the sec­ond Eden. He be­came a great leader among one group of his fa­ther’s peo­ple and did, to a cer­tain de­gree, ful­fill the pre­dic­tions of Ser­a­p­ata­tia, for he did pro­mote peace be­tween this di­vi­sion of the Nod­ites and the Adamites through­out his life­time. Cain mar­ried Re­mona, his dis­tant cousin, and their first son, Enoch, be­came the head of the Elamite Nod­ites. And for hun­dreds of years the Elamites and the Adamites con­tin­ued to be at peace.

159:1.7[The use of the term sev­enty-seven as an il­lus­tra­tion of mercy and for­bear­ance was de­rived from the Scrip­tures re­fer­ring to Lamech’s ex­ul­ta­tion be­cause of the metal weapons of his son Tubal-Cain, who, com­par­ing these su­pe­rior in­stru­ments with those of his en­e­mies, ex­claimed: “If Cain, with no weapon in his hand, was avenged seven times, I shall now be avenged sev­enty-seven.”]

76:0.2Cain and Sansa were both born be­fore the Adamic car­a­van had reached its des­ti­na­tion be­tween the rivers in Mes­o­po­ta­mia. Laotta, the mother of Sansa, per­ished at the birth of her daugh­ter; Eve suf­fered much but sur­vived, ow­ing to su­pe­rior strength. Eve took Sansa, the child of Laotta, to her bo­som, and she was reared along with Cain. Sansa grew up to be a woman of great abil­ity. She be­came the wife of Sar­gan, the chief of the north­ern blue races, and con­tributed to the ad­vance­ment of the blue men of those times.

68:1.2As­so­ci­a­tion early be­came the price of sur­vival. The lone man was help­less un­less he bore a tribal mark which tes­ti­fied that he be­longed to a group which would cer­tainly avenge any as­sault made upon him. Even in the days of Cain it was fa­tal to go abroad alone with­out some mark of group as­so­ci­a­tion. Civ­i­liza­tion has be­come man’s in­sur­ance against vi­o­lent death, while the pre­mi­ums are paid by sub­mis­sion to so­ci­ety’s nu­mer­ous law de­mands.

74:8.8In his early teach­ings, Moses very wisely did not at­tempt to go back of Adam’s time, and since Moses was the su­preme teacher of the He­brews, the sto­ries of Adam be­came in­ti­mately as­so­ci­ated with those of cre­ation. That the ear­lier tra­di­tions rec­og­nized pre-Adamic civ­i­liza­tion is clearly shown by the fact that later ed­i­tors, in­tend­ing to erad­i­cate all ref­er­ence to hu­man af­fairs be­fore Adam’s time, ne­glected to re­move the tell­tale ref­er­ence to Cain’s em­i­gra­tion to the “land of Nod,” where he took him­self a wife.

148:4.7“You are con­fused, Thomas, by the doc­trines of the Greeks and the er­rors of the Per­sians. You do not un­der­stand the re­la­tion­ships of evil and sin be­cause you view man­kind as be­gin­ning on earth with a per­fect Adam and rapidly de­gen­er­at­ing, through sin, to man’s pres­ent de­plorable es­tate. But why do you refuse to com­pre­hend the mean­ing of the rec­ord which dis­closes how Cain, the son of Adam, went over into the land of Nod and there got him­self a wife? And why do you refuse to in­ter­pret the mean­ing of the rec­ord which por­trays the sons of God find­ing wives for them­selves among the daugh­ters of men?