Cain and Abel in Text and Tradition: Jewish and Christian Interpretations of the First Sibling Rivalry

by John Byron

The story of Cain and Abel narrates the primeval events associated with the beginnings of the world and humanity. But the presence of linguistic and grammatical ambiguities coupled with narrative gaps provided translators and interpreters with a number of points of departure for expanding the story. The result is a number of well established and interpretive traditions shared between Jewish and Christian literature. This book focuses on how the interpretive traditions derived from Genesis 4 exerted significant influence on Jewish and Christian authors who knew rewritten versions of the story. The goal is to help readers appreciate these traditions within the broader interpretive context rather than within the narrow confines of the canon.

Genres: Religion

268 pages, Hardcover

First published January 1, 2011

About the author

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John Byron Ph.D. (University of Durham) is Professor of New Testament at Ashland Theological Seminary. He is the author of Slavery Metaphors in Early Judaism and Pauline Christianity (Mohr Siebeck, 2003), Recent Research on Paul and Slavery (Sheffield Phoenix, 2008), as well as a number of scholarly articles. His more recent work has focuses on Jewish and Christian interpretations of the Cain and Abel story (Brill, 2011). In addition to teaching and research Byron is an active participant in the Tel-Gezer excavation project. You can interact with John Byron on his blog The Biblical World (http://thebiblicalworld.blogspot.com).

Reviews

[Pardis TD · Rating 5 out of 5]

A Jewish friend asked me to read this as he knew I was agnostic, and I seemed curious (was looking for a religion)... I am not much into violence, I liked the Book of Esther more.