A History of Religious Ideas, Volume 1: From the Stone Age to the Eleusinian Mysteries

by Mircea Eliade

It is possible to find in this episode an opposition between cultivators and herders and, implicitly, an apologia for the latter. Yet, if the name Abel means “shepherd,” Cain means “smith.” Their conflict reflects the ambivalent position of the smith in certain societies of pastoralists, where he is either scorned or respected but is always feared.10 As we saw (§ 15), the smith is regarded as the “master of fire” and possesses redoubtable magical powers. In any case, the tradition preserved in the biblical narrative reflects the idealization of the “simple and pure” existence of the nomadic herders and the resistance against the sedentary life of agriculturalists and dwellers in towns. Cain became “builder of a town” (4:17), and one of his descendants is Tubal-cain, “the ancestor of all metalworkers in bronze or iron” (4:22). So the first murder is performed by him who in some sort incarnates the symbol of technology and urban civilization. Implicitly, all techniques are suspected of magic.