When Cecil B. DeMill portrayed the Old Testament, biblical story of Moses and the Exodus he did so with the type of panache and pomp the Biblical authors intended. This because, whatever the true objective reality was from whence this story came, the story itself was more intended to dramatize the plight and abilities of the Jewish people. To inspire them with a sense of greatness beyond what an ordinary individual could believe of himself. Undoubtedly more myth and less reality, Moses himself may have been an actual, or a non-actual living person whose character is certainly more the personification of spirit, much in the same venue as King Arthur of the Kelts from the 5th century AD of modern day England.
There is archeological proof of King David's existence, there is none of Moses, and Moses is at this time relegated to a place somewhere between pure myth and an actual person of much smaller stature than the Bible portrays him to be. Put simply, there may have been an actual man with Moses like qualities or there may not have been, we just don't know for sure.
As it is known David existed, not known if Moses existed, it is obvious that Cain and Able never existed as living, individual humans. However the story of Cain and Able is predicated in, or drawn from, real life. The two are personifications of an historical truth of reality.
If one looks a picture of Pharaoh, in full Pharaoh regalia, among other symbols of Pharaoh power are the crook and the flail. The crook is what we understand as the Shepherds staff and the flail an instrument for threshing grain from stock.
It is from the meaning of these symbols that the story of Cain and Able materializes.
About ten thousand years or so ago, in three separate places of similar latitude, two Caucasoid and one Mongoloid people made manifest the reality of agricultural husbandry, which further, shortly thereafter, then subsequently made manifest animal husbandry. One of the Caucasoid areas for this achievement was the Fertile Crescent, the land of the Jews, ancient Egypt and other Arab/Semite peoples.
I consider this reality, humanity's greatest twin achievements of all time, the twin achievements of agricultural and animal husbandry.
Further it is with the achievement of agriculture that our modern day concept of culture and civilization was born. As humans now needed to settle down in one area as opposed to migrating out and about to forage and hunt.
Progressing from agriculture came animal husbandry as certain herding animals such as goats and sheep gravitated to the newly developed fields of food. It was then found that the herding animals, docile and safe, were controllable. Flocks emerged, and a migratory people thusly ensued. By the way, and in my opinion, it is here that the domestication of the most servile wolves, into dogs, began. This because the wolves would have been attracted to the herding animals, who were attracted to the cultivating fields of grain.
This I believe is where the story of Cain and Able comes from. The story is not of an actual individual family but rather a story personified through an imaginary family. That further, the brothers personified the newly developed, mutually exclusive, cultures or ways of life. The evil brother Cain is the agriculturalist and the good brother Able is the shepherd because the Jews were shepherds practicing herding while the non Jews were the agriculturalist. Clearly the Biblical authors wanted their people to understand that they the Jews were the good people who were then subsequently wronged by the outside group of non-Jews.
Further, before the Jews monotheism emerged, people of the time were polytheists. It was, in my opinion, the human shepherd, constantly seeing himself as a superior being to his flock, giving guidance and protection, that the idea of a single, all powerful God emerged, the God of the animal husbandry people, the God of the Jews.
Moreover, it was with the agricultural husbandry people, the people who began the city-state cultures from which we of today descended to live in the larger nation-state, that the idea or concept of life after death emerged as with each spring, life would resurrect from the throes of winter's death, and life would begin anew.
In ancient, Pharaoh Egypt, this life after death phenomenon became a huge part of their overall culture. Mummification, pyramid building, and the God of the afterlife, Osiris, all came from this concept, born of agricultural husbandry.
Finally, the Christian name for the book of the two testaments, The Holy Bible literally translates as The Whole Book, or the complete book. In my opinion, it is the complete book because with the life story of Jesus the Nazarene, or Jesus the Christ for believers, the whole story of the two mutually exclusive, ideology of cultures runs full course, and once again the two people who were one become one again via the union of the two ideologies.
At the point of Jesus's resurrection and eternal life, the belief in the concept of a single, all powerful God of the nomadic shepherd and flock people is merged with the concept of the life after death people of agriculture, and finally, that all who live in accordance with the will of God shall resurrect in the afterlife and live again, forevermore.
From the Sanctuary, @ http://the-pdk.blogspot.com/
I'm PDK: Thank you.
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