ABSTRACT
This chapter argues that early Rabbinic and Christian interpreters were asking similar questions about Gen. 4:1–16. However, in their reconstruction of what happened between Cain and Abel, early readers did not use the theoretical alternative of reconstructing the deity’s nature based on its actions. Cain then becomes the locus of human evil and at the same time a victim in the story, as is Abel because, the lack of detail and the grammatical, syntactical, and linguistic ambiguities of the tale, added to Cain killing Abel, transformed Cain into the archetypal scapegoat for generations of interpretation. The study challenges this assumption.
