ABSTRACT
After outlining how this project connects with the current debate about reception history and biblical studies, the author introduces the political philosophy of Giorgio Agamben and Jacques Rancière, as well as the psychological insights of Julia Kristeva to examine the story’s history of interpretation. It demonstrates that the predictable assumption of the exegetes that the divine behavior in the narrative could not be anything but perfectly justified and benevolent resulted in the persistent portrayal of Cain as the Kristevian stranger. That, in turn, had major political consequences when Augustine identified Cain with those who did not fit in the Rancièrian ethical community he sought to create, and especially with the Jews, resulting in the Agambenian inclusive exclusion of the latter by Christian sovereigns.
