An ancient lesson in how to prevent civil strife

For Fred Boehrer

It’s easy to look upon the story of Cain and Abel in the Book of Genesis as a cute little morality play where the blackguard Cain gets his comeuppance: He is exiled to the Land of Nod, cut off from his past — his mother and father, the mother and father of the universe — while watching his chances of getting into heaven when he dies wither by the day.

Probably his most remembered line is: “Am I my brother’s keeper?” sassing a god whose blood he already made boil.

But a deeper look at the text — beginning with the brothers offering their gifts to God — reveals the tale of Cain and Abel to be a lesson on how to — paradoxically — prevent murder and, on a macro scale, civil strife.

As we know, Cain was a farmer and Abel a herdsman and the original archetypes for Rodgers and Hammerstein’s line in “Oklahoma”: “Oh, the farmer and the cowman should be friends.”

Over the years, I’ve met more than a thousand criminologists but cannot recall a single one ever taking up the case of Cain and Abel or the crime-prevention message contained in Genesis 4:3-7.

If you’re up on your Old Testament, you know how the story goes. Genesis [4:3] says, “In the course of time Cain brought some of the fruits of the soil as an offering to the Lord.”  

The next verse goes: “But Abel brought fat portions from some of the first born of his flock. The Lord looked with favor on Abel and his offering; but on Cain and his offering” [4:5] “he did not look with favor. So Cain was very angry, and his face was downcast.”  

Of course, the key words are “fat portions from the first-born of his flock”; an enormous archive exists describing how peoples across the globe have dealt with “first fruits,” whether it be grain, lambs, olive oil, or some other part of the harvest.

“Fat portions” can be translated as the best of the best — of which there is no better, an ethic of giving Abel lived by.

And we must keep in mind that Cain sinned twice: The most glaring is the murder of course but he also refused to follow the rules that insure a community’s future — he chintzed on his gift to his God, which he got as a gift from God’s soil.  

Kenneth Mathews, in his extraordinary commentary on the early books of Genesis, asks whether the problem with Cain’s transgression is the nature of his gift or a personality flaw he couldn’t control.

The issue is worthy of discussion but it’s hair-splitting; the crux of the matter is the great importance communities assign(ed) to the “first fruits” of a harvest.

On one level the practice smacks of superstition but it’s the way civilizations guided their lives — in some religions the practice persists — and seemed happy with the results.   

The great ethnologist, J. G. Frazer, with a multitude of examples, has documented how communities regarded the “corn-spirit,” that is, the spirit or god inherent in a crop. 

They believed the new fruits were animated with a divine spirit and the way to keep that spirit alive was to ingest it sacramentally. By eating the body and blood of the corn-spirit — the body and blood of the god — the community was assured a future and its people renewed life. 

Christians eat the god to this day; when the priest holds up a host at Mass he does not say, “Here is a piece of bread”; he says, “This is the body of Jesus Christ.” 

And, when he holds up a chalice of wine, he does not call it wine but says: “Here is the blood of Jesus. Eat and drink this god and you will live forever.” 

Jesus, as the first and only begotten son of God, was himself a first fruit.

Tracing the practice of ingesting the god, Frazer in the second volume of “Spirits of the Corn and of the Wild” says, “Sometimes the first-fruits are presented to the king, perhaps in his character as a god; very often they are made over to the spirits of the human dead, who are sometimes thought to have it in their power to give or withhold the crops.”

But the rules are always the same, until “the first-fruits have been offered to the deity, the dead, or the king, people are not at liberty to eat the new crops.”

The first fruits belonged to those with power over nature, over the processes (rain, sun) that insure a bountiful crop and thus a community’s future. Cain’s offering was OK but it violated the ethic of offering your best for the common good.  

But somewhere along the line people no longer saw themselves as ingesting a god as a sacrament but as offering a sacrifice. Early on, the community ate “the new fruits sacramentally because they suppose them to be instinct with the divine spirit or life.”  

But then, Frazer adds, “The fruits of the earth are conceived as created rather than as animated by a divinity.” 

When this happens, “the new fruits are no longer partaken of sacramentally as the body and blood of the god; but a portion of them is offered to the divine beings who are believed to have produced them.” Whether sacrament or offering, the rules remain the same.

In New Caledonia, the first yams dug from the ground were eaten sacramentally. Then the chief got up and reminded everybody they were eating to their hearts’ delight because they had adhered to the rules of their ancestors; he then urged the young to continue the tradition (if they knew what was good for them). Not an LOL.

In classical antiquity, the people of Athens sacrificed the first fruits of wheat and barley to Demeter (the goddess of their harvest) and to her daughter, Persephone (also a vegetation goddess), in the city of Eleusis.

And in Rome, the first ears of corn were sacrificed to Ceres (the Roman god of agriculture) and the first new wine to Liber (the god of wine) and “until the priests had offered the sacrifices,” the rules said, “the people might not eat the new corn nor drink the new wine.”  

Then the New Testament came along and turned things upside down. Jesus said there are two commandments: Love God and love your neighbor as yourself, thereby putting the community on the same level as God. From then on, the first fruits were to be offered to the community, especially the poor who live within.

And it was John the Baptist who set the standard, “If you have extra clothes, you should share with those who have none. And if you have extra food, do the same.” The message is: Don’t be possessive; don’t be a Cain. 

Augustine of Hippo in Chapter 15 of his “City of God,” says, “Cain means ownership,” which centuries later Karl Marx translated as “class struggle.”

The gospel writer Matthew (19:22) says, when people find out they have to give their first fruits to the poor they go away sorrowful — like the proverbial rich man — knowing it requires a re-evaluation of their wealth in relation to what others have — and why Chesterton said, “The Christian ideal has not been tried and found wanting. It has been found difficult; and left untried.”

For years now, in all parts of our country, there’s been considerable talk about “economic equality” but, when the blueprint arrives showing the structural changes you/me/we need to make to make that happen, you/me/we head to the Land of Nod to percolate civil strife.

And yet there are data that show, when someone adopts the blueprint of offering first fruits to those with less, he starts flushing his Xanax down the toilet.