Talk:Cain tradition

"Among Hebrews and Christians it was believed that Cain and his descendants were instruments in Satan’s plan for the destruction of man" - can you provide a reference??? Danielcohn (talk) 22:43, 26 November 2007 (UTC)

Based on an older tradition
"This tradition which developed during the middle ages argued that the the descendants of Cain were monsters and giants. There are certain differences, however between the two texts. While the Septuagint tells of the ‘angels of God’ mating with the ‘daughters of men,’ (thus creating monstrous figures), the Vulgate mentions the giants but not their origin."

I'm sorry, but this is not quite right. The view that giants (and perhaps monsters) were conceived by a mix between humans and fallen angels, is much older than the medieval times. It is the actual view of the Old Testament, in Genesis 6:1-4. It does not explicitly say that these hybrids were of Cain's breed only, but that may have been the view of the Jewish interpreters, as Cain's brother Set's breed was seen as holy.

Thus, the first "Cain tradition" was the biblical tradition, and this was the most common view among both Jews and Christians, until about the 5th century, when Augustin and other scolars started to allegorize the story. After that, this first Cain tradition was forbidden in the Catholic Church. The official view was that there only had been a mix between Set's and Cain's breed, resulting in a population of humans "gigantic" only in science, progress, and such things. Thus, the supernatural element in the original story was denied.

So, if there was a living Cain tradition in medieval times, it would either have been a "non-catholic" tradition, or, a tradition more based on allegorical interpretations, than on supernatural.

In Beowulf, then, the original view seems to be preserved, which would suggest that Beowulf is written under another Christian influence, than that of the Catholic Church's. /Leos Friend (talk) 20:46, 5 December 2007 (UTC)


 * "There are certain differences, however between the two texts. While the Septuagint tells of the ‘angels of God’ mating with the ‘daughters of men,’ (thus creating monstrous figures), the Vulgate mentions the giants but not their origin."


 * This is verifiably incorrect. The Latin Vulgate and Greek Septuagint texts of Gen 6:1-5 agree, both texts attributing the origin of the giants to intercourse between "sons of God" ("filii Dei" and "υΊοι του Θεου", respectively) and "daughters of humans".  For that matter, though I can't speak to the Hebrew text personally, my JPS translation of the Hebrew reads the same as Vulgate and Septuagint, only substituting "divine beings" for "sons of God".  /Perseant (talk) 07:12, 18 June 2008 (UTC)


 * I found this on the net, which might answer the above: "In some of the manuscripts it is left as "sons of God," but in the others - including the Alexandrian text - it is rendered by the word "angelos." This text was in existence in the time of Christ." Leos Friend (talk) —Preceding undated comment was added at 01:31, 12 September 2008 (UTC).

Not exactly right...
I'm finding sources that do mention a "Cain Tradition", but not really anything that is specifically about this theory as it is written. There are various different theories out there that use this term (such as this book that talks about the devil as Cain's father) and I'm leaning towards this being almost completely re-written if it is to be kept. In other words, make it less about this specific theory and more about the usage of the term in general. The article as it's written now is pretty much almost complete OR. I'm going to use this section as a dumping source for the stuff I find, but I'm slightly leery about this because it's going to be so easy for it to turn into OR and view pushing if we're not careful. I'm almost thinking that this might be better as an article entitled "Theories about Cain", but I'm not quite happy with this title either since it's sort of WP:POINTy.Tokyogirl79 (｡◕‿◕｡)   04:54, 25 February 2013 (UTC)
 * ,, , , , , , , , . I'm finding stuff, but this is kind of daunting in how much work it entails and how carefully all of it'll need to be written. The term is used, but it's not exactly used in a very specific manner. This might be best summed up in a few sentences such as "People have used the term 'Cain Tradition' to refer to several different concepts or theories about Cain, his lineage, or about other aspects of his nature." That's not perfect and not exactly the sentence I'd use, but that's kind of what most of the books and journals above summarize as in a nutshell.Tokyogirl79  (｡◕‿◕｡)   05:02, 25 February 2013 (UTC)