Image by Chris Cook, https://www.chriscookartist.com/
I love learning about the history of languages and how they have evolved over the millennia. Figuring out those words and parts of words we share with other speakers now or in the ancient past can inform how I might use words differently, pronounce difficult phrases, how lyrics fit into music, and it even helps me and Brian complete the New York Times Crossword Puzzle every day.
I’ve been reading a book called Proto: How One Ancient Language Went Global. It explores the history of our language through the lens of what we’ve learned through ancestral DNA and how Western language, and also the stories language can tell, spread from relatively few speakers to the roots of all of the Indo-Europian language. The social, political, economic, intellectual, and religious implications are staggering. Not only do we find that English shares history from North America and Europe through Saudi Arabia, India, and Russia, but also find that quite a few of the stories we learn in the Old Testament share history with similar stories across the same cultures.
Within the first chapter, author Laura Spinney explores how communities were driven away from the Black Sea by a major flood event (think Noah’s ark) and spread in various directions away from the sea. This is all confirmed through archeology and genetic research. Some cultures continued a nomadic lifestyle, tending herds of sheep and hunting for food. Others developed farming and settled down. As farmers expanded their settlements and nomads continued to roam, they ran into each other from time to time, and things weren’t always peaceful. An entire ideological shift had happened between them - the language of the people who roamed the world without boundaries was based on an ethos of sharing and welcome, where the language of the farmers was based on ownership and boundaries.
Somewhere in all of this, we find the seeds of the Cain and Abel story. Cain, a farmer, had a settled area that he cultivated and defended. Abel, a shepherd, roamed the plains and shared from his herd. When they made offerings to God, Cain gave some of his crops, maybe out of obligation. The ones he didn’t use for himself or offer to God, he would have sold. Abel gave the first-born, the fattest of his herd. As a nomad, he would have been more likely to share his bounty among a community rather than selling it in a traditional sense. Cain ends up feeling rejected by God—his lands go fallow, and, out of jealousy, he murders his brother.
We see this story play out in the real archeological record—not among actual brothers, but among people of similar ancestry whose paths diverged and then came back together. Bands of settlers trying to establish the first fixed communities find that staying in one place doesn’t always work out. Weather changes, different needs arise, and the firm boundaries they try to implement are eroded by powers outside of their control. The same is true today; even the most careful investors and business people might fail because of market trends or natural disasters.
The more flexible nomads, who always look for the most fertile ground for their flock and have an attitude of sharing from their abundance, are more equipped to succeed despite outside forces.
As is so often the case in Bible stories, it would be easy to say this could imply we shouldn’t have boundaries or own things of our own. I don’t think we have to interpret it that way. We’re allowed to have nice things. But there is a big difference between having walls so permanent that nothing goes in or out and living with a spirit of abundance in which we welcome our neighbors and share freely.
How does the story of Cain and Abel apply to your life and the world we live in now?
John Johns, Director of Music