How Sheep Undermine the Biblical Narrative
The Gaping Plot Hole of Cain and Abel
Today’s fundamentalist, evangelical Christians teach that the Bible’s characters were real people, in real space and time, whose stories have real applications for the lives and faith of believers. While some exceptions exist (e.g. Job’s story is widely considered part of the “wisdom literature” genre), Christianity would have us believe that the people within the Biblical canon — Adam, Eve, Noah, Moses, Abraham, etc. — fit neatly into the story of history, all as part of God’s “perfect plan.”
But as we look more broadly, we see that many parts of the Bible simply don’t align with our knowledge of the world. For example, humans evolved gradually through natural speciation from prior species of primates, not from a single mating pair (i.e. Adam and Eve). The Mesopotamian flood myth predates any record of the story of Noah’s Ark. And archaeology has found zero evidence of a mass exodus of Hebrews who left Egypt and wandered the desert for forty years.
Close inspection of Genesis reveals another major plot hole: based on the evidence, the story of Cain and Abel could not have happened as written.
Consider the following passage that introduces us to Adam and Eve’s offspring:
1 Adam made love to his wife Eve, and she became pregnant and gave birth to Cain. She said, “With the help of the Lord I have brought forth a man.” 2 Later she gave birth to his brother Abel. Now Abel kept flocks, and Cain worked the soil. 3 In the course of time Cain brought some of the fruits of the soil as an offering to the Lord. 4 And Abel also brought an offering — fat portions from some of the firstborn of his flock. (Genesis 4:1–4)
Notice the particular detail that the text claims about the brothers’ occupations: Abel “kept flocks,” and Cain “worked the soil.” In other words, the second generation of humans to ever exist had already developed agriculture, domesticating both plant and animal species. Based on what we know of early human history, the first animals domesticated in the Middle East were sheep. However, the earliest evidence of sheep domestication forces us to place Cain, Abel and their family no earlier than roughly 11,000 years ago.
But this conclusion leads us into two major problems. First, we know that early, anatomically-modern Homo sapiens were hunter-gatherers for scores of millennia before developing agriculture. (The Homo sapiens species is easily more than 100,000 years old.) The Bible could have avoided this pitfall by saying that Abel offered the kill from a hunt, allowing Cain’s “fruits of the soil” to be interpreted as gathered fruit, nuts, etc. But the Bible is specific: these are kept flocks, meaning that they are housed and bred under human skill and supervision.
Second, by 11,000 years ago, early humans had long since migrated across the world. Scientists estimate that humans spread across Europe at least 40,000 years ago, reached eastern Asia by 30,000 years ago, and finally hightailed it into the Americas between 14,000 and 12,000 years ago. All of this happened well before Abel could ever have supposedly tended to his flocks.
Creative interpreters of the Bible might be tempted to suggest that Adam and Eve lived for all those countless millennia before having Cain and Abel, perhaps birthing many others before them. (This would at least explain how Cain was able to meet a wife.) However, this is countered by the text’s explicit statement that Adam lived for only 930 years, meaning that (claims of unnaturally-long lifespan aside) we would have to place Adam around 11,000 to 10,000 BCE, to Abel’s 9,000 BCE — still not accounting for the Homo sapiens living well before then.
The other way out would be to argue that the story of Cain and Abel is some type of allegory, perhaps to explain the origin of human violence, or why God favors some offerings more than others. The Bible, however, does not grant that luxury; most of Genesis is essentially a family saga, tracing a specific, named lineage from Adam through Abraham and beyond. Anyone who would argue Cain and Abel’s story to be metaphorical would have to explain why Adam before them, and Noah and Abraham after, are so often presented by churches as literal figures.
Beyond that, the apostle Paul would have considered a metaphorical interpretation of Genesis as a false teaching. In fact, Paul’s theological understanding of Jesus’s sacrifice and resurrection depends on Adam being real*:
18 Consequently, just as one trespass resulted in condemnation for all people, so also one righteous act resulted in justification and life for all people. 19 For just as through the disobedience of the one man the many were made sinners, so also through the obedience of the one man the many will be made righteous. (Romans 5:18–19, emphasis mine)
Furthermore, Jesus himself preached sermons that were based on the premise that Genesis represented real, literal history. Having been raised in the Jewish tradition, he would naturally have studied the Old Testament stories, and been taught that they actually happened. So it’s understandable that Jesus’s teachings would reflect this when he draws upon Adam, Eve, Noah, and (you guessed it:) Abel.
Thus, if someone attempts to explain away a provably-false Bible story as a metaphor, they directly contradict the viewpoint promoted by the New Testament’s central figures. Either way, the Bible cannot be defended as infallible.
So why does any of this matter? It matters because taking the Bible as an entirely literal, inerrant book has real-world consequences.
Churches who preach biblical inerrancy continue to produce legislators, judges and attorneys whose political positions place them at odds with LGBT equality and reproductive rights. These churches also produce parents and even teachers who push for creationism and against evolution science to be taught in schools, who reject the reality of man-made climate change, and who refuse to vaccinate their children. All based on the testimony of a book with mythological tales that are demonstrably false.
Fortunately for Christianity, for all of its talk about God’s unchanging nature, the religion has done a fair (if not slow) job of adapting to suit its social climate. The Bible used to be invoked to justify slavery and to ban interracial marriage in the United States, until the Christian demographic changed its mind. Likewise, Christians once overwhelmingly opposed legal same-sex marriage on biblical grounds, but as of last year, a firm majority of Christians support it.
Today, greater numbers of people are willing to confront the Bible’s stories with a critical mind, and follow the evidence where it leads. In that spirit, it is time for Christianity to adapt its view once more, and leave behind the idea of the Bible as a perfect, divinely-inspired book.
Many thanks to Susie Ambrose, fellow Recovering From Religion contributor, for her assistance in researching for this article. For more history-based challenges of Christian doctrine, visit Ambrose’s Medium page.
*Although this article focuses on Adam and Eve’s offspring and their historical validity, I have also argued elsewhere that Adam himself cannot be dated such that the Bible and early human history agree.
