Did Abel Deserve To Die?: Mosala’s Postcolonial Reading of Genesis 4:1-16

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As far as I can remember, my mother was the first one to teach my brother and I about the Cain and Abel story. She inferred in her reading (which was the traditional understanding) that Abel gave the better sacrifice, the very best lamb he had. The question is, for me, where is this in the text? No where in Scripture does it say, in Genesis 4 that Cain gave the worst of his crop (as the children’s bible illustrations tried to teach me). This story always eluded me. For post-modern readers, like Brian McLaren and Marjorie Suchocki, they offer Abel and Cain as part of the meta-narrative of the Fall to violence, that Abel was one of the world’s first scapegoats (after his mother Eve of course), and Cain leads the world into death, rage, and eventually Nimrod’s empire.

At first, this would seem to be an appropriate reception of Genesis 4, but it still does not bother to ask, why is Abel favored over Cain? Then last week in my reading, I came across Itumeleng Mosala in his Biblical Hermeneutics And Black Theology In South Africa and his materialist critique of liberation theology. For Mosala, the notion of the Bible as “the Word of God,” something that is free of ideology with one clear message, is a bourgeois bias (page 26). The Bible as “the Word of God” conceals, according to Mosala, the fact that the text is a product of “complex and problematical histories and societies” (20). I believe this scathing critique, while aimed at James Cone, can rightfully be applied to the subject of Cone’s dissertation topic, Karl Barth as well.

Mosala takes Desmund Tutu and Allan Boesak to task for their liberationist hermeneutical leaps, and existential uses of Scripture without acknowledging Scripture’s oppressive passages. For Mosala, the problem with Boesak’s reading of the Bible as an ideological text starts with Boesak’s defense of the decision by God to leave Cain a landless nomad (a refugee if you will). However, Mosala notes, that nearly all scholars agree that Genesis 4:1-16 was written around 10th century BCE. It is not a matter simply of Cain killing his brother, he is punished, end of story. The gaps in the story tell us something about the ideology behind the author’s intentions. For one thing, Abel is a shepherd, and shepherds in the ancient near east were titles given to the kings along with the ruling class (priests, nobility).  The 10th century BCE was also the time when the ruling classes during the Davidic monarchy expropriated land from the masses, leaving their fellow Judeans homeless. In this instance, Boesak’s (and I would include McLaren’s and Suchocki’s) reading of Genesis 4:1-16 is a collusion with the oppressors (33). Therefore, it could be said that Cain and Abel is a story to justify the Yahwist author’s defense of the people becoming landless– since of course, only the royalty and the elite are pleasing before the LORD (34). Scriptural evidence for this taking of land includes II Kings 21 and II Chronicles 26. The royal scribes producing the history of David’s triumph worked to apologize for the economic changes taking place, from the more egalitarian pre-monarchal tribal setting during the time of judges, to a socio-economic structure where the king is in charge of a tribute system that exploits the poor; remember, YHWH did warn the Israelites that this would happen (1st Samuel 8). Large, privately owned estates, latifundias as they were called, began to appear as the peasant class lost their power. In reading Ezekiel’s eschatology, (chapters 40-48), I am now beginning to wonder if Ezekiel, while part of the priestly class himself, he does call for the egalitarian distribution of land among the people (Ezekiel 48: 1-29). Just something to think about.

Speaking of priesthood, Mosala also takes Tutu for task for using “the one royal priesthood” as a metaphor in his Hope and Suffering, since a royal priesthood is a code-word for ideological landed nobility (39).  This reminds me of theologians such as Hauerwas and company who rely on similar language, with all the talk of virtue ethics and community, that maybe some theological projects are inherently going to favor the gentry.  It also makes me want to reconsider readings of 1st Peter 2:9; perhaps it would be more emancipatory to read 1st Peter 1 & 2 together, that the notion of diaspora (1st Peter 1:1), homelessness, is connected to discipleship, for the Son of Man has nowhere to lay his head (Luke 9:58 NRSV).  This may even cause us to re-think Jesus as our High Priest-King, once we filter through the historical definitions of what it meant to be a royal scribe.

As for Mosala’s reading of black liberation theology and Genesis 4:1-16, there are a few issues that I need to air out. First, while I side with Mosala, that there is no meta-narrative in scripture, and that the idea that there is a meta-narrative in the Bible is ultimately a middle-class bias that supports the ruling class within the church. However, Mosala is driven by his own Marxist & materialist meta-narrative that does not see its own blind spots. Contemporary theology views Jesus as the primary Word of God, and Scripture secondary, and that the Bible can only be considered the Word of God as far as it refers to the mission of Christ. Secondly, materialism comes from a form of naturalism that ignored the immanently transcendent presence of the Living God in creation.  It is the unquestioned pre-supposition of God’s existence (for better or worse) that differentiates modern black theological projects from others, i.e., there is little engagement with non-theistic thinkers (in my view).  Thirdly, what we know about the history of the ancient Near East is very limited, and while it is helpful, it is not a foundation that laypersons can rely on.  In other words, it is a view mostly accessible to the academy.  Now granted, there are many laypersons who are interested in historical criticism.  It is just very difficult to make it plain.

So, I ask, did Abel deserve to die?  Is Cain the victim after all?

RodtRDH

Formerly known as Rod of Alexandria, Rod the Rogue Demon Hunter Preacher of Hope | Black Scholar of Patristics | Writer for Nonviolent Politics. Destroyer of Trolls. It must be that angry puppy.

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