Cain and Abel Comparison

There were definitely acute differences in the two versions of Cain and Abel that we read. The biblical one seemed very much bare-bones, just saying what (allegedly) happened in the tale of Cain and Abel. In fact, much of the story is not even about Cain or Abel, as a few of the verses only talk about Cain’s family tree, which has little to do with the murder that is the subject of the section. This really stems from the purpose of the work of writing, which in the case of the Bible was to serve as basically a reference text for the Christian religion. It is supposed to be the Christian view of how things happened, not a book that people were reading for pure entertainment. Thus, the no nonsense approach works quite well.

However, the second version, from the N-town plays, works very nicely for its purpose. This is something that was probably meant as at least some form of entertainment, as it is written as a play as opposed to a simple, basic retelling of the events that unfolded. There are little to no details in the Bible itself as to what happened, so, as stated in The Staging of the First Murder in the Mystery Plays in England, the playwrights had no basis on how the killing of Abel actually happened. This is expanded on in the N-town play, in which Cain uses a jawbone to kill Abel. In my opinion, this is quite the unorthodox weapon, but that is what they went with, and the article also mentions that this shows up in other retellings of the story too, such as the Towenley Matacio Abel. The long and short of this is that these stories have been embellished to have more action, and generally be more exciting to read. This evolution of the tale is quite interesting, and it should be looked into more as a way of analyzing the play itself.