4:7 If you do well, won’t it be lifted up? If you don’t do well, sin crouches at the door. Its desire is for you, but you are to rule over it.”

A Multidisciplinary Contextualized Analysis of Select Passages From Genesis Version 2.0

[This is an excerpt from a new edition I’m writing of a personal study of the book of Genesis, the first edition of which can be found here. The purpose of this exercise is to compare a close reading of the text to our current understanding of language, paleontology, and the physical sciences. Constructive discussion on the elements presented is always encouraged!]

God’s “curse” on Adam and Eve is essentially a separation from the benefits of garden residency. Despite kicking them out of the house per se, He still is invested in their family’s success. But now that Adam’s family has the same capacity for moral evaluation as any other human, God’s guidance appeals to those capacities.

“Yatab” (יָטַב) is a subjective qualifier of goodness or wellness. As mentioned throughout this study, ethics are inherently objective. However, to effectively interpret and implement an ethical principle beyond simple obedience is a subjective balance of the consequences of an action or feeling. As discussed in the analysis of Genesis 2:9, the knowledge of good and evil is the capacity to make these subjective analyses.

One can use this capacity to evaluate goodness to either validate or attempt to circumvent one’s ethical principles. One might question that, if a principle is objectively ethical, why would one choose to subjectively invalidate it? For whatever reason, boredom, jealousy, competitiveness, revenge, self-pity, there is the temptation to supplant a clear ethical path with one that the individual believes will lead to greater personal fulfilment. This instrumental convergence, encapsulated in the statement “the ends justify the means,” is antithetical to the long-term stability and success of an individual, community, or even a nation.

Where his parents were kicked out of the garden for failing to adhere to simple rules convinced by the rudimentary semantic debate skills of a reptile, God is approaching Cain at a much more sophisticated level, suggesting that the man find fulfilment in doing the best in his own work. It is the animosity he has when evaluating himself against his brother that is driving him to consider an instrumental convergence to change what he perceives as an injustice. He murders his brother, not in a fit of rage, but in a calculated plot to dispose of him in the fields.

Although emotions like rage are primarily linked to lower frequencies, including Beta for arousal and Theta for emotional processing, these would not sustain a calculated and delayed anger response. For example, a child might hit for the sake of immediate anger, but it is unlikely they will sustain that feeling in a plotted retaliation. Gamma activity increases during tasks requiring emotional regulation and moral decision-making. Reduced Gamma power, as seen in some neurological conditions, correlates with impaired self-awareness and emotional control, suggesting that complex emotions like revenge or jealousy would be less accessible. Without self-awareness or social comparison, jealousy would be limited to rudimentary possessiveness.

Rage, revenge, and jealousy often involve appraisals of fairness, intent, and status, which Gamma waves enhance. Planning retribution requires Gamma-driven foresight and moral justification. Cain’s anger and jealousy toward Abel in Genesis 4:5-8 reflect this emotional and computational complexity.

The first documented failure of human judgment was a simple matter of direct requirement that the humans allowed a third party to weigh in on. In fact, the easiest action should be the absence of or abstinence from a non-critical action. To avoid ingesting the fruit of that one tree as well as the majority of the Ten Commandments are simple avoidance behaviors. Even the US Constitution does not prescribe compulsory behaviors on citizens, but is largely a list of actions the government itself is prohibited from taking.

The second significant error in human jugement of the Bible being the murder of Abel is subtley but significantly more sophisticated. God is recommending that Cain make an evaluation of “goodness” which his parents were not physiologically capable of in the garden. Justifying the reasons God had restricted Adam’s Gamma wavelength processing to begin with, it is this difficulty for humans to “rule over” their complex thinking and self-awareness.

Additionally, the story of Cain and Abel may also touch on aspects of nature versus nurture. As per this literalized analysis, their parents may be genetically identical making these brothers effectively clones of their father. If that is the case, any differences in their thoughts or behavior are entirely experiential as their genetic makeup is identical.

The case for nurture being the difference between them would be that their experiences, being of different ages and primary occupations, were enough to force their personalities to be incongruent. Alfred Adler, a contemporary of Sigmund Freud, proposed that a child’s position among siblings, whether firstborn, middle, or youngest, affects personality. For example, firstborns are often more conscientious and achievement-oriented, feeling dethroned by younger siblings. Youngest children might be more outgoing, rebellious, or pampered. The differences in their formative experiences is believed to be the primary driver of these noteworthy behavioral differences. This suggests it is the pressures of Cain’s station that drove him to consider murder.

In contrast, the case for nature would be that the brothers shared the same interests and passions. That Cain found little fulfilment in his duties when he compared himself to Abel implied that they both were shepherds at heart, but only Abel was given the opportunity to do so. Would it then be the case if their responsibilities were reversed that Abel would have been the one plotting the crime?

Perhaps the correct answer is not the developmental question of nature versus nurture, but that the issue is human nature itself. If a social imbalance or preference is perceived by a person, there is a universal human temptation to assign blame externally as opposed to plan how to overcome it internally. This seems to be the entire point of Genesis 4:7: That our self-perceived inadequacies or relativistic evaluations are the inception of instrumental convergence, otherwise known as sin. That one is responsible for their own level of performance, whether self-evaluated or externally reviewed. And to make one’s own value entirely dependent on the performance of others is an unsustainable dissociation from one’s responsibilities.

Only 4 chapters into the Bible, this one verse is the most succinct self-help advice and social behavior warning sign in perhaps all literature.