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The Curse of Cain: The Violent Legacy of Monotheism
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The Curse of Cain: The Violent Legacy of Monotheism Paperback - 1998

by Regina M. Schwartz

THE CURSE OF CAIN confronts the inherent ambiguities of biblical stories on many levels and, in the end, offers an alternative, inspiring reading of the Bible that is attentive to visions of plenitude rather than scarcity, and to an ethics based on generosity rather than violence. "(A) provocative and timely examination of the interrelationship of monotheism and violence. . . ".--BOOKLIST.


First line

Original sin. The wisdom of the ages tells us that all the miseries of the world-the injustice, hostility, pain, poverty, illness, violence, and even death-are the result of the first man and woman disobeying God.

From the rear cover

A murderer, an outcast, a man cursed by God and exiled from his people - Cain, the biblical killer of Abel, is a figure of utter disdain. But that disdain is curiously in evidence well before his brother's death, as God inexplicably refuses Cain's sacrifice while accepting Abel's. Cain kills in a rage of exclusion, yet it is God himself who has set the brothers apart. For Regina Schwartz, we ignore the dark side of the Bible to our peril. The perplexing story of Cain and Abel is emblematic of the tenacious influence of the Bible on secular notions of identity - notions that are all too often violently exclusionary, negatively defining "us" against "them" in ethnic, religious, racial, gender, and nationalistic terms. In this compelling work of cultural and biblical criticism, Schwartz contends that it is the very concept of monotheism and its jealous demand for exclusive allegiance - to one God, one Land, one Nation or one People - that informs the model of collective identity forged in violence, against the other. The Hebrew Bible is filled with narratives of division and exclusion, scarcity and competition, that erupt in violence. Once these narratives were appropriated and disseminated by western religious traditions, they came to pervade deep cultural assumptions about how collectives are imagined - with collective hatred, with collective degradation, and with collective abuse. Recovering the Bible's often misguided role as a handbook for politics and social thought, Schwartz demonstrates just how dangerous it can be.

Details

  • Title The Curse of Cain: The Violent Legacy of Monotheism
  • Author Regina M. Schwartz
  • Binding Paperback
  • Edition Later Printing.
  • Pages 228
  • Volumes 1
  • Language ENG
  • Publisher University of Chicago Press, Chicago, Illinois, U.S.A.
  • Date 1998-10-01
  • ISBN 9780226742007 / 0226742008
  • Weight 0.73 lbs (0.33 kg)
  • Dimensions 8.99 x 6.02 x 0.7 in (22.83 x 15.29 x 1.78 cm)
  • Themes
    • Religious Orientation: Christian
  • Dewey Decimal Code 221.830

About the author

Regina M. Schwartz is professor of English and religion at Northwestern University and director of the Chicago Institute of Religion, Ethics, and Violence. She is the author of Remembering and Repeating: On Milton's Theology and Poetics; editor of The Book and the Text: The Bible and Literary Theory; and co-author of The Postmodern Bible.
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