How many ways did early Christian artists and writers understand the story of Cain and Abel, and make new sense of it for their own times, places, and circumstances? Already in writings that would be included later in a canonical New Testament, we find four such invocations of the drama of the first murder. Keywords: catacomb paintings, Irenaeus, Gnostics, Marcion, anti-Jewish, Passion Sarcophagus, Seth
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Finally, three writings treating relations in the household of Adam and Eve are investigated. A considerable part of this chapter concerns the artistic Cain and Abel interpreters whose works appear in fresco paintings in Rome’s Via Latina catacomb and in sarcophagus images of the brothers’ offerings. These characterizations stimulated Irenaeus to include anti-Jewish polemics within his attacks on Marcion and others he counted as gnosticizing heretics. Because of Abel’s righteousness Cain murdered him (c.f., 1 John 3:12) and in Matthew 23:29–36, Jesus predicts that scribes and Pharisees will continue their ancestors’ murders of God-sent prophets, and recalls the “the blood of righteous Abel.” These are seeds of a Christianization of the story in which Abel the innocent victim whose voice lives on and inspires, is an ante-type of Christ, while Cain is the murderous resister of God’s will. Several references to the Cain–Abel clash occur in the New Testament.
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Chapter 6 Hagar and Ishmael, Abraham’s Family in Mecca.Chapter 5 Sarah and Hagar in Christian Retellings.Part II Sarah and Hagar: Mothers to Three Families.Chapter 3 “Tell Them the Story of the Two Sons of Adam as It Really Was”.