In his 1909 AD book The Legends of the Jews Louis Ginzberg made the following remarks in chap III, “The Ten Generations—The Birth Of Cain”:
Wickedness came into the world with the first being born of woman, Cain, the oldest son of Adam. When God bestowed Paradise upon the first pair of mankind, He warned them particularly against carnal intercourse with each other.
Well, you can see why these are legends as the Bible states no such thing. However, note that he referenced Cain as, rightly and as per the Bible, “the oldest son of Adam.” Yet, he continues by noting:
But after the fall of Eve, Satan, in the guise of the serpent, approached her, and the fruit of their union was Cain, the ancestor of all the impious generations that were rebellious toward God, and rose up against Him. Cain’s descent from Satan, who is the angel Samael, was revealed in his seraphic appearance. At his birth, the exclamation was wrung from Eve, “I have gotten a man through an angel of the Lord.”
So first, Cain is “the oldest son of Adam” but then he is “the fruit of” the union of Eve and the serpent as he was of “descent from Satan.” Now, that “the angel Samael, was revealed in his seraphic appearance” is confused in a few ways such as:
1) Indeed, this is legend as it appears in, for example, the circa 600 AD Palestinian Targum of Jonathan ben Uzziel aka more accurately as Pseudo-Jonathan which makes has Genesis 3:6 reading as that “the woman beheld Sammael, the angel of death.” FYI: in his article Was Cain Fathered by the Devil? No, Wait — Extraterrestrials (June 7, 2008 AD) ancient languages scholar Michaels Heiser notes, “it cannot be argued that Targum Pseudo-Jonathan of Genesis 4:1 is as old as Jesus’ day.”
2) An angel looks like a human male without wings nor a halo but a Seraph has six wings thus, the Angel could not be “revealed in his seraphic appearance” as he is Angelic in appearance. 3) The serpent was Satan and Satan is neither an Angel nor a Seraph but is a Cherub (Ezekiel 28:14) who has four faces and four wings (see Ezekiel chaps 1 and 10).
4) Eve stating “I have gotten a man through an angel of the Lord” is obviously not biblical and not even Pseudo-Jonathanian as that text has Genesis 4:1 as:
And Adam knew Hava his wife, who had desired the Angel; and she conceived, and bare Kain; and she said, I have acquired a man, the Angel of the Lord.
Louis Ginzberg continues by noting:
…her son was born, a radiant figure. A little while and the babe stood upon his feet, ran off, and returned holding in his hands a stalk of straw, which he gave to his mother. For this reason he was named Cain, the Hebrew word for stalk of straw.
Being born “a radiant figure” seems to play off of the legend of related in the apocryphal Book of Enoch’s Fragment of the Book of Noah 107:2-3 which has Lamech stated the following to his dad Methuselah, “I have begotten a strange son, diverse from and unlike man, and resembling the sons of the God of heaven; and his nature is different and he is not like us, and his eyes are as the rays of the sun, and his countenance is glorious” (for details, see Wherein the Book of Enoch contradicts the Bible).
We are then told:
His hostility toward Abel…began when God had respect unto the offering of Abel…while the offering of Cain was rejected. They brought their sacrifices on the fourteenth day of Nisan, at the instance of their father…
Of course, legend cannot seem to make up its mind as to whether they had the same dad or not.
Lastly, Louis Ginzberg notes something very in keeping with the Bible:
If his sacrifice had been accepted graciously by God, and Cain’s not, it was because his deeds were good, and his brother’s wicked.
Serpent seedline of Satan theorists assert that the difference in the lines are genetic—with Cain having Satanic genetics and Abel and later Seth having Adamic genetics—but biblically they are based on actions—sinful Satanic actions versus righteous Godly actions—which I have demonstrated most succinctly in Serpent Seed of Satan article in a Christian Apologetics. Thus, it is accurate that Abel’s deeds were good and Cain’s wicked.
In Genesis 4:6:7, the Bible states:
And the LORD said unto Cain, Why art thou wroth? and why is thy countenance fallen? If thou doest well, shalt thou not be accepted? and if thou doest not well, sin lieth at the door. And unto thee shall be his desire, and thou shalt rule over him.
“Doest” is a reference to taking an action. Also, Cain can overcome sin which one would think he could not do if he was of Satanic genetics.
For more from Ginzberg, see Louis Ginzberg’s The Legends of the Jews on the Nephilim.
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