Was Cain Innocent? The Early Rabbis Interpret Guilt

Abstract

Rabbinic literature of Late Antiquity encompasses legal and exegetical texts. Whereas legal texts delineate criminal procedures to determine a guilty party and advise appropriate punishment, exegetical texts suggest an almost entirely indeterminate and indeterminable understanding of guilt. This chapter examines rabbinic interpretations of the paradigmatic biblical story of guilt, Cain's murder of his brother Abel, in which Cain's guilt is mitigated and the stable relationship between evidence and guilt is challenged. I argue that these conflicting views of guilt in early rabbinic thought need not be harmonized – that a legal understanding of determinate guilt need not require a philosophical, or theological, counterpart.

Citation

Halberstam, C. (2005), "Was Cain Innocent? The Early Rabbis Interpret Guilt", Anderson, M. (Ed.) Toward a Critique of Guilt: Perspectives from Law and the Humanities (Studies in Law, Politics, and Society, Vol. 36), Emerald Group Publishing Limited, Leeds, pp. 127-140. https://doi.org/10.1016/S1059-4337(05)36007-8