Violence and the City: On the Yahwist’s Leviathan

Robert S. Kawashima

264 NEAR EASTERN ARCHAEOLOGY 78:4 (2015)

Eastern wall of the Temple Mount wall, Jerusalem, from near Gethsemane, Jerusalem. Photograph by Wknight94. Courtesy of WikiMedia Commons user Wknight94, http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Eastern_Temple_Mount_wall,_Jerusalem_from_near_Gethsemane.jpg.

Violence and the City On the Yahwist's Leviathan

The Yahwist’s “Primeval History” – those passages in Genesis 1–11 belonging to the J source1 – is conspicuously concerned with origins: of culture, of sacrifice, of art and

technology, etc. (Kawashima 2004). [For a brief explanation of these “sources,” see the “Editor's Note” on p. 265.] For this rea-son, J’s origin stories are often read as myths. It would be more appropriate, however, to read them as faux-myths, not unlike those found in Plato. For J’s etiologies, even those based upon traditional epics and myths, have been freely composed in order to make historical, sometimes even philosophical, points. Adam and Eve, for example, may represent humanity as such, that is, the human condition – for which reason, the designation for Adam in Genesis 2–3 is not actually a proper noun but a common noun, “the human” (hā’ādām), while Eve (ḥawwâ) is so named by her mate because she is “mother of all living [ḥāy]” (3:20). But for J, the human condition is not some static reality to be dutifully accepted by mortals as the ineluctable will of the immortals, but rather a problem to be solved in and through history, ultimately, by Israel’s covenant with Yahweh (Kawashima 2014).

Through the story of Cain – indeed, through the rest of the Primeval History – J extends his depiction of the human condi-tion. Let us say that this son of Adam constitutes a type of every-man – much as scholars interpret Gilgamesh as a Mesopotamian

everyman. In this regard, one should carefully consider the fact that for J, Cain is, as Israel Knohl has aptly noted, the “forefather of humanity.”2 If the story of Eve, the mother of humanity, is ulti-mately about the origin of culture, the story of Cain is ultimately about the origin of the city. What J thereby identifies as a – argu-ably the – crucial contributing factor in the creation of the city is violence. For Cain builds the first city only after commiting the first homicide. At first glance, the relationship thus established between violence and the city might seem to be ironical (murder leads to progress), or critical (urban life is born of crime). What I propose instead is that the relationship between violence and the city is mythical. Or more precisely, again, that Cain’s story is a faux-myth of the city. It will be useful for me to begin with an explanatory summary of Cain’s rather elliptical biography.

Adam and Eve (fig. 1), one recalls, having eaten the forbidden fruit and thus become “like God, knowing good and evil” (Gen 3:5; cf 3:22) – viz., legally competent adults, who may as such be held accountable for their actions (Deut 1:39) – are banished from the garden, which was apparently, as a related tradition sug-gests, adjacent to God’s home atop some mythical “mountain of God” (Ezek 28:13–16). Banished from the divine estate, perhaps, but still within walking distance – hence the guards God installs at the entrance to the garden, lest his neighbors to the east return

This journal was published by the American Schools of Oriental Research and is available on JSTOR at http://www.jstor.org/journal/neareastarch. You may receive the journal through an ASOR membership or subscription. See http://www.asor.org/membership/individual.html for more information.

NEAR EASTERN ARCHAEOLOGY 78:4 (2015) 265

Figure 1. Paradise Lost. Painting by Paul Gauguin. On view at the Yale University Art Gallery. Courtesy of WikiMedia Commons user Trzęsacz,

http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/9/95/Paul_Gauguin_-_Le_Paradis_Perdu_%28ca.1890%29.jpg.

in search of the paradise they have lost (Gen 3:24). For this rea-son, the “offerings” (minḥâ) Cain, and then Abel, “bring” to God (4:3–4) should be understood to be hand-delivered gifts, rather than sacrifices turned into smoke on an altar (Kawashima 2004: 497). For some unspecified reason, God accepts Abel’s offering, but not Cain’s. The latter, jealous of the recognition his younger brother thus receives from their immortal father figure, lures him “out to the field” (4:8),3 where he kills him. In recompense for this premeditated murder, he is “cursed from the ground” and sent into exile by God as “a fu-gitive and a wanderer [nād]” (4:11–12). This punishment is too great, Cain laments, for as a nomad “hidden from your face ... all those who find me will kill me” (4:14). God concedes Cain’s point and de-cides to protect him by plac-ing a “mark” or “sign” upon his flesh, a portent of seven-fold “vengeance” upon any who would dare to strike him down (4:15). Thus assured, Cain goes into exile. Finally, in a surprising turn of events, he settles in the land of Nod (Wandering), where he mar-ries his wife, begets a son, and builds the first city, which he names after said son, Enoch.

Cain’s final act, then, the culmination of his life, is not the begetting of a son, but rather the building of the first city, that is, the invention of the city as such.4 For this reason, I read the story of Cain as a myth of the city, that is, as a narrative representation of its nature and function. J’s understanding of urban life is remarkably Hobbes-ian. By which I mean to say that the city, according to J, constitutes a type of “Leviathan”5 (fig. 2). My invocation of Hobbes, however,

should not be taken to mean that I propose to “apply” Hobbes’s political philosophy to Genesis, or to offer a “Hobbesian” inter-pretation of Cain. I merely note a family resemblance between J’s theory of the city and Hobbes’s theory of the State. It is not out of the question, conversely, that Hobbes was influenced in this regard by his reading of the Bible – perhaps unwittingly, inso-far as he makes no reference to Cain in the relevant texts. For I do maintain that J explores certain moral and political questions that anticipate Hobbes’s political philosophy in striking ways.

Hobbes, as is well known, casts his political philoso-phy in the form of a kind of myth of the State.6 Man, ac-cording to this myth, begins in a state of nature, in which he is caught in the grip of his natural appetite, that is, an unlimited desire, fueled by an innate pride or vanity, “to appropriate to itself the use of those things in which all others have a joint inter-est” (Hobbes 1991: 93; De Cive, epistle dedicatory). The Other, for this reason, consti-tutes a natural enemy, whence Hobbes’s famous “war of all against all.” Alongside this natural appetite, however, man possesses natural reason, namely, an innate fear of be-ing subjected to the humilia-tion of a violent death at the

hands of another – a “contra-natural dissolution [mortem vio-lentam]” (ibid; see also De Homine XI.6) – which according to Hobbes, is the worst possible fate a human being might suffer, and thus the greatest evil. It is in this fear of all, experienced by all, that is to be found the origin of the State. For men finally come to realize that, rather than risk a violent death, they ought

Editor's Note on the Documentary Hypothesis

Scholars have long recognized that the Pentateuch (the first five books of the Hebrew Bible) is a composite text, to which multiple authors and editors have contributed. In the nineteenth century, one theory in particular came to enjoy a broad consensus, namely, the Documentary Hypothesis. Ac-cording to this theory, the Pentateuch consists almost entirely of four source documents: the Yahwistic source (J), the Elohistic source (E), the Priestly source (P), and the Book of Deuteronomy (D). The details of this theory – the precise identification of the Pentateuchal sources, their provenance, and the process by which they were combined – may continue to be a matter of scholarly debate, but the theory itself continues to exert a great deal of influence, especially in the United States and Israel. In recent decades, numerous scholars, particularly in Germany, have come to espouse an alternate theory, according to which the Pentateuch was composed through a continuous process of editorial expansion and accretion, by which small textual units were gradually combined into larger ones. The following list provides an ecumenical sampling of accessible introductions to the different ways that scholars have reconstructed the process by which the Pentateuch was composed.

Joel Baden, The Composition of the Pentateuch: Renewing the Documentary Hypothesis. New Haven: Yale University Press, 2012.Joseph Blenkinsopp, The Pentateuch: An Introduction to the First Five Books of the Bible. New York: Doubleday, 1992.Alexander Rofé, Introduction to the Composition of the Pentateuch. Sheffield: Sheffield Academic Press, 1999.Jean-Louis Ska, Introduction to Reading the Pentateuch. Winona Lake, IN: Eisenbrauns, 2006.



to relinquish their pride and submit to the State, the rule of Law, in order to establish and maintain a peaceful coexistence with their erstwhile enemies. It is because of the crucial role that the State plays in the domestication of humanity that Hobbes likens it to Leviathan, describing it, with reference to Job 41:34, as the “King of the Proud” (1996: 220–21; Leviathan ch. 28; fig. 3).

J’s Primeval History similarly traces humanity’s halting if inev-itable progress from the state of nature to that of civilization. Cain, in particular, represents that critical moment when the city comes into being. Adam and Eve, thanks to their god-like knowledge, may already be cultured beings – as opposed to those natural “liv-ing beings” belonging to the animal kingdom (Gen 2:7, 19). But at this primitive stage of human existence, they possess only the bare rudiments of culture – husbandry and clothing – the vari-ous milestones of civilization having yet to be reached, including, notably, the rule of Law. Which is to say that they still live in, or at least in proximity to, that Hobbesian state of nature, in which there is nothing to prevent the unbridled rights of each from ex-tinguishing the very life of the others: Hobbes’s war of all against all. Thus, within the span of a single generation – measured from the expulsion from the garden – and within a community of only

four human beings – members of a single nuclear family, no less – the first murder already takes place. Regina Schwartz, in her sug-gestive reading of this story, which she dubs a “foundational myth … of sibling rivalry” (1997: 2), partly lays the blame at God’s feet, due to the apparent “scarcity” of divine favor: “What kind of God is this who chooses one sacrifice over the other?” she asks (3). The question J seems to raise, however, is rather: Why should Abel’s success incite Cain to murder (fig. 4)? Reminiscent of Hobbes, it would seem that Cain’s pride simply cannot abide the divine re-gard his brother has come to enjoy. And vanity, in the absence of a civilizing influence, “naturally” leads to violence. It is this same lawless violence that Cain, quite understandably, expects to fall victim to in exile himself (cf Gunkel 1997: 46; Skinner 1930: 109). For if Abel had none to protect him out in the field – but presum-ably not so very far from his home and parents – how much more so will Cain, in turn, be vulnerable to a violent death at the hands of another, in that vast terra incognita stretching away from Eden and the mountain of God?

Here at last we arrive at the ultimate “Hobbesian” significance of Cain, namely, the constitutive relationship between the mark and the city. Reminiscent of Hobbes, again, not only does Cain fear a violent death at the hands of others, but his would-be mur-derers are made to fear that same violent death as well, thanks to his mark and the principle of vengeance it signifies. Out of this shared natural reason, arising from the universal fear of death,

Figure 3. Behemoth and Leviathan, from Illustrations of the Book of Job. Engraving by William Blake. From the collection of the Metropolitan Museum of

Art, http://images.metmuseum.org/CRDImages/dp/original/DP816554.jpg.

Figure 2. The frontispiece of the book Leviathan by Thomas Hobbes. Engraving by Abraham Bosse. Courtesy of WikiMedia Commons user Tom Reedy, http://upload.

wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/a/a1/Leviathan_by_Thomas_Hobbes.jpg.



the city is born. For as long as there is no fear of reprisal, humans do well to avoid each other as much as possible; but thanks to the promise of ret-ribution that God inscribes upon Cain’s body, Cain is able to overcome his fear of the Other and thereby create a space in which men might live together in peace. By the same logic, one should fur-ther note, close-quartered life “in the city” creates a sponta-neous system of surveillance not to be found “in the field” – as Cain knew all too well – one which acts as a deterrent to crime (Deut 22:23–27). In this way, the story of Cain-as-everyman – specifically, that plot arc leading from fratri-cide to city – represents not only Cain’s individual biogra-phy, but also the general sub-mission of man in his natural state to Leviathan, that mon-strous force able to domes-ticate the proud and thereby

transform them into creatures who are sufficiently docile as to be capable of living togeth-er in a stable commonwealth.

The relationship estab-lished through Cain between violence and the city calls to mind the “cities of refuge” mentioned in various bibli-cal passages (Exod 21:12-14; Numbers 35; Deuteronomy 19; Joshua 20).7 J, it is true, does not explicitly mention these cities, but it seems rea-sonable to assume that he was aware, at the very least, of the idea of them. Indeed, I would go so far as to argue that the Cain myth is in part J’s response to that institu-tion, insofar as the city of ref-uge, not unlike Cain’s city, is understood to function as a deterrent to violence, specifi-cally, vengeance. According to these texts, anyone guilty of accidental manslaughter could flee to certain designat-ed cities, in which he would

Figure 4 (above). Cain slaying Abel. Painting by Peter Paul Rubens. From the collection of the Courtauld Institute of Art, London. Courtesy of WikiMedia Commons user Botaurus, http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/5/51/Peter_Paul_Rubens_-_Cain_slaying_Abel_%28Courtauld_Institute%29.jpg.

Figure 5 (below). A stitched image showing the Ishtar gate of Babylon in full view. On view at the Pergamom Museum, Berlin. Photograph by Radomir Vrbovsky. Courtesy of WikiMedia Commons, user Emmilwastaken, http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/5/53/Ishtar_gate_in_Pergamon_museum_in_Berlin..jpg.



be granted refuge from the vengeance of the victim’s “redeemer”; one guilty of intentional murder, conversely, would be extradited and put to death. (The fact that Cain was not so punished by God is related to the fact, mentioned earlier, that the laws characteriz-ing civilized life had not yet been put into place.) But why should the unintentional killer be directed specifically to a city? The “city” (‘îr) of refuge, one should keep in mind, was, as Hebrew ‘îr indicates in general, walled (Num 35:4), and thus fitted with a gate (Josh 20:4) restricting movement in and out of the city as a discrete, enclosed space (fig. 5). The wall, then, would have functioned as a physical barrier between the killer and the re-deemer. It would also have functioned as a symbolic barrier. For if the killer were to be found outside of this border, the redeemer could kill him with impunity, whereas if the redeemer killed him within the city’s walls, he would be guilty of murder. The city of refuge, then, constitutes a space in which an otherwise law-ful act of vengeance is prohibited. It thus constitutes the inverse image of Cain’s city: Cain’s mark preemptively deters potential

bloodshed; the principle of sanctuary, conversely, deters further bloodshed in response to blood already shed. In both cases, the city functions as a restraint against violence, a version of Leviathan.

Vengeance alone, however, does not provide society with an adequate principle of con-straint, does not constitute, that is, a stable foundation for civilized life. This would seem to be the lesson we are meant to draw from the vainglori-ous boast of Cain’s descen-dant, Lamech: “I have killed a man for a wound, a young boy for a bruise. If Cain was avenged sevenfold, Lamech will be seventy-sevenfold” (4:24). Lamech has outgrown Cain’s childish violence, one merely born of sibling rivalry, and moved on to violence for violence’s sake. The threat of vengeance, it turns out, might deter crime in the short term, but in the long term, the mere threat thereof tends to turn into its actual realisation; and vengeance, once realized, tends to swerve downward into a violent spiral, trans-forming what was originally a retardant into an accelerant. Given his anti-social behav-ior, it seems no coincidence

that Lamech has apparently abandoned the city: n.b., the profes-sions of his first three sons – tent-dwelling and animal husband-ry, music, and metalworking (4:20–22) – all have traditional ties to nomadism (Kawashima 2004: 490). It also seems no coinci-dence that the tale of Lamech immediately precedes that of the flood – at least in J8 – for this monitory example of violent pride run amuck would seem to embody that “evil of humankind” which will lead God, however reluctantly, to destroy all life on earth, save for those aboard the ark (Gen 6:5–7).9

Now, the flood not only eradicates all life, but also all traces of material culture, cities included (fig. 6). Noah and his family, however, will preserve not only life, but also the cultural legacy of the antediluvian world, so that civilization – the city, in particular – will not only survive, but continue to evolve. Thus, according to Genesis 11, humankind, still united after the flood by a single language, migrates en masse to the land of Shinar, where they decide to build a city and a tower, “lest we be scattered upon the face of the whole earth” (11:4; fig. 7). Cain was afraid of encoun-

Figure 6. Light and Colour (Goethe’s Theory) - the Morning after the Deluge - Moses Writing the Book of Genesis. Painting by Joseph Mallord William Turner. From the collection of the Tate, London. Courtesy of WikiMedia Commons user M0tty, http://

upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/1/1b/Unmatinapresledeluge.jpg.



tering anyone in exile; now everyone fears being separat-ed from everyone else. What has changed? Inasmuch as the flood has wiped away all the families of the earth save one, the remnant of humanity is united not only by language, but also by blood: all postdi-luvian humans descend from Noah (9:18–19) and thus ul-timately from Cain himself. Cain, it is true, was capable of fratricide, but humans, at least for the time being, seem to have laid their demons to rest. Perhaps because of the flood’s ultimate lesson: the greatest threat to their survival lies not within, but without, more precisely, above. Accordingly, the city they propose to build this time will not constitute a Leviathan, subjugating its in-habitants to the coercive rule of Law. Rather, it will con-stitute the objective correla-tive of the perfect harmony of the family of man. Such is the power of this unified hu-manity that their tower will, as it were, reach up to the skies: perhaps not an overtly aggressive or hostile act, but certainly a symbolic show of pride and strength in the sight of heaven. This harmony, however, in no way indicates that men have actually outgrown their violent impulses. God himself has already diagnosed hu-man nature as being after the flood exactly what it was before: “Never again will I curse the ground because of humankind, for the inclination of the heart of humankind is evil from youth” (8:21; cf 6:5). He thus reasonably concludes that mortals cannot be left to their own devices: “Look, they are one people, and they all have one language, and this is only the beginning of what they will do, and now nothing they scheme to do will be withheld from them” (11:6). God therefore decrees that they who are at present united by blood and language, shall henceforth be di-vided by language and nationality.

Humans, as a result, will no longer be able to assert their au-tonomy vis-à-vis God, as did the founders of Babel. For they have effectively been ushered into a new version of Hobbes’s war, one of nation against nation, rather than individual against in-dividual.10 Two consequences follow from this revised version of the human condition. On the one hand, by alienating each nation from the others, God circumvents the virtually limitless

mischief that a unified humankind would otherwise be capable of. On the other hand, however, this newly reconfigured human landscape, which creates a previously nonexistent distinction be-tween familiars and strangers, raises a new ethical question: How will any given city-state treat outsiders?

Genesis 19 provides two paradigmatic answers to precisely this question. Two angels of God, having supped with Abraham at the oaks of Mamre, continue on to the city of Sodom, where they encounter two very different receptions. Lot, on the one hand, not only welcomes them into his home, but offers them protec-tion at great personal risk. The men of Sodom, on the other hand, accost them as a mob, with the express intention of sexually vio-lating them. Note well: whereas Cain feared meeting potentially lawless individuals in the pre-civilized world, these two angels actually come up against an entire city united against them in their lawlessness. What is remarkable, then, is that the citizens of Sodom exhibit no fear of violence from one another. Apparently, the legacy of Cain – the peaceful coexistence within the city of its citizens – remains intact. For the abominable violence of Sodom

Figure 7. The Tower of Babel. Painting by Pieter Brueghel the Younger. From the collection of the Museo Nacional del Prado. Courtesy of WikiMedia Commons user Botaurus,

http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/f/f0/Pieter_Brueghel_de_Jonge_-_De_bouw_van_de_toren_van_Babel.jpg.



is directed, not inward, but outward, toward the Other. Thus, when Lot, who seems to have blended in amongst the locals well enough up to now, defies the mob in de-fense of his guests, they are only too willing to point out his status as a foreigner: “This one came merely to sojourn [lāgûr] amongst us, and he would actually judge us! Now we will do worse to you than to them” (19:9).

The point of the story of Sodom, however, is not to in-troduce a second avatar of Le-viathan, this time between the city as a whole and outsiders. Fire and brimstone may rain down upon the cities of the plain for their crimes against humanity, but the threat of di-vine judgement will not func-tion as a practical deterrent to collective crime, as does the threat of human reprisal to individual crime. For the wrath of God, in an instructive con-trast to the vengeance of man, is notably rare, even in biblical

times (fig. 8). The story of Sodom constitutes instead a morality tale about civiliza-tion, a tale whose moral is the ethical value of that positive virtue known as hospitality (Alter 1990), that is, treating strangers as if they were fam-ily (Benveniste 1973). Thus, there is no indication that Lot realized whom he was receiv-ing into his home; nor is there any evidence that Abraham realized whom he was feed-ing (fig. 9). Abraham, more-over, intercedes with God on behalf of the strangers dwelling in the Jordan plain, ironically, mere hours before a number of them threaten Lot, his family, and his guests, with bodily harm (18:20–33). The pointed contrast between Abraham and Lot, on the one hand, and the men of Sodom, on the other, brings into focus J’s point. By seeking to harm

those whom they should have helped, the Sodomites condemn themselves to death by fire; by entertaining angels unawares, Lot

Figure 8 (above). The Burning of Sodom. Painting by Camille Corot. On view in the Metrolpolitan Museum of Art, http://images.metmuseum.org/CRDImages/ep/original/DT2014.jpg.

Figure 9 (below). Hospitality of Abraham. Tempera on wood, anonymous. From the collection of the Walters Art Museum. Courtesy of WikiMedia Commons user Kaldari, http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/5/50/Russian_-_Hospitality_of_Abraham_-_Walters_371185.jpg.



earns his salvation from said fire; by exhibiting compassion for those whom he has never even met, Abraham proves himself worthy of the regard God already has for him (18:17–19).

In fact, hospitality is arguably the cardinal virtue in J’s moral and political vision. Consider the evolution of the city and its relationship to the Other: Cain feared all strangers; amongst the builders of Babel there were no strangers; the men of Sodom were a menace to strangers, whereas Lot and Abraham, them-selves nomadic strangers in Canaan, were their friend. Indeed, the concern Abraham and Lot show for the Other would seem to align them with Yahweh, whose “compassion” (ḥemlâ) leads his angels to forcibly remove a hesitant Lot, along with his family, from the doomed city (19:16). Thus, whereas Leviathan coerces men into suppressing their natural violent impulses, hospitality will lead a select few to willingly reject them.

This is not to say that J idealizes Israel and its ancestors. To take only the most egregious example, two of Jacob’s sons – Simeon and Levi – betray and murder their hosts, the men of Shechem, in Genesis 34. Thus, whereas Sodom threatened its would-be guests with violence, Shechem falls victim to the vio-lence of its guests. And let us not forget one of the central prem-ises of J’s work and of the tradition it is based upon: viz., that Yahweh dispossessed the Canaanites for the sake of the Israelites. Does this not somehow violate the principle of hospitality? The story of Sodom, again, is crucial. The Jordan plain, one should consider, constitutes the border of the promised land. The gates

of Sodom, then, represent, by synecdoche, the gates of Canaan as a whole. This being the case, God’s ominous parting words to Abraham, as he prepares to take his leave of his host, seem to signal, in retrospect, a crucial turning point in history: “The out-cry against Sodom and Gomorrah, how great it is, and their sin, how very grave! Let me go down and see whether they have done altogether according to the outcry which has come up to me. And if not, I will know” (18:20–21). According to J, then, God’s pyrotechnic judgement functioned as a first salvo, a warning to the Canaanites of the invasion to come, just as the Dead Sea, produced by said judgement, would later serve as an instructive reminder to Israel of the just fate of its predecessors (fig. 10).

Notes1. In spite of the recent wave of hostility against source criticism, I

continue to operate within the framework of the Documentary Hypothesis: see Kawashima 2010; Friedman 1987; Baden 2012.

2. In J, as Knohl (2004) observes: there is no Sethite genealogy; Cain is the sole surviving offspring of Adam and Eve; Noah son of Lamech thus descends from Cain; Lamech’s naming of Noah, which not coinciden-tally invokes Yahweh (5:29), was originally a part of J’s Cainite geneal-ogy in Genesis 4; it was moved to the Sethite genealogy by the Redactor.

3. Reading with the Septuagint, et al.4. Karl Budde argues that it was Enoch, not Cain, who built this city,

partly based on the claim that once a genealogy recounts the birth of a son, no further mention should be made of the father’s acts (1883:

Figure 10. Beach at the Dead Sea, Western Jordan. Courtesy of WikiMedia Commons user Zairon, http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/7/73/Jordanien_Totes_Meer_18.JPG.



ABOUT THE AUTHOR

Robert S. Kawashima is an associate professor at the University of Florida in the Department of Religion and the Center for Jewish Studies. He received the Ph.D. in Comparative Literature from the University of California, Berkeley. His research thus far has focused primarily on the Hebrew Bible, treating it as a literary artifact within the context of both the ancient Mediterranean world and the literary and intellectual history of the West. He is the author most notably of Biblical Nar-rative and the Death of the Rhapsode; he has also written articles on biblical Hebrew, biblical law, and Israelite religion, not to mention Homer and literary theory. His current book project, The Archaeology of Ancient Israelite Knowledge, is an analysis of Israel’s religious traditions informed by Foucault’s investigations into the history of systems of thought.

120; see also Westermann 1984: 327). But in fact, it is precisely by breaking this pattern that J reveals the true significance of Cain’s story. For the same reason, Lamech’s song of vengeance follows the birth of three sons and a daughter (Gen 4:19–24).

5. André LaCocque has suggested in passing the relevance of Hobbes for the story of Cain (2008: 100 n.58, 122 n.137, 138).

6. I rely heavily on Strauss’s succinct account of “The Moral Basis” of Hobbes’s political philosophy (1963: 6–29). I hasten to add that ac-cepting Strauss’s analysis is not a prerequisite for acknowledging the family resemblance between Hobbes’s Leviathan and J’s.

7. For a brief overview, see Cohn and Elon 2007.8. There is reason to believe that in J, Gen 6:1–4 originally came af-

ter the flood. The point of this story, after all, is to account for the origin of the Nephilim, who would later inhabit the promised land (Num 13:33). The current location of this origin story is thus illogi-cal, insofar as the flood kills everything that breathes (Gen 7:22). The awkward insertion “and also afterward” (6:4) is both an attempt to resolve this contradiction (cf Dillmann 1897: 242) and also a trace of the story’s original, logical location.

9. Even if we leave Gen 6:1–4 in its present location, this origin story does not explain why God chose to flood his creation. For the real culprits here are not the “daughters of humankind” but rather the “sons of godkind,” whereas J’s flood is meant to punish human evil (Gen 6:5–7; see Hendel 1987).

10. Hobbes, too, distinguishes between the citizen, already submitted as such to the State, and the city, which behaves like man in his natural state in its dealings with other cities (Hobbes 1991: 89–90; De Cive, epistle dedicatory).

ReferencesAlter, Robert. 1990. Sodom as Nexus. Pp. 146–60 in The Book and

the Text: The Bible and Literary Theory, ed. Regina M. Schwartz. Oxford: Blackwell.

Baden, Joel S. 2012. The Composition of the Pentateuch: Renewing the Documentary Hypothesis. New Haven: Yale University Press.

Benveniste, Emile. 1973. Phílos. Pp. 273–88 in Indo-European Language and Society. Coral Gables: University of Miami Press.

Budde, Karl. 1883. Die biblische Urgeschichte (Gen. 1–12, 5). Giessen:

J. Ricker.Cohn, Haim Hermann and Menachem Elon. 2007. City of Refuge. Pp.

4.742–45 in Encyclopaedia Judaica, eds. Michael Berenbaum and Fred Skolnik. 2d ed. Detroit: Macmillan Reference USA.

Dillmann, August. 1897. Genesis: Critically and Exegetically Expound-ed, trans. W. Stevenson. Vol. 1; Edinburgh: T. & T. Clark.

Friedman, Richard Elliott. 1987. Who Wrote the Bible? Englewood Cliffs, NJ: Prentice Hall.

Gunkel, Hermann. 1997 [1910]. Genesis, trans. M. Biddle. Macon, GA: Mercer University Press.

Hendel, Ronald S. 1987. Of Demigods and the Deluge: Toward an Interpretation of Genesis 6:1-4. JBL 106: 13–26.

Hobbes, Thomas. 1991 [1658, 1642]. Man and Citizen: (De Homine and De Cive), ed. Bernard Gert. Indianapolis: Hackett Publishing Company.. 1996 [1651]. Leviathan, ed. Richard Tuck. Cambridge: Cam-bridge University Press.

Kawashima, Robert S. 2004. Homo Faber in J’s Primeval History. Zeitschrift für die Alttestamentliche Wissenschaft 116: 483–501.. 2010. Sources and Redaction. Pp. 47–70 in Reading Genesis: Ten Methods, ed. Ronald Hendel. Cambridge: Cambridge Uni-versity Press.. 2014. Covenant and Contingence: The Historical Encounter be-tween God and Israel. Pp. 51–70 in Myth and Scripture: Contem-porary Perspectives on Religion, Language, and Imagination, ed. Dexter Callender. Atlanta: Scholars Press.

Knohl, Israel. 2004. Cain: The Forefather of Humanity. Pp. 63–67 in Sefer Moshe, eds. Chaim Cohen, Avi Hurvitz, and Shalom M. Paul. Winona Lake, IN: Eisenbrauns.

LaCocque, André. 2008. Onslaught against Innocence: Cain, Abel and the Yahwist. Eugene, OR: Cascade Books.

Schwartz, Regina M. 1997. The Curse of Cain: The Violent Legacy of Monotheism. Chicago: University of Chicago Press.

Skinner, John. 1930. Genesis. 2d ed. Edinburgh: T.&T. Clark.Strauss, Leo. 1963. The Political Philosophy of Hobbes. Chicago: Univer-

sity of Chicago Press.Westermann, Claus. 1984. Genesis 1-11: A Commentary, trans. J. Scul-

lion. Minneapolis: Augsburg Pub House.


Documents

Violence and the City: On the Yahwist’s Leviathan