Cain, Abel, and the Politics of God

This is a groundbreaking analysis of the famous biblical sibling rivalry between Cain and Abel, so crucial for the three Abrahamic religious traditions. In critical theoretical dialogue with Giorgio Agamben, Jacques Ranciere, and Julia Kristeva, Gonzalez adeptly transforms the classical interpretations of that first instance of homicide. Conscious of the centrality of that biblical saga for our literary and cultural traditions, Gonzalez engages in a fruitful dialogue with Lord Byron's play Cain: A Mystery. As a scholar of Latino heritage, he also holds an enlightening conversation with two of the most celebrated Latin American writers: Jorge Luis Borges and Cesar Vallejo. This is an important contribution to the interpretation of one of the most perplexing and bewildering texts of the Hebrew sacred scriptures. - Luis N. Rivera-Pagan, Henry Winters Luce Professor in Ecumenics Emeritus, Princeton Theological Seminary, USA Murder? He probes! Gonzalez Holguin's book is a significant and sophisticated study of the many unsolved mysteries involved in the first homicide and fratricide in human history narrated in the Hebrew Bible. Drawing from the scholarship of Agamben, Ranciere, and Kristeva, Gonzalez Holguin reads the reception history of this passage-within both biblical scholarship and the larger literary world-and relates Abel's death to today's questions about human rights and immigration. This book is wide-ranging, thought-provoking, and socio-politically relevant. Don't miss it! - Tat-siong Benny Liew, Class of 1956 Professor in New Testament Studies, College of the Holy Cross, Worcester, MA, USA Cain, Abel, and the Politics of God is a groundbreaking re-interpretation of Gen. 4:1-16. It demonstrates that biblical studies can greatly profit from taking into account literary rewritings and re-interpretations of biblical stories, for it opens endless possibilities for a more complex and critical approach to those stories. In addressing the key issue of othering at the core of Abel and Cain story, Julian Andres Gonzalez excels in offering an innovative approach to it; he also illuminates the profound impact that bringing together literary and religious studies in illuminating and addressing social, human and political pressing issues of our time as well as convincing us of the urgent necessity of taking a stand, making a commitment in regard to those very issues. This is an exciting and timely study. Cain's figure is no longer that other to be outcast; instead the killing of Abel paves the way to interrogate critically the role of the sovereign: God. In projecting the fate of the immigrant on the cursed Cain, Gonzalez's study unveils a sovereign power that very much relies on politics of exclusion, othering and devaluation of other lives. It takes a passionate stand for human rights precisely there where those rights remain in the parenthetical, precarious life of homo sacer. - Francisco Moran, Department of World Languages and Literatures, Southern Methodist University, USA Cain, Abel, and the Politics of God succeeds in that most difficult of critical tasks, marrying the rigours of traditional scholarship to the imaginative powers of contemporary method. Marshalling writers from Agamben to Augustine, Philo to Foucault, this book offers a reading of immense richness that despite its complexity never overwhelms, never falters, never brays. Gonzalez's Agambenian treatment of Genesis 4 is an important comment on the Bible's political and philosophical currency, then, but equally important is its nature as a challenge to the sovereignty of the old disciplinary boundaries in the academic guild. - Christopher Meredith, St Mary's University, UK By reading against the grain of the narrative of Gen. 4.1-16 and its associated interpretations, Gonzalez Holguin throws fresh light on an ambivalent text ... This fine book is enriched by extensive endnotes and bibliography. - Fleur Houston, Journal for the Study of the Old Testament