Cain, Abel, Seth, and T H E Meaning of Human Life as Portrayed I N T H E Books of Genesis and Ecclesiastes

Jean-Paul Sartre, one of the most influential philosophers of the twentieth century, wrote in his philosophical works about a pessimism that is the result of the plight of human beings in the modem world. He claimed that any authentic human being knows that his or her acts are ultimately htde in the face of death and the absurdity of existence.' As with God, human beings create worlds upon worlds; as with Sisyphus, they push their boulder daily up the steep inche of existence without complaint since it is their boulder-they created it.2 If consciousness is made the object of reflective study, Sartre continues, it is found to be "a monstrous, impersonal spontaneity," in which thoughts come and go at their wdl, not ours. Human beings constantly struggle to impose order on that spontaneity; when they fail to do so, they suffer from psychoses and neuroses. Human beings, Sartre contended, have been thrown into an absurd, meaningless world without their permission, where they dscover that nohngness separates them from them~elves.~ There is nothmg between humanity and its past (i.e., humans are not who they were), or between humanity and its future (i.e., the persons humans will be is not who they presently are). Thus humanity awaits itself in the future, but is in angush because it has discovered that it is not there; that it is not a stable, solid entity that can last through time. Rather, humans are a self-made creation, made and remade from moment to moment by them~elves.~ Sartre's worldview is correct if human beings are alone in the universe. However, if the universe was originally a friendly place with a moral structure established by God, then everythmg must be seen differently. For instance, the story of Cain, Abel, and Seth in Gen 4 presents an account of how harmony and happiness were transformed into absurdty, meaninglessness, and pessimism. The book of Ecclesiastes develops a similar idea by attempting to answer the riddle of human existence.' Thus the purpose of this article is to compare these two