Note 35 — DICTIONARY OF ISLĀM. (continued 14)

The account given in the Qurʾān of Cain’s murder is borrowed from the Bible, and his conversation with Abel, before he slew him,35 is the same as that in the Targum of Jerusalem, generally called pseudo-Jonathan. After the murder, Cain sees a raven burying another, and from this sight gains the idea of interring Abel. The Jewish fable differs only in ascribing the interment to the parents: “Adam and his wife sat weeping and lamenting him, not knowing what to do with the body, as they were unacquainted with burying. Then came a raven, whose fellow was dead: he took and buried it in the earth, hiding it before their eyes. Then said Adam, I shall do like this raven, and, taking Abel’s corpse, he dug in the earth and hid it.”36 The sentence following in the Qurʾān—“Wherefore we commanded the children of Israel, that he who slayeth a soul, not by way of retaliation, or because he doeth corruptly in the earth, shall be as if he had slain all mankind; but he who saveth a soul alive shall be as if he saved all souls alive,” would have no connection with what precedes or follows, were it not for the Targum of Onkelos, in the paraphrase of Gen. iv. 10, where it is said that the blood of Cain’s brother cried to God from the earth, thus implying that Abel’s posterity were also cut off. And in the Mishnah Sanhedrin, we find the very words which the Qurʾān attaches to the murder, apparently with sense or connection.37 [ABEL, CAIN.]