CAIN was, according to Genesis iv. 1, the first-born son of Adam and Eve. The genealogy is interrupted by the story of Cain and Abel (q.v.), vv. 2-16, which cannot very well be from the same stratum of tradition as the Garden of Eden story, which pre cedes, for it implies the existence of a considerable population in the earth (v.14) . It relates how Cain, a tiller of the ground, enraged because the Lord accepted the offering of his shepherd brother Abel in preference to his own, murdered Abel. For this crime he is cursed and banished from the settled country. Before he departs to the land of Nod (wandering), feeling that in his exile he will be the victim of any man who encounters him, he obtains from the Lord a sign of protection, and a promise that if he be slain despite it he shall be avenged sevenfold. The story is probably intended to explain how a certain tribe, bearing the name of Cain, came to have a certain tattoo mark, and to be noted for the plenteous vengeance it took upon any other tribe by whose hands one of its members was slain. It explains, too, from the point of view of the settled peoples, how this tribe came to live a nomad life. It has been plausibly argued, especially by Eduard Meyer (in Die lsraeliten) that the tribe in question is the Kenites. The genealogy is resumed in iv. 17-24. In the parallel genealogy from the Priestly Source, Genesis v., the Kenan who appears fourth in the list is probably to be identified with Cain. The representation of Cain as a city-builder accords ill with the picture of Cain the nomad. Irenaeus mentions a Gnostic sect of the second century called the Cainites, who be lieved that Cain derived his existence from the superior, Abel from the inferior, power, and that Cain was the first of a line which included Esau, Korah, and the Sodomites; their evangel was a Gospel of Judas. (W. L. W.)