Misinterpretations Of The Mark Of Cain
Stupidity is a rampant thing. Unlike ignorance, stupidity is willful, and sought out. One fine example of stupidity is that some of the early Christians interpreted the “mark” of Cain to be part of the “curse.” This supposed mark, was darkened skin. Which led to the belief that those with dark skin were “marked” by God, and still under the curse of Cain. This led justification to racists all over the world. Eventually, this belief has been largely discredited, and has fallen along the wayside to all those except the grandest examples of stupidity, which reside within white supremacist groups, and a very small number of modern Christian churches. In actuality, there are no credited theories as to what exactly the “mark” of Cain was.
A Jewish text, called the “Zohar” believed the mark of Cain to be the letter “vav,” or “waw.” Further misinterpretations went on to say that the phrase from the Bible, “And Cain was very wroth, and his countenance fell”. In Syriac Christianity, this is interpreted to mean that Cain underwent a permanent change in skin tone. Rather instead that his “countenance” falling just meant that he became, or depressed, as other might consider the phrase to mean. This is to say that Cain became dark skinned, as well as all of his descendant; such as those who are nomadic in the deserts located in Arabia, and Africa. Ephrem the Syrian wrote that “Abel was bright as the light, / but the murderer (Cain) was dark as the darkness”.
Other arguments were made which supported this belief in the late fifth or early sixth century, in the Eastern Christian or Armenian, Adam-book texts, it’s written “And the Lord was wroth with Cain. . . He beat Cain’s face with hail, which blackened like coal, and thus he remained with a black face.” This was supposedly taken to mean the mark of Cain, that God gave him as part of the curse. In an Irish Christian text, known as The Versified Psalter, AD written in 988 A.D., it’s recorded that Gabriel announced to Adam “Dark rough senseless Cain is going to kill Abel.” However, this makes it seem as though Cain was already dark in skin tone. So, to finally draw a conclusion to this idiotic theory, one thing happens either before or after something else.