Ever see the musical Oklahoma?

Okay, it's thin on plot (though the songs are memorable – and one even went on to become an official state song), but it dealt with one interesting issue, which was the conflict between cattle ranchers – who  during the period of the show (early 1900s), required hundreds of acres of open, unfenced land – and farmers, who by necessity require fences and boundaries.

In a way, it reminded me of a story in the Book of Genesis. Abel, as you might recall, was essentially a cowman. (Actually, he herded sheep and goats, but it's the same principle.) Cain on the other hand was a farmer. When it came time to offer up a sacrifice to their common Deity, Abel put a lamb on his altar, which was acceptable – and Cain offered his produce, which was not. This made Cain a little upset (and why not? He worked his butt off to grow that stuff and pull it out of the ground).

You know what happened next.

Now, a lot of religious scholars, Jewish, Christian and Muslim, have had their own takes on this story over the centuries. Most Sunday School teachers simply tell children that Cain was jealous because God liked Abel better. On the other hand, some rabbis, using a method of interpretation called midrash, figure that there was jealousy over a woman involved. Other interpretations peg Cain as being just plain evil. But I think all of these people are missing the real point of what this story is about.

With all due respect to the devout among us, I'd like to step out of that religious viewpoint and look at it as an anthropologist or paleontologist might.

Often, what we all like to label as "conservative" and "liberal/progressive" are just words for "old" and "new." (Stay with me here.) For example, the word "pagan" really means "country/rural people" who practiced old ways of doing things. Back in the day, when the first Christian missionaries were heading into the back country of Iron Age Europe from the cities of the Roman Empire, their religion was considered something "new." It threatened those in the countryside who followed the "old" ways.

Now, let's back up another 8,000 years or so. At one time, all people were hunters and gatherers. After awhile, hunters started following herds; eventually, this became what we know as ranching. This is the way people got a lot of their food for thousands of years.

Nobody knows for sure when people figured out how to plant, tend and sow crops. What we call the "Angricultural Revolution" seems to have started in several places at different times – and you can be certain that it didn't happen overnight. Nonetheless, agriculture was at one time, a "new thing" – and because it required fences and a strange new concept known as "private property," it wasn't long before the new agriculture came into conflict with the old herding/ranching lifestyle.

What if the story of Cain and Abel is a metaphor representing this conflict? Since farming was a "new" thing, and therefore threatening to the status quo, it shouldn't come as a surprise that Cain got a reputation for being a bad guy (fact that he murdered his own brother notwithstanding).

This same tragedy was played out in the American West during the latter part of the 19^th Century; the "range wars" are a part of our history (the 1953 movie Shane was set against on such conflict).  Eventually, the government had to step in to make sure that farmers and cowmen could work together and play nice.

I'll have some more thoughts on this next week...