>I considered the Yama & Manu = Abel & Cain idea myself a while ago, but
>I think you relying way too much on it here. If I had to draw a
>connection, I would say the Cain & Abel story was a late folkloric
>addition to Semitic myth, an addition modeled perhaps on contacts with
>IE peoples or maybe the ur-myth I posited in my last post. In other
>words I don't see Cain and Abel as being very relevant to >reconstruction.
No, John, you're underestimating the Old European myth underlying the Bible.
The Tree of Good and Bad is the World Tree (Norse myth: Yggdrasil). Cain and
Abel is also part of the original Creation myth, the Horse Twins in IE myth.
The mention of the "watery deep" in the Beginning (aka Tiamat, *Da:nu) etc.
Even the Flood myth is simply the retelling of the Creation myth where a
bird is set free to fly over the waters to find land (aka Goddess as Raven,
Creatrix of the World-Tree and ultimately the entire cosmos), etc, etc. The
themes recur over and
over in the same order in Sumerian, Akkadian and IE myth. The main structure
always involves a watery Underworld which I believe is part of the Old
European tripartition that would be adopted by the IE and Semitish in part.
Sorry, no go. The connections are sound.
- gLeN
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