Early Traditions About the Blood of Abel
According
to the Armenian History of Abel and Cain the Sons of Adam 53-55, the
blood of Abel never dried.[1] A medieval Gaelic (Irish) text says “We are told
by the experts, those men of melodious learning, that from ancient times the
stones did not grow, once the blood of Abel had touched them” (Adam and His
Descendants 12).[2] A similar tale was recounted by the eighth century AD
Muslim writer Muhammad ’ibn 'Abd Allah ’al-Kisā’ī, who wrote that “the earth
was drenched with Abel’s blood, and the trees and flowers of the surrounding
area had withered.”[3] Three centuries later, his fellow Muslim, Abu Ishaq
Ahmad b. Muhammad b. Ibrahim al-Thaclabi al-Nisaburi (died 1036), wrote:
When the son of Adam killed his brother the entire earth shook for
seven days. Thereupon the earth drank his blood like the drinking of water . .
. God prohibited the earth from that day to drink any blood forevermore.
Al-Dahhak, who had it on the authority of Ibn Abbas, said: When Cain killed
Abel while Adam was in Mecca, the trees became thorny and the foods changed.
The fruits became sour, the water became bitter, and the earth became dusty.[4]
These later Christian and Muslim traditions may have derived from
an early veneration of Abel’s blood. Three earlier Christian texts, the Conflict
of Adam and Eve, the Book of the Rolls, and the Cave of Treasures,
declare that the antediluvian patriarchs of the line of Abel’s brother Seth,
when placing their posterity under covenant, made them swear “by the blood of
Abel the just.”[5] This information was also reported by the tenth-century
patriarch of Alexandria, Sa’id ibn Batriq (also known as Eutychius) in his Nazm
al-Jawhar.[6]
Footnotes for the Above:
[1] W. Lowndes Lipscomb, the Armenian Apocryphal
Adam Literature (University of Pennsylvania Armenian Texts and Studies 8,
1990), 169-170, 275.
[2] Máire Herbert and Martin McNamara, eds., Irish
Biblical Apocrypha: Selected Texts in Translation (Edinburgh: T & T
Clark, 1989), 18.
[3] W. M. Thackston, Jr., transl., The Tales of the
Prophets of al-Kisa’i (Boston: Twayne, 1978), 2:78.
[4] Al-Thaclabi, Qisas al-’Anbiya’ (“stories of
the prophets”), unpublished translation by Brian Hauglid.
[5] See Conflict of Adam and Eve II, 11:7,
12:10, 14:2, 15:2, 20:25, 27; Cave of Treasures 9b.2, 10a.1, 10b.1,
11a.1, 11b.1, 13a.1, 13a.2; Book of the Rolls 103a-b, 104a, 105b.
[6] For English translations of the relevant passages,
see notes 15, 20, and 23 in S. C. Malan, The Book of Adam and Eve, also
called The Conflict of Adam and Eve with Satan (London: Williams and
Norgate, 1882), 227, 229, and 230.
Source: John A. Tvedtnes, "Chapter 19: The Blood of
Abel," in Joseph Smith and the Ancient World (unpublished)
