Where Exactly Did Cain Wander?

There a number of places within The Bible that show just what a mishmash of old stories it is, as well as just how old it is. The resolution to the story of Cain and Abel is one of the more obvious spots, as Cain is thrown into exile to travel among the other peoples of the Earth. However, an interesting point is that, if Adam and Eve are the first couple, and Cain and Abel are presumably the only two other people on the planet. Yet somehow he was able to find another group of people to hang with. An interesting issue, to be sure.

There are, of course, several interpretations of this. The first, and most obvious, is that he had married one of his sisters prior to his exile and was able to build up a family to the size of city by the time he died. Given the age people supposedly died at that period of time (a number of people were living almost a thouand years back then), he would have a lot of time to accomplish exactly that. Obviously incest was not an issue at the time (the exact law against it was not introduced until much later) and inbreeding was not yet a worry. This is the literal translation.

The second, and more boring, interpretation, is that the Jewish has the same problem a lot of tribes had. Specifically, a number of linguists have noted that a number of Native American tribes translates as roughly "The People" and they consider themselves humans while considering everyone else foreign. All this means is that Adam and Eve would be the first Jewish people, and that other races existed at the time with their own origin. As such, Cain would find it easy to find another group to hang out with and eventually marry into, and even found a city with their assistance.

However, there is also the metaphorical aspect of The Bible that comes into play. It is worth noting that the Land of Nod translates as "Land of the Wanderer", making it an apt location for one who had been exiled. More to the point, Cain's exile was a spiritual one, and that the land he was exiled to was more of mental exile than physical. His murder of Abel set him apart from God and His chosen people, and so far apart from that he was unable to return and had to stay in exile. He had to accept an entirely new mindset, which would have marked him as different, in order to adapt to his new situation. In essence, he was split from his people and marked as something entirely different.

If you also allow that a number of stories in The Bible were warnings (the tale of King Solomon and the two mothers was a political warning), then it obviously warns that if you commit a sin against God, He will punish you. No matter how well you hide it from others, you cannot hide it from God. Given how much Genesis tends towards punishment and warnings it seems to be common theme.

So it is an interesting story, and says a lot about those that wrote it. I just wish they had been a happier people.

Hobby Lobby and How Little People Know The Law

The Hobby Lobby decision has a lot of people spooked, and for good reason. The short and nasty version is that the Supreme Court of the United States ruled in favor of the company's ability to use ObamaCare as their insurance, but they were able to get an exemption: They did not need to pay for four means of contraception. Although the ruling should have a narrow effect, that is it only effects a very specific situation, a lot of people are worried it can have a broader effect. The good news is that a lot of the worry is for naught.

There are three interesting points that people seem to bring up a lot that show just how little they paid attention in civics. The first is that people feel that the Supreme Court needs to worry about popular opinion. That's part of the reason that they are hired for life; that gives them the freedom to know that no matter how unpopular their decision is there can be no political ramifications. This allows them to make those unpopular decisions as they are required, and especially when someone else would have to worry about the political ramifications for making that decision. It's a hard job, but that ability to ignore politics is a major advantage.

The other is that the belief that the concept of corporations as "people" is a recent one. It is a legal fiction that has been around since the 14th Century and serves a number of important functions, not the least of which is to provide a continuity of contracts; if not for that fiction then contracts would get really weird. The problem is that when corporations get in trouble they can't be sent to jail, but they can be fined; sending a corporation to jail sounds like a great idea, but that would mean sentencing the people on the line as well as the executives, so it sort of sucks.

The last is that legal definitions can be different than medical definitions. The basic reason is politicians are not medical doctors; as such they tend to go for a more general definition than a physician would. The best example of this is how the RU238 pill works in regard to an abortion. From a medical perspective it does not qualify as an abortion as it stops a pregnancy before it really becomes a pregnancy; from a legal perspective, however, it is an abortion as it stops a fertilized egg from becoming a viable child. For a group that can get truly pedantic, these issues crop up all too often.

That said, the decision itself is not only only narrow, but can be fixed with the proper legislation. The decision was based on a loophole put in place by Republican conservatives to allow privately-owned companies to opt out of contraceptives that they saw as causing abortion. Although it has been mentioned that companies could therefore ignore policies that go against the religious beliefs of its owners, such as blood transfusions, the reality is that is an unlikely scenario at best; most of those scenarios have been dealt with at the local level and are unlikely to need to be dealt with again.

In short, a woman still has control over her body, she just may have to pay for some of the contraceptives. Roe v. Wade has not been overturned, by any stretch of the imagination, but at the same time, for now, the religious rights of company owners have been respected. Other insurance carriers can insure the contraceptives, and publically-held companies are required to insure them as well, so this is not necessarily a step backwards for equal rights so much as it a stagger. However, a minor change in the legislation can easily fix the issue, and that actually be seen sometime in the next year or so.