In it, the two brothers Dumuzi and Enkimdu are competing over the courtship of the supreme Sumerian goddess Inanna. At first, the goddess favors Enkimdu, but Dumuzi talks her out of it. Dumuzi gets the girl and his brother Enkimdu leaves.

The parallels are striking. Like Cain and Abel, Enkimdu and Dumuzi are a shepherd and a farmer. Like Cain and Abel, they are brothers. Like Cain and Abel, they are in a conflict over the attention of their God. Like in the bible, the shepherd wins the love of God, and the farmer leaves. Basically, the only difference is that in the bible, Cain kills Abel inbetween things.

Scholars have argued that the Cain vs Abel story reflects the old conflict between farmers and nomadic shepherds. In the centuries BC, that was a very real conflict indeed. The bible clearly chooses sides: the shepherds are the good guys, the farmers aren’t.

There’s a funny error in Genesis 4:17. It states that ‘Cain lay with his wife and she became pregnant’. But that clearly can’t be true. Up to that point, Eve should have been the only woman around.