Publisher's Synopsis
Cain and Abel: Do we really know them? The obviousness of fratricide has dazzled us and led us to miss other messages of the text. Iosef Kleiner proposes here a different, daring, revolutionary analysis, after a careful reading of details generally overlooked in this biblical account. In an analysis, partly textual, partly psychological, arguing with classical Jewish and Christian biblical exegesis, as well as with modern biblical critical analysis, Iosef Kleiner discovers a Cain who may not have been so evil, but rather a forger, whose creative and uncontrolled spirit leads him also to anger and to commit a terrible and abominable act. Cain has established a serious imbalance and must find the lost equilibrium again. Where there is almost no possibility of doing, Cain, the forger, errs, falls, fails; but he gets up, continues, creates and tries to repair. Dialoguing with Freudian and Lacanian developments on narcissism and aggressiveness, Iosef Kleiner sees that the figure of Cain could be taken as a psychological paradigm of the relationship between creativity and aggression, a figure that has much to teach us about the human character, the human being's strivings, mistakes and successes. This is a work created for the general public as well as for the academic public, who will be able to find here analytical and bibliographical elements in the areas of philosophy, psychology, biblical literature, literary analysis and Hebrew philology.
