A very thorough and provocative study brother. You are but one of many who always get disgusted at the very plain teachings of Christ.
You say that Cain was not the first murderer, that it was Satan? Then why is it that Cain is listed as murdering Abel and not Satan?
In John 8:44 Christ is rebuking the Pharisees and blatantly calling them out as the children of Satan. Throughout the entire scripture there is a message of seedline, all the way from Cain and Abel. Why do you think God put enmity between the seed or the offspring of the woman and the offspring of the 'serpent' the Nachash, this whisperer of secrets, an enchanter. Do not think that I haven't studied the original texts, as I have devoted much of my life to studying the Word.
It is typical of those that deny any seedline in scripture to point to Genesis 4:1 where it says: “And Adam knew Eve his wife; and she conceived, and bare Cain, and said, I have gotten a man from Yahweh.” They will say: “You see there, Cain was the son of Adam.” They don’t seem to realize that Eve was already pregnant with Cain before Adam “knew” her. If they would take the time to study and see what the rest of the Bible has to say on the matter, they wouldn’t come to that erroneous conclusion. Let’s consider 1 John 3:12:
“Not as Cain, who was of that wicked one, and slew his [½] brother...”
Here, the word “of” in Greek is #1537 in the Strong’s Concordance. When used implying a person, it means “a son of.”
Its also important to know that 'to eat' is a transliteration of 'to lie with, sexually'
The New Testament in Modern English by J.B. Phillips: “We are none of us to have the spirit of Cain, who was a son of the devil ...”
Smith And Goodspeed: “We must not be like Cain who was a child of the evil one ...”
Living Bible: “We are not to be like Cain, who belonged to Satan ...”
New English Bible: “... unlike Cain who was a child of the evil one ...”
New Century Bible: “Do not be like Cain who belonged to the Evil One.”
The New Jerusalem Bible: “... not to be like Cain, who was from the Evil One ...”
The Modern Reader’s Bible: “... not as Cain was of the evil one ...”
Now that we have consulted some various translations on 1 John 3:12, let’s take a look at some Bible commentaries on this same verse:
The Wycliffe Bible Commentary page 1473: “He [Cain] is said to have belonged to thefamily of the wicked one.”
Matthew Poole’s Commentary On The Holy Bible, volume 3, page 936: “Which showed him [Cain] to be of that wicked one, of the serpent’s seed: so early was such seed sown, and so ancient the enmity between seed and seed.”
Matthew Henry’s Commentary, volume 6, page 1077: “It showed that he [Cain] was as the firstborn of the serpent’s seed ...”
That it is speaking concerning the GENETICS of Cain and his descendants compared to the GENETICS of the woman and her descendants can be readily observed in 1 John 3:9 (three verses before) contrasting the seed (offspring) of the serpent and the seed (offspring) of the woman:
“Whosoever is born of Yahweh doth not commit sin; for his seed (spérma)remaineth in him: and he cannot sin because he is born of Yahweh.”Here the word for seed in the Strong’s Concordance is the Greek word #4690, spérma,AND YOU CAN’T GET ANY MORE GENETIC THAN THAT! In other words, the reason the descendants of Satan through Cain (the “Jews”) act the way they do is because it is in theirGENES. Likewise those born of Adam and Eve, the offspring of Yahweh, will behave according to their GENETICS.
There is a real problem with the word “seed”, spérma, expressed by W.E. Vine in hisAn Expository Dictionary Of New Testament Words. This is what he says on page 339:
“While the plural form ‘seeds’, neither in Hebrew nor in Greek, would have been natural any more than in English (it is not used in Scripture of human offspring; its plural occurrence is in 1 Sam. 8:15, of crops), yet if the Divine intention had been to refer to Abraham’s natural descendants, another word would have been chosen in the plural, such as ‘children’ ... ”
Note: There is nothing wrong with the first half of Vine’s statement, which is actually helpful, explaining that in Hebrew and Greek a singular “seed” is used to denote a collective plural, as in English. It is the second half of Vine’s statement which is faulty, using a word that describes a collective and limiting it to a single one. Further, in the original Hebrew, it may very well be that “seed” is always singular except in 1 Samuel 8:15, where multiple varieties are implied, and the plural would certainly be proper! It would, therefore, be proper to indicate that Eve’s “seed”, like Jacob’s “seed”, would be a singular kind of seed. There is a world of difference between a single variety of seed and a single seed. How are we to interpret Genesis 17:7 where it says: “... thy seed after their generation(s)”? It should be noted that all of Yahweh’s Covenants with Adam-man were made with a single variety of “seed.” The word “seed” in Scripture is important, for it excludes all those who are not “seed.” Whether or not Vine had an ax to grind is hard to say, but he doesn’t seem to ring entirely true according to Wilson’s Old Testament Word Studies, page 377 where Wilson states concerning this word:
“... semen virile, hence children, offspring, posterity; spoken also of one child when an only one ...”
It would seem that Vine is applying the singular “seed”, spérma, in all cases, whether in a collective sense or in situations where there is but one child. Also, Vine’s statement does not square with #2233 (seed) in the Gesenius’ Old Testament Lexicon. I believe that many of the one-seedliners have been misled by Vine. By Vine applying a false premise for the word “seed”, spérma, it would be hard to estimate his influence in many Bible commentaries and religious books. There is one thing about it: either Vine is wrong or Wilson is wrong! It should also be noted, Vine referred to various “Rabbis” regarding the word “seed.” More than likely, this is where he got the idea that in all Scripture, both Old and New Testament, in every case, the word “seed” was used in the singular.
