Ahmad.10.6.09

**The First Murder: Cain & Able**
Basic gist: Farmer Cain's offering of vegetables is rejected over the superior Able's meat offering. Cain becomes jealous and murders Able.

- jealous - basis of murder - vengeance - from God for killing Able - deceit - Cain kills his own flesh and blood, his own brother - suffering - Cain is damned to live with guilt and put up with hardships of life - pity - God has pity on Cain by not killing him right away (Instead, he lives as a marked man, literally) - free will - Cain's emotions and own decision led him to kill (always had the option to not kill, never coerced into it) - being a marked - a means of defiling the body (additional humiliation)
 * __Themes__**
 * It could be argued that this was a crime of passion, spurred on by raging emotions, as opposed to a premeditated crime that was planned beforehand.

__**Personification**__ - "at the tent flap, sin crouches" - "your brother's blood cries" - "soil that groped with its mouth" -"if you till the soil, it will no longer give you its strength"

__**Rhetorical Device**__ - "Am I my brother's keeper? (rhetorical question) meaning more or less: am I responsible for him?

__**Motifs**__ - soil - source of strength, symbol of life - number 7 (a number of completion, stability)

__**Parallelism**__ - "Why are you incensed? Why is your face falling?"

**The Song of Songs**
Basic gist: a series of love poems about two individuals. Not very Biblical in nature, but could be interpreted allegorically. Different groups have interpreted it differently. Could represent the love between husband and wife or Jesus and world/church. Written in epic style - strikingly similar to Gilgamesh's long-winded descriptions.

__**Portrayal of God**__ - symbolizes love of man to God - representation of the ability to love given to man by God

__**Symbolism**__ - virginity - fountain sealed

__**Metaphors**__ - fertility and beauty of the Earth compared to woman's natural beauty - setting compared to Garden of Eden

__**Motifs**__ - vineyards - nature and love

__**The Iliad**__
__connotation__ - meanings associated with a word, the baggage a word brings along with it __denotation__ - a word as defined in the dictionary, the factual explanation


 * A lot of symbols, connotations, and denotations are found in the Illiad*

- starts off in the last year of a 10-year war - similar themes to Gilgamesh and Old Testament - first word: "Rage!" - of which the catalyst were pride, vengeance, arrogance - point of view may lead us to sympathize with one side, whether that is legitimate or not
 * relationship between divine and man, concept of divinity
 * The theme of humility VS arrogance found in Gilgamesh is the source of the first conflict in The Illiad.
 * Status of god(s) is an issue dealt with in all three
 * Hierarchy, humanistic characteristics, conflicts, jealousy - in Gilgamesh and The Illiad
 * One God, All-Knowing, The Judge - Old Testament