Never before has the problem of evil been a more urgent subject for our reflection. The Yahwist confronts the issue through a sequence of stories on the progressive deterioration of the divine-human relationship in Genesis 2-11. In Genesis 4 he narrates the initial slaughter of one human being by another, and strikingly, it is described as fratricidal. Onslaught Against Innocence: Cain, Abel, and the Yahwist provides a close reading of J's story by using literary criticism and psychological criticism. It shows that the biblical author has more than an "e;archaeological"e; design. His characters--including God, Adam, Eve, Cain, and Abel, plus minor characters--are paradigmatic. They allow J to proceed with a fine analytical feel for the nature of evil as performed by "e;homo"e; as "e;homini lupus."e; No imaginative "e;mimesis"e; of evil has ever been recounted with such an economy of means and such depth of psychological insight.
