Cain

Cain, the first-born of Adam and Eve, appears in the book of Genesis as the prototype of human weakness descending swiftly into inhuman wickedness, and Cain and his family are contrasted with the husbandman Abel as the founders of settled life and worldly culture. A sect of the Ophite Gnostics, called Cainites (130 A.D.), believed that Cain was the offspring of the intercourse of a superior Power with Eve, and Abel of an inferior Power; that their characters corresponded to their paternal parentage, and that the slaying of Abel only symbolised the victory of the superior over the inferior Power. See Gnostics, OPHITES.