"CAIN ROSE up AGAINST His BROTHER ABEL and KILLED HIM": MURDER OR MANSLAUGHTER?
"CAIN ROSE UP AGAINST His BROTHER ABEL AND KILLED HIM": MURDER OR MANSLAUGHTER? Irene Merker Rosenberg* Yale L. Rosenberg** I. INTRODUCTION The world's first case of man slaying man,' and, indeed, the earliest recorded crime,2 is dealt with in a series of terse verses in Genesis, the first of the five Books of the Torah,3 the Jewish Bible: * Royce R. Till Professor of Law, University of Houston Law Center. B.A., College of the City of New York, 1961; LL.B., New York University School of Law, 1964. ** A.A. White Professor of Law, University ofHouston Law Center. B.A., Rice University, 1959; LL.B., New York University School of Law, 1964. We extend special thanks to Rabbi Arnold Greenman for his invaluable assistance on the Jewish law segment of this article. Thanks also to Harriet Richman, Director, Faculty Research Services, University of Houston Law Library, and the students under her supervision, especially Stewart Schmella, Class of 2001, University of Houston Law Center. In addition, we have profited greatly from the suggestions of our colleagues in the "Thursday Thoughts" faculty workshop, especially Joseph Sanders. In our citations to Jewish law materials, we have used English translations whenever possible, verifying their accuracy by comparing them with the original sources. In some cases, however, this means that the same word will be transliterated differently by various translators. For example, the Hebrew letter equivalents of"s" and "t" are sometimes used interchangeably. With respect to Hebrew and Aramaic sources that have not been translated into English, we of course vouch for the accuracy of the translations.
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