Samael, Eve, and the Demonized Lineage of Cain: From Jewish Mysticism to Christian Demonology

Samael, Eve, and the Demonized Lineage of Cain: From Jewish Mysticism to Christian Demonology

Introduction

Cain, the first murderer in the biblical narrative, quickly became a symbol of corruption in both Jewish and Christian traditions. In the Hebrew Bible, he is the firstborn of Adam and Eve (Gen. 4:1–2). Yet medieval Jewish mystical traditions often reassigned Cain’s paternity to Samael, the serpent-like adversary, thereby associating him with demonic descent. Moncure Daniel Conway’s Demonology and Devil-Lore (1879) preserves this tradition, highlighting how Jewish demonology developed alongside and sometimes in tension with biblical monotheism making readers understand that Jewish were, at the beginning, polytheistic in their ancestral beliefs.

While reading Conway’s book, one gets to realize that Christian demonology later appropriated and reshaped these ideas, transforming Cain into the archetypal sinner and, in some medieval narratives, even an ancestor of sorcerers and heretics. This paper explores Conway’s insights, the kabbalistic expansions, and the Christian adaptations of the Samael–Cain myth.

Conway on Samael and Cain

Conway (1879) underscores the role of Samael as a liminal figure, half angel, half demon, who became a vessel for projecting theological anxieties about evil. He notes:

In Conway’s reading of ancient mythologies, Cain becomes a hybrid figure, a man whose very bloodline is tainted by demonic interference. This shift now explains Cain’s role as the archetypal fratricide we are presented in the book of Genesis:

Kabbalistic Sources: Samael and Eve

Going further in Conway’s book, the kabbalistic Zohar elaborates on this theme by connecting Samael with both Lilith and Eve. Conway (1879) points out that it is Lillith, Adam’s first wife, the one serpent in the Garden of Eden tempting Eve, Adam’s second wife. In Zohar I:35b–36a, Samael mates with Eve and produces Cain, whereas Abel is fathered by Adam. Thus, the first brothers already represent two spiritual lineages: one corrupted, one pure.

From a different mythological line, the Pirke de-Rabbi Eliezer (ch. 21) similarly suggests that the serpent (identified with Samael, and not with Lillith) impregnated Eve with Cain. This dual paternity creates a mythological framework where Cain’s act of murder is not only personal but genealogical; he kills his “half” brother because he is born of a killer spirit. Finally, as Isaac Luria explains, in later kabbalistic thought, he tied Cain’s soul to the “qelippot” (husks of impurity), while Abel’s soul contained holy sparks destined for redemption (Scholem, 1965).

Mythological Parallels

The story of Cain’s demonic paternity parallels other myths of divine-human hybrids. From the Greek Heracles, born of Zeus and a mortal, to the biblical Nephilim of 1 Enoch, such unions blur the line between human and supernatural. Yet unlike heroic hybrids, Cain embodies corruption rather than greatness. His lineage is not destined for triumph but for violence.

Conway situates this in a larger pattern:

Christian Demonology and Cain

As Christianity started to absorb Jewish mystical motifs, Cain’s image expanded in demonological imagination. Early Church Fathers, such as Augustine, emphasized Cain as the prototype of the civitas terrena (earthly city), in opposition to Abel’s civitas Dei (City of God) (City of God, XV.1). Though Augustine does not mention Samael directly, his dichotomy laid the foundation for seeing Cain’s lineage as spiritually corrupt.

By the Middle Ages, Christian demonology began incorporating Jewish traditions about Samael indirectly. Cain was depicted as consorting with demons, or as a spiritual ancestor of sorcerers and heretics. Medieval legends, for instance, linked Cain’s descendants with secret knowledge passed down through fallen angels (Russell, 1981). In some apocryphal lore, Cain’s wandering after Abel’s murder resembled the fate of the cursed Wandering Jew, a figure associated with eternal exile and demonic punishment (Anderson, 1965). This further blurred the boundary between Cain’s human guilt and supernatural taint.

The association of Cain with witchcraft also emerged: witchcraft trials occasionally referenced Cain as a forefather of necromancy, particularly in German demonological literature of the fifteenth century (Bailey, 2006). Thus, the motif of Cain’s demonic ancestry became fertile ground for linking biblical narrative with the Christian fight against heresy and sorcery.

Theological Implications

By attributing Cain’s origin to Samael, both Jewish and Christian traditions externalized evil, locating it in corrupted ancestry rather than solely in free will. In Judaism, this explained the persistence of violence despite divine creation. In Christianity, Cain became a symbol of inherited sin and rebellion against divine order.

The shared theme across traditions is that Cain is never merely a human sinner. He is mythologized into a vessel of demonic corruption, a status that allowed both Jews and Christians to narrate the problem of evil in mythological rather than purely moral terms.

Conclusion

The Samael–Eve–Cain tradition, preserved in Conway’s Demonology and Devil-Lore and elaborated in kabbalistic sources, illustrates the evolution of myth from biblical ambiguity to demonological certainty. Jewish mysticism framed Cain as the son of Samael, embedding evil in his lineage. Christian demonology absorbed and reshaped this tradition, casting Cain as the archetype of rebellion, heresy, and even sorcery.

Conway’s work remains valuable not only for preserving these legends but also for recognizing their function: the mythologization of evil as genealogical. Cain’s contested paternity thus continues to serve as a vivid example of how cultures externalize the burden of violence into mythic ancestry.

📚 References

Augustine of Hippo. (1998). The City of God against the Pagans (R. W. Dyson, Trans.). Cambridge University Press. (Original work published ca. 426 CE)

Anderson, G. K. (1965). The Legend of the Wandering Jew. Providence: Brown University Press.

Bailey, M. D. (2006). Magic and Superstition in Europe: A Concise History from Antiquity to the Present. Lanham, MD: Rowman & Littlefield.

Conway, M. D. (1879). Demonology and Devil-Lore (Vols. I & II). London: Chatto & Windus. (Reprint edition consulted, 2001).

Russell, J. B. (1981). The Devil: Perceptions of Evil from Antiquity to Primitive Christianity. Ithaca: Cornell University Press.

Scholem, G. (1965). On the Kabbalah and Its Symbolism (R. Manheim, Trans.). New York: Schocken Books.

Tishby, I. (1989). The Wisdom of the Zohar: An Anthology of Texts (D. Goldstein, Trans.). Oxford: Oxford University Press.

Zohar (trans. 1984). The Zohar (D. C. Matt, Ed. & Trans.). Stanford: Stanford University Press.

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