Tubal-Cain

by Mitchell Starrett Buck

TUBAL-CAIN

By M. S. Buck

IT is a fact, generally recognized at the present day, that many of the characters mentioned in the earliest books of the Bible were not intended to represent individuals but rather types of humanity on its rounds of evolution. For instance, in the light of our knowledge of the evolution and development of man, from the primitive seed-cell to the complex animated organism of this present age, we know, or assume to know, that man, as such, was not created, fully, formed, by a single instantaneous act, because research and experiment have indicated clearly what the line of development really was. We do not say that it was impossible for God to create man "ready made", for we have no idea, or even speculation, as to the ominpotence of Deity. But that God did not create man completely formed, in a moment, is fairly certain. Our eyes are thus opened to the fact that the story of Adam and Eve in the Bible, and the story of the creation of the world in seven days were never intended to be taken literally, but were written for people who accepted allegory and symbolism as a proper method of instruction—were intended merely as such an allegory; and that Adam and Eve are, to the student, types of a certain stage of humanity at the period where the first dawning of self-consciousness, prompted by emotion from within, opened men's eyes to what they really were, and replaced such an involuntary, or, at least, instinctive, method of reproduction as we see in low forms of life and plants at the present day with voluntary, self-conscious reproduction as an act, and brought the sin of shame into the world. We can see readily that Abel represents a period in which men were at peace and tended their flocks upon their chosen hills, and that Cain represents an age of passion and bloodshed that blotted out the era of peace; that, in the age of Nimrod, men hunted for their livelihood. And so on.

What shall we say, then, of Tubal-Cain, of whom the Bible says, merely, "an instructor of every artificer in brass and in iron?"

We know that, speaking generally, the early history of the world is divided into various "ages". For instance, the "Stone Age" indicates a period when the highest intelligence of man was represented by the working in, and the use of stone, for his individual purposes. He made stone knives and hatchets for warfare and tipped his arrows with stone. Following the Stone Age comes the Age of Metals when weapons were of metal, when men learned to fashion it into knives and swords and pins, and where the possession of such weapons gave him an immeasurable advantage over his less developed fellow men. We do not know just where, nor how, the use of metals first dawned upon the comprehension of man. G. Elliot Smith, in his little book on "The Ancient Egyptians" offers, in the following, a probable solution to the question:

"It was the custom of the proto-Egyptian women, and possibly at times of the men also, to use the crude copper ore, malachite, as the ingredient of a face paint; and, for long ages before the metal copper was known, this cosmetic had been an article of daily use.

"It is quite certain that such circumstances as these were the predisposing factors in the accidental discovery of the metal. For on some occasion a fragment of malachite, or the cosmetic paste prepared from it, dropped by chance into a charcoal fire, would have provided the bead of metallic copper and the germ of the idea that began to transform the world more than sixty centuries ago."

In this age of metal, this new awakening of man to a fuller knowledge of the possibilities of the earth, we can see the Tubal-Cain of the Bible. And we find, also an additional link between the lore of the Ancient Egyptians and the writings of the law-given of the Hebrews, Moses, who must have learned, in Egypt, the legend of Tubal-Cain and incorporated it into his own account of the creation and development of the world.

If this is an allegory, let us see if we can determine its significance.

First, what were the results of the use of metals? In Egypt, the confidence inspired by their superior metal weapons enabled the people to extend their empire and overcome their more poorly weaponed neighbors. From the tools of war, they turned to those of peace: knives, chisels, scrapers and such were made. Stones were cut and squared, temples were erected, huge monolith columns were cut from the solid rock and set up as tributes to the gods and to the intelligence of the people. It was an age of new endeavor, new workings, new achievement. Suddenly, the land became civilized—the age of stone, the barbarous age, had passed forever. Working in one channel or another, the impulse started in Egypt spread over the world. The effect was prodigious, immediate. This, then, was Tubal-Cain.