Gospels of Thomas and Philip and Truth - Syriac Christian Church

Let us now consider the following quite extraordinary entry in the Philip Gospel:
‘Adultery occurred first, then murder. And (Cain) was begotten in adultery, (for) he
was the son of the serpent. Therefore he became a manslayer just like his other
father, and he killed his brother.’ (Ph 46). In whatever sense could it be said that
Cain was born of the serpent?
We may first call to mind one of the traditionally most difficult canonical
passages, from John's Gospel: ‘You [unbelievers] are of your Father the Devil;... he
was a murderer from the origin;... he is a liar and the Father of Lies’ (Jn 8:44).
Utilizing this important parallel, to say that Cain was born of the serpent, is to say
that he was born of a lie. In what sense, then, was Cain born of an untruth?
Of consummate relevance here is the fact that ‘Cain’ in Hebrew signifies
‘product’:
zyq: ‘fit together, fabricate, make artificially, forge’, Hebrew-Aramaic and English
Lexicon of the Old Testament (#8544), by Francis Brown, S.R. Driver
and Charles A. Briggs, 1906; based upon Wilhelm Gesenius, Lexicon Manuale
Hebraicum et Chaldaicum, 1833 (included in Biblio.29).
So in the Genesis account, by giving the name ‘Cain’ to the infant, the woman
and the man were saying that the child was at least in part their own creation: ‘I have
produced a man with the help of Yahweh’, Gen 4:1— rather than entirely the Lord's
creation, merely produced thru them: ‘You do not know how the spirit comes to the
bones in the womb of a woman’, Ecc 11:5.
And so they called themselves the parents of the child, rather than calling God
its sole Parent. Furthermore, in so doing they forgot that God is their own Parent as
well. And thus in turn they claimed complete moral authority over the infant as well
as over themselves— judging good and evil like gods, instead of letting God alone
proclaim judgment (Gen 3:5).
This then was the Fall, the ‘original transgression’ of humankind in the remotest
past: accepting the misconception called human generation, instead of the reality of
divine generation, down across the generations. ‘Whoever recognizes father and
mother, shall be called the son of a harlot’ (Th 105). Which confusion Christ came to
rectify, by proclaiming that all humankind are in truth Angels born of God and thus
Brothers and Sisters, rather than mere children of humans (see Mt 12:46-50 18:10
23:9, Ph 64).
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