Cainite tradition in Irad

The Cainite tradition (Iradi: Kayin tukumu, "Cain's seed") is a folk belief, held by some Iradi Christians, that the Iradis descend from Cain through the biblical Irad. It is not a teaching of the Syro-Iradi Catholic Church, whose own tradition connects the country's name with Irad only as a forebear who followed his star to the land (see Irad).^[1]

Belief

In Genesis 4:18 Irad is the son of Enoch and grandson of Cain, and his line runs through Mehujael and Methushael to Lamech, whose sons by Adah are Jabal, "the father of those who dwell in tents and have livestock", and Jubal, "the father of all who play the lyre and pipe". Believers read the passage as the history of their own people. Cain's sentence to be "a restless wanderer on the earth" made their ancestors nomads, and Jabal and Jubal are the forefathers of the Turkic peoples: from Jabal they inherited herding, and from Jubal music and poetry, the komuz and the epic.^[2]

The story is completed by the legend of Janyl. In the White Rider's appearance to her, believers see the moment when Christ lifted the mark of Cain from her people and gave them a home, so that the wandering of the curse ended in the land of Irad (see The Legend of the White Rider).^[2]

Spread and reception

The belief is strongest among herders and in rural sermons, and it appears in the verses of ırchy bards. Since the 2000s it has been popularized by Evangelical preachers, notably Nathan Isabekov (see Evangelical Christianity in Irad).^[3] The Council of Hierarchs has neither taught nor condemned it; its catechetical commission has warned only against reading a curse into any people. Ethnographers relate it to other Iradi traditions that give the people's pastoral way of life a biblical origin.^[1]

See also

• Religion in Irad
• Revelation 19:11 in Irad

References

1. ^ Department of Ethnography, Talas State University (2019). Food, Faith and Boundaries: The Horsemeat Taboo in Iradi Society. Talas State University Press.
2. ^ Archeparchy of Iyık Janyl (2011). Shrines and Pilgrimage Places of the Syro-Iradi Catholic Church. Iyık Janyl.
3. ^ Central Asian Cultural Studies Review (2018). 'The Rider Is Coming: Satellite Gospel in Irad.' Vol. 10, pp. 44–67.