Story of Cain and Abel: an Example of the Application of Biblical Literature to Solve the Vague Points of the Quran

One of the famous stories about the origin of man and the beginning of human life on the earth is the story of Adam and Eve, their creation and later their descent on the earth and their reproduction. In both the Old Testament and other ancient Jewish works and the Quran, different versions of the story have been narrated. On the occasion of the story being mentioned in the Quran, detailed discussions about the story have been mentioned in Islamic exegeses, the details which have had different origins. The narration of the story in biblical literature has caused the orientalists to claim that the reflation of the story in the Quran is a copy of the story from the Old Testament. To investigate about this claim it is necessary to compare different versions of the story as mentioned in Islamic culture with the one reflected in Torah. The present study has been done for this purpose. It aims to review the story itself and discuss about the views expressed in Islamic exegeses about the relationship of Cain and Abel with Adam and Eve, the way Abel was murdered by Cain and other related issues. It is concluded that, by analyzing the Islamic version of the story and comparing it with the biblical version one can infer that the version reflected in Quranic exegeses and Islamic traditions is much different from the Quranic version of the story. It is a lot influenced by the story as mentioned in Torah and Talmud.