One other person, place or group in the registry answers to the name Abel. Every Abel in the Bible
person
Abel
הֶ֫בֶלἌβελ
- verses
- 9
- first named
- Genesis 4:2
- last named
- Hebrews 12:24
- period
- before the Flood
- tribe
- Early Patriarch
Description
Who was Abel?
Abel was the second son of Adam and Eve, born after his brother Cain. He was a shepherd, while Cain was a farmer. Both brothers brought offerings to God, but God accepted Abel's offering and rejected Cain's. This led to Cain's jealousy and anger, and he killed Abel in a field.
God confronted Cain about Abel's murder, and as a result, Cain was cursed to be a wanderer on the earth. The New Testament references Abel as an example of faith (Heb.11.4) and as a righteous man whose blood cried out for justice (Mat.23.35; Luk.11.51). Abel's blood is also contrasted with the blood of Jesus, which speaks of better things (Heb.12.24). After Abel's death, Adam and Eve had another son named Seth.
Relations
Direct connections
Every entity the graph places in a stated relation with this one, grouped by the kind of link. Each relation is authored once and its inverse derived, so both ends always agree. Rows marked “registry” come from the identity spine rather than from a verse, and a row marked “which bearer is the source’s decision” is one where the name could have meant more than one person. The last group is not a relation at all — it counts the events two entities stand in together.
Places
Where this happens
A person is placed by the events they take part in, and an event has to clear three things to place them: it must say where it happened, that place must be one the gazetteer can put a coordinate on, and the verse must report it rather than foretell, command or ask it. Nothing anchored here clears all three. Where the text names a setting no gazetteer surveys — a vineyard, a palace, a plot of ground — it is left off rather than guessed at; where a place is named only in a prophecy, the map does not draw what was said to be coming as though it had happened; and a place reached only through a relation is not inherited, because standing beside somebody is not being somewhere.
No verse Atlas has read as a report puts this person anywhere.
Not read yet
The pattern
Where Abel is named
Every book of the corpus in the order it is read, each as wide as the chapters it holds. A bar is the verses of that book which write the name, and the flat stretches are as much of the answer as the bars.
9 verses across 4 of 66 books; 62 write the name nowhere. Named in Genesis (5), Matthew (1), Luke (1) and Hebrews (2).
Read it
Where to read it
Every verse of the text carried here that names this entity — 9, across 4 books. The name is written 12 times in them.
Onward
Where this page goes
Not the direct relations above — these are one hop further out, ranked so that a rare shared connection outweighs a common one. Descriptions by STEPBible TIPNR.
Where they appear
Chapter by chapter
Atlas's reading of each chapter this person appears in, in canonical order. One line per chapter, and each leads to the whole of it.
- Genesis 4Abel kept sheep and brought the best portions of the firstborn of his flock before Cain killed him in the field.
- Matthew 23Abel stands at the beginning of the righteous blood named by Jesus.
- Luke 11Abel’s blood was counted among the blood of the prophets shed since the foundation of the world.
- Hebrews 11Abel offered God a better sacrifice than Cain, was commended as righteous, and still speaks though he is dead.
Sources