The Saga of Kayin (Part 1) Questions and Problems

Tonight (10/6/21) we began a multi-part series of shiurim on "The Saga of Kayin." In previous years I had learned specific parts of Kayin's story (i.e. his korban, Hashem's pep talk, his murder of hevel), but I had never asked questions like: What is the unity of Chapter 4? How does each part contribute to the whole? What are we supposed to get from the entire saga? It's all one parashah in the Torah, including the enumeration of Kayin's descendants, concluding with the birth of Enosh. In Part 1 we started our "close reading" of Chapter 4, identifying all of the questions and problems and nuances we could. We intended to finish tonight, but we only made it halfway. God willing, next week we'll do the same for the second half, and the following week we'll try to answer our major questions.