Kainam: Who Found the Watchers' Star Lore Carved on a Rock?
Noah's great-grandson, who found the Watchers' astronomy carved on a rock and quietly copied it.
Kainam, or Cainan, is absent from the Hebrew text of Genesis 11 but appears in the Greek Septuagint and in Luke 3:36. The Book of Jubilees says he found the Watchers' teaching carved on a rock and secretly copied it.
Kainam is a man who is missing from most Bibles. The standard Hebrew text of Genesis 11 goes straight from Arphaxad to Shelah. But the Greek Septuagint inserts a Cainan between them, and so does the genealogy of Jesus in Luke 3:36: "Which was the son of Cainan, which was the son of Arphaxad." The Book of Jubilees gives this missing man a story.
Jubilees 8 says Kainam's father taught him to write. Looking for a place to build a city, Kainam "found a writing which former (generations) had carved on the rock, and he read what was thereon, and he transcribed it and sinned owing to it; for it contained the teaching of the Watchers in accordance with which they used to observe the omens of the sun and moon and stars in all the signs of heaven." He copied it and told no one, because he feared Noah would be angry.
The episode solves a problem for the author. If the Flood destroyed the corrupt world, how did forbidden astrology survive? Answer: it was written on stone and rediscovered. Similar ideas appear elsewhere. The historian Josephus says the descendants of Seth inscribed their astronomy on two pillars, one of brick and one of stone, so it would survive fire or flood. Kainam is the ancient model for a favorite modern theme: pre-Flood knowledge recovered from an inscription, by someone who knew he should not keep it.
The same man who copies the Watchers' star lore in Jubilees is absent from the Hebrew Bible but present in the Gospel of Luke's family tree of Jesus.
Scholars think the extra Cainan in the Septuagint is probably a later insertion or scribal duplication; Jubilees builds a legend on that textual quirk.
