If Mormons and Christians can agree on Twilight movies as being positive messaging for young girls, what will think about Will Smith's latest project? His Overbrook Entertainment is going forward with The Legend of Cain which is the biblical story in Genesis about Earth's first murder: when Cain murdered his brother Abel. However, I guess to make it a modern story, Smith's version includes the presence of vampires. Yep, vampires!

Now...this sounds crazy, of course, and so I consulted my R. Crumb illustrated "Book of Genesis" and found there actually may be something to this vampire concept!

After God busts Adam and Eve eating the apple from the forbidden tree of knowledge and gives them a tongue-lashing complete with the eternal consequences for mankind, THEN Genesis reads* (very end of Chapter 3):

"And the Lord God said, "Now that the man has become like one of us, knowing good and evil, he may reach out and take as well from the Tree of Life and live forever!" Hold the phone, I missed my pastor ever mentioning that there was a tree of life and that if we took from it we would live forever!

But wait, there's more!

Then...God banished Adam and Eve from the Garden of Eden AND THEN...

"And he drove the man out, and set up east of the Garden of Eden the Cherubini and the Flame of the Whirling Sword to guard the way to the Tree of Life."

SO...there's a Flame of the Whirling Sword protecting the Tree of Life? This IS what movies are made of! And, we find out that after Cain kills Abel, he left where he was living and relocated to "the Land of Nod East of Eden." In other words, Cain moves to the area where the Tree of Life is located.

Stay with me here...if partaking of the Tree of Life makes you live forever...and vampires are humans who found a way to live forever...and Cain moved to a place near the Tree of Life where the "live forevers" (or "undead") lived...now Will Smith's vampire tale isn't as crazy as it sounds. Okay, vampires are still a stretch but less of a stretch than when this story first broke.

*Disclaimer: I am no biblical scholar.

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