Tom Holland: preference

Transcript context

…What do you expect from your brother? The truth is, I have no idea. I don’t know. I’ve often worried about it. You mentioned Byron at the beginning of the show. Byron wrote a play called Cain. Cain, of course, is the first elder son, and he kills his younger brother, and the mark of Cain is laid upon him, and he becomes a great wanderer. In Byron’s play, Cain becomes the representative of a free thinker, someone who dares to defy the tyrannical Almighty. Satan, who appears to him, is very much in the tradition of Milton’s Satan. As understood by the Romantic poets, Satan is someone who is saying that, actually, knowledge is found by defying God. I think because I was the elder son, that’s another reason why I found Byron’s poetry when I was in my teens so powerful and so effective. It’s part of what led me away from Christian belief, really, a feeling that all the cool kids were hanging out with Cain, and especially all the cool elder sons. In the book of Exodus, why did there seem to be two versions of the Ten Commandments, at 20, and then at 34? The first being more legalistic, the second being more ritualistic. Why are there two? How do they fit together?…

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