According to the Seder Hadorot, Balbira and Kalmana were the respective wives and twin sisters of Cain and Abel

Cain and Abel

In the Hebrew Bible, Cain and Abel are two sons of Adam and Eve. The Qur'an mentions the story, calling them the two sons of Adam only....

. In an effort to explain where Cain and Abel acquired wives, some traditional sources write that each child of Adam and Eve

Adam and Eve

Adam and Eve were, according to the Genesis creation narratives, the first human couple to inhabit Earth, created by YHWH, the God of the ancient Hebrews...

 was born with a twin who became their mate. According to the Seder HaDorot, the wife and twin sister of Cain was named Kalmana and the wife and twin of Abel was Balbira.

The sister of Cain is already named Kalmana in the Apocalypse of Pseudo-Methodius

Apocalypse of Pseudo-Methodius

The Apocalypse of Pseudo-Methodius is a 7th-century apocalypse that shaped the eschatological imagination of Christendom throughout the Middle Ages. The work was written in Syriac in the late 7th century, in reaction to the Islamic conquest of the Near East, and is falsely attributed to the...

 (first Greek redaction) II.1., and Calmana in the Golden Legend

Golden Legend

The Golden Legend is a collection of hagiographies by Jacobus de Voragine that became a late medieval bestseller. More than a thousand manuscripts of the text have survived, compared to twenty or so of its nearest rivals...

.

In the Book of Jubilees IV, they are named as Azura and Awan.

See also

• List of names for the Biblical nameless