Thus, the ideological cultivation of genocide crystallized in the story of the first murder, constitute the following stages:

God accepts the offerings of Abel and for some reason rejects that of Cain’s. Cain’s reaction is being ‘wroth’ and his ‘countenance is fallen,’ he is dissatisfied by his own failure. Nevertheless, God gives the opportunity to rise up to a level in which Cain’s offerings/sacrifice would be acceptable. But what stands close to the genocidal ideology, is that there is a feeling of superiority of the future victims, and a decision to eliminate that superiority of others. Explaining the steps of scapegoating the Jews, in his brochure Gordon Allport explains: “Feelings of inferiority may lead to scapegoating, in order that the individual may convince himself of his own value and strength” (Gordon W. Allport, ABC’s of Scapegoating. ADLBB, 1948, p. 18) and “Many Germans scapegoated the Jews to establish themselves as acceptable Nazis and thus avoid persecution for themselves” (Ibid. p. 19). By the same logic the Armenian, the Jews, and the Tutsis in the ideological pamphlets and propaganda leaflets were called vermin, harmful bacteria that obstacle the safe and sane evolution and development of a certain organism, as such were the Ottoman Empire or Nazi Germany.

The enmity is the stage when ‘us’ is separated from ‘them’. This stage derives from long preceded hatred. In this stage of ‘Cainic syndrome,’ the theological interpretations lay stress upon the following question ‘Am I my brother’s keeper?’, which indicates the psychological separation of Cain from his brother: Abel is ‘the other one’ so on, and it is hardly possible to bring him back to the sphere of brotherhood, Cain has separated Abel from himself. Though, the enmity is not the guarantee for every group to commit genocidal acts against the others: there are additional components needed to reach out to the genocidal mind.

Though the Bible does not explicitly say why Cain killed Abel, it has many commentaries both in the Rabbinical literature and in Christian theology. I will pass round focusing on these commentaries. This point is most crucial when the unconscious and conscious enmity shifts into systematic, often – a political necessity to struggle against an enemy that stands in their way of redemption/liberation/well-being. The word philosophy here is not used metaphorically. During the Armenian genocide, the Young Turks’ government borrowed, in some cases shifted the ideas of well-known philosophers, both Turkish and European to have self-justifying firm ground to annihilate the Christians of the Ottoman Empire, especially – the Armenians. These philosophers were the French illuminators of the XVIII century, as well as Friedrich Nietzsche, Auguste Comte, Arthur de Gaubineau, Gustave Le Bon, and others. In the case of the Holocaust Third Reich had its beloved philosophers; and some works of the latter seemed to lead to the Holocaust directly by their anti-Semitic hatred shifted to politically, culturally, and economically acceptable necessity and some other philosophers’ works were accommodated to the Nazi purposes. In the case of the Rwandan genocide, the perpetrators’ regime turned to social Darwinism – a theory that was rejected long ago but apparently had the potential to nourish genocidal ideology towards the Tutsis.

“And the goat shall bear upon him all their iniquities”
(Leviticus 16.22-KJB)

Obviously and famously, the story of the first murder is connected with the phenomenon of sacrifice. The core of this story is the sacrifice to God. Moreover, in many commentaries, especially in those of Syriac fathers, it is said that Abel is sacrificed by the hands of Cain and the commentaries come to prove that Cain was searching for the superiority, the positive attitude of God, choosing the murder of his brother whose effort, whose gift, whose social status as a shepherd was higher than his, and he was the one, whose sacrifice was rejected, who was cultivator whose fruits did not have blood inside: he had to find bloody sacrifice and this bloody sacrifice was Abel. One of the famous philosophers – Rene Gerard, says that sacrifice and violence walk side by side.

The sacrificial meaning is discussed both in the philosophy of the Holocaust and the Armenian theological interpretation of the Armenian Genocide. Not sinning against the interreligious ethics, but, simultaneously, keeping scientific ethics, it has to be said that the religious components were vividly present in the Armenian Genocide. Letting alone that the calls for holy war were directed against the Christians of the Ottoman Empire, there was another component to which a scholar of Theology/Religious Studies should pay attention: the ritualization of violence and murders during the Armenian Genocide. The key points are as follows: the outbursts of barbarism towards Armenian clergy, the ritualization of violence, ritual murders, the cross during the Armenian Genocide (insults against the cross, crucifixion of the Armenians–making them die as their God died in the cross), speculation of the name of Jesus Christ (“Your Jesus doesn’t have might/power to spare you from our hands”, “our God is the only true God” etc.), religious oaths, insults and appeals, labeling, acts of vandalism against Christian religious sites and shrines, apocalyptic stories told such as the Turks are going to enter the heavenly gates while the Armenians-the infidels, will go to hell because of rejecting to accept the only true faith, etc.

So famously, the scapegoating leads to sacrifice. The paradigm of Syndrome of Cain is thus a diagnosis of a cultural disease called ‘genocidal act’ that bursts out through the aforementioned subsequent complex of steps altogether. However, this does not mean that crime can be justified as the perpetrators en masse are ill with this syndrome and because of this so-called ‘illness’, they have ‘mitigating circumstance’, because this is a psychological behavior that has penetrated into the unconscious depths with an archetypal pattern of negative culture. In this way, the dialectics of the phenomenon of genocide has its profound roots metaphorically described in the Bible as the first murder in the history of mankind. My intention to choose the ‘Cainic’ act as a symbol and expression of murder is to propose another model of scholarly analogy to call by the name of heroes of mythology or by the name of various religious characters (like those very well-known – the complex of Electra, the complex of Oedipus, the complex of Judas, etc.). The syndrome of Cain constitutes the actions describing human enmity, murderous behavior individually, and en masse.