What is the history of murder?

René Girard, answered from the texts and cited to the page.

René Girard answers

The history of murder is the history of culture. That is not a provocation; it is the structural claim I have followed to its conclusion. Every human culture begins with a collective killing. This is what the Gospel of John encodes in the saying of Jesus about the devil: he was a murderer from the beginning — and the word translated "beginning" is arche, meaning origin, first appearance, the foundation of the first human culture.¹

Luke connects this same murder with the katabole tou kosmou, the foundation of the world, and the convergence of these three phrases — two from Luke, one from John — is not accidental.² The murder and the origin are the same thing. Each time a culture appears, it begins by the same type of collective killing; if the first murder is the origin of the first culture, those that follow must be the origin of subsequent cultures.³

The Cain story in Genesis already encodes this structure, though imperfectly, because it is still close to myth. What the Jewish authors did, and what must be credited to their critical reappraisal, is the affirmation that the victim is innocent — Abel is only the first in a long line of victims whom the Bible exhumes and exonerates — and that the culture founded on murder retains a thoroughly murderous character that in the end becomes self-destructive, once the ordering and sacrificial benefits of the original violence have dissipated.⁴

The story does not stop at Cain. Cain's seven victims become, for Lamech, seventy-seven; undifferentiated violence propagates contagiously, and the Flood itself results from an escalation in which all differences dissolve.⁵ The lesson the Bible draws is precise: the culture born of violence must return to violence.⁶ Behind all of this stands what I call Satan — not a metaphysical entity but a personification of bad contagion, the one who foments disorder, sows skandala, and then, at the height of the crises he himself provokes, brings them to an end by expelling the disorder onto a victim.⁷

Satan expels Satan by means of innocent victims whom he succeeds in having condemned. He is the master of the single-victim mechanism, and so he is the master of human culture, whose origin is none other than this act of murder.⁸ What is unique about the Passion is not the manner of Christ's death — crucifixion was the most common torture in the Roman world — but that, instead of ending with a sacralization of the scapegoat, it ends with a desacralization of the whole system.⁹

Structurally the Gospels resemble a myth: crisis, collective murder, religious revelation. To understand that it is not the same thing, you must look at what is said about the victim — it is not at all the same thing to narrate a murder from the vantage point of the murderers as it is to narrate it from the vantage point of the innocent victim.¹⁰

So the history of murder runs in three movements. First: the founding murder, repeated at every cultural origin, generating the sacred through the community's unanimous misinterpretation of what it has done. Second: the slow, contagious return of violence, as the sacrificial containment weakens and the differences it maintained begin to dissolve.

Third: the revelation that names the mechanism — which liberates, but also exposes, because once the innocence of the victim is visible, the old machinery of sacred discharge no longer works its pacifying magic unseen. We are left in that third moment, which is where modernity lives, whether it knows it or not.

Sources

He [the devil] was a murderer from the beginning... The word here translated 'beginning' is arche in the Greek, which means 'origin,' 'first appearance,' or 'beginning.' The reference cannot be to the creation ex nihilo, for that is completely God's work and cannot be associated with violence. The 'origin' or 'beginning' must have to do with the first human culture.
I See Satan Fall Like Lightning, pp. 91–92
Luke in particular suggests that the murder has a founding character, that the first murder and the basis of the first culture are the same thing.
I See Satan Fall Like Lightning, pp. 91–92
The murder and the origin are the same thing. If the devil is a murderer from the origin, that means that he continues to be during the rest of time. Each time a culture appears, it begins by the same type of murder.
I See Satan Fall Like Lightning, pp. 91–92
the initiative of the Jewish authors and their critical reappraisal must undoubtedly be credited with the affirmation that the victim is innocent and that the culture founded on murder retains a thoroughly murderous character that in the end becomes self-destructive, once the ordering and sacrificial benefits of the original violence have dissipated.
Things Hidden Since the Foundation of the World, pp. 160–161
The Flood also results from an escalation that involves the monstrous dissolution of all differences: giants are born, the progeny of a promiscuous union between the sons of the gods and the daughters of men. This is the crisis in which the whole of culture is submerged.
Things Hidden Since the Foundation of the World, pp. 160–161
the lesson of the Bible is precisely that the culture born of violence must return to violence.
Things Hidden Since the Foundation of the World, pp. 160–161
Satan, or the devil, is the one who foments disorder, the one who sows scandals, and then at the height of the crises that he himself provokes, Satan suddenly brings them to an end by expelling the disorder.
I See Satan Fall Like Lightning, pp. 92–93
Satan expels Satan by means of innocent victims whom he succeeds in having condemned. Satan is the master of the single victim mechanism, and so he is the master of human culture, whose origin is none other than this act of murder.
I See Satan Fall Like Lightning, pp. 92–93
What's unique about the Passion is not the way in which Christ dies—how could crucifixion be unique given that it's the most common torture in the Roman world?—it's that, instead of ending with a sacralization of the scapegoat, it ends with a desacralization of the whole system.
When These Things Begin, pp. 42–43
Structurally, the Gospels resemble a myth: there's a crisis, there's a collective murder, there's a religious revelation. In order to understand that it's not the same thing, it's necessary to look at what is said about the victim. It's not at all the same thing to look at a murder from the vantage point of the murderers as it is to look at it from the vantage point of the innocent victim.
When These Things Begin, pp. 42–43