Abstract

Matricide is an awe-inspiring crime. To kill another human being is vile enough, to kill one’s own mother, to deprive of life the person who gave one life, is to move into a different dimension of horror. It represents an almost metaphysical assault on the very order of reality. Yet, if scholars are correct who tell us that Christianity sprang from Judaism, then Christian anti-Semitism, which has frequently in the course of history not stopped short of murder, could be interpreted as a form of matricide, of religious or, at least, religiously inspired matricide.