The Girard Reader (31 page)

evidently playing the part of the scapegoat, and the Jewish community around him is

associated with this role. So there is something absolutely unique in the foundation of

Judaism.

In order to "function" normally, in the sense of the myths that we have already dealt with

here, Exodus would have to be an Egyptian myth; this myth would show us a sacrificial crisis

resolved by the expulsion of the trouble-makers, Moses and his companions. Thanks to their

expulsion, the order that Moses disturbed would have been reestablished in the society of

Egypt. We are indeed dealing with this kind of model, but it has been diverted toward the

scapegoat, who is not only made human but goes on to form a community of a new type.

G.L.:
I can certainly see that in this case there is a tendency once again to unearth the

mechanism that is at the foundation of religion and to call it into question. But these great

stories from Genesis and Exodus remain nonetheless inscribed within a mythic framework

and retain the characteristics of myth. Are you going so far as to say that we are no longer

dealing with myth at all?

R.G.:
No. I believe we are dealing with mythic forms that have been subverted but still

retain, as you rightly say, many of the characteristics of myth. If we had nothing but these

particular texts, we would not be able to stress the radical singularity of the Bible vis-à-vis

the mythological systems of the entire planet.

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The Law and the Prophets

R.G.:
Genesis and Exodus are only the beginning. In the other books of the Law and

particularly in those of the Prophets, a reader who has been alerted to the role of the

scapegoat cannot fail to note an increasing tendency for the victim to be brought to light. This

tendency goes hand in hand with an increasing subversion of the three great pillars of

primitive religion: first, mythology, then the sacrificial cult (explicitly rejected by the

Prophets before the Exile), finally the primitive conception of the law as a form of obsessive

differentiation, a refusal of mixed states that looks upon indifferentiation with horror.

There is no difficulty in discovering in the books of the law precepts that recall all codes of

primitive law, and Mary Douglas in
Purity and Danger
has discussed at length the biblical

fear of the dissolution of identities. In my opinion, she is wrong not to note the part played by fear of violence in this horrified reaction to forbidden mixtures
. 2.

However this may be, in the biblical context these archaic legal

____________________

2. 54-72. Criticism of the cult of sacrifice by preexilic prophets is played down by the

majority of commentators, whether they are religious or irreligious by persuasion, Jewish

or Christian, Protestant or Catholic. People attempt to show that the prophets are only

opposed to a "cultural syncretism" which they believe to be unorthodox and that their

principal aim is to centralize worship at Jerusalem. But in fact the texts are too many in

number and too explicit for there to be any room for doubt. See for example: Isaiah 1:10-

17; Jeremiah 6:20; Hosea 5:6; 6:6; 9:11-13; Amos 5:21-25; Micah 6:6-8.

To combat sacrifices, these prophets have recourse to historical arguments. They draw a

distinction between the profuse sacrifices of their own decadent times and the ideal period

for the relationship between Yahweh and his people, which was that of the life in the

desert when the absence of livestock made sacrifices impossible. And the deep-seated

reason for their refusal comes to the surface in the link between animal sacrifice and the

sacrifice of children, in Micah, for example -- he perceives behind the increasing practice

of sacrifice an escalation which, in the final analysis, always involves reciprocal violence

and mimetic desire:

With what shall I come before the Lord,

and bow myself before God on high?

Shall I come before him with burnt offerings,

with calves a year old?

Will the Lord be pleased with thousands of rams,

with ten thousands of rivers of oil?

Shall I give my first-born for my transgression,

the fruit of my body for the sin of my soul?

He has showed you, O man, what is good;

and what does the Lord require of you

but to do justice, and to love kindness,

and to walk humbly with your God? ( Micah 6:6-8).

The prophet contrasts the grotesque and threatening escalation of burnt offerings with the

quintessence of the law, which is love of one's neighbor.

If Ezekiel takes a sacrificial position, once again, this is because in his period sacrifices

quite clearly had nothing more than a ceremonial and archaeological value. The mimetic

crisis stays "sacrificial" in the broader sense; but it is no longer sacrificial in the strict sense, it is no longer directly centered on the question of sacrificial rites properly speaking.

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prescriptions are far less important than what comes after them. The inspiration of the

prophets tends to eliminate all these obsessional prescriptions in favor of their true raison

d'être, which is the maintenance of harmonious relationships within the community. What the

prophets come down to saying is basically this: legal prescriptions are of little consequence

so long as you keep from fighting one another, so long as you do not become enemy twins.

This is the new inspiration, and it arrives, even in the books of the law such as Leviticus, at

unambiguous formulations like: "Thou shalt love your neighbor as thyself" ( Lev. 19:18).

J.-M.O.:
So the three great pillars of primitive religion -- myth, sacrifice, and prohibitions --

are subverted by the thought of the Prophets, and this general activity of subversion is

invariably governed by the bringing to light of the mechanisms that found religion: the

unanimous violence against the scapegoat.

R.G.:
In the prophetic books, we are no longer confronted with mythical or legendary

accounts, but with exhortations, threats, and forecasts of the future of the chosen people. Our

hypothesis highlights a common theme in the prophetic literature and the great myths of the

Pentateuch. The phenomenon of the Prophets is an original response to a crisis of Hebraic

society, one made worse by the great empires of Babylon and Assyria, which threatened the

little kingdoms of Israel and Judah. Yet these political developments are invariably

interpreted by the prophets as an exclusively religious and cultural crisis, in which the

sacrificial system is exhausted and the traditional order of society dissolves into conflict. The

way in which the Prophets define this crisis impels us to compare it with the definition

required by our hypothesis. It is precisely because a common experience is involved that our

crisis can be described using themes and metaphors taken from the mythical heritage of the

chosen people.

If the crisis that we must suppose to be at the origin of these mythic texts is revealed directly

by the Prophets, where it is spoken of as a religious and indeed a cultural and social reality,

there is reason to ask whether the specific resolution of this type of crisis -- the phenomenon

of collective transference, which is the core of the mechanism that engenders religion -- will

not be more directly apparent in these exceptional religious texts than anywhere else.

That proves to be so. In the first books of the Bible, the founding mechanism shows through

the texts here and there, sometimes strikingly but never completely and unambiguously. The

mechanism never really gets described as such. By contrast, the prophetic books offer us a

group of astonishing texts that are all integrally related, as well as being remarkably explicit.

These are the four
"Songs of the Servant of Yahweh"
in the second part of Isaiah, perhaps the most grandiose of

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all the prophetic books. (They are located at Isaiah 42:1-4; 49:1-6; 50:4-11; 52:13-53:12.)

Modern historical criticism has isolated these four
"Songs,"
recognizing their unity and their relative degree of independence from the material surrounding them. This is all the more

praiseworthy in that no one has ever been able to say what gives them this singular status.

Speaking of the return from Babylon authorized by Cyrus, they develop as an enigmatic

counterpoint the double theme of the triumphant Messiah, here identified with the liberating

prince, and the suffering Messiah, the Servant of Yahweh.

To recognize the relevance of our hypothesis to the Servant, we need only quote one or two

key passages. In the first place, the Servant appears within the context of the prophetic crisis

for the purpose of resolving it. He becomes, as a result of God's own action, the receptacle for

all violence; he takes the place of all the members of the community:

All we like sheep have gone astray;

we have turned every one to his own way;

and the Lord has laid on him the iniquity of us all. ( Isa. 53:6)

All the traits attributed to the Servant predispose him to the role of a veritable human

scapegoat.

For he grew up before him like a young plant, and like a root out of dry ground; he had no

form or comeliness that we should look at him,

and no beauty that we should desire him.

He was despised and rejected by men;

a man of sorrows, and acquainted with grief;

and as one from whom men hide their faces

he was despised, and we esteemed him not. ( Isa. 53:2-3)

If these traits make him similar to a certain type of sacrificial victim within the pagan world -

- for example, the Greek
pharmakos
-- and if the fate he undergoes, the fate reserved for the

anathema, is similar to that of the
pharmakos
, it is nonetheless no ritual sacrifice that we are dealing with. It is a spontaneous historical event, which has at once a collective and a legal

character, and is sanctioned by the authorities:

By oppression and judgment he was taken away;

and as for his generation, who considered that he was cut off from out of the land of the

living,

stricken for the transgression of my people?

And they made his grave with the wicked and with a rich man in his death,

although he had done no violence,

and there was no deceit in his mouth. ( Isa. 53:8-9)

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This event therefore has the character not of a ritual but of the type of event from which,

according to my hypothesis, rituals and all aspects of religion are derived. The most striking

aspect here, the trait which is certainly unique, is the innocence of the Servant, the fact that he

has no connection with violence and no affinity for it. A whole number of passages lay upon

men the principal responsibility for his saving death. One of these even appears to attribute to

men the exclusive responsibility for that death. "Yet we esteemed him stricken, smitten by

God, and afflicted" ( Isa. 53:4).

In other words, this was not so. It was not God who smote him; God's responsibility is

implicitly denied.

Throughout the Old Testament, a work of exegesis is in progress, operating in precisely the

opposite direction to the usual dynamics of mythology and culture. And yet it is impossible to

say that this work is completed. Even in the most advanced texts, such as the fourth
"Song of
the Servant,"
there is still some ambiguity regarding the role of Yahweh. Even if the human community is, on several occasions, presented as being responsible for the death of the

victim, God himself is presented as the principal instigator of the persecution. "Yet is was the

will of the Lord to bruise him" ( Isa. 53:10).

This ambiguity in the role of Yahweh corresponds to the general conception of the deity in the Old Testament. In the prophetic books, this conception tends to be increasingly divested

of the violence characteristic of primitive deities. Although vengeance is still attributed to

Yahweh, a number of expressions how that in reality mimetic and reciprocal violence is

festering more and more as the old cultural forms tend to dissolve. Yet all the same, in the

Old Testament we never arrive at a conception of the deity that is entirely foreign to violence.

J.-M.O.:
So in your view there is an inconclusiveness in the Old Testament that affects all

the still primitive aspects to the same degree: the myths are worked through with a form of

inspiration that runs counter to them, but they continue to stand. The sacrifices are criticized,

but they continue; the law is simplified and declared to be identical to the love of one's

neighbor, but it continues. And even though he is presented in a less and less violent form,

and becomes more and more benevolent, Yahweh is still the god to whom vengeance

belongs. The notion of divine retribution is still alive.

R.G.:
That is right. I think it is possible to show that only the texts of the Gospels manage to achieve what the Old Testament leaves incomplete. These texts therefore serve as an

extension of the Judaic Bible, bringing to completion an enterprise that the Judaic Bible did

not take far enough, as Christian tradition has always maintained. The truth of this whole

account comes to the fore when we use the scapegoat in our reading. And it comes to the fore