BIBLE: ANTIDOTE TO VIOLENCE

I just thought of sharing a few lines from my dissertation paper which I did on René Girard’s Mimetic Theory of Violence. It is interesting to see how Girard presents Bible as an Antidote to Violence.

René Girard’s interpretation of the Bible and the crucial role he assigns it in the history of Western culture are doubtless the most controversial features of his entire intellectual enterprise. In his book Things Hidden Since the Foundation of the World Girard attributes our ability to break down and analyze “cultural mechanisms” such as scapegoating and to demystify the role of sacrificial violence in the establishment of order, to the influence of Biblical texts. Traditional myth tell the story from the side of the saved community, vilifying but also deifying the scapegoat, hiding the murder and generative mimetic scapegoating mechanism (GMSM). The Judeo-Christian Scriptures exhibit the traits of siding with the victim, clearly portraying the murder and eventual failure of the sacrifice to bring lasting peace. This can be shown in both the Jewish and the Christian texts, in most of the narratives found therein.

In Things Hidden Since the Foundation of the World Girard argues that what was distinctive about the Judeo-Christian Scriptures, beginning with the story of Abraham and Isaac and culminating in the Crucifixion of Jesus, was that the violent structures of culture were progressively unveiled, revealed for their arbitrariness and horror, and finally, utterly repudiated. To this end, he engages in a careful series of readings of Biblical texts and relates them to his previous hypothesis on violence and the sacred. Girard arrives at this insight not as chance discovery but as a deep conversion experience. (We shall look at his conversion experience some time later). His conclusion is that the Bible is the sole textual mechanism to enact a complete exposé of the victimage mechanism. Its mission is to alert us to this seemingly perennial cycle of the restoration of order caused by conflictual desire and violence. This exposé was undertaken in order that humanity may refuse the victimage mechanism without remainder.

The Bible in short, offers us real knowledge of human relations. It is not a text to be dissected with modern critical tools but is itself the double edged sword which cuts through the misconceptions of old modernity to get to the fundamental truths of humanity.