Journal: Bulletin for Biblical Research
Volume: BBR 03:1 (NA 1993)
Article: Sacrifice, Mimesis, And The Genesis Of Violence: A Response To Bruce Chilton
Author: James G. Williams

BBR 3:1 (1993) p. 31

Sacrifice, Mimesis, And The Genesis Of Violence: A Response To Bruce Chilton

James G. Williams

Syracuse University
Syracuse, Ny 13244-1170

I would like to thank Bruce Chilton for the informed and collegial way that he has responded to The Bible, Violence, and the Sacred: Liberation from the Myth of Sanctioned Violence. He quite rightly places it in the context of René Girard’s mimetic theory and then focuses on the issue of sacrifice in the ensuing critique of my book. There is much at stake here for all of us who seek to preserve and clarify the distinctive testimony of the Jewish and Christian Scriptures. We are in an age when “postmodern” critics, whether literary, philosophical, or theological, tend (if not intend) to undermine the Jewish and Christian heritage of Western culture. We should be well aware of this tendency, whose inspiration comes primarily from Nietzsche and whose thrust has been transmitted into the contemporary period primarily through Heidegger and Derrida. However, a blind reaction to it will simply make of us “doubles” of postmodern interpreters, that is, rivals so preoccupied with the enemy other that our thinking is determined by them. In this context there is no problem more urgent than the ancient phenomenon of sacrifice and all that attends it.

Certain aspects of Chilton’s review of Girard’s theory are quite perceptive. He says, “In his treatment of the Gospels, Girard’s analysis becomes openly ethical and programmatic (one might even say, evangelical)” (p. 20). That is certainly true. Girard’s research has led him to an “evangelical” orientation not simply in the sense of the good news of the Gospel witness to the Christ, but in arguing that both scientific and religious truth converge and have their origin in the biblical testimony to the innocent victim and the God who is the advocate of victims. A typical statement is this one from The Scapegoat: “The invention of science is not the reason that there are no

BBR 3:1 (1993) p. 32

longer witches, but the fact that there are no longer witch-hunts is the reason that science has been invented.”1 This opening up of the world to investigation is part of a long history, which does not run in a straight line or smoothly but which nonetheless moves inevitably toward disclosure of the collective violence and its ritual forms that undergird human culture. The unveiling of collective violence and victimization camouflaged in religion and culture comes primarily through certain distinctive biblical witnesses. Above all, in its clearest and most sustained form, it is disclosed through Jesus as the Christ in the New Testament Gospels.