Rene Girard: Are the Gospels Mythical? (1996)

[Blood]

http://www.firstthings.com/article/1996 ... s-mythical

"This is the contemporary intellectual situation Christian thinkers face as they read the Scriptures. The Cross is incomparable insofar as its victim is the Son of God, but in every other respect it is a human event. An analysis of that event—exploring the anthropological aspects of the Passion that we cannot neglect if we take the dogma of the Incarnation seriously—not only reveals the falsity of contemporary anthropology’s skepticism about human nature. It also utterly discredits the notion that Christianity is in any sense mythological. The world’s myths do not reveal a way to interpret the Gospels, but exactly the reverse: the Gospels reveal to us the way to interpret myth."

[Blood]

"When Jesus dies alone, abandoned by his apostles, the persecutors are unanimous once again. Were the Gospels trying to tell a myth, the truth Jesus had tried to reveal would then be buried once and for all and the stage would be set for the triumphal revelation of the mythological victim as the divine source of the reordering of society through the “good” scapegoating violence that puts an end to the bad mimetic violence that had threatened the society."

[Ben C. Smith]

Are the Gospels Mythical?

Noooooo, the gospels are not mythical. They exist! I have seen them, even read a couple of them.

[Tenorikuma]

Go home, Rene. You're drunk.

[Clive]

Maybe this illustrates something.

Everyone wants there oeuvre to be appreciated, even praised. They want its artistry to be appreciated, its logic, its sound arguments, the depths of its perspective, its colours, shape, texture....

The gospels, the passion, the resurrection are impressive raw materials to attempt to reshape into something, to try illustrating from a different angle...

Rorschach, where are you?

[Clive]

Hmm, I might try one - Jesus invented the surreal and postmodernism.

[Blood]

I guess some people never escape Catholicism.

[toejam]

That article was painful to read through.