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31 CHAPTER 5 Christ (Orders and Disorders) MT: In your view, Christian revelation triggers a process that is global, worldwide or perhaps even wider. We emerge from the lie, from the mythical shadow, and are reborn under the sun of truth. It’s the beginning of History as such, and it’s not just one more myth. RG: From a Christian point of view, it could be said that, in a sense, Creation starts up again. Creation damaged by sin. MT: What sin exactly? RG: Mankind’s sin, original sin. MT: Yes, but how do you define it? RG: I don’t presume to define it, but I’m saying that the mimetic system is a big part of it. Original sin begins on an individual level in Genesis, with Adam and Eve, but it immediately continues on the group level with Cain and Abel: the murder of the brother, you see, is the creation of human culture . The whole mimetic system is there, and the Gospels say so, I think. 32 Chapter Five They have Jesus say that “he is going to die like the prophets” and, among the prophets, Abel is mentioned. That shows that it’s not only a question of the Jewish prophets, but of all religious murders since the foundation of the world, murders that all resemble the Passion inasmuch as they are all founding murders in the scapegoat sense. The death of Christ occurs in continuity with those murders. What’s unique about the Passion is not the way in which Christ dies—how could crucifixion be unique given that it’s the most common torture in the Roman world?—it’s that, instead of ending with a sacralization of the scapegoat, it ends with a desacralization of the whole system. And what Christianity says, which is obviously very paradoxical, is that this Revelation which desacralizes everything is the only truly religious one, the only one that is truly divine. Structurally, the Gospels resemble a myth: there’s a crisis, there’s a collective murder, there’s a religious revelation. In order to understand that it’s not the same thing, it’s necessary to look at what is said about the victim. It’s not at all the same thing to look at a murder from the vantage point of the murderers as it is to look at it from the vantage point of the innocent victim. MT: One could make the following objection: given that the mythical text obviously doesn’t acknowledge its lie, your assertion that this text is lying and that the Gospel text is speaking the truth necessarily comes before any sort of analysis; your system of representation and that of your critics are both closed, mutually exclusive. Discussion is impossible. RG: An excellent objection, and one that sums up many others. But my response is that it isn’t true that I assume a priori that myths are lies and the Gospel is the truth. To the contrary, it’s the modern world and its pseudoscience that, without any serious reflection, takes as a given that everything is mythical, including the Passion, that everything is false. By resisting the mimetic escalation that myths fail to resist, the Gospels identify, penetrate, and explain that to which myth is too completely subject even to see. The Gospels see that Oedipus’s guilt—like Christ’s—is a panicked crowd’s “frameup job,” they are able to describe what pagan eyes think they see, the scapegoat first killed and then later falsely divinized as the source of reconciliation. The Gospel of Luke says that “and though Herod and Pilate had been enemies before, they were reconciled that same day.” It’s a reconciliation that Christ (Orders and Disorders) 33 obviously isn’t Christian, but rather the result of the sacrifice for those who believe in it. And even more striking: Herod believes in the resurrection of John the Baptist, whose killing he ordered! It’s written (Matthew 14:2)! Of Jesus, whose fame has spread all the way to him, the panic-stricken tetrarch declares: “This man is John the Baptist! It’s him, risen from the dead; that’s why he possesses the power to work miracles!” Herod divinizes his victim as a scapegoat, insofar as he killed him. The Gospels see that myth is dominated by a false accusation, while myth can tell us nothing about the Gospels. Without Gospel intelligence we see only...

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