The Prophetic Law: Essays in Judaism, Girardianism, Literary Studies, and the Ethical

A Jewish-Christian Dialogue

33 A Jewish-Christian Dialogue A Jewish-Christian Dialogue Sandor Goodhart, “Isaiah 52–53, René Girard, and the Innocent Victim” René Girard’s theory of the uniqueness of Christianity is based upon the theory of the innocent victim. Jesus of Nazareth for Girard is not simply another hero of Greek tragedy who becomes an enemy twin of everyone. Jesus does nothing violent and yet is willing to die to reveal the arbitrariness of scapegoat violence, the inefficaciousness of the sacrificial expulsion about which the Hebrew prophets have been speaking, as part of a structurative process which may once have galvanized primitive culture but which has now become, in the modern context, little short of murder. But a careful examination of Isaiah 52–53 reveals that this earlier text is entirely compatible with the theory of the innocent victim, although it appears some six hundred years prior to the texts of the Christian Gospel. There is nothing that Girard says about the innocent victim in Christianity which is not already fully present in Isaiah 52–53. As a consequence, we need to reexamine Girard’s claim for the Gospel’s singularity. There would seem a limited number of possibilities, none entirely satisfactory . The first is that Christianity really is unique—as both Girard and 34 The Prophetic Law other Christians claim—but its uniqueness is not based on the disclosure of the innocent victim (as Girard asserts) but rather upon some other consideration which remains to be articulated. The second is that Christianity is not unique (although Girard and Christians say it is) and that it is only an episode in the history of its religious predecessor and of which it remains—in its themes and content (and all denials of such affiliation to the contrary)—an unwitting or unwilling extension. The third possibility is that Christianity really is unique (as both Girard and Christians say), that such uniqueness is rooted in the understanding of the innocent victim (as Girard claims), but that the correspondence between the two—the innocent victim in Isaiah and the innocent victim in the Gospel—is incomplete, although precisely the ways in which this discussion should continue remains to be elaborated. There are problems with each view. The problem with the first proposal is that the Girardian explanation is convincing. Although Christians may continue to debate the matter, there is no obstacle from a Jewish perspective to regarding the explanation that Girard offers as entirely compelling, both as an account of primitive culture, and (with some qualifications) as a distinguishing critical feature of the Gospel revelation. The second proposal must be rejected for similar reasons. Whether or not such a claim is acceptable from a Jewish point of view, it is certainly not so from a Christian perspective. The third possibility is the most interesting. It maintains the revelatory status of Christianity and the linkage to Girard’s theory. But it depends upon a perspective which remains to be articulated and is hard to fathom. Could the uniqueness of Christianity rest, for example, upon the manner in which it takes up the themes of invasion and abandonment in family life? Is it possible that Christianity introduces into the history of the anti-sacrificial what may be termed the “self-sacrificial,” or, more precisely, dynamics of self-construction that appear to be fundamental to Christianity which are precisely the lines of the mimetic and the conflictual that Girard has been developing? Moreover, these dynamics may even account for the appearance of the Christian with the history of Pharisaic Judaism, and yet that have not yet been articulated? Rather than compare early Christian texts to the Hebrew texts of the ancient sixth century, it might be more fruitful to set them beside contemporary Judaic texts—for example from the Talmud or Midrash—in which different approaches to the same Jewish filigree are evident. A Jewish-Christian Dialogue 35 Such largely unattempted reflections may enable us to expose the distant and sometimes troubled relations between Judaism and Christianity to be more of a family quarrel than a clash of independent perspectives, and consequently may open us to the possibility of reconciliation and even common pursuit. Raymund Schwager, “Reply to Sandor Goodhart” I very much appreciate the fact that Sandor interprets the Hebrew bible in the light of Isaiah 52–53. In this way, a Jewish and a Christian understanding of the Revelation come quite close to each other. A longer answer...