Re: A Question about Worship/Sacrifice/Ritual -- Mimetic Theory and Literary Study

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Date Posted: 07:06:19 02/27/08 Wed
Author: Kiernan
Subject: Re: A Question about Worship/Sacrifice/Ritual
In reply to: Cara 's message, "Re: A Question about Worship/Sacrifice/Ritual" on 20:10:28 02/26/08 Tue

It seems to me that much of the difficulty of Girard comes in his use of the word "sacrifice." He defines sacrifices as always violent and thus as something to avoid. Yet, at the same time, he discusses how neither the OT or the Gospels shy away from using these same sacrificial models in a new way. I think that rather than always discussing sacrifice in the sense of violence, would should perhaps think of it in terms of guilt and innocence. After all, violence against a single victim is done in order to place all the guilt on them and hide our own guilt. In "rending our own hearts," we are no longer passing off our guilt onto another victim; we are acknowleging our own sin, the heart of repentance and contrition. This, then, would be the way in which the Jewish scriptures and the Gospels redefine the mechanism - revealing the way in which they work and undermining them by presenting a similar (almost the same) pattern with radically different results.

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Re: A Question about Worship/Sacrifice/Ritual -- Cara, 07:47:22 02/29/08 Fri