The One by Whom Scandal Comes by René Girard

Author:René Girard
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9781609173999
Publisher: Michigan State University Press

MSB: The historical-critical method of biblical interpretation seems to be enjoying something of a revival. What is your opinion of it?

RG: I haven't read any very recent examples of this method, but I have great esteem for the work of the late Raymond Brown, who was at St. Patrick's Seminary in Menlo Park, near Stanford, for many years. Brown was a meticulous scholar. He wrote a book in two large volumes, The Death of the Messiah, surveying the whole range of critical studies that have examined the four gospel narratives in microscopic detail, from the arrest of Jesus up until the Resurrection, including the trial, the Passion, and the crucifixion.8 While remaining completely faithful to the historical-critical method, this work nevertheless manages to uphold orthodox teaching, even if it does accept some things that seem to me very doubtful. Father Brown firmly endorses the view that John did not know Mark. I think he is right. His arguments are convincing. John clearly did not take from Mark certain factual details that are common to both. The traditions are independent of each other and the vocabulary seems to confirm the absence of any mutual influence. And yet the details are the same. Now, if one really wishes to discredit the Gospels, one must assume there was a unique source for all of them. The Greek used by Mark is the most impoverished, the most grammatically incorrect, and yet the most powerful from a literary point of view. And Mark is also, as I say, the most insistent of the four authors in seeing Jesus as a scapegoat. Take, for example, the two thieves who were crucified after him. In Mark they are both hostile to Jesus; in other words, there is no exception to violent unanimity. In Luke, on the other hand, one of the two is not subject to this dynamic. He is saved, because he recognizes the truth. He recognizes himself as a persecutor.9 This does not happen in Mark; there is no “good” thief there. The idea that Jesus is a scapegoat for all humanity is present in Luke, but other meanings are superimposed on it and make it less obvious. If one had only Luke, it would be more difficult to see how little the disciples understood prior to the Resurrection. But with the Gospel According to Mark, there can be no mistake: before the Resurrection, the disciples did not utter a single word that was not foolish. Not one. But Mark's harshness has a theological rather than a polemical or political function. In no way whatever is it a satire of the disciples. It is a portrait of humanity prior to Christ's revelation.

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