How to Read Girard
Christianity as Destroyer of Sacred Myths —”[T]he election of a scapegoat may in fact have worked to found culture in the days before biblical revelation, but the Gospels reveal how it works, and an understanding of how it works destroys the possibility of it working. If we know the victim to be innocent, we can still pronounce him guilty, but we will not succeed in being drawn together—we will not succeed in founding a culture—with the pronouncement.” ( Joseph Bottum, “Girard Among the Girardians” )
.. Already the Old Testament shows this turning inside-out of the mythic accounts with regard to the innocence of the victims (Abel, Joseph, Job, . . . )
.. The death of Christ on the cross exposed the lie of the scapegoat mechanism from within and offered humanity the chance to establish a new and more mature relationship to the divine.