In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:THE MOB AND THE VICTIM IN THE PSALMS AND JOB Robert Hamerton-Kelly Woodside Church IrecaiI a passage from Elie Wiesel's novel, Night, where, looking at the frail body of a young boy writhing on the gallows—his body weight was too light to kill him outright when he dropped through the trap door—someone asksthe narrator, "Where is nowyourGod?" This question is often on my mind, not least because for the (...) last seven years ofmy tenure at Stanford I studied ethnic conflict and filled my mind with the most discouraging images. I found myselfsaying on occasion that I felt ashamed to be a human being, which was only a slight exaggeration. I noted with wry amusement that a few years ago it was reported that the wolves were fleeing from the Caucasus in great numbers because ofthe human violence there, a sad irony in the light of Thomas Hobbes' motto, Homo homini lupus. I had long suspected thatthat was an insult to wolves, and now I had the proof. Lately we have Philip Gourewitch's new book on the Rwanda holocaust of 1994, where they killed one million people in ten weeks, not with weapons ofmass destruction butwith machetes and clubs primedwith six-inch nails, and Rwanda is a Christian country. The voice ofconscience cries out, "Where is our God?" in all this; why does He spend his time causing statues to ooze oil in suburban Massachusetts rather than defending the children of Kosovo against depraved nationalists.1 It is some comfort that the psalmist cried the same question and thus provides a convenient way into a meditation on violence in the Psalms. It occurs first in 42,3: "I have no food but tears / day and 1I refer to the phenomena reported in connection with the comatose teenage girl, Audrey Sosa, who is believed by some to be a channel for miracles. 152Robert Hamerton-Kelly night:/ and all day long men say to me,/ Where is now your God?" and again at 42,10, "Nearly breaking my bones / my oppressors insult me / as all day long they ask me / Where is now your God?" In 79, 10 it occurs in a national lament, "Why should the pagans ask, Where is their God?" and this recalls two prophetic oracles, in Joel 2,9, "Spare yourpeople Yahweh!/ Do not make your heritage a thing of shame, a byword for the nations./ Why should it be said amongthe nations,/ Where is their God?" and Micah 7,10 "When my enemy sees it (my vindication)/ she will be covered with shame,? she who said to me: Where is Yahweh your God?" So there are two classes of such sayings, one by an individual and one by the nation. Much ink has been spilled on the questions, Who is the victim?, and Who are the enemies? The answers have canvassed all the possibilities from the lone individual beset by spiritual temptations, or David himselfin his days and nights as a fugitive, to the nation beset by rival nations.2 The victim surrounded by persecutors is clearly a major category in the Psalms, present in two thirds ofthe collection; one hundred out ofthe one hundred and fifty explicitly or implicitly refer to a victim surrounded by enemies.3 Let me cut to the chase and recall that according to René Girard's mimetic theory, which I take as a point of departure, the situation of the victim surrounded by a mob ofenemies is a structural not an historical situation.4 The deep structure ofhuman history is a victim surrounded by the mob, a lamb slain since the foundation ofthe world. This deep structure controls the shape of emergent history but that emergence conceals its deep structure by turning history into myth. Myth covers up the blood stains and stifles the voice of the victim, myth accuses the victim, presents the victim as guilty or willing and the persecutors as innocent. To this day much that claims to be history is really myth. History happens only when the voice ofthe victim comes to word, and for that reason the gospel is irreducibly history and not myth. The 2Raymund Schwager (53ff) gives the following information... (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:RESPONSE TO QAMAR-UL HUDA Robert Hamerton-Kelly Stanford University Qamar and I communicated by email. The text of my response is basically what I sent him by email. Dear Qamar: Thanks for your greeting. I have read your paper with interest and learned from it. Here is a brief account of what I plan to say. My response will be chiefly from the point of view of the mimetic theory (...) which holds that religion in its human, pagan, unrevealed form is a structure of sacred violence that lives by scapegoating and sacrifice and generates culture out ofthe victim by means of, firstly ritual, the repetition of the first murder as sacrifice, secondly prohibition, religious law that enforces differentiation, and thus prevents the crisis of undifferentiation, that is the precursor of surrogate victimage and thirdly myth, the account of the originary violence told from the point of views of the perpetrators, coverup for their violence. Islam's monotheism is a powerful antidote to this pagan sacred, indeed, in terms ofmimetic theory, all the great religions are more or less in reaction against the pagan sacred, against generative violence; and one ofthe marks oftheir greatness resides in the candor with which they address the problem of the residual sacred violence in themselves. This was my problem with Rabbi Kimelman's presentation yesterday, and I confess it is my problem with your presentation. In this regard Iconsider the Buddhistcontribution to this symposiumto be the best of the lot, precisely because it is so candid about the residue of sacred 100Robert Hamerton-Kelly violence in this truly great religion. I think that the presentation on Christianity too was, in this regard, candid. Islam's monotheism is a powerful antidote to this pagan sacred, and I want to drawjust for a minute on that. As you yourself mentioned, the rise ofIslamwas aconflictual phenomenon within thepagan diversity ofArabia in the sixth century. Andthat itselfis disclosive oftherelationshipbetween this emerging monotheism and the residual pagan sacred. Now, you understand, that in terms of mimetic theory, the god is the transfigured victim. So the god is essentially a center of violence. And the emergence of monotheism emerges as a critique of the pagan sacred, the transfigured victim. Now here are some indications in the biblical tradition that illustrate this that I find are quite interesting. You recall that monotheism in the Bible first emerges in the texts of Second Isaiah, Deutero Isaiah. Where the Israelite—in this case Jewish—experience of exile leads the prophet to perceive that God is not just the God of Israel—that is, it's not just henotheism—but is the God of all the world, and that he can indeed work through Cyrus, King ofthe Medes and Persians. It is surely significant that monotheism emerges in the very same text in which the figure of the Suffering Servant of Yahweh appears. It seems as if the emergence of monotheism goes along with the emerging recognition that the victim is innocent. That, ifyou like, is the demythologization ofthe sacred victim of the pagan divinity. I refer you now, secondly, to the ten commandments, the ten words of Moses from Sinai in Exodus 20 and Deuteronomy 6. As we discussed in our seminar at Stanford and as René has made clear in his most recent book (ISee Satan Falling likeLightening ), the tenth commandment,"Thou shalt not covet" is indeed a prohibition on mimetic desire. This is what the Apostle Paul understood when he picked up in a book epithumesis—in Greek: "you shall not desire." By the way thuo, the root thu in Greek is the root for sacrifice. So epithumia/desire, is etymologically in Greek linked to sacrifice. "You shall not desire" is a prohibition on sacred violence. That's the last commandment and, I take it as an important summary of the previous nine commandments. What I have not seen generally appreciated is that the first commandment is a prohibition on idolatry. It is in fact the establishment of the absolute monotheism. So it is as if the ten commandments are bracketed by two stridently mimetic antimimetic injunctions: theinjunction on idolatry and the injunction on mimetic desire. And I think you can... (shrink)

Apocalypse. To most, the word signifies destruction, death, the end of the world, but the literal definition is "revelation" or "unveiling," the basis from which renowned theologian René Girard builds his own view of Biblical apocalypse. Properly understood, Girard explains, Biblical apocalypse has nothing to do with a wrathful or vengeful God punishing his unworthy children, and everything to do with a foretelling of what future humans are making for themselves now that they have devised the instruments of global self-destruction. (...) In this volume, some of the major thinkers about the interpretation of politics and religion— including Eric Voegelin, Leo Strauss, and Carl Schmitt— are scrutinized by some of today's most qualified scholars, all of whom are thoroughly versed in Girard’s groundbreaking work. Including an important new essay by Girard, this volume enters into a philosophical debate that challenges the bona fides of philosophy itself by examining three supremely important philosopher of the twentieth century. It asks how we might think about politics now that the attacks of 9/11 have shifted our intellectual foundations and what the outbreak of rabid religion might signify for international politics. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:The King and the Crowd: Divine Right and Popular Sovereignty in the French Revolution Robert G. Hamerton-Kelly Stanford University We French cannot really think about politics or philosophy or literature without remembering that all this— politics, philosophy, literature—began, in the modem world, under the sign of a crime. A crime was committed in France in 1793. They killed a good and entirely likable king who was the incarnation of (...) legitimacy. We cannot not remember that this crime was horrible... When we speak about writing, the accent is on what is necessarily criminal in writing. (Jean-François Lyotard, "Discussion Lyotard-Rorty" 583; quoted in Dunn 165) The condemnation ofthe king is at the crux ofour contemporary history. It symbolizes the secularization of our history and the disincarnation of the Christian God. (Albert Camus, The Rebel 120; quoted in Dunn 140) Susan Dunn makes a well-documented case that the death of Louis XVI was unconsciously understood, especially by the Jacobins, as a human sacrifice that was necessary for the founding of the republic. "Louis must die because the patrie must live," said Robespierre at the king's trial, and the representative Carra considered Louis "the source of corruption and servitude... the fatal talisman ofall our ills" whose death would cause the people to be "regenerated in morality and virtue" (Dunn 15-37). The king was a monster and the source ofall the ills, and his death 68Robert G. Hamerton-Kelly had the power to alleviate those ills and regenerate the nation. This image of the king as sacrificial victim persisted throughout the first half of the nineteenth century in French literature and politics, sometimes assimilating itself to the image of Jesus Christ who died for the sins of the world. Legitimist writers like Joseph de Maistre saw his death precisely in this light as a great Christian sacrifice that would do France and the world good (Dunn 28-37). The king as a sacred monster whose life causes all ill and whose death brings healing is the classic figure of the scapegoat or sacrificial victim identified by René Girard. Susan Dunn recognizes this but because she does not know Girard's mimetic theory she is not able to explain the significance of the scapegoat king. Her work is, indeed, as Conor Cruise O'Brien says in the foreword, a work ofdemonstration rather than argument, of evidence rather than interpretation. I offer a mimetic interpretation ofthe Jacobin claim that the death ofthe king was the human sacrifice that founded the republic, and an argument that a universally operative generative mechanism forged the historical events of the revolution.1 There is no essential difference between the sovereignty ofthe king and the sovereignty of the people. In both cases sovereignty arises from a metaphorical contract that threatens death to anyone who violates it. The royal metaphors are organic while the revolutionary metaphors are legal and rational, but they all express the sacrificial structure ofpolitical power. Revolutionary democracy imports the fiction ofrationality to obscure its sacrificial structure. The desire ofthe general will for contractual equality is a transformation of mimetic desire in search of a victim around which the bad violence ofmimetic rivalry can coalesce into the good violence of sacred order. Sovereignty, therefore, is structurally single and simple; it is violence transformed through the sacred into the powers oforder. Max Weber understood this in general ifnot in its particulars when he defined sovereignty as the monopoly of the means of violence within a single territory.2 1 Mimetic theory was discovered by René Girard. I have given an account of my understanding of it in 7Ae Gospel and the Sacred 129-52. The idea of a mechanism universally operative in human history isjustified in the emerging discipline ofevolutionary psychology. Such mechanisms are the result ofthe interaction ofgenetic and environmental factors in the process of evolution (see Robert Wright). 2 The precise quotation from Weber is as follows: "The state is a human community that (successfully) claims the monopoly of the legitimate use of physical force within a The King and the Crowd69 The transition from royal to popular sovereignty is a transformation of the basic pattern of victim and group. The... (shrink)