scholarly journals Syndebukke i Gammel Testamente

1989 ◽  
Author(s):  
Kirsten Nielsen
Keyword(s):  
Old Testament ◽  
Social Institutions ◽  
Deuteronomistic History ◽  
Ethical Question ◽  
Short Introduction ◽  
Book Of Job ◽  
Rene Girard ◽  
The Past ◽  
René Girard ◽  
Generative Mechanism

The French anthropologist René Girard is known for his theory of the unanimous victimage as the generative mechanism of all religions and social institutions. According to Girard the function of this mechanism is to stop the crisis by sacrificing one person, the scapegoat.This article gives a short introduction to Girard and discusses whether the Deuteronomistic History should be read as a hunting of scapegoats. The answer is yes, but it is shown that a great number of Old Testament texts react strongly against this cruel and arbitrary treatment of the innocent: The Book of Jonah, Gen 22, Ps 22, The Book of Job and Isa 53. In these texts the scapegoat is saved and the reader knows his innocence.Texts like these may be read as a protest against the Deuteronomistic understanding of History as a clear and righteous system, where God rewards all good and punishes all evil. And it is suggested that one of the consequences of the discovery of this victimage mechanism is that it is not only a historical, but also an ethical question whether the readers trust the historicity of texts giving words to the cries of innocent victims in the past. Trusting their suffering is the only way to do them justice today.

scholarly journals Begæret, volden og offeret

1985 ◽  
Author(s):  
Finn Frandsen
Keyword(s):  
Social Institutions ◽  
Main Element ◽  
Human Society ◽  
Mimetic Desire ◽  
Rene Girard ◽  
René Girard ◽  
Single Person ◽  
Cultural Order ◽  
Generative Mechanism

The French critic and anthropologist René Girard is one of the most original and controversial thinkers of today. This article contains an introduction to his theory of the unanimous victimage as the generative mechanism of all religious and social institutions. The main element in this mechanism is the mimetic desire, i.e. a desire which depends on a mediator and whose dynamics is rooted in a dispute object. Every human society has originally known a state of crisis caused by mimetic rivalry and contagious, reciprocal violence. The function of the victimage mechanism is to stop the crisis, to institute a cultural order based on differences and hierarchy, and to reconcile the members of the community by expelling and sacrificing one single person considered to be the cause of the evil. The purpose of prohibitions, rituals and myths is afterwards to maintain and renew this reconciling “scapegoat effect”. The introduction also includes two shorter chapters on René Girard’s interpretation of the Oedipus myth and his non-sacrificial reading of the evangelic text.

scholarly journals Trends in the history of research on the problem of violence in the Old Testament

1997 ◽  
Vol 18 (1) ◽  
pp. 127-145
Author(s):  
S. D. Snyman
Keyword(s):  
Old Testament ◽  
Rene Girard ◽  
History Of Research ◽  
René Girard ◽  
History Of ◽  
Major Attention ◽  
Old Testament Studies

Violence as theological problem is a relative newcomer to the scene of Old Testament studies. It was only during the 1970’s that violence was given major attention by Old Testament scholars. In a number of studies the main focus was on Yahweh and his relation to violence. By the late I970’s the theories of Rene Girard on violence were applied to the Old Testament and played an important role in the thinking of Old Testament scholars on violence. In the last part of the article proposed solutions to the problem of violence in the Old Testament are discussed.

scholarly journals Restoring the Past, Forging the Present: Scapegoating and Redemption in Calvaire and These Are The Names

Religions ◽  
2021 ◽  
Vol 12 (5) ◽  
pp. 327
Author(s):  
Peter G. A. Versteeg ◽  
Edwin Koster
Keyword(s):  
Horror Film ◽  
Rene Girard ◽  
The Past ◽  
René Girard ◽  
New Beginning ◽  
Painful Events ◽  
The Way

This article is a comparison of two works of fiction, a film and a novel, that both address the question of how people deal with intense memories of tragic events from their past. Both works are characterized by crucial references to religious phenomena. In the Belgian cult horror film Calvaire and the bestselling Dutch novel These Are The Names, stories are told about the desire to restore what was lost. In order to deal with past realities, the characters in these works of fiction impose the past, in an imaginative form, upon the present, which inevitably seems to create violence and conflict. The introduction of violence, and the way this violence destroys identities as a means to restore a lost world, calls the possibility and credibility of restoration into question. In order to explore the phenomenon of restoration, we introduce a concept of substitution (inspired by René Girard) to investigate the power of violence in these two narratives. In Calvaire, violence leads to the perversion of identity, ultimately leading to the latter’s destruction, yet at the same time it can be understood to result in love and absolution. In These Are The Names, sacrificing acts first seem to bring a new beginning but in the end redemption is substituted by accusations of severe crimes. However, in this novel the past is also present in such a way that lost identities could be restored. How both stories look at the relation between past and present and in which way they present the possibility of restoring painful events, will be our main questions.

A Short Life of Kierkegaard

2013 ◽  
Author(s):  
Walter Lowrie ◽  
Alastair Hannay
Keyword(s):  
Old Testament ◽  
Soren Kierkegaard ◽  
The State ◽  
Young Girl ◽  
Love Affair ◽  
Short Life ◽  
The Past ◽  
Modern Thought ◽  
Hans Christian Andersen

A small, insignificant-looking intellectual with absurdly long legs, Søren Kierkegaard (1813–1855) was a veritable Hans Christian Andersen caricature of a man. A strange combination of witty cosmopolite and melancholy introvert, he spent years writing under a series of fantastical pseudonyms, lavishing all the splendor of his mind on a seldom-appreciative world. He had a tragic love affair with a young girl, was dominated by an unforgettable Old Testament father, fought a sensational literary duel with a popular satiric magazine, and died in the midst of a violent quarrel with the state church for which he had once studied theology. Yet this iconoclast produced a number of brilliant books that have profoundly influenced modern thought. This classic biography presents a charming and warmly appreciative introduction to the life and work of the great Danish writer. It tells the story of Kierkegaard's emotionally turbulent life with a keen sense of drama and an acute understanding of how his life shaped his thought. The result is a wonderfully informative and entertaining portrait of one of the most important thinkers of the past two centuries.

The concept of the flat earth in the holy scripture

2020 ◽  
Vol 1 (100) ◽  
pp. 77-82
Author(s):  
V.P. Kultenko ◽  
◽  
K.M. Mamchur ◽  
Keyword(s):  
Old Testament ◽  
Space Exploration ◽  
Practical Experience ◽  
Modern World ◽  
Cultural Experience ◽  
Religious Texts ◽  
Sacred Texts ◽  
The Past

The article deals with the concept of flat Earth. There has a adherents and defenders in the modern world, despite the solid age of heliocentric teaching. Flat Earth apologists point out, that the evidence in favor of the scientific heliocentric theory is held on confidence. People should trust the testimony of astronauts, space exploration data, and more. However, the vast majority of people cannot verify this data from their own practical experience. If science is a criterion for truth, then the heliocentric concepts and flat Earth are far removed from this criterion. Moreover, in the cultural experience of the past we can find arguments in favor of the concept of a flat Earth. These testimonies are contained, in particular, in the Old Testament Bible, the sacred texts of Christianity and Judaism. The mythological and religious texts of other nations and cultures also refer to the idea of a flat Earth.

L'identité du social et du religieux selon René Girard

1980 ◽  
Vol 78 (37) ◽  
pp. 71-90
Author(s):  
Claude Troisfontaines
Keyword(s):  
Rene Girard ◽  
René Girard

Polarized Readings of René Girard: Utilizing Girardian Thought to Break a Theological and Philosophical Impasse

2019 ◽  
Vol 24 (1) ◽  
pp. 25-42
Author(s):  
Colby Dickinson
Keyword(s):  
Religious Values ◽  
Rene Girard ◽  
René Girard

René Girard’s work often seems suspect to liberals, because it appears as a totalizing narrative. Such hesitancy with respect to either dismissing or endorsing it follows from the demise of “grand narratives” that brought with them imperialistic and hegemonic tendencies. Yet if a liberal viewpoint does not embrace Girard, it is for different reasons that conservatives are either fully supportive of his thought as promising a return to religious values or hesitant about accepting his theories because they critique a form of violence inherent to any community. Girardian thought, it can be argued, has focused on deconstructing mythological justifications for violent activity at the expense of establishing a fruitful position regarding positive communal formations. The tensions between these juxtaposed liberal and conservative viewpoints, as taken up in this article, illustrate an impasse between deconstructivist-genealogists (representing trends within liberal discourse) and communitarians (representing conservative or orthodox viewpoints)—one that shows up in a variety of contexts today. Highlighting this particular standoff in interpretations of Girard can, nevertheless, yield important insights regarding the ultimate significance of his work.

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