566 - The Bible, Violence, and the Sacred

The Bible, Violence, and the Sacred
By James G. Williams
San Francisco, Harper, 1992. 288 pp. $27.00.

Violence is woven into the fabric of society, often enjoying religious sanctions. Its universality naturally prompts anthropologists to offer a rationale that takes into account the human propensity for violence and the desire to include deity in that behavior. Perhaps the most influential theory regarding violence and the sacred is associated with Rene' Girard. Among his many writings, Job, the Victim of His People, applies his view to a biblical character. A disciple of Girard, James Williams, has now attempted a thorough reading of the entire Bible from the perspective of mimetic rivalry and the resulting conflict. According to Girard's hypothesis, which Williams endorses, society originates in imitative rivalry and endeavors to control the conflict through scapegoating victimization. Prohibition, myth, and ritual conceal and delimit social violence, but the decisive escape from the dynamic of violence is foreshadowed by the prophets and ultimately accomplished in Jesus, who shows that God opposes the differentiation of victimization by submitting innocently to the scapegoat mechanism.

Williams, best known for a perceptive study of gnomic sayings and for influential essays on Job and Qoheleth, has entered the arena of heavyweights, taking on Nietzsche, Freud, and Jung, with occasional jabs at Derrida, Mann, and Hesse. Williams blasts the establishment in

568 - The Bible, Violence, and the Sacred

academe for its contempt for religion and its special distaste for a violent deity as depicted in the Bible. Boldly rejecting Nietzsche's love for a super race as wrong, Williams also faults Freud for a peculiar self-defense that allowed a Jew to gain honor in Nazi-torn Europe by virtually denying his ancestry. Williams also accuses Jung of incorporating violence into the godhead. Mann's problem and Hesse's, in Williams' eyes, was their surrendering to the great man theory. Derrida's wish to live in a world of non-concepts irks Williams, for this scheme leaves no place for victims.

Such evaluations of influential thinkers do not constitute the heart of Williams' book; for that we must look to his analysis of fraternal conflicts as reported in Genesis, to Moses' ordeal, to the royal struggles between David and Saul, to Job's conflict with his friends, and to the Gospels' accounts of Jesus' death. Williams identifies mimetic rivalry between Cain and Abel, indicating that violence occurs in connection with ritual, which provided Abel an outlet for violence in sacrifice but failed Cain in this respect. The violent act was checked by divine prohibition, the function of law in society. Williams examines the above-mentioned conflicts in considerable detail, explaining each of them as the result of mimetic desire. Often the theory fits nicely, and Williams illuminates several features of the stories. Sometimes he pushes the evidence too far, for example, when claiming that the tree Moses threw into the water was a substitute for his life, or when accepting Daube's suggestion that the color of Jacob's food reminded a violence-prone Esau of blood.

Occasionally, Williams refuses to let the evidence challenge the theory. Two examples will illustrate this point, the first, a minor incident, the second, a major character trait. Williams is troubled by Jesus' momentary act of violence in the temple; to mitigate its effect on his theory, Williams calls the action brief and symbolic. Anything more than this would undoubtedly destroy the idea of Jesus as victim. However, Williams implies that finitude is fault; logically there could be no victim, at least prior to the God-Man. The least convincing feature of the book is Williams' failure to recognize that violence characterizes the biblical God, whom he describes as taking the side of all victims. None would deny that a tradition in the Bible describes God in this way, but another tradition emphasizes God's vindictive behavior against the inhabitants of the land, the Amalekites, various foreign nations, and slack churches (in the Book of Revelation). "Tit for tat" thinking pervades the Bible, and in those rare moments when it is transcended, for example, the essential argument of Job in the Dialogue and Jesus' comment in John 9 about the person who was born blind, the insight fades quickly, for the epilogue to Job returns to a retributive concept of virtue and its reward, and the Johannine school envisions a violent conclusion to the earth surpassing anything in the Hebrew Bible.

Of course, one can explain the violent deity as human perception,

569 - The Bible, Violence, and the Sacred

which naturally paints God in colors drawn from experience. That is indeed what such descriptions of God amount to, but this reading of the Bible rules out revelation, which Williams does not wish to do. He therefore must choose the minor tradition about God that surfaces here and there despite a dominant understanding running counter to it. The result is confusing, as when Williams describes God as just and compassionate, two attributes that cancel one another out, a truth that the author of Jonah recognized and rebelled against.

Williams' praise for the North American experiment, a society that has become flawed in its inner core, rings hollow, for other nations, too, have aspired to greatness with similar results. Mimetic rivalry, conflict, victimization, scapegoating and violence run rampant, as the recent bloody riots in Los Angeles demonstrate graphically. One could argue that events have conspired to support Girard's essential thesis, even when applied to the creation of the world. If recent findings are confirmed and the universe really did begin with a mighty explosion, then events on earth are truly mimetic, and Williams' fundamental optimism has little basis in reality.

My disagreement with Williams must not overshadow a great appreciation for the many insights into the biblical text he offers. I have always read his works for novel interpretations of traditional material. He did not fail me in this book. I am grateful for that fact, although, from my perspective, he stops short of conclusions implied in the biblical text and ultimately is less radical than I think appropriate.

James L. Crenshaw
Duke University
Durham, NC