On May 25, 1996, James Williams conducted a lengthy interview with René Girard. The transcription of the full interview appears as 'The Anthropology of the Cross: A Conversation with René Girard' in The Girard Reader. James G. Williams (ed.) (New York: Crossroad Publishing, 1996), pp. 262-88. These excerpts, taken from pages 262-4, 272-4, 279-80, 282-3, are relevant to the question of Christianity as a sacrificial or nonsacrificial religion. They are published here with the kind permission of the publisher and Professor Girard. 1997 Academic Press Limited James Williams As you look back over your career, what has been the most satisfying thing to you in your work?
René Girard The most satisfying thing has been the actual experience of discovery. I would say that there have been three great moments in the process of my thinking and writing.
First was mimetic desire and rivalry, when I realized that it accounted for so much. The second was the discovery of the scapegoat mechanism. This basically completed the mimetic theory. I felt it gave a highly plausible interpretation of myth and ritual in archaic cultures. From that time on I was convinced that archaic cultures, far from being simply lost in superstition or having no constancy or stability, represented a great human achievement.
The third great moment of discovery for me was when I began to see the uniqueness of the Bible, especially the Christian text, from the standpoint of the scapegoat theory. The mimetic representation of scapegoating in the Passion was the solution to the relationship of the Gospels and archaic cultures. In the Gospels we have the revelation of the mechanism that dominates culture unconsciously.
It seemed to me, as I experienced these moments, that a great deal of evidence was piling up, an avalanche, to support them. I naively thought that everyone would agree with my theory immediately, because I saw it as so obvious and overpowering.
JW Concerning the relation of the New Testament to the full development of the mimetic scapegoat theory, already in your first book, Deceit, Desire, and the Novel you recognize the importance of the Gospels. But are you saying it took a number of years for the full extent of the Passion as revelation of the scapegoat mechanism to occur to you? RG Sure. I recognized the importance of the Gospels in the individual experiences of the novelists who came to grips with mimetic desire and came to a knowledge of mimetic desire. In fact, they have a kind of conversion experience, and this conversion is of the same nature as the shift from mythology to the Gospels. Of course, I didn't fully understand that at the time. This is the most difficult thing for people to understand about my theory-that scapegoating does not play an essential role in the Gospels, whereas it has an enormous