This won't answer your question(s), but near the end of the article:
Only a few months earlier, Girard had spoken at an informal philosophical reading group in History Corner for several dozen faculty and students. Girard recapitulated the story of the Old Testament Joseph, son of Jacob, bound and sold into slavery by his "mob" of 10 half-brothers: "They all get together and try to kill him. The Bible knows that scapegoating is a mob affair." Joseph reestablishes himself as one of the leaders of Egypt and then tearfully forgives his brothers in a dramatic reconciliation. It is, he said, a story "much more mature, spiritually, than the beginning of Genesis." The story is unlike any in archaic literature: "It's a very beautiful story, which like many biblical stories, is a counter-mythical story," he said, "because in myth, the lynchers are always satisfied with their lynching." But at the reading group, he suggested his audience might not have noticed this before. After all, they had been trained to think that the Bible was a completely backward book, superceded and preceded by better efforts, with little that was new to the world.
Girard recapitulated the story of the Old Testament Joseph, son of Jacob, bound and sold into slavery by his "mob" of 10 half-brothers: "They all get together and try to kill him. The Bible knows that scapegoating is a mob affair." Joseph reestablishes himself as one of the leaders of Egypt and then tearfully forgives his brothers in a dramatic reconciliation. It is, he said, a story "much more mature, spiritually, than the beginning of Genesis."
The story is unlike any in archaic literature: "It's a very beautiful story, which like many biblical stories, is a counter-mythical story," he said, "because in myth, the lynchers are always satisfied with their lynching."
But at the reading group, he suggested his audience might not have noticed this before. After all, they had been trained to think that the Bible was a completely backward book, superceded and preceded by better efforts, with little that was new to the world.
I don't understand how a figure based on collected and edited oral histories, whose existence has no historical basis, who talked to burning bushes and collected miraculous tablets of stone directly from the hand of god, and who organised the deaths of thousands, can be 'counter-mythical.'
That novel approach, according to Girard, is forbearance and forgiveness, girded by faith, as exemplified by Job, Jesus and Joseph (as opposed to the rancor and revenge of other traditions).
It is an interesting idea, but I wonder how it would hold up under cross-cultural scrutiny: even within an Indo-European/Semitic context. ... all progress depends on the unreasonable mensch.(apologies to G.B. Shaw)
