Abstract
According to Girard, it was the biblical revelation that led from the archaic sacred to the holy: “The God of the Bible is at first the God of the sacred, and then more and more the God of the holy, foreign to all violence, the God of the Gospels.” This difference is at the center of Girard’s theory of religion. His comparison of archaic myths with biblical revelation led him to the discovery of an “essential divergence” or the “biblical ‘difference.’” Following Thomas Mann’s lecture on his Joseph novels at the Library of Congress in 1942, which emphasized the importance of the biblical rejection of human sacrifice, I call Girard’s distinction between archaic myths and biblical revelation the “Abrahamic Revolution.”
This is a preview of subscription content, log in via an institution to check access.
Access this chapter
Tax calculation will be finalised at checkout
Purchases are for personal use only
Further Reading
Calasso, Roberto. Ardor. Translated by R. Dixon. New York: Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 2014.
Chilton, Bruce. Abraham’s Curse: Child Sacrifice in the Legacies of the West. New York: Doubleday, 2008.
Girard, René and Wolfgang Palaver. “The Bloody Skin of the Victim.” In The New Visibility of Religion: Studies in Religion and Cultural Hermeneutics, edited by M. Hoelzl and G. Ward. London: Continuum, 2008.
Mann, Thomas. Essays. Bd. 5: Deutschland und die Deutschen 1938–1945. Frankfurt am Main: Fischer Taschenbuch Verlag, 1996.
Palaver, Wolfgang. 2009. Abrahamitische Revolution, politische Gewalt und positive Mimesis. Der Islam aus der Sicht der mimetischen Theorie. In Im Wettstreit um das Gute. Annäherungen an den Islam aus der Sicht der mimetischen Theorie, edited by W. Guggenberger and W. Palaver. Wien: LIT.
Author information
Authors and Affiliations
Editor information
Editors and Affiliations
Copyright information
© 2017 The Author(s)
About this chapter
Cite this chapter
Palaver, W. (2017). Monotheism and the Abrahamic Revolution: Moving Out of the Archaic Sacred. In: Alison, J., Palaver, W. (eds) The Palgrave Handbook of Mimetic Theory and Religion. Palgrave Macmillan, New York. https://doi.org/10.1057/978-1-137-53825-3_14
Download citation
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1057/978-1-137-53825-3_14
Published:
Publisher Name: Palgrave Macmillan, New York
Print ISBN: 978-1-137-55280-8
Online ISBN: 978-1-137-53825-3
eBook Packages: Religion and PhilosophyPhilosophy and Religion (R0)