The Girard Reader by René Girard Read Free Book Online Page B

address
    themselves to the Lord -- even though he is Jonah's Lord and not their own:
    Wherefore they cried unto the Lord, and said, We beseech thee, O Lord, we beseech
    thee, let us not perish for this man's life, and lay not upon us innocent blood: for thou, O
    Lord, hast done as it pleased thee.
    So they took up Jonah, and cast him forth into the sea; and the sea ceased from her
    raging.
    Then the men feared the Lord exceedingly, and offered a sacrifice unto the Lord, and
    made vows. ( Jonah 1:14-16)
    What we see here is a reflection of the sacrificial crisis and its resolution. The victim is
    chosen by lot; his expulsion saves the community, as represented by the ship's crew; and
    a new god is acknowledged through the crew's sacrifice to the Lord whom they did not
    know before. Taken in isolation this story tells us little, but when seen against the
    backdrop of our whole discussion, each detail acquires significance.
    Modern man flatly rejects the notion that Chance is the reflection of divine will.
    Primitive man views things differently. For him, Chance embodies all the obvious
    characteristics of the sacred. Now it deals violently with man, now it showers him with
    gifts. Indeed, what is more capricious in its favors than Chance, more susceptible to
    those rapid reversals of temper that are invariably associated with the gods?
    The sacred nature of Chance is reflected in the practice of the lottery. In some sacrificial
    rites the choice of victim by means of a lottery serves to underline the relationship
    between Chance and generative violence. In an essay entitled "Sur le symbolisme
    politique: le Foyer commun," Louis Gernet cites a particularly revealing ritual, which
    took place in Cos during a festival dedicated to Zeus:
    The choice of victim was determined by a sort of lottery in which all the cattle, which
    were originally presented separately by each division of each tribe, were mixed together
    in a common herd. The animal ultimately selected was executed on the following day,
    having first been "introduced to Hestia," and undergone various rites. Immediately prior
    to the ritual presentation, Hestia herself receives homage in the form of an animal
    sacrifi ce. 4.
    ____________________
    4. Gernet, Anthropologie de la Grèce antique ( Paris: Maspero, 1968), 393.
    -25-

    Hestia, the common hearth, in all probability marked the place where the original act of
    communal violence was perpetrated. It seems more than likely, therefore, that the

    selection of the victim by lottery was meant to simulate that original violence. The
    selection is not made by men, but left to divine Chance, acting through violence. The
    mixing together of the cattle that had originally been identified by tribe or by division of
    tribe is particularly revealing. This deliberate confusion of distinctions, this merger into
    a communal togetherness, constitutes an obligatory preamble to the lottery; clearly it
    was introduced to reproduce the exact order of the original events. The arbitrary and
    violent resolution that serves as a model for the lottery takes place at the very height of
    the sacrificial crisis, when the distinctions delegated to the members of society by the
    cultural order succumb to the reciprocal violence and are merged into a communal mass.
    A traditional discussion of Dionysus involves a demonstration of how he differs from
    Apollo or from the other gods. But is it not more urgent to show how Dionysus and
    Apollo share the same characteristics, why the one and the other should be called
    divine? Surely all the gods, despite their differences, have something in common,
    something from which all their distinctive qualities spring. Without such a common
    basis, the differences become meaningless.
    Scholars of religion devote themselves to the study of gods and divinity. They should be
    able to provide clear and concise definitions of these concepts, but they do not. They are
    obliged, of course, to decide what falls within