If the Gospels were mythical themselves, they could not provide the knowledge that demythologizes mythology.
Only two possible reactions to the mimetic contagion exist, and they make an enormous difference. Either we surrender and join the persecuting crowd, or we resist and stand alone. The first way is the...
The resistance to the mimetic contagion prevents the myth from taking shape. The conclusion in the light of the Gospels is inescapable: myths are the voice of communities that unanimously surrender to...
The world’s myths do not reveal a way to interpret the Gospels, but exactly the reverse: the Gospels reveal to us the way to interpret myth.
We can understand why one of the titles given to Jesus is that of ‘prophet.’ Jesus is the last and greatest of the prophets, the one who sums them up and goes further than all of them. He is the proph...
In myth, violent death is always justified.
The essence of desire is to have no essential goal. Truly to desire, we must have recourse to people about us; we have to desire their desires.
If we choose Jesus as our model, we simultaneously choose his own model, God the Father. Having no appropriative desire, Jesus proclaims the possibility of freedom from scandal. But if we choose posse...
The experience of death is going to get more and more painful, contrary to what many people believe. The forthcoming euthanasia will make it more rather than less painful because it will put the empha...
Imitation is human intelligence in its most dynamic aspect.
Our concern for victims is the secular mask of Christian love.
The most powerful anti-Christian movement is the one that takes over and "radicalizes" the concern for victims in order to paganize it. The powers and principalities want to be “revolutionary” now, an...
The commandment to imitate Jesus does not appear suddenly in a world exempt from imitation; rather it is addressed to everyone that mimetic rivalry has affected. Non-Christians imagine that to be conv...
The goal of religious thinking is exactly the same as that of technological research -- namely, practical action. Whenever man is truly concerned with obtaining concrete results, whenever he is hard p...
