The Evangelical Subversion of Myth – by René Girard

Girard begins this subversive exploration of the evangelical (Gospel) subversion of myth by quoting Sigmund Freud in his famous work, Totem and Taboo. Freud recognizes that long before he intuited the violent origins of human culture, the Gospels had already revealed them. “In the Christian doctrine,” he writes, “men were acknowledging in the most undisguised manger the guilty primeval deed.”

Sigmund Freud

The Gospels, according to Girard, were the only text in which the Truth—a truth that had been expelled from human cultures—occupied the central place. The Gospel is true revelation, revealing the “things hidden since the foundation of the world,” including the founder murder of Cain and Abel and the founding murder that is at the heart of every culture but which humans have done their best to hide behind myths, rituals, and taboos.

Subversion of Myth

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