The Victim Who Liberates

“This uniqute situation is a product of biblical influence. But we need not, like Nietzsche, become obsessed by mimetic resentment, so that we look on it as the legitimate heir to the Bible and even as its earliest inspiration. Resentment is merely an illegitimate heir, certainly not the father of Judaeo-Christian Scripture. Beyond the misunderstandings, calumnies and encroachments of which it is the object, beyond the historical reversals and even the disasters that result, and beyond all that disfigures it in our eyes, the truth of the victim that we are last possess is the greatest, most fortunate even in the history of religion and the whole of humanity” (Girard, Job, p. 108).