Vrije Universiteit Amsterdam > Blaise Pascal Instituut > Girard Studiekring > COV&R 2007 > Abstracts Papers 

Philippe De Keukelaere

Active tolerance in the Jewish-Christian inter-religious dialogue – a way towards peace

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pAper  

“At the origin of this little people there is the divine election.”

Pope John Paul II (1)

1. Introduction

The term "tolerance" and the inter-religious dialogue both seem to be in a catch 22 situation. How can this be solved? We propose to give the term "tolerance" a new interpretation, based on a new approach from the Jewish-Christian inter-religious dialogue. We call it active tolerance. Active tolerance entails a number of conditions.

A first condition is the basis of every dialogue: listening to the other party. Active tolerance is not just about listening; it is to be open to the criticism coming from the other religion.

The second condition is our position. We maintain that in Christianity, there is always a link between intolerance and the misunderstanding of its own religious texts (Girard, 2002, 181 – 198). The cause of Christian intolerance, particularly Christian anti-Semitism, is caused by a double misunderstanding of our own religious texts.

Existing research into Jesus' era (from 100 BC until 100 AD) generally misunderstood the mimetic poles between dispersed Judaism and Roman religion. It is useful to re-read some of the work by Flavius Josephus and Qumran in that respect. The position of our own gospel texts is clearly at the other end of these mimetic poles – attraction and rivalry – with respect to Roman religion. The Christians particularly often misunderstand the true nature of the kingship of Jesus. When we read the gospels and Paul it is important to keep this in mind. In our short essay, we will take the link between the decapitation of John the Baptist and the kingship of Jesus as an eloquent example. 

A third condition is the invitation to dialogue, which every religion should be open to. Active tolerance means looking for a good (and just) reciprocity.  Today religion is more than a religious experience; it is becoming an inter-religious experience. The core of active tolerance is to give the other religion some space through renewed knowledge, space we do not appropriate ourselves. We will see that it is actually René Girard's anthropology that makes it possible to reinterpret the term tolerance in the Jewish-Christian inter-religious dialogue. (2).

2. Listen, open one's ears to criticism as active tolerance

There could be no better starting point than Shmuel Trigano’s criticism of certain aspects of René Girard's work (Trigano, 2003, 101 – 104). Active tolerance invites us to open our ears to this criticism, even more so because we get the impression the criticism coming from this Jewish philosopher is founded on a certain fear, a fear that the Christians would appropriate the Jewish revelation, something that frequently happened in history; in other words, fear that René Girard's "reformulation" of Christianity would not leave enough room for Judaism. This example is relevant to the extent that Shmuel Trigano criticises the Christian interpretation of René Girard's anthropology and not the anthropology itself.

Shmuel Trigano assumes that there is mimesis between Judaism and Christianity. To Shmuel Trigano, René Girard's message is mostly a Jewish message. Because of the exclusively universal character of the message and particularly of the story of the passion of Jesus, René Girard would appropriate and destroy the particularity of the Jewish election: the erasing of the Jewish signifier under the Christian meaning (Trigano, 2003, 104).

3. Renewed knowledge of our own religious texts as active tolerance. An example: religious mimesis and the decapitation of John the Baptist

In what follows we will oppose the false kingship of Antipas to the kingship of Jesus of Nazareth. We will try to show, using mimetic theory as an interpretative tool, how Antipas was fascinated by the Roman religion and how there is in the gospels a judgment of the Roman mythical illusion of the wrath of the gods.

We will first pay attention to three aspects of the execution of John the Baptist: the most important protagonist, Herod Antipas, the Roman religion and Antipas' mimetic relationship with the Roman religion. Mark the evangelist deals with both elements very skilfully. His short gospel pays most attention to John the Baptist's execution.

a/ Herod Antipas' political mimesis: his irresistible urge for kingship

Thanks to the Jewish historian Flavius Josephus, we know quite a lot about Herod Antipas. (Flavius Josephus, 2005, XVII and XVIII).  He was the son of king Herod the Great. The struggle for the succession to the throne of this king was one of the most horrific ever. During this struggle, the king had no less than three of his own children killed. In the end, three pretenders remained: Herod Archelaus, Herod Antipas en Herod Philip.

In the personal story of Herod Antipas, the thing that characterises him most is the mimetic nature of his personality.  We know from the gospel texts that there was mimetic rivalry between Antipas and the Roman prefect Pilate – who probably belonged to knightly nobility – (Luke, 23:12).  Flavius Josephus tells us that he was not only the rival of Pilate, but also of a much more important man: Vitellius, the proconsul (governor) of Syria - belonging to senatorial nobility. Another aspect of his personality is that he used some of his friends as a dangerous weapon in his mimetic brawls (we know this from two different historical sources). Antipas was particularly  a good friend of the Roman emperor Tiberius or - as Flavius Josephus cleverly put it - he had obtained a high degree of friendship with emperor Tiberius (Flavius Josephus, 2005, XIII, 3, 36). He used his friendship with the emperor in his rivalry with other Roman rulers.

Antipas' father, king Herod the Great had been friends with Octavianus' rival, Anthony. After Octavianus' victory over Anthony, King Herod the Great founded the city of Sebastos (Augustus in Greek) in Palestine in honour of Emperor Augustus. Antipas founded the city of Tiberias by the lake of Genesareth in Galilee in honour of his good friend emperor Tiberius. Flavius Josephus tells us in great detail that the foundation of this city was not a Jewish event at all. But why did Antipas abuse his friendship with the Roman emperor?

Flavius Josephus tells us that his father, king Herod the Great, had written a will that had been approved by Rome (Nodet, 2002, 273) The will indicated his son Herod Antipas was to be king of Judea. Flavius Josephus tells us that this king had written his will out of hatred towards his other sons.

The last days in the life of king Herod the Great were very turbulent. Not only did he have a third son killed with the permission of Rome , he also wrote an addendum (codicil) to his will. The addendum said Antipas' brother, Archelaus, was to be king of Judea . This addendum was not approved by Rome . Was the addendum to the will of Herod the Great valid? Testaments and changes of former testaments are often a cause of quarrel between the heirs.

When the king died, the pretenders to the throne went to Rome to defend their claims to the throne of Judea before Emperor Augustus. Antipas claimed that his father was not any more able to make the addendum (Prause, 1978, 251). Archealaus was defended by Nicolas of Damask and Ptolemaios, the first minister of Herod the Great (Prause, 1978, 251). Antipas must have been extremely disappointed. He only got to be tetrarch of Galilee and Perea. His inherited land was divided by Samaria . Flavius Josephus describes the entire business as a bad division, like the division of a cake. Antipas only got a quarter of his father's empire. Herod Philip also received a quarter. The remaining half went to their rival Archelaus. Archelaus became etnarch of Judea (with Jerusalem as its captial). Augustus promised him the position of king, provided that he could prove he was worth it. He was not and would be replaced by a Roman prefect after a few years at the request of the Jews themselves.

Antipas' entire life was nothing but a frustrated response to not being king (a position he would never hold).  I believe that when Mark the evangelist calls him a king rather than an etnarch it is only to make us understand that Antipas desperately acted like a king, even though he was not.

b/The core of the Roman religion and Antipas

Antipas' personality does not only show a frustrated mimetic desire for kingship, but also – and this is perhaps not as widely known - a constant urge to imitate Roman religion. We know that Roman religion was a unity of two fundamental characteristics. First there was an obsession with rituals (Scheid  2005, p. 279).The Roman obsession with rites was so excessive that one might think that the Roman religion could be reduced to its rituals, which is the position of John Scheid, the greatest contemporary expert on Roman religion (Scheid, 2003, 126). There is something more fundamental to Roman religion than rituals, though: the Roman sacred, and particularly the duality of divine benevolence and malice, which we find in all archaic religions. The sacral double bind in Rome was not a human, rational construction by rituals. Roman religion was not a rational religion, but a mythical religion. Roman religion was as in all antique societies totally dependant on the mythical sacred (and the sacrifice as foundation), but as no other antique people Rome could use this in a rational way for his expansion. (3). As I wrote : “The core of Roman civilisation is the possibility for Rome to use the mythical causality in a rational way as a politic means” (De Keukelaere, 2004, 166).  The Romans probably inherited the divine duality of their religion from the Etruscans (Briguel, 1999, 234, Martha Sordi, 2004,288 - 289).  It was the ambivalent duality between the “pax deorum” and the “ira deorum”, the peace of the gods and the wrath of the gods. René Girard pointed out the importance of the wrath of the gods when linking the sacred and the violence in archaic religions (Girard,1994, 387).

The ritual was only there in order to maintain good relations with the gods, the “pax deorum”. Proof of this is obvious. Not following the ritual rules correctly had dramatic consequences. It roused the wrath of the gods. The entire ritual or some of it had to be repeated. If a severe offence was committed, for example if a sentence was passed on an unfavourable day (dies nefas), the "judge" (the offender) was declared "impius" or godless, which was irreversible and therefore had severe consequences. (Porte,1995, 122). The ritual purity of religion was the model for the formalism of law, that had his separated domain (Humbert, 1993, 40). But the formalism of law and its rationality was in fact dependant of the Roman sacred as we will see with the procedure of the oath. (4).

The obsessive formal aspect of Roman religion was a guarantee to obtain the pax deorum, that assured effectiveness in all fields of society and more particularly in Roman politics and military enterprises.  

The foundation of Roman religious rules was very different from the Jewish Thora. René Girard is right in saying that John the Baptist's reproach to Antipas – "It is not lawful for you to have your brother's wife." (Matthew 14:4 and Mark 6:18) – mainly refers to Antipas' mimetic (actually political) acquisitiveness, acquisitiveness of his brothers wife (Girard, 2001,154), in fact as a mimetic rivalry between two brothers, who desired the same royal throne. We should not forget that the father of Antipas was good friends with Marcus Antonius, the husband of Cleopatra, as a “Neos Dionysos” (Roman, 2001, 229). Thus, in the act of Antipas there is - trough the imitation of Rome -, an imitation of the sacred of Egypt , as some of the descendants (in feminine line) of Antonius do it, or tried to do it. So emperor  Claudius with Agrippina minor, his niece, and emperor Nero with his mother (Roman, 2001, 245, Suetonius, 27-28).(5). The purpose of the act of Antipas was the reinforcement of his “auctoritas”, trough an “hierogamy”, a royal incest, this was usual for the Ptolemaists in Egypt . The first meaning of the Latin word “auctoritas” is not authority but the desire to “be” more (Benveniste, 1969, 150-151). Not in the sense of  increase, but in the sense of a divine creation, in fact to “be” as a god (cfr. Meslin, 2001, 114).

In our opinion it is also quite interesting to see from which part of the Thora John the Baptist extracted the quoted sentence. We assume that it is a contraction of Leviticus 18:16 ”You shall not uncover the nakedness of your brother's wife; it is your brother's nakedness.” and Deuteronomy  15:3 “Of a foreigner you may require it; but you shall give up your claim to what is owed by your brother.” Armand Abécassis gives a beautiful and concise translation of the latter: "you shall acquit your brother of everything you own that is with him." (Abécassis, 2006, 326). Both passages from the Thora  bring the brother into focus, not the "ira deorum". The first passage condemns the mimetic triangle. By focusing on brotherly love, the mimetic triangle (Antipas-wife-brother) is broken and is replaced by what Antipas takes away from his brother, as "it is your brother's nakedness". The second passage makes any type of division redundant. It is remarkable that Antipas was obsessed with the word "divide", particularly in the political sense of the word :  the division of his "kingdom".

The question is now whether we will find that Antipas has a similar mimetic fascination for the Roman religion.

c/ Antipas' birthday celebration and his imitation of Roman religion

Mark the evangelist indicates that the celebrations were Roman. The birthday celebration, the right occasion (maybe a dies fas?) for the execution of John the Baptist indicates that it was not a biblical feast. The feast was a Roman sacred event.

The good friend of Antipas Tiberius also found the celebration of his birthday of exceptional importance.  We know that the text of the Roman city decree regulating Emperor Tiberius' birthday celebrations speaks of "eternally" celebrating this feast for the emperor (Scheid, 2005, 238-245). The decree also states how people should celebrate and which sacrifices should be made to the gods on such occasions. Antipas couldn’t include the Jewish people in his pagan celebration. Only the great man of his "kingdom" were invited and attended his celebrations.

We cannot imagine Roman imperial sacred birthday celebrations without a sacred cake. In Rome , birthday celebrations included a sacred cake called "libum" (Benveniste, 1969,219). The sacred ritual was to pour honey over the cake. The libation was a sacrifice to the god Liber - as father who gave the honey - through a hot birthday cake covered in honey. (Benveniste 1969, 219). The sacred ritual consisted of making a constant libation (libatio) to the god with the honey, as was done with wine.  The constant pouring of the honey was done by means of a sacred instrument, a ladle called a "simpulum".  We could presume that Antipas followed this ritual due to his mimetic rivalry with the Roman prefect.

We know that Pilate wanted to introduce libations in Palestine to obtain the favour and benevolence of the gods.  Pilate was the only prefect that had coins minted showing the sacred ladle or "simpulum", the instrument for this pagan libations. (Theissen,1998, 141). What is most amazing – if we consider what happens later - is that the purpose of this ritual was to divert the wrath of the gods (ira deorum). Thus, it is no coincidence that Mark the evangelist uses Roman terms such as an "opportune day" and "birthday", and situated the execution of John the Baptist on such a day. 

For Antipas honey didn’t stream from the promised land Israel but from a cake by pagan libation. To John the Baptist, honey was not an unknown ingredient. Mark the evangelist tells us at the beginning of his gospel that he ate wild honey, not the harvested honey from the land of milk and "honey", which was used for libations for Roman gods.

In Mark's story, the turning point between Antipas' imitation of divine benevolence and malice is the oath. It is the moment where the feast went (badly) wrong. Antipas wanted to reward his dancing daughter and what did he do? Mark the evangelist writes: "He promised her with an oath" (Mark 6:23)

In Roman religion the oath, expressed phonetically in Latin (ius iurandum), was not only the most mimetic ritual, it was also the most risky as far as ambivalence and the double bind of divine sacred is concerned.

The Roman ritual of the oath involved the hands of the person to whom "a word" was given. Antipas, who thought of himself as a king, put his hands into the hands of the little child to whom he promised half of his kingdom, a kingdom which he did not even have! Here, the evangelist surpassed even Cervantes! It is an example of evangelical humour that is hard to find anywhere else.

It is also a typical example of Antipas' "kingship". Because of his Roman sacred oath, he put his future, "his" kingdom in the hands of a small child by dividing it! He would be more trough a kingdom he didn’t had (Roman majestas), in the faith in a little child (Roman fides), and as a benefactor (Girard, 2001, 173) (Greek-Roman philotimia or evergetism).

The oath mainly consisted of two parts:

-        a material content, including the sacrifice of the person who took the oath to the wrath of the gods (ira deorum) - the death - if he were not to keep his word or promise, called “sacramentum”. (Benveniste, 1969, 117-118 and Roman, 2001, 346).

-        a formal part of the ritual, called "jurare", which was a very precise mimicry of the words to be formulated (ius iurandum, literally the expression who must be formulated “adjurat in quae adactus est verba”).

For those who took the oath, it was just as important to correctly and exactly repeat the formula as it was to keep the promise itself. Emile Benveniste refers to a text by Titus Livius to tell us that the person who took the oath could be killed if he repeated the promise inaccurately. (Benveniste, 1969, 117-11). In Latin “iurat”. 

Antipas took the Roman oath, a two-part mimetic ritual, when he repeated his promise to the child. In an normal procedure the first sentence had tot be pronounced by the little child, and the response had to be the exact verbal ritual imitation of the question. The oath of Antipas is a grotesque imitation of the Roman oath.(6). In some Greek manuscripts there is an additional word in the sentence “He swore”. (Mark 6,23). This word is “polla”. Generally it is translate by “even”, “He even swore”. In other bibles the translation is “solemnly”. In the gospel of Mark the Greek root “pol” points mostly to a form of negative mimesis. So the crowd (“pollo” or “ochlon polloi” or “polu plytos” etc.), or as a controversy between a man and the crowd (the repetition in the story of Bartimaeus), or in connection with a Roman military term (“legioon onoma moi, oti polloi” – Mark 5,9). Here “polla” indicates a notion of the summit of something, as an exaggeration in mimesis. The oath is for Antipas the summit of his mimetic imitation of Roman religion. After taking the oath, there was no way back for Antipas. He could no longer spare John the Baptist. “ The king was deeply grieved; yet out of regard for his oath and for the guests.” (Mark 6 : 26). After the oath Antipas was the prisoner of his fear for an accusing crowd and of his fear of the anger, the wrath and the vengeance of gods. In reality both are the same elements of the mythical illusion revealed by the innocence of the victim.  The choice was either to kill the prophet or sacrifice himself to the wrath of the gods (ira deorum).  Antipas choice for killing was a choice between death and death. It was a Roman (double) choice, not the choice of the king of Israel . There was no prostitute as in the story of  king Salomon to break the unanimity  in a choice for life. Antipas was only “king” for the leading people of his “kingdom”, not for all the Jewish people. Antipas was an imaginary “king” totally separated of his people. (7).

Antipas imitated the rigour (in his fear of transgression) of the Roman religion (and law) founded on divine wrath, divine vengeance.

The rigour of the Thora is not based on the wrath of gods. The rigor of the Thora  in Judaism, is also the rigor of teshouvah (metanoia - return), forgiveness (as from Roch Hachanah to Kippour), and rahamim (compassion). The God of the thora is the God with a long face. The God of patience, in Hebrew “nasso” what means “to bear” and “to forgive”. (Eisenberg/ Steinsaltz,1988, 76). The rigor of the Roman religion is in total opposition with the rigor of the Thora. “The divine patience precedes the whole law (Thora) and found her.” (Bernheim, 1997, 174).

The words in Matthew 3 : 7 – “who showed you to flee the coming wrath” are an invitation to have no fear of the wrath, but to do “teshouvah”. In the Greek word “fugein” there is a sense of defeatism (to flee for the enemy). The sin is to be paralysed by the Roman religious rigour of the wrath of divinity, so that the Thora couldn’t more produce fruits. It is the same reasoning as in the parable of the talents (Matthew  25 : 14-30).

Mark tells us that Antipas liked to listen to John the Baptist. But his imitation of the Roman religion prevent him to save the life of the prophet. (8). In fact John the Baptist stood in the way of the king who was unwanted by the God of Israel . This king was not faithful to the Thora. He followed the most sacred rituals of a pagan religion. The sin of Herod Antipas is the sin against the election of Israel . His desire to be more was a desire to imitate Roman ritual and Roman divine ambivalent duality. It was also a sin against the “Shema Israel ” and the divine unity of the God of Israel . But trough the imitation of the Roman sacred he imitated the pharaoh of Egypt . According to me this is the deepest reason of the intervention of the prophet.  

What cardinal Lustiger said about king Herod the Great is also applicable to Antipas :”The sin of Herod is to refuse the election of Israel in order to seize it for substituting himself to it.” (Lustiger, 2002, 51). This was also the temptation of Jesus in the desert. The devil tried to bring Jesus to use the election of Israel as a desire to be more – self assertion of power and prestige – by imitating the three core Greek-Roman values of the Roman religion used by Rome  in order to realise the pax Romana in the eastern part of the Roman Empire, namely the Roman “fides” (faith in the Roman social organisation and the divinity Roma, as Herod  the Great placed the statue of this divinity  in the port of  Caesarea), the Roman majestas (Meslin, 2001,136) and the Roman philotimia or evergetism. (9). We recognize this reasoning in Luke 22 : 25 :”The kings of the nations lord it over them; and those in authority over them are called benefactors.” It is remarkable that in the Greek text the Evangelist used the Greek terms : “exouziazo”, power to reign over an other (who implies “fides”, “majestas”  and “auctoritas”) and “euergétes”, the Greek technical term for this fundamental Greek - Roman value for the pax Romana.

The whole text of the birthday (by Marc as by Matthew) is an explanation of the belief of Antipas in the false “resurrection” of John the Baptist. The text explains us the false causality (Roman mythical) of Antipas. Antipas’ question was : why did Jesus perform miracles ? Antipas asked this question because in his mind there was a connection between the kingship of Jesus and the miracles of Jesus. Miracles in the antic world were external signs of the legitimacy of a king (Theissen, 2006, 307), which was an obsession for Antipas, who didn’t obtain the Jewish kingship as we have seen. This is also the reason why Antipas was exclusively interested in miracles when he interrogates Jesus during his trial. (Lucas 23, 8 : 12). For Antipas the miracles of Jesus were a consequence of the decapitation of John the  Baptist as he said in Matthew 14,1-2 :”This must be John the Baptist raised from the dead ! That is why he can do such miracles.”

Romans weren’t afraid of death, but the where afraid of the deceased. It was important to fix them in tombs (as it also was for Egyptians) and to appease  them, in order to avoid that they wander and stain or infect their families. (Richard, 2005, 61). The relation between the miracles of Jesus and his Jewish kingdom was impossible for Antipas and he connects them with the Roman belief in the false Roman mythical “resurrection” of deceased leaving there tombs and contaminating the people.

In the story of the death of John the Baptist we have the revelation of universal human mimesis trough the tension between the particular election of Israel (revealed by the prophet)  and the Roman pagan oath of Antipas. We have the revelation of the mimesis that divides  - in a humoristic way - and in the execution of the prophet, as a consequence of the oath, the mimesis of reconciliation - on a dramatic way - . But in this mimesis of reconciliation there is an unity of two elements. The unanimity of the antagonists (the fear of Antipas for his important guests) and the ira deorum (the sacral sanction for Antipas) are the basic mythical (false) elements of Roman pagan religion in order to found the pax Romana. In comparison to the election of Israel as a little particular element (a little stone, part of a rock),  the base (the feet) of every empire and more specially the universal Roman empire is nothing more than a mythical illusion (Daniel 2, 34 : 35).

Both Armand Abécassis (on the Jewish side) and Frédéric Manns (on the Christian side) convincingly defend the position that the baptism of Jesus was a royal unction in the full sense of biblical royal unctions by prophets. (Manns, 1998, 110-111, and 1994, 62-63, Abécassis, 1999,59-60). They both refer to the same psalm. We know that psalms were to be read out loud during royal unctions. The main issue is the link between the lineage of Jesus, who reveals the Jewish kingship as king of Israel . Armand Abécassis' interpretation of the nature of this lineage (adoptive son of God) differs from that of Frédérique Manns (son of God). To Armand Abécassis, it is only an adoptive lineage after the unction. However, regardless of this difference, both come to the same conclusion.

It is in this sense that we should interpret the words of John the Baptist in John 3 : 36: “for God's wrath remains on him.” This is not a Roman sentence for those who do not believe in Jesus. To John the Baptist, it is only an observation. What John the Baptist is telling us in this text is that Jesus of Nazareth, the "hidden" king of Israel , freed his Jewish contemporaries from the Roman mythical illusion of the wrath of the gods.

4.The Kingship of Jesus and active tolerance

The story of the passion of Jesus is intrinsically linked to his Jewish kingship. In the story of the death of Jesus we have also the revelation of the deepest universal mimesis trough the tension between the particular election of Israel (revealed by Jesus) and the Roman emperor Tiberius. In the mimesis of reconciliation there is an unity of the two same elements as in the story of the death of John the Baptist. Those are revealed trough the innocence of the victim, who is the king of the Jews. The final unanimity was the consequence of the friendship between Antipas and Tiberius (the “judgment” of Pilate from the Litostrotos in John 19 : 12 - 13). The innocence of the Jewish king is a place without any negative mimesis, rivalry - or scandal -, in opposition to the mimetic supports for the emperor of Rome (whom Antipas supported all his life). The only desire of Pilate (internal mediation) was to be a better friend of the emperor than Antipas (10). In his “judgment” Pilate is the slave of the mimetic triangle Antipas-Tiberius//Tiberius-Pilate. Here Antipas and Pilate are monstrous doubles in the girardian sense. In Jesus’ trial  they are as never before totally undifferentiated. The reconciliation of this monstrous double is the reconciliation of the persecutors at the depend of the innocence victim (Luke, 23 :12). The crucifixion was the ultimate medium to preserve the social peace in Rome (and Italy ) and the “pax Romana” in the empire. The punishment was for the guilty person not only a social curse (maledictio), but above all a divine sentence of the wrath of the gods (ira deorum). In Rome the loser was always guilty (“vae victis”, bad luck for the defeated). In Roman crucifixion there is a link between the “maledictio (curse) of the guilty person, the “ira deorum” (wrath of gods)  and the maintaining of the pax Romana as Roman domination. The unanimous designation of the guilty person and his punishment restored the pax deorum, and preserved thus the pax Romana.

The innocence of the Jewish king reveals that the (military and political) domination of the Roman empire was not the consequence of the wrath of the gods, or the “ira deorum”. The unanimously guilty  Jewish king (the victim) and the wrath - as the vengeance - of the gods are the same mythical (Roman) illusion, because the victim was in truth innocent. So the God of Israel, who is the God of the victims, was not defeated by the Roman gods, but reveals their non-existence. (11). This particular revelation of the king of the elected people mortally wounded the relationship between the pax Romana and the Roman religion. The innocence of the victim is a judgment of human (Roman as a pars pro toto) history trough the election of Israel . This judgment is not above this history, but in and trough this history (cfr. Girard, 2003,2, 107). This judgment is a unity on the one side of God’s love (hessed) for humanity, that is delivered from the mythical illusion of the Roman wrath of gods (and trough this of all wrath of Gods), and on the other side of Gods rigor (din) in the “kenose” of the victim, in  total contrast with the core Greek-Roman values of the pax Romana. The core of this aspect (Gods rigor) is the loneliness of the scapegoat. As René Girard writes : “The extreme loneliness of Jesus is the other face of the anthropology of the scapegoat. It is so absolute that the victim had the impression to be rejected by God himself which resulted in the famous cry:” My God, my God, why have you forsaken me?” (Girard 2003,1, 52).   The nakedness of the victim as a judgment of  “evergetism” (his clothes were “divided” by drawing lots, Mark 15 : 24), the humiliation of the victim as a judgment  of the “majestas” (Paul, Philippians 2 : 1-13), and the isolation of the victim (the dereliction) (Hebrews 5 : 7) as a judgment  of the faith (“fides”) in Rome . It is the judgment of the “exousia”, the human desire to be as a god (Genesis 3 : 5). It is as the opposite side of a mirror, or a glove turned inside out (12). In this revelation by a Jewish king  (“titulus” by Pilate) Jesus is not entirely faithful to the election of Israel , but it is this particular election that makes this unique revelation possible, as the place where the bottom of the death touches life. This place is in God the “hamaqom”, the field of the resurrection (about the “hamaquom” Trigano, 1986, 123, with reference to Ezekiel). “It is the place where times turns upside down, where the past is thrown near the future, in witch we are not in this world of disappearing” (Trigano, 1986, 123). It is also the place where human history is turning upside down. That which is most particular for Israel (the election) enabled (through this resurrection) a unique causal leap beyond the (Roman) mythical illusion and beyond death. It delivered pagans from there mythical illusions, what made there participation to the revelation possible.  For humanity the election of Israel is a hidden treasure. The tree is supported by the root and not the other way around (Paul, Romans 11 : 17, cfr. Michna, Sanhédrin 10,1 and Yevamot 63a, in Kryger, 2007, 201-202). Trough the resurrection as the place where times turns upside down in God, we can turn over, we can do “teshouvah” (conversion). Not only as the discovery of the innocence of the victim, but also as the discovery that we are often part of the accusing crowd.

The false kingship of Antipas was more than his desire to be a king, it was his desire (and those of all “Herodians”) for total assimilation of Israel in the universal Roman empire . The true kingship of Jesus makes this assimilation impossible, and destroys the Roman foundation of it.

What we discover in the gospels is not the election of Israel as a part of the history of salvation, but that without the election of Israel there is no history of salvation at all ! Cardinal Lustiger writes : “Misunderstanding or repudiating this election would deprive the history of salvation of all signification. This history of salvation founds the Christian faith, and perhaps also all of  human history.” (Lustiger, 2002, 326). Active tolerance implies that we do not appropriate the discovered particular space in our religious texts, but that we leave the election of Israel to Israel . Gospels invite us to recognise the election of this people, even "if this people does not recognise Jesus of Nazareth as the Messiah and Saviour of the world", as Cardinal Christoph Schönborn wrote. (Schönborn, Sens, 614)  Historically this “no” is a limit for pagans that prevents them from totally appropriating and transformating the election of Israel for their own pagan use, as it happened so often. (13). But on the other hand this “no” made it possible for Christians to discover in their own texts the election of Israel . Christians can now give a positive interpretation to this “no”.  This “no” is the preservation (in the sense of something that is placed aside) during human history of the possibility to read these texts without mimetic appropriation of the election of Israel . It is an essential condition for the history of salvation for pagans.

As far as the inter-religious dialogue between Christians and Jews is concerned, this implies that we first listen to the criticism of the other party in order to practise a "auditio divina" with our own religious texts. This way, René Girard's anthropology makes it possible to open up to others.

Active tolerance is quite a challenge. It is a condition for a demanding dialogue between all religions. By opening up space in our own religious texts, space we do not appropriate ourselves, the mimetic fascination for the other religion disappears. Reciprocity is an essential condition here. This non-appropriation can be compared to a mother who carries a foetus inside her, without assimilating the foetus to her own body. That is the core of active tolerance. Active tolerance goes beyond "just accepting the other party being different"; it liberates the inter-religious experience from mimetic fascination. Active tolerance is a condition for positive mimesis in inter-religious relations between Jews and Christians. The fruit of such reciprocal active tolerance is, in effect, peace.

(1)   Colloquium : The roots of anti Judaism in Christian environment, 1997, speech of this pope. Quotation in Remaud, 2007, 74.

(2) What René Girard has found is not only the human mimesis as the root of violence (mimesis rivalry) and through the sacrifice of the (innocent) scapegoat the foundation of culture. Trough this he has found the essential elements of  the genetic code of religion (the mythical causality). We tried to give an - incomplete - “diagram” of this. (De Keukelaere, 2004, 166). When we apply such a diagram to the bible texts we discover causality leaps in the genetic code. This has something to do with the election of Israel .

Active tolerance is not the same as tolerance. Active tolerance always implies the reciprocity of non- appropriation. Without this it should be only a naive approach of difficult reality. 

(3) Roman domination of Israel was for the election of Israel of a totally different and other nature than the domination by other empires. This was already the interpretation of rabbi Loeuw in his book “Ner Mitsva”, published in Prague in 1600 (Gross, 1995, 140 – 160). Rome was a synthesis that included all archaic societies : a kind of pars pro toto.  The religious construction (juxtaposition of all kinds of foreign worship and maintaining of forgotten gods and worship and insertion of foreign gods), were the consequence of the “numen”, the anger of the divine power (indefinite and very plural). This guaranteed the “pax deorum” (Porte, 1995, 8).

(4) An example of this dependence is the Roman trial, which was considered as a symbolic way to put the opponent to death as in a war or as in a private vengeance.(Thomas, 178, 98).

(5) Aureus (coin) of Nero of December 54, with Nero and Agrippina face to face (Depeyrot, 2006 64, Foubert, 2006, 100).

(6) “grotesque” is not exactly the right word. In the gospels there is a special form of Jewish “humour”, which is difficult to define. It is based on the tension between particular and universal. We could compare it to the Jewish “Witz” (Mosès, 1998, 4-12).

(7) In Jewish tradition a king must have a people. There is a maxim : “no king without people” (Eisenberg/Steinsalz, 1988, 27).

(8)The text by Matthew is different : “Herod wanted to put him to death, but he was afraid of the people (in Greek “ton oxlon”) Matthew 14,5.

(9) This is the thesis of Ramsay MacMullen (2003, 15-54). He gives a lot of examples concerning Herod the Great.

(10) During the reign of Tiberius there were a number of trials for crimes of “laesus majestatis”. Some historians use the word “terror” (Tukker, 2006, 235, 22, with reference to Tacitus).  Tiberius named the “delatores”  (informers) the “custodies leges” (the guards of the law). It is strange because usually Tiberius is considered as the emperor who refused to have a divine cult (Roman 2001, 337, with reference to Tacitus).  Geraldine Puccini-Delbey demonstrates with historical  texts and representation that the mythical imaginary of Tiberius was this of the god Pan. (Puccini-Delbey, 2007, 331-332).

This god was half a god and half a human (with animal elements as a satyr or a goat). Pan includes in him all gods of the “pantheon”.  He was  sometimes identified  as  Flaurus, as the god of fertility of nature, as Baal was in the middle east ( Sineux, 2007, 171). But he was also in Greece the god who turned the chance (in Greece “Tyche” and in Rome “Fortuna”) during the battle. In Greece the fear (Deinos) and  the flight (Fobos) were gods, and sons of Ares, the god of the war. Pan, the god « goat » who could frighten the shepherds in the summer, could provoke « Panic » in whole armies. (Singor, 2006,  95). This « panic » was also in Rome during the battle the manifestation of the “ira deorum”. God could go over to the enemy. In order to prevent this and to turn this against the enemy tere was a “ritual” - in fact a “contract” with the gods : the sacrifice (devotio) of the “general” (Decharneux, 2006, 84). Panic was for losing armies the moment where the bottom of life touched death. It is possible that there was a link between these trials and the mythical imaginary of Tiberius.

(11) In antiquity war was also a war between the gods of the two enemies. The Roman procedure of the “evocatio” is an example  of the way in witch Romans - as no other people before - tried on a great scale to win the war by inviting the foreign gods to come to Rome (De Keukelaere, 2005, 66-67, Herman, 2004, 96, Meslin, 2001,214). Flavius Josephus was influenced by this Roman vision of war and history (Hadas-Lebel, 1989, 185).

 (12) After his death the victim couldn’t become a Roman god. The divine nature of Jesus as Christ is not the same as the divine nature of Roman gods. The resurrection of Jesus is of an other nature than a “Roman” “resurrection”. His empty grave couldn’t be a foundational element, as was the grave of Alexander the Great in Alexandria for the pax romana. The body of the victim couldn’t be a foundational element for the unity of the social body. The sign of the resurrection was broken bread, the same sign as in Jewish alliances (Bernheim, 1997, 123).

(13) We give an example of pagan appropriation of the election of Israel for pagan universal use. In his political work Monarchia Dante uses the election of Israel as model for his defence of the (universal) monarchy.  He finally comes to the conclusion that Rome was the elected people because the son of God was born under emperor August (Lefort, 1995, 104).

ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

I wish to thank my son Simon De Keukelaere for his interesting suggestions.

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