There is no common ground between what happens in the Gospels and what happens in myths, particularly the more developed myths. Later religions diminish, minimize, soften, and even totally eliminate sacred guilt as well as any trace of violence; but these are minor dissimulations and bear no relation to the system of representing persecution. This system collapses in the world of the Gospels. There is no longer any question of softening or sublimation. Rather, a return to truth is made possible by a process which, in our lack of understanding, we consider primitive simply because it reproduces the violent origin once more, this time in order to reveal it and thus make it inoperative.
[Peters denial, the murder of John the Baptist, and the Passion itself] are all examples of this process. They correspond perfectly to the way in which Jesus himself, and after him Paul in the epistles, defines the effect of disintegration that the crucifixion had on the forces of this world. The Passion reveals the scapegoat mechanism, i.e., that which should remain invisible if these forces are to maintain themselves.
RENÉ GIRARD The Scapegoat
