Thomas Bolin, «Rivalry and Resignation: Girard and Qoheleth on the Divine-Human Relationship», Vol. 86 (2005) 245-259
This article looks at the repeated gnomic phrase in the Book
of Qoheleth, "All is vanity and a chasing after wind" (NRSV) and reads it as a
disjunctive parallelism in which the terms lbh
and xwr denote mortality and the divine spirit,
respectively, thus showing the sense of the phrase to be, "All is mortal, but
strives for immortality". Using René Girard’s concept of mimetic rivalry
clarifies this reading of the proverb, and shows it to be a concise expression
of a major theme in the Book of Qoheleth, viz., the author’s thoughts on the
difference between humanity and God, understood as paradoxical relationship
based on both similarity and difference between humans and the divine. More
importantly, Girard helps to understand more deeply how and why Qoheleth views
human proximity with the divine as the cause of conflict and pain in human life.
Because this tension is also evident in numerous other biblical and
extra-biblical texts, caution must be exercised, in referring to the Book of
Ecclesiastes as a "radical" or "heterodox" writing.
Rivalry and Resignation: Girard and Qoheleth 253
parallelism contrasting divine power with human limits (34), as I
propose, gives the phrase a more pointed tone consonant with
Qoheleth’s outlook elsewhere in the book. The proverb thus functions
as a succinct expression of Qoheleth’s theology.
3. On Divine and Human Rivalry: A Girardian Reading of Qoheleth
For over two decades, the wide-ranging and comprehensive
anthropological theory of René Girard concerning sacred violence and
scapegoating has been influential in biblical studies (35). It should be
noted, however, that a problematic aspect of Girard’s approach lies in the
privilege he grants to the Bible as a unique divine revelation which,
because God takes the part of the victim, breaks the dominance of sacred
violence (36). Even more troubling for exegetes is Girard’s developmental
reading of the Christian Bible, in which he claims that the revelation of
God’s stance against sacred violence is but partially revealed in the Old
Testament, and made fully visible only in the New(37).
Despite this shortcoming in Girard’s overall understanding of
sacred violence, one particular component of this thought, namely
what he terms “mimetic desireâ€, can be used to clarify Qoheleth
understanding of the divine-human relationship. Girard’s discussion of
mimetic desire occurs throughout his major published works (38), and
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the Context of Wisdom, 451-456; and H.-P. MÜLLER, “Wie Sprach Qohälät von
Gott?†VT 18 (1968) 507-521.
(34) The use of lbh to denote idols in contrast to the living God (e.g., Jon 2,9;
Ps 31,7) is another example of the term being used in a disjunctive manner to
show the difference between the human and the divine.
(35) René Girard and Biblical Studies (ed. A. MCKENNA) (Semeia 33; 1985)
and J. WILLIAMS, The Bible, Violence and the Sacred: Liberation from the Myth
of Sanctioned Violence (New York 1991).
(36) Things Hidden since the Foundation of the World (Baltimore 1978) 141-
280, 416-431; Job: The Victim of His People (Stanford 1987).
(37) “[O]nly the texts of the Gospels manage to achieve what the Old
Testament leaves incomplete... bringing to completion an enterprise that the
Judaic [sic] bible did not take far enough, as Christian tradition has always
maintained†(Things Hidden, 158). W. Wink (Engaging the Powers. Discernment
and Resistance in a World of Domination [Minneapolis 1992]) criticizes Girard
for this triumphalism. For a summary of Girard’s thought, see WILLIAMS, The
Bible, Violence and the Sacred, 1-31; and Violent Origins. Walter Burkert, René
Girard, and Jonathan Z. Smith on Ritual Killing and Cultural Formation (ed. R.
HAMERTON-KELLY) (Stanford 1987) 6-22.
(38) Deceit, Desire, and the Novel (Baltimore 1965) 1-112; Things Hidden,
283-431; Violence and the Sacred (Baltimore 1977) 143-192.
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