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ROBERT G. HAMERTON-KELLY, The Gospel and the Sacred: Poetics of Violence in Mark (Minneapolis: Fortress, 1994). Pp. xvi+ 175. Paper $13.
At one level, this book by Robert G. Hamerton-Kelly can be described easily and accurately as simply a reading of the Gospel of Mark in terms of Rene Girard's cultural theory of sacred violence, the "generative mimetic scapegoating mechanism," or GMSM, as H.-K. abbreviates it. H.-K.'s reading ostensibly demonstrates both that the GMSM was part of the process that first produced the Gospel of Mark and that the same writing exposes the GMSM for what it is, namely, social construction on the basis of innocent victimhood, thereby rendering the text of Mark truly "gospel" (as opposed to the reputedly obfuscating "myths" of sacred violence).
After a brief introduction to Girard's theory of sacred violence as a method of interpretation--complemented in a concluding appendix by a schematic presentation of the GMSM--the four main chapters of the book discuss the entire narrative of Mark's Gospel in the following order: (1) Jesus in the Temple (Mark 11:1-12:44), (2) the destruction of the temple and Jesus' death (Mark 13:1-16:8), (3) the beginning of the Gospel (Mark 1:1-3:35), and (4) the middle of the Gospel (Mark 4:1-10:52). Two additional chapters (5 and 6) are titled "Time and Space as Categories of...