The Prophetic Law

Sandor Goodhart claims that one can sustain a Girardian reading of the sacrificial and the mimetic and remain a Christian, a Hindu, a Buddhist, a Muslim, or a Jew. His own intellectual itinerary exemplifies impressively how a Jewish reader can broaden the understanding of René Girard’s mimetic theory by uncovering its prophetic roots and by complementing it with Emmanuel Levinas’s emphasis on the ethical.
--Wolfgang Palaver, Institute for Systematic Theology, University of Innsbruck

Goodhart brings to these deft readings in Mosaic law and prophetic tradition a thorough grounding in René Girard’s mimetic theory and in Hebrew culture. The result is a Jewish-Christian dialogue that interweaves the most powerful cognitive and ethical insights of our religious heritage.
--Andrew J . McKenna, Professor of French Language and Literature, Loyola University

These collected essays reflect a Jewish intellectual’s lifelong, devoted, and critical engagement with the mimetic theory of René Girard, the renowned French cultural anthropologist, literary critic, and Biblical interpreter who was Goodhart’s teacher at SUNY Buffalo. As the developing corpus of his writings show, Girard also learned a great deal from Goodhart. Indeed, principally because of Goodhart, it is now possible to imagine a Jewish Girardianism.
--Ann W. Astell, Professor of Theology, University of Notre Dame

Essays by Goodhart and responses from René Girard and others address a common theme: Goodhart’s call to bring within the purview of mimetic theory the anti-sacrificial message of Judaism and other religious and reflective traditions. An essential back story to the Girardian corpus, these essays chronicle and preserve for future generations a conversation that spanned two decades and had a transformative impact on mimetic theory.
--Martha J. Reineke, Professor of Religion, University of Northern Iowa