René Girard, Anthropologist of the Cross

One of the modernist critiques of Christian faith that still lingers on into our own day is the charge that the Holy Scriptures are merely one deposit of ancient myth among many. While the scriptural myths may be culturally important, the episodes they relate, so the critique goes, bear such unmistakable similarities to other mythological writings so as to deprive them of any claims to inspiration or uniqueness. To take the most popular example, some have argued that the crucified and resurrected Jesus is just one more incarnation of the myth of a god/king dying and rising, examples of which can be found in other, earlier mythologies. This critique received widespread attention following the publication of James Frazer's 'The Golden Bough' at the end of the nineteenth century. The ensuing scandal was on par with public reaction to Darwin's theory of evolution and while Frazer is less spoken of today, his critique has come to be more or less a standard-issue weapon in the atheist's kit.