Erich Auerbach and His "Figura": An Apology for the Old Testament in an Age of Aryan Philology

Abstract

Auerbach's goal in writing -Figura‖ and Mimesis was the rejection of Aryan philology and Nazi barbarism, based on racism, chauvinism and the mythologies of Blood, Volk and Soil, which eliminated the Old Testament from the Christian canon and hence from European culture and civilization. Following the Nazi Revolution of 1933 and the triumph of Aryan philology, Auerbach began writing -Figura,‖ published in 1938, where he provided an apology for the Old Testament's validity and credibility, striving to prove that the Jewish Bible was inseparable from the New Testament contrary to the claims of Aryan philology and Nazi historiography. Auerbach's -Figura‖ should be considered not merely as a philological study but also, and more importantly, as a crucial stage in his response to the crisis of German philology with Mimesis, in turn, seen as his affirmation, against Aryan philology's Nazi racist and völkish views, of the humanist, Judeo-Christian foundation of European civilization.

Violence, Mysticism, and René Girard

“…83 Auerbach's equally famous 1944 essay "Figura," however, discovers contrasts in both style and content between ancient allegory and biblical typology-the latter being a species of prophecy that retrospectively discovers in historical persons, events, and things a foreshadowing of later ones. Like Auerbach, who wrote "Figura" as a pointed response to the mythological Nazi anti-Judaism of his time, 84 Girard understood a figural reading of the Scriptures to be a powerful way of seeing Christ in historical victims, beginning with Abel, slain by his brother Cain. From Auerbach, Paul Claudel (1868−1955), Henri de Lubac (1896−1991), and Blaise Pascal, 85 Girard learned "the richness and power of this [spiritual] type of exegesis," which sees "the great figures of the Old Testament as prefiguring and announcing Christ."…”