The fact that positions of this kind are already stigmatized in the Gospels clearly demonstrates that we should not confuse the highest Christian inspiration with its psychological and social by-products.

* * *

The only miracle in the prediction of renunciation is the knowledge of desire that is manifested in Jesus' words. It is only because of their inability to fully understand this knowledge that the evangelists themselves turn it into a miracle in the narrow sense.

"Thou shalt deny Me three times this night, before the crows twice" (Mk 14:30). Such miraculous precision in the prophetic proclamation overshadows the higher rationality that the analysis of these texts can reveal. Does it follow from this that in fact this rationality is not there and I simply invented it? I don't think so—the data that speak for it are too numerous and too well consistent. The coincidences between the essence of this narrative and the theory of "scandalon", that is, the theory of mimetic desire, cannot be accidental. Therefore, the question must be asked whether the Gospel writers themselves fully understand the springs of desire that are exposed by their own texts.

The extreme importance attached to the rooster first by the evangelists themselves, and then by all the others, indicates a lack of understanding. It is this comparative misunderstanding, I think, that turns the rooster into a kind of animal fetish, around which a certain "miracle" crystallizes.

In Jerusalem at that time, the first and second crowing of the rooster, scholars tell us, simply meant a certain hour of the night. Consequently, the original reference to the rooster probably had nothing in common with the real animal that sings in the Gospels. In his Latin translation, Jerome even makes this rooster sing one more time than in the Greek original. One of the two cries provided for in the prediction was not mentioned in the story of the renunciation, and on his own initiative the translator corrects the omission, which seems to him intolerable and scandalous.

Three other evangelists suspect, I think, that Mark gives the rooster too much importance. In order to put this rooster in its place, they let it sing only once, but they do not dare to eliminate it completely. Even John mentions it, although he completely eliminated the prediction of renunciation, without which the rooster has no reason to appear in the text at all. There is no need to regard as miraculous a prediction that is rationally explained if we understand correctly the invariably mimetic reasons for the renunciation and the actions that preceded it in Peter's conduct.

Why did the author turn into a miracle the foresight that is explained quite rationally within the story? The most likely explanation is that he himself does not understand this rationality or does not fully understand it. This is what happens, I believe, in the story of the renunciation. The editor clearly sees that there is some consistency behind the external inconsistency in Peter's behavior, but he does not know what it is. He sees the importance of the concept of "skandalon", but does not know how to use it, and only repeats word for word what he has heard on this subject from Jesus himself or from the first mediator. In the same way, the editor does not understand the role of the rooster in this story. It's not so scary, but two misunderstandings quite naturally attract each other and combine, eventually leading to the miracle of a rooster's crow. The two ambiguities correspond to each other and reflect each other, although in the final analysis each seems to explain the existence of the other, but inevitably in a supernatural way. An inexplicable but tangible rooster focuses the inexplicability scattered throughout the scene. In any knowledge that is inaccessible to them, people are inclined to see some kind of miracle, and one outwardly mysterious, but concrete detail is enough for the crystallization of the myth to occur. And here we have a rooster, partially turned into a fetish.

My analysis is inevitably speculative. But there are indications in the Gospels that support it. Jesus is critical of the disciples' excessive love for miracles and their inability to understand the teaching they imparted. There are two weaknesses here, or rather two aspects of the same weakness, which must be assumed in order to understand the insertion of a miracle into a scene that does not need a miracle in the least. The unnecessary presence of this miracle harms the scene of renunciation, since it overshadows the excellent understanding of human behavior that is manifested in the text. And a miracle encourages intellectual and even spiritual laziness in both believers and non-believers.

The text of the Gospels was worked out among the first disciples. The testimony of the first and then the second Christian generation, although corrected by the experience of Pentecost, knew the shortcomings that Jesus himself points out. The texts emphasize the lack of understanding of revelation by the disciples, even the best ones, not to humiliate the disciples of the first hour or to belittle them in the eyes of posterity, but to indicate the distance that separates Jesus and his spirit from those who first heard his message and passed it on to us. I think this indication should not be neglected when we interpret the Gospels two thousand years later in a world which has no more natural insight than it did in the time of Jesus, but which, however, for the first time became able to understand certain aspects of his teaching, because this world, our own, has been slowly imbued with his teaching over the centuries. These are not necessarily the aspects that first come to mind when we hear the words "Christianity" or even "Gospels," but they are most necessary in order to better understand texts such as the scene of the renunciation.

If I am right, if the evangelists do not fully understand the rationality of Peter's denial and Jesus' prophecy about him, then our text is striking in that it tells both the miracle inserted into the scene by editors who do not fully understand its logic, and the data that today allow us to reveal this logic. That is, it is the Gospels that give us all those fragments of testimony that they themselves are not fully capable of interpreting, since they replace the rational interpretation with an irrational interpretation, which we ourselves identify on the basis of the same data. I always remember that we cannot say anything about Jesus that is not taken from the Gospels.

Our text adds a wonderful explanation to a scene that is easier to interpret without the help of this miracle. Consequently, despite their inability to understand the full meaning of the testimony, the Gospel editors collected and reproduced fragments of this testimony with astonishing accuracy. If I am right, then their inability in some points is compensated by their extreme accuracy in all other points.

At first sight this combination of merits and demerits is difficult to reconcile, but it is enough to think about it and we will see that it is, on the contrary, quite plausible and even probable, if even in part the elaboration of the Gospels was influenced by that mimeticism of which Jesus constantly reproaches his first disciples, a mimeticism which is manifested in their behavior and the functioning of which they (quite normally) cannot fully comprehend. because they did not quite manage to get rid of it.

The mythological crystallization around the rooster, if I read it correctly, would reveal a phenomenon of mimetic exacerbation analogous to those exemplified by the Gospels themselves. For example, in the murder of John the Baptist, the motif of the head on a platter arises from a too literal imitation. To be truly true, the transmission of meaning from one individual to another, translation from one language to another, requires a certain distance. The copyist, who is too close to his model because he is too absorbed in it, reproduces all its details with admirable accuracy, but from time to time he succumbs to weaknesses, mythological in the proper sense of the word. It is the all-powerful mimetic attentiveness, the utmost concentration on the victim-model that leads to primitive sacralization, to the deification of the scapegoat, whose innocence is not recognized.