Rich, this is about patterns of desire. Girard saw something unique: the story of Adam and Eve makes clear that the desire for the forbidden fruit that both of the garden dwellers experience is not an innate desire. Adam and Eve had just been reveling in each other. The man had just looked at the first woman and said “this is bone of my bone and flesh of my flesh” and celebrated her. And then something shifts. The serpent comes on the scene and draws the attention of the woman to something else.
Eve gets her desire from the serpent. He’s the one that first shows the desire for the fruit. He asks her a question which is not factually true, and she corrects him. But even though she was able to mentally engage and not fall into his little trap, she still was changed by him.
Because she saw in the snake the desire for the fruit. Suddenly, she looks at it a different way, “When the woman saw that the tree produced fruit that was good for food, was attractive to the eye, and was desirable for making one wise, she took some of its fruit and ate it.”
It doesn’t stop there.The man sees the desire of the woman,and the next thing you know he’s eating it.
This insight is the foundational insight of Girard’s work: So this is how Jesus is the new Adam who “got it right”. He has given us a new pattern of desire. Does this make sense?