Aho believed that the book deserved "careful consideration by researchers studying the links between religion and violence" and that it showed both the positive and negative aspects of interdisciplinary scholarship. He found it "convoluted" and "overly difficult". He suggested that Girard based his sociology of religion partly on an "intimate knowledge of mythology" and partly on his imagination. He believed that, like some of the founders of sociology, Girard was overly ambitious. He suggested that Girard was "unfamiliar with contemporary literature on scapegoating, the phenomenology of religious experience, and the sociologies of comparative religion and violence", and made untestable claims.