{"id":17112,"date":"2015-03-25T00:00:00","date_gmt":"2015-03-25T00:00:00","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/leithart.level2d.com\/?p=1922"},"modified":"2015-03-25T00:00:00","modified_gmt":"2015-03-25T00:00:00","slug":"revelation-and-empire","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/leithart\/2015\/03\/revelation-and-empire\/","title":{"rendered":"Revelation and Empire"},"content":{"rendered":"\n\n<\/head>

Over the centuries, readers have assumed that Revelation was written in, or predicting, a period of intense persecution. Irenaeus seems to say that Revelation was written in the reign of Domitian, and commentators have gone to lengths to show that Domitian fits the profile of the beast.<\/p>\n

Scholars today widely accept the conclusion that Domitian, during whose principate the book is supposed to have been written, did not <\/em>intensify persecution or expand the imperial cult, as had long been believed. Christians in Asia Minor were well-integrated into the host culture, if not wholly assimilated. What they faced was not overt persecution but subtler cultural pressure to conform.<\/p>\n

Harold Thompson\u2019s The Book of Revelation: Apocalypse and Empire<\/a> is a main source for this reassessment of Domitian, but draws a different conclusion concerning John\u2019s purposes. He distinguishes between \u201cpublic knowledge\u201d that is the common currency of a culture, and the \u201cdeviant knowledge\u201d possessed by minority groups. Revelation is deviant knowledge in several respects. With regard to its source, \u201capocalypses provide knowledge through private, esoteric means apart from larger communal, institutional validation.\u201d Further, \u201cit is deviant in its assessment of the larger social order: apocalyptic knowledge devalues, rather than supports, the cognitive structures, identities, roles, and norms in the order of society. And it is deviant in its cosmology. In the public order, cosmicizing assures that \u2018the way we do things\u2019 reflects \u2018the way that the world really is.\u2019 . . . in the cosmicizing of apocalyptic, ironic reversals abound. Kings and emperors are disestablished by means of metaphorical links to satanic and evil forces, while the transcendent knowledge transmitted through apocalypses appears in the here and now to be disconfirmed\u201d (181). By offering this alternative knowledge, Revelation draws boundaries where there had been none. In conditions where believers had become too comfortable and too accommodated, Revelation undermines the \u201cpublic knowledge\u201d in favor of its deviant revealed knowledge.<\/p>\n

Adela Yarbro Collins (Crisis and Catharsis<\/a>, 85) accepts the conclusion that Domitian did not persecution Christians, but still dates the book to Domitian\u2019s reign. But she concludes that the book was not occasioned by \u201can objectively intense and extensive crisis.\u201d Instead, studies in psycho-sociology have shown that \u201crelative<\/em>, not absolute or objective, deprivation is a common precondition of millenarian movements. . . . the crucial element is not so much whether one is actually oppressed as whether one feels<\/em> oppressed.\u201d<\/p>\n

Other scholars have used the conceptual categories of post-colonial studies, and particularly the work of Homi Bhabha, to explain Revelation\u2019s stance toward the Roman empire.<\/p>\n

In\u00a0Spectacles of Empire<\/a>, Christopher Frilingos observes that \u201cspectacle\u201d was central to the Roman empires efforts to gain and retain power: \u201cThe Roman Empire was not maintained by raw strength alone: of equal or greater significance were the countless moments of interaction and negotiation in which the subjects of Rome, from the elite pagans of the Greek East to the seemingly marginalized Christians of John\u2019s community, struggled to grasp for themselves the truth of their society and their place in it.\u201d Spectacles \u2013 triumphs, games, parades \u2013 \u201cprovided a framework for the delineation of the real in Roman society and for the forging of identity\u201d (11). Spectacle did not provide Rome with a one-directional tool for imposing its will on the empire. Spectacle itself was a destabilizing factor, one that allowed new forms of culture to surface (120).<\/p>\n

Within this context, Frilingos makes use of Bhabha\u2019s notion of \u201cmimicry,\u201d which Bhabha defines as \u201cthe desire for a reformed, recognizable Other, as a subject of difference that is almost the same, but not quite. . . . On the one hand, colonial mimicry is an expression of imperial intention: \u2018the civilizing mission to transform the colonial culture by making it copy or \u2018repeat\u2019 the colonizer\u2019s culture.\u2019 At the same time, however, mimicry is a \u2018menace,\u2019 since it reveals the limits of the realization of imperialist intentions: the colonized are always \u2018almost the same,\u2019 but not quite\u2019 . . . Mimicry is thus a \u2018double vision which in disclosing the ambivalence of colonial discourse also disrupts its authority\u2019\u201d (10).<\/p>\n

Some have used postcolonial theory to describe Revelation as a \u201csubaltern\u201d within the Roman world, much as Thompson sees Revelation as \u201cdeviant knowledge.\u201d Frilingos, however, argues that Revelation is \u201can expression of Roman culture, possessed of the same ambiguities and ambivalence\u201d found in a variety of other cultural products. Revelation is not a straightforward book of resistance to Rome, but a site of negotiation that makes use of one of Rome\u2019s tools \u2013 spectacle.<\/p>\n

Stephen D. Moore\u2019s\u00a0Empire and Apocalypse<\/a> also uses Homi Bhabha\u2019s theory about parody turning to mimicry to explore how the New Testament, Revelation in particular, but ends more pessimistically by claiming that Revelation presents a \u201cconception of the divine sphere as . . . empire writ large\u201d (p. 121). <\/p>\n

Moore writes, \u201cMore than any other early Christian text, Revelation is replete with the language of war, conquest, and empire \u2013 so much so, indeed, as to beggar description. Note in particular, however, that the promised reward for faithful Christian discipleship in Revelation is joint rulership of the Empire of empires soon destined to succeed Rome (3.21; 5.10; 20.4-6; 22.5), a messianic Empire established by means of mass-slaughter on a surreal scale . . . calculated to make the combined military campaigns of Julius Caesar, Augustus, and all their successors pale to insignificance by comparison. All this suggests that Revelation\u2019s overt resistance to and expressed revulsion toward Roman imperial ideology is surreptitiously compromised and undercut by covert compliance and attraction.\u201d Far from viewing the book as a source of resistance, Moore sees Revelation\u2019s vision fulfilled in \u201cConstantinian Christianity,\u201d since Revelation \u201ccounters empire with empire\u201d (119).\u00a0<\/p>\n<\/body><\/html>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Over the centuries, readers have assumed that Revelation was written in, or predicting, a period of intense persecution. Irenaeus seems to say that Revelation was written in the reign of Domitian, and commentators have gone to lengths to show that Domitian fits the profile of the beast. Scholars today widely accept the conclusion that Domitian, […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3021,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[65],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-17112","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-bible-nt-revelation"],"yoast_head":"\nRevelation and Empire<\/title>\n<meta name=\"description\" content=\"Over the centuries, readers have assumed that Revelation was written in, or predicting, a period of intense persecution. 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