SUFFERING AND RESISTANCE IN THE APOCALYPSE

289 Pages·2014·2.43 MB·English

SUFFERING AND RESISTANCE IN THE APOCALYPSE:
A CULTURAL STUDIES APPROACH
TO APOCALYPTIC CRISIS
By
Chul Heum Han
Dissertation
Submitted to the Faculty of the
Graduate School of Vanderbilt University
in partial fulfillment of the requirements
for the degree of
DOCTOR OF PHILOSOPHY
in
Religion
August, 2014
Nashville, Tennessee
Approved:
Fernando F. Segovia
Daniel M. Patte
Herbert R. Marbury
Paul C. H. Lim
©
Copyright 2014 by Chul Heum Han
All Rights Reserved

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ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

This dissertation would not have come to fruition without the invaluable help of many dedicated
people. First of all, I feel greatly indebted to my parents, Ghi Seok Han and Ghil Ho Kwon, whose lives
have demonstrated to me what it means to live a good Christian life. In particular, I would like to thank
you for all the sacrifices you have made for your children. Thank you for always being there for me.
Words cannot express how grateful I am to all of my family members.
I am honored and privileged to have written this dissertation under the supervision of Professor
Fernando F. Segovia, whose academic achievement is only surpassed by his exemplary life. I would like
to express my deepest appreciation to Dr. Segovia for his help and guidance throughout my Ph.D. studies.
Without your patience and encouragement, this dissertation would not have been possible. In particular, I
would like to thank you for your careful reading of the drafts and your detailed and insightful feedback,
which have made this a far better work than it otherwise would have been.
I would also like to thank my other committee members, Professor Daniel Patte, Professor
Herbert Marbury, and Professor Paul Lim for their time and expertise. I have learned much from each of
them. I want to thank you all for sharpening my critical thinking and close reading skills. I am particularly
grateful for your generous comments and valuable suggestions. Special thanks are due to Dr. Patte, who
helped me broaden my horizons of biblical interpretation. Last but not least, I wish to extend my sincere
gratitude to all those who have been a source of inspiration and support on my academic journey.

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TABLE OF CONTENTS
Page

ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS ......................................................................................................................... iii

LIST OF FIGURES .................................................................................................................................... vii

Chapter

I. INTRODUCTION ................................................................................................................................ 1

Survey of Suffering and Resistance in Revelation Studies ............................................................... 6
Historical Criticism ....................................................................................................................... 7
Literary Criticism ........................................................................................................................ 10
Sociocultural Criticism ............................................................................................................... 12
Multimethodological Readings ................................................................................................... 15
Ideological Criticism ................................................................................................................... 23
New Critical Approach ................................................................................................................... 36
Cultural Studies Criticism ........................................................................................................... 37
Postcolonial Criticism ................................................................................................................. 43
Resistance Hermeneutics ............................................................................................................ 64

II. INTERTEXTUALITY OF REVELATION: SUFFERING AND RESISTANCE IN
APOCALYPTIC LITERATURE ....................................................................................................... 69

Intertextuality of Revelation’s Resistance Language ...................................................................... 70
Pacifism in Jewish Apocalyptic Writings ................................................................................... 71
Violent Resistance in Jewish Apocalyptic Writings ................................................................... 74
Violence in the New Testament .................................................................................................. 83
Justice and Anthropodicy in the Apocalypse .............................................................................. 92
The Book of Revelation as Apocalyptic Genre............................................................................... 96
Apocalypse as Genre ................................................................................................................... 96
Leitmotif of the Apocalypse: Resistance .................................................................................. 113
Suffering and Resistance: Real and Perceived .......................................................................... 115
Revelation and Ordinary Readers ............................................................................................. 120

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III. ARTS OF DOMINATION AND ARTS OF RESISTANCE .......................................................... 126

James Scott, Public Transcripts, and Hidden Transcripts ............................................................. 130
Transcripts: Public and Hidden ................................................................................................. 130
Hegemony and False Consciousness ........................................................................................ 134
Injuries and Insults .................................................................................................................... 139
Revelation and Resistance Tactics ................................................................................................ 143
Ideological Resistance............................................................................................................... 143
Resistance between Passive Endurance and Active Resistance ................................................ 150
Imitators of the Author .............................................................................................................. 173
Humor and Resistance .............................................................................................................. 176

IV. ECONOMIC RESISTANCE IN REVELATION 18 ...................................................................... 183

Previous Interpretations of Revelation 18 ..................................................................................... 184
Symbolic Interpretations ........................................................................................................... 185
Economic Interpretations .......................................................................................................... 193
Suggested Interpretation of Revelation 18 .................................................................................... 202
Another Angel’s Prophetic Judgment (18.1-8) ......................................................................... 203
The Lament of the Kings (18.9-10) .......................................................................................... 209
The Lament of the Merchants (18.11-17a) ............................................................................... 210
The Lament of the Mariners (18.17b-20) .................................................................................. 212
The Prophetic Pronouncement of the Mighty Angel (18.21-24) .............................................. 222
John’s Adaptation of Prophetic Antecedents ............................................................................ 227
Beyond Economics ................................................................................................................... 230

V. CONCLUSION ................................................................................................................................. 235

Summary of Findings and Insights ............................................................................................... 235
Apocalypse Then .......................................................................................................................... 241
Suffering, Resistance, and Identity Formation .......................................................................... 241
Third Camp: New Ideology in the New Order.......................................................................... 242
Apocalypse Now ........................................................................................................................... 253
Liberation Theology .................................................................................................................. 253
Global Capitalism ..................................................................................................................... 257

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Suggestions for Further Studies .................................................................................................. 262
Extent of Aggressive Resistance ............................................................................................... 262
Role of Intellectuals .................................................................................................................. 263

BIBLIOGRAPHY ..................................................................................................................................... 267
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LIST OF FIGURES

Figure 1: Diagram of Apocalyptic Worldview .................................................................................... 109

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SUFFERING AND RESISTANCE IN THE APOCALYPSE:
A CULTURAL STUDIES APPROACH
TO APOCALYPTIC CRISIS

CHAPTER I

INTRODUCTION

The theme of suffering permeates the Apocalypse. According to a leading scholar on the
Apocalypse, Elisabeth Schüssler Fiorenza, there is general consensus only as to the purpose of the book:
“The author seeks to give courage and perseverance to Christians threatened by persecution insofar as he
refers to the nearness of the final eschatological salvation.”1 This dissertation problematizes this very
assumption by trying to reclaim under-defined meanings of resistance in the Apocalypse. Against the grain
of the reductionist reading of the Apocalypse as offering pacifism or passive resistance against oppression
or persecution, this study intends to argue that the hermeneutical meaning of resistance requires more
activist interpretations of the text on the part of those who are suffering.
To my mind, the popular assertion that the Apocalypse encourages the people of God to persevere
through suffering rather than actively deal with evil in the world is theological and ideological. It is
theological in the sense that the relation of suffering to resistance envisioned in Revelation is reconfigured
by reference to other New Testament books. It should be noted that the Apocalypse may represent a
minority opinion in the NT regarding the relation between Christian and society, insofar as most of the later
NT writings counsel quiet adaptation to Greco-Roman society.2 I seek to undermine theological agendas
that lie behind attempts to explain away Revelation’s resistance language. In this regard, I attempt to
reconstruct the meaning of resistance on a theological level. It is ideological in the sense that it may

1 Elisabeth Schüssler Fiorenza, The Book of Revelation: Justice and Judgment, 2nd ed. (Minneapolis: Fortress, 1998),
36.
2 Elisabeth Schüssler Fiorenza, Revelation: Vision of a Just World (Minneapolis: Fortress, 1991), 133.
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represent the concerns of a particular social group. Purporting to read the Book of Revelation as non-
involved observers, interpreters may end up serving the interests of the dominant power. In particular, we
have to underscore the shadow of empire in the production of modern readings of the ancient texts.3 The
correlation between power dynamics and biblical interpretation should be brought to the fore. I seek to
undercut political agendas that lie behind attempts to explain away Revelation’s resistance language. In this
sense, I attempt to reconstruct the meaning of resistance on an ideological level.
In order to construct the meaning of resistance from the Book of Revelation over against traditional
interpretations, I seek to approach the text from the perspective of those who suffer to such a subhuman
extent as to elicit the will to resist. Reclaiming the Apocalypse as resistance literature assumes that the book
was written, and should be read, from the point of view of the oppressed. This assumption might be
vulnerable to the argument that the Apocalypse’s portrayal of the Roman Empire is not only one-sided but
also distorted, to the extent that it speaks for the vengeance and envy of those facing crisis.4 This criticism
presupposes that authors can and must transcend their own relationship with the world. On the contrary, the
text of Revelation may be ineluctably informed by the author’s religious construction of the world, which
draws on his own life experiences. The question to ask is what socioreligious agenda lies behind John’s
writing. Again, we may have to highlight the shadow of empire in the production of ancient writings.5
Along these lines, I would like to view the Apocalypse as an example of how marginal Christians reacted
to the oppressive realities of the Roman Empire. A warrant for approaching the Apocalypse from below
lies in the fact that it was written from below.
Previous work on Revelation scarcely speaks on behalf of real readers who are suffering, because,
from their point of view, the ways of resistance are not fully reconstructed from the text. I would highlight
two cases where the Apocalypse has been marginalized: first, from resistance literature to peace literature

3 Fernando F. Segovia, “Biblical Criticism and Postcolonial Studies: Toward a Postcolonial Optic,” in Decolonizing
Biblical Studies: A View from the Margins (Maryknoll: Orbis, 2000), 128.
4 Adela Yarbro Collins, “Persecution and Vengeance in the Book of Revelation,” in Apocalypticism in the
Mediterranean World and the Near East: Proceedings of the International Colloquium on Apocalypticism, Uppsala,
August 12-17, 1979, ed. David Hellholm (Tübingen: Mohr, 1989), 747.
5 Segovia, “Toward a Postcolonial Optic,” 126.
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by those who overemphasize its supernatural characteristics; second, from resistance literature to violent
literature by those who overstress its disturbing imagery.
First, the Apocalypse is marginalized from resistance to peace literature by, for example,
fundamentalists who fail to see the exigency of suffering in apocalypticism, let alone the sociohistorical
matrix of the book. In contrast with genuine apocalypticism, which is never a theological program self-
consciously constructed in security and repose but arises within a setting of alienation, P. D. Hanson
characterizes pseudo-apocalyptic movements, especially during the medieval period, as movements
which do not generate alternative universes of meaning in response to alienation, but which take the
symbolic universe of an earlier movement and exploit it programmatically, often for nationalistic,
racist, or dogmatic purposes. This phenomenon does not represent genuine apocalypticism, but is
blind imitation bereft of the pain and struggle of attempting to relate faith to the experience of a
disintegrating social and cosmic universe.6

If the question is posed whether apocalypticism arises from the experience of suffering or mechanically
uses earlier apocalypticism in service of selfish interests,7 it is likely that much of modern apocalypticism
will lose its apocalyptic force. The popular assumption that apocalyptic language concerns the introduction
of the new world, aloof from the realities at the time of writing is undercut by the historical-critical method,
which has called attention to the sociohistorical context of the original readers. Some rightly ascribe the
main political impact of apocalyptic literature not to any program it may imply for the future but to its
rejection and condemnation of the present order as represented by an evil empire, such as the Roman Empire
in the Apocalypse.8 The apocalyptic vision draws its enduring vitality from its insight into the temporality
of all human existence, rather than the illusory certainty of a new kingdom.9 Thus, the Apocalypse is no
less a revelation of human relations than a revelation of the supernatural. In view of the explicit political
criticism of apocalyptic works, it is no surprise that in the time of Justin Martyr the reading and
dissemination of Jewish apocalyptic literature was considered a crime and that under Japanese colonialism

6 The Interpreter’s Dictionary of the Bible: An Illustrated Encyclopedia, ed. Keith R. Crim. Supplementary Volume
(Nashville: Abingdon, 1976), s.v. “Apocalypticism.”
7 Ibid., 34.
8 John J. Collins, “Temporality and Politics in Jewish Apocalyptic Literature,” in Apocalyptic in History and Tradition,
ed. Christopher Rowland and John Barton (London: Sheffield Academic, 2002), 40-41.
9 Ibid., 43.
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