Apocalypse Against Empire

Apocalypse Against Empire PDF Author: Anathea E. Portier-Young
Publisher: Wm. B. Eerdmans Publishing
ISBN: 080287083X
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 487

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Book Description
A fresh and daring take on ancient apocalyptic books. The year 167 b.c.e. marked the beginning of a period of intense persecution for the people of Judea, as Seleucid emperor Antiochus IV Epiphanes attempted -- forcibly and brutally -- to eradicate traditional Jewish religious practices. In Apocalypse against Empire Anathea Portier-Young reconstructs the historical events and key players in this traumatic episode in Jewish history and provides a sophisticated treatment of resistance in early Judaism. Building on a solid contextual foundation, Portier-Young argues that the first Jewish apocalypses emerged as a literature of resistance to Hellenistic imperial rule. She makes a sturdy case for this argument by examining three extant apocalypses, giving careful attention to the interplay between social theory, history, textual studies, and theological analysis. In particular, Portier-Young contends, the book of Daniel, the Apocalypse of Weeks, and the Book of Dreams were written to supply an oppressed people with a potent antidote to the destructive propaganda of the empire -- renewing their faith in the God of the covenant and answering state terror with radical visions of hope..

Apocalypse Against Empire

Apocalypse Against Empire PDF Author: Anathea E. Portier-Young
Publisher: Wm. B. Eerdmans Publishing
ISBN: 080287083X
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 487

Get Book

Book Description
A fresh and daring take on ancient apocalyptic books. The year 167 b.c.e. marked the beginning of a period of intense persecution for the people of Judea, as Seleucid emperor Antiochus IV Epiphanes attempted -- forcibly and brutally -- to eradicate traditional Jewish religious practices. In Apocalypse against Empire Anathea Portier-Young reconstructs the historical events and key players in this traumatic episode in Jewish history and provides a sophisticated treatment of resistance in early Judaism. Building on a solid contextual foundation, Portier-Young argues that the first Jewish apocalypses emerged as a literature of resistance to Hellenistic imperial rule. She makes a sturdy case for this argument by examining three extant apocalypses, giving careful attention to the interplay between social theory, history, textual studies, and theological analysis. In particular, Portier-Young contends, the book of Daniel, the Apocalypse of Weeks, and the Book of Dreams were written to supply an oppressed people with a potent antidote to the destructive propaganda of the empire -- renewing their faith in the God of the covenant and answering state terror with radical visions of hope..

The Apocalypse of Empire

The Apocalypse of Empire PDF Author: Stephen J. Shoemaker
Publisher: University of Pennsylvania Press
ISBN: 0812250400
Category : Religion
Languages : en
Pages : 272

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Book Description
In The Apocalypse of Empire, Stephen J. Shoemaker argues that earliest Islam was a movement driven by urgent eschatological belief that focused on the conquest, or liberation, of the biblical Holy Land and situates this belief within a broader cultural environment of apocalyptic anticipation. Shoemaker looks to the Qur'an's fervent representation of the imminent end of the world and the importance Muhammad and his earliest followers placed on imperial expansion. Offering important contemporary context for the imperial eschatology that seems to have fueled the rise of Islam, he surveys the political eschatologies of early Byzantine Christianity, Judaism, and Sasanian Zoroastrianism at the advent of Islam and argues that they often relate imperial ambition to beliefs about the end of the world. Moreover, he contends, formative Islam's embrace of this broader religious trend of Mediterranean late antiquity provides invaluable evidence for understanding the beginnings of the religion at a time when sources are generally scarce and often highly problematic. Scholarship on apocalyptic literature in early Judaism and Christianity frequently maintains that the genre is decidedly anti-imperial in its very nature. While it may be that early Jewish apocalyptic literature frequently displays this tendency, Shoemaker demonstrates that this quality is not characteristic of apocalypticism at all times and in all places. In the late antique Mediterranean as in the European Middle Ages, apocalypticism was regularly associated with ideas of imperial expansion and triumph, which expected the culmination of history to arrive through the universal dominion of a divinely chosen world empire. This imperial apocalypticism not only affords an invaluable backdrop for understanding the rise of Islam but also reveals an important transition within the history of Western doctrine during late antiquity.

Empire and Apocalypse

Empire and Apocalypse PDF Author: Stephen D. Moore
Publisher: Sheffield Phoenix Press Limited
ISBN:
Category : Religion
Languages : en
Pages : 178

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Book Description
In Empire and Apocalypse Stephen Moore offers us the most complete introduction yet to the emergent field of postcolonial biblical criticism. It includes an indispensable in-depth introduction to postcolonial theory and criticism together with a detailed survey of postcolonial biblical criticism. Next come three substantial exegetical chapters on the Gospels of Mark and John and the Book of Revelation, which together demonstrate how postcolonial studies provide fresh conceptual resources and critical strategies for rethinking early Christianity's complex relations to the Roman Empire. Each of these three texts, to different degrees, Moore argues, mimic and replicate fundamental facets of Roman imperial ideology even while resisting and eroding it. The book concludes with an amply annotated bibliography whose main section provides a comprehensive listing of work done to date in postcolonial biblical criticism.

Imperial Cults and the Apocalypse of John

Imperial Cults and the Apocalypse of John PDF Author: Steven J. Friesen
Publisher: Oxford University Press on Demand
ISBN: 0195131533
Category : Religion
Languages : en
Pages : 300

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Book Description
After more than a century of debate about the significance of imperial cults for the interpretation of Revelation, this is the first study to examine both the archaeological evidence and the Biblical text in depth. Friesen argues that a detailed analysis of imperial cults as they were practiced in the first century CE in the region where John was active allows us to understand John's criticism of his society's dominant values. He demonstrates the importance of imperial cults for society at the time when Revelation was written, and shows the ways in which John refuted imperial cosmology through his use of vision, myth, and eschatological expectation.

Imperial Apocalypse

Imperial Apocalypse PDF Author: Joshua A. Sanborn
Publisher: OUP Oxford
ISBN: 019101544X
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 288

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Book Description
Imperial Apocalypse describes the collapse of the Russian Empire during World War One. Drawing material from nine different archives and hundreds of published sources, this study ties together state failure, military violence, and decolonization in a single story. Joshua Sanborn excavates the individual lives of soldiers, doctors, nurses, politicians, and civilians caught up in the global conflict along the way, creating a narrative that is both humane and conceptually rich. The volume opens by laying out the theoretical relationship between state failure, social collapse, and decolonization, and then moves chronologically from the Balkan Wars of 1912-13 through the fierce battles and massive human dislocations of 1914-16 to the final collapse of the empire in the midst of revolution in 1917-18. Imperial Apocalypse is the first major study which treats the demise of the Russian Empire as part of the twentieth-century phenomenon of modern decolonization, and provides a readable account of military activity and political change throughout this turbulent period of war and revolution. Sanborn argues that the sudden rise of groups seeking national self-determination in the borderlands of the empire was the consequence of state failure, not its cause. At the same time, he shows how the destruction of state institutions and the spread of violence from the front to the rear led to a collapse of traditional social bonds and the emergence of a new, more dangerous, and more militant political atmosphere.

Apocalypse and Allegiance

Apocalypse and Allegiance PDF Author: J. Nelson Kraybill
Publisher: Brazos Press
ISBN: 1441212558
Category : Religion
Languages : en
Pages : 224

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Book Description
In this lively introduction, J. Nelson Kraybill shows how the book of Revelation was understood by its original readers and what it means for Christians today. Kraybill places Revelation in its first-century context, opening a window into the political, economic, and social realities of the early church. His fresh interpretation highlights Revelation's liturgical structure and directs readers' attentions to twenty-first-century issues of empire, worship, and allegiance, showing how John's apocalypse is relevant to the spiritual life of believers today. The book includes maps, timelines, photos, a glossary, discussion questions, and stories of modern Christians who live out John's vision of a New Jerusalem.

Spectacles of Empire

Spectacles of Empire PDF Author: Christopher A. Frilingos
Publisher: University of Pennsylvania Press
ISBN: 0812201973
Category : Religion
Languages : en
Pages : 193

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Book Description
The book of Revelation presents a daunting picture of the destruction of the world, complete with clashing gods, a multiheaded beast, armies of heaven, and the final judgment of mankind. The bizarre conclusion to the New Testament is routinely cited as an example of the early Christian renunciation of the might and values of Rome. But Christopher A. Frilingos contends that Revelation's relationship to its ancient environment was a rather more complex one. In Spectacles of Empire he argues that the public displays of the Roman Empire—the games of the arena, the execution of criminals, the civic veneration of the emperor—offer a plausible context for reading Revelation. Like the spectacles that attracted audiences from one end of the Mediterranean Sea to the other, Revelation shares a preoccupation with matters of spectatorship, domination, and masculinity. Scholars have long noted that in promising a complete reversal of fortune to an oppressed minority, Revelation has provided inspiration to Christians of all kinds, from liberation theologians protesting globalization to the medieval Apostolic Brethren facing death at the stake. But Frilingos approaches the Apocalypse from a different angle, arguing that Revelation was not merely a rejection of the Roman world in favor of a Christian one; rather, its visions of monsters and martyrs were the product of an empire whose subjects were trained to dominate the threatening "other." By comparing images in Revelation to those in other Roman-era literature, such as Greek romances and martyr accounts, Frilingos reveals a society preoccupied with seeing and being seen. At the same time, he shows how Revelation calls attention to both the risk and the allure of taking in a show in a society which emphasized the careful scrutiny of one's friends, enemies, and self. Ancient spectators, Frilingos notes, whether seated in an arena or standing at a distance as Babylon burned, frequently discovered that they themselves had become part of the performance.

Apocalypse

Apocalypse PDF Author: Neil Faulkner
Publisher: Amberley Publishing Limited
ISBN: 1445612178
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 284

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Book Description
If you want a gripping, well-written, detailed story of insurrection against Rome, supported by splendid illustrations, start here.?The Sunday Telegraph

Resisting Empire: The Book of Revelation as Resistance

Resisting Empire: The Book of Revelation as Resistance PDF Author: C. Wess Daniels
Publisher: Barclay Press
ISBN: 9781594980633
Category : Religion
Languages : en
Pages : 138

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Book Description
Revelation speaks to the reality that we are caught in the fray of cosmic conflict. We are guilty. We've already been contaminated. But it's not too late for us to exit empire and enter the kingdom. We are yet both victim and victimizer. We have healing work to do, and we must take responsibility for the ways in which we have benefited from and been complicit with the religion of empire. This is the truth of Revelation. God wants to liberate us in body, heart, soul, and mind.Revelation reveals how scapegoating functions within empire to define its own boundaries and contours as being over and against wicked others.Revelation critiques wealth and shows that even in the first century there was prophetic critique against an economic system that was based on abundance for some, while exploiting the rest.Revelation demonstrates the importance of liturgy as something that forms people into the likeness of either empire or the lamb.Revelation reveals an alternative social order which becomes the center of resistance rooted in a vision of what the book describes as "the multitude."

Revelation

Revelation PDF Author:
Publisher: Canongate Books
ISBN: 0857861018
Category : Bibles
Languages : en
Pages : 60

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Book Description
The final book of the Bible, Revelation prophesies the ultimate judgement of mankind in a series of allegorical visions, grisly images and numerological predictions. According to these, empires will fall, the "Beast" will be destroyed and Christ will rule a new Jerusalem. With an introduction by Will Self.