Hostname: page-component-848d4c4894-pftt2 Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2024-05-21T01:17:36.558Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false
  • English
  • Français

Vilification and Self-Definition in the book of Revelation

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  10 June 2011

Adela Yarbro Collins
Adela Yarbro Collins
Affiliation:
University of Notre Dame
Get access Rights & Permissions [Opens in a new window]

Extract

New Testament scholars, as well as preachers, are in frequent danger of perpetuating negative stereotypes about the Jews. The reason for this state of affairs is that the polemical anti-Jewish remarks in the NT are often simply repeated or paraphrased in the interpreter's context without attention to the difference in meaning these remarks have when read in their original social and historical contexts. Krister Stendahl has done much to sensitize Christians to this danger in his writing, public speaking, and teaching. This concern about relations between Jews and Christians today is a major reason for doing a historical analysis of the passages in the book of Revelation in which Jews are vilified (2:9 and 3:9).

Type
Research Article
Information
Harvard Theological Review , Volume 79 , Issue 1-3: Christians Among Jews and Gentiles: Essays in Honor of Krister Stendahl on His Sixty-fifth Birthday , July 1986 , pp. 308 - 320
Copyright
Copyright © President and Fellows of Harvard College 1986

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

References

1 Stendahl, Krister, “Biblical Theology, Contemporary,” IDB 1 (1962) 418–32Google Scholar; idem, “Hate, Non-Retaliation, and Love,” HTR 55 (1962) 343–55.Google Scholar

2 Such an approach is taken in Collins, Adela Yarbro, Crisis and Catharsis: The Power of the Apocalypse (Philadelphia: Westminster, 1984).Google Scholar

3 On conflict from a sociological point of view, see Simmel, Georg, Conflict: The Web of Group-Affiliations (trans. Wolff, Kurt H. and Bendix, Reinhard; New York: Free Press; London: Collier-Macmillan, 1955).Google Scholar

4 On the prophetic character of the seven messages, see Aune, David E., Prophecy in Early Christianity and the Ancient Mediterranean World (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 1983) 275–79.Google Scholar

5 Bousset, Wilhelm, Die Offenbarung Johannis (1906; MeyerK 16; 6th rev. ed.; Göttingen: Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht, 1966) 208–9Google Scholar; Swete, Henry B., The Apocalypse of St. John (3d ed.; London: Macmillan, 1917) 31Google Scholar; Beckwith, Isbon T., The Apocalypse of John (New York: Macmillan, 1922) 452–54Google Scholar; Charles, R. H., A Critical and Exegetical Commentary on the Revelation of St. John (ICC; 2 vols.; New York: Scribner's, 1920) 1. 56–57Google Scholar; Allo, E.-B., Saint Jean: L'Apocalypse (ÉtBib; 4th ed.; Paris: Gabalda, 1933) 35Google Scholar; Lohmeyer, Ernst, Die Offenbarung des Johannes (HNT; rev. ed.; Tübingen: Mohr-Siebeck, 1953) 24Google Scholar; Caird, George B., A Commentary on the Revelation of St. John the Divine (HNTC; New York: Harper & Row, 1966) 35Google Scholar; Ford, Josephine Massyngberde, Revelation (AB; Garden City, NY: Doubleday, 1975) 392–95Google ScholarPubMed; Sweet, J. P. M., Revelation (Philadelphia: Westminster, 1979) 85Google Scholar; Fiorenza, Elisabeth Schüssler, “Apocalyptic and Gnosis in the Book of Revelation and Paul,” JBL 92 (1973) 572Google Scholar; idem, Invitation to the Book of Revelation (Garden City, NY: Doubleday, 1981) 63.Google Scholar

6 Shepherd, Massey H., Jr., “The Gospel of John,” The Interpreter's One-Volume Commentary on the Bible (ed. Laymon, Charles M.; New York; Abingdon, 1971) 708Google Scholar; Johnson, Sherman E., “Early Christianity in Anatolia,” in Aune, David E., ed., Studies in New Testament and Early Christian Literature: Essays in Honor of Allen P. Wikgren (NovTSup 33; Leiden: Brill, 1972) 186Google Scholar; idem, “Asia Minor and Early Christianity,” in Neusner, Jacob, ed., Christianity, Judaism, and Other Greco-Roman Cults: Studies for Morton Smith at Sixty (SJLA 12; 4 parts; Leiden: Brill, 1975) 111Google Scholar; Kraft, Heinrich, Die Offenbarung des Johannes CHNT; Tübingen: Mohr-Siebeck, 1974) 60–61Google Scholar; Prigent, Pierre, L'Apocalypse de Saint Jean (CNT 14; Lausanne: Delachaux et Niestlé, 1981) 47–48Google Scholar; Gager, John, The Origins of Anti-Semitism (New York: Oxford University Press, 1983) 132.Google Scholar

7 See Koester, Helmut, Introduction to the New Testament, vol. 2: History and Literature of Early Christianity (Philadelphia: Fortress, 1982) 279–87.Google Scholar

8 Yarbro Collins, Crisis and Catharsis, 46–49.

9 Grant, Robert M., “Jewish Christianity at Antioch in the Second Century,” RechSR 60 (1972) 100–101Google Scholar; Barnard, L. W., Studies in the Apostolic Fathers and Their Background (New York: Schocken, 1966) 22–25.Google Scholar

10 See Collins, Adela Yarbro, The Combat Myth in the Book of Revelation (HDR 9; Missoula: Scholars Press, 1976) 130–35.Google Scholar

11 On the relationship of John's prohibitions of eating food sacrificed to idols and “prostitution” to the “Apostolic Decree,” see Collins, Adela Yarbro, “Insiders and Outsiders in the Book of Revelation and Its Social Context,” in Neusner, Jacob and Frerichs, Ernest S., eds., ”To See Ourselves as Others See Us”: Christians, Jews, “Others” in Late Antiquity (Atlanta: Scholars Press, 1985) 211–12.Google Scholar

12 On the date of Polycarp's martyrdom, see Musurillo, Herbert, The Acts of the Christian Martyrs (Oxford: Clarendon, 1972) xiii.Google Scholar

13 Coser, Lewis A., The Functions of Social Conflict (New York: Free Press, 1956) 8.Google Scholar

14 The use of vituperatio in the schools of rhetoric in the ancient world was brought to my attention by Sean Freyne; see his essay, “Vilifying the Other and Defining the Self: Matthew's and John's Anti-Jewish Polemic in Focus,” in Neusner and Frerichs (eds.), “To See Ourselves As Others See Us, ” 118–19.

15 Yarbro Collins, “Insiders and Outsiders,” 190–96.

16 ibid., 198.

17 Gunkel, Hermann, Schöpfung und Chaos in Urzeit und Endzeit: Eine religionsgeschichtliche Untersuchung über Gen I und Ap Joh. 12 (Göttingen: Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht, 1895).Google Scholar

18 Collins, Adela Yarbro, The Apocalypse (New Testament Message 22; Wilmington: Glazier, 1979) 89–95.Google ScholarPubMed

19 Idem, “The Political Perspective of the Revelation to John,” JBL 96 (1977) 252–54.Google Scholar

20 Wayne Meeks has argued that such a process took place in the communities founded by Paul, in The First Urban Christians: The Social World of the Apostle Paul (New Haven/London: Yale University Press, 1983) 86–89.Google Scholar

21 On itinerant charismatic leaders and their social setting, see Theissen, Gerd, Sociology of Early Palestinian Christianity (trans. Bowden, John; Philadelphia: Fortress, 1978) 7–23Google Scholar; idem, The Social Setting of Pauline Christianity: Essays on Corinth (trans, and ed. Schiltz, John; Philadelphia: Fortress, 1982) 27–67.Google Scholar

22 On popular apocalypticism today, see Jewett, Robert, “Coming to Terms with the Doom Boom,” Quarterly Review 4 (1984) 9–22.Google Scholar

23 This interpretation was reported to the community of McCormick Theological Seminary by Sheri Noah, who was an international student for a time in Costa Rica.

24 Sano, Roy I., “Ethnic Liberation Theology: Neo-Orthodoxy Reshaped or Replaced?” Christianity and Crisis (10 November 1975)Google Scholar; see also idem, “Jesus as Savior and Lord,” in The Myth/Truth of God Incarnate (The Tenth National Conference of Trinity Institute; Wilton: Morehouse-Barlow, 1979) 85–103.Google Scholar

25 See 1QS 5.1–2, 10–20; 9.16; CD 1.12; 1QM 1.1; and esp. 1QM 4.9–10 and 1QH 2.22; see also Yarbro Collins, “Insiders and Outsiders,” 208–9.

26 Ignatius Smyrn. 9.1; Polycarp Phil. 7.1; Bauer, Walter, Orthodoxy and Heresy in Earliest Christianity (Philadelphia: Fortress, 1971) 70Google Scholar.