Parables of War: Reading John's Jewish Apocalypse

Abstract

Parables of War: Reading John's Apocalypse, by W. Marshall. Studies in Christianity and Judaism 10. Waterloo, ON: Wilfrid Laurier University Press, 2001. Pp. vii + 258. $29.95 (paper). In introduction to this provocative but flawed work, Jew named John gazes from island of Patmos at events across Roman Empire during turbulent year 69 C.E. Like Saruman with his palantir in Orthanc, he sees all! In east siege of Jerusalem and, farther east, ghost of Nero leading armies of Parthia against Rome; in west, assassination and civil war in Italy; armies marching across Asia toward Rome; and communities in Seven Cities harassed by their neighbors and giving way to temptations of Greeks. With this sort of clarity, one wonders why did not become emperor himself. Instead, apparently, he wrote Apocalypse. Marshall's main thesis in this revised Princeton dissertation (1998) is that Apocalypse should be read not as a text but as a one. This claim has been made before, from Martin Luther to Rudolf BuItmann, who dismissed Apocalypse as weakly Christianized (see Theology of New Testament [2 vols.; Scribner, 1955], 2:173-75), and many scholars since have identified elements in text. Marshall, however, deconstructs categories Christian and Jewish as part of his study and maintains that text, its author, and its audience should be understood completely within a context. he joins a significant minority of who date text to time of Nero. Finally, he argues that calls on his readers to resist Roman culture and religion. Marshall offers a new combination of previous proposals and approaches-the Apocalypse as Jewish; Apocalypse as a Neronic text; Apocalypse as countercultural; and Apocalypse as read through poststructural lenses-but results are unpersuasive. Marshall engages a limited set of scholarship on Revelation. He caricatures scholarship on Revelation as full of cliches and defined by master narrative of orthodox Christianity. By commentators in first half oi book, Marshall means almost exclusively Adela Yarbro Collins (whose Crisis and Catharsis: The Power of Apocalypse [Westminster, 1984] receives extensive criticism), Leonard Thompson, David E. Aune, and Elisabeth Schussler Fiorenza. These are all influential scholars, but book would have been more effective if it had more fully engaged a wider set of authors from past ten years. These might include Greg Carey, Paul Duff, Steven Friesen, Catherine Keller, Stephen Moore, Stephen Moyise, Tina Pippin, and my own work. Granted, Parables of War is a new reading. But his critique of modernist scholars from a poststructuralist perspective, while ignoring similar approaches, fights against only paper tigers. The cliches he tries to debunk (p. 175) have also been deconstructed by others. The introduction (ch. 1) tackles a couple of thorny methodological problems. Marshall questions outright whether presence of Christ demands presence of Christianity. Claiming that, in John's Apocalypse, the faith, institutions, and cult of judaism are not even objects of criticism (p. 6), he attempts a noncanonical reading of Revelation that would not retroject Christianity into text. The task involves a continual self-examination and constant reformulation that will ideally enrich terms 'Judaism' and 'Christianity' (p. 9). Marshall critiques complex of dogma and belief that have defined Christianity through which Apocalypse has been read. But he does not consider alternative definitions of Christianity proposed by scholars, for instance as social construct, symbolic universe, or discursive formation. In first part of book (chs. 2-7), Marshall unpacks his theoretical claims. He builds his analysis around a series of aporias, interpretive cruxes that produce circular readings if text is read as but which become clear when text is read as Jewish. …