Prophetic Rivalry, Gender, and Economics

Abstract

Olivia Stewart Lester has produced an important study on Prophetic Rivalry, Gender, and Economics through a comparative analysis of Revelation and Sibylline Oracles 4 and 5. The positioning of these texts is guided by a series of clever impulses. First, Stewart Lester argues that “a shared rhetorical tendency” exists that can be “obscured by later religious and canonical boundaries.” Second, read in concert, the texts of her inquiry offer a counter-current to narratives of “declining prophecy” in Second Temple Judaism, early Christianity, and wider ancient Mediterranean contexts of the first and second centuries AD. Third, each text, far from staking claims on this or that explication of cultic difference, employs distinct registers of a shared literary function, namely, the construction of what she refers to as “true prophecy.”Writing with enviable clarity and economy, Stewart Lester presses these concerns through three focuses—rival interpretation, gender construction, and affective, economic systems—over the course of six well-conceived chapters. The first chapter considers the figures of Balaam and Jezebel within the complex narrative world of Revelation. Her readings of Jezebel in conversation with Eliza Rosenberg’s recent work are particularly insightful. Chapter two considers Balaam’s represented prophetic illegitimacy in Philo and Josephus. In the rather suggestive ch. three, John’s combat myth is placed alongside the well-worn fatigue throughout the Mediterranean with Delphic profitability. Mainly in conversation with Lucan’s Civil War, Stewart Lester positions these two texts as operating within an “Anti-Neronian” prophetic economy and their entanglements with gender violence. Chapter four engages issues of pseudepigrapha with respect to the Sibyline Oracles. As opposed to thin designations of “forgery,” Stewart Lester positions the Jewish stylistic operationalizing of the Sibyl as “ideological subterfuge.” That is, imperial property and Apollo’s whims are turned against themselves through the rival prophetic function of Jewish tradition. Chapter five provides an important (and convincing) demonstration of one of the author’s main theses, namely, the repetition of gender violence within prophetic texts. This is a powerful finding. Alongside the rhetorical function of the Sibyl’s “political resistance,” the construction of prophetic rivalry in the Jewish Sibylists 4–5 instrumentalizes the Sibyl through the force of the lashing whip of the masculine divine. The chapter sits powerfully within Stewart Lester’s flowering argument on gender violence within prophetic rivalry. Chapter six suggests an “affective” economy of reversal and repayment within prophetic discourse in Sib. Or. 4–5 as well as their approving receptions in Clement of Alexandria and the author of the prologue.Prophetic Rivalry, Gender, and Economics is a powerful reflection on and study of its considered themes. Several insights stand out. As an impressive demonstration of comparison, Stewart Lester reads a canonical text within a deep forestry of vibrant prophetic patterns. Wittgenstein stated that a “good comparison refreshes understanding.” Stewart Lester has marshaled an impressive comparison between complex textual histories that will prove fruitful and refreshing for any reader of prophecy of this period.One of the many insights that stood out to this lowly reviewer (who is gathering notes on violence and apocalyptic) is how even within the reordered worlds of Revelation and Sib. Or. 4–5—texts often celebrated for their politically subversive potential—the human stain of gender violence, economic absorption, and flagrant rivalry recur. Much more could be said here, but such findings should give our theologians and exegetes much to think about.This is the first of what will surely prove to be a series of excellent studies on these important themes from the pen of Stewart Lester.