Abstract
Abstract This article explores John’s Exodus rhetoric as a decolonial strategy and maps its implications for contemporary migrants. Other scholars have convincingly argued that local authorities deported John to Patmos as a vagus, because his message opposed civic institutions, but they do not explain the nature and function of his preaching. Using migrant narratives and decolonial theory, I read John’s call to come out of Babylon and his deployment of Exodus topoi as migration rhetoric. He uses topoi of liberation, wilderness wanderings, and promised land to subvert the colonial situation of the assemblies under Rome. Rather than migrating to a place, believers embody the eschatological Exodus by rejecting food offered to idols and upholding the boundaries of Jewish identity as they wait for the full realization of God’s kingdom in the New Jerusalem. Regarding Latinx migrant communities, John’s Exodus rhetoric informs how migrants legitimate their migration and how they negotiate identity and resist imperialism in the US/Mexico borderlands.
Highlights
Exodus rhetoric in Revelation elucidates John’s deportation to Patmos and informs the struggles for human flourishing of contemporary Latinx migrant communities
I have argued that John deploys Exodus rhetoric as a decolonial strategy to address the colonial situation of the seven assemblies of Asia Minor
Reconstructing the latter as Jewish diaspora communities who believed in Jesus, I suggest some believers participated in eidōlothyta to ease the pressure of Greek cities to acculturate and negotiate the colonial situation under Rome
Summary
Exodus rhetoric in Revelation elucidates John’s deportation to Patmos and informs the struggles for human flourishing of contemporary Latinx migrant communities. Suggest John engaged in strategic crisis-mongering to gain the upper hand in a power struggle with local prophets.[5] For Adela Yarbro-Collins, John’s narrative reflects a perceived crisis rather than real tensions with the empire.[6] Unconvinced by crisis theories altogether, Leonard Thompson suggests that John went to Patmos to receive revelations.[7] According to Giancarlo Biguzzi, local Asian authorities deported John as a vagabond (vagus) because his prophetic messages opposing civic institutions had become disruptive These scenarios have their merits, they rely on external evidence and deserve interrogation. They call John to account for how his migration rhetoric reproduces the imperial practices of exclusion it seeks to eradicate
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