Sarah Emanuel. Humor, Resistance, and Jewish Cultural Persistence in the Book of Revelation: Roasting Rome. Cambridge University Press, 2020.
Building on more than thirty years of scholarship focused on situating ancient literature in postcolonial theory, Sarah Emanuel’s monograph titled Humor, Resistance, and Jewish Cultural Persistence in the Book of Revelation: Roasting Rome contributes a concise and innovative analysis to the study of ancient Judaism and early Christianity. Emanuel’s methodological blend utilizes relational trauma theory, humor studies, and historical-critical lenses towards a new reading of the Book of Revelation that is both deeply insightful and highly nuanced. Scholarship on Revelation’s relationship to empire is now quite prevalent and Emanuel adds to the conversation with her study of humor as a mode of Jewish survival. The author aims to account for Revelation’s seemingly contradictory perspectives of responses to empire and imperial subjugation and suggests that comic has a way of handling such incongruities, “reconfiguring social structures, and in turn, fostering cultural persistence” (75). For Revelation, this cultural persistence is uniquely Jewish and is expressed both within the tradition of Jewish literature and against a Hellenized-Roman backdrop. In each chapter of her monograph, Emanuel interacts with and ventures beyond classic postcolonial verbiage, such as hybridity, mimicry, and ambivalence[i] to address the ways that John’s Apocalypse simultaneously resists the violent whims of empire with satirical commentary and yet, as a result of communal trauma, becomes the very reflection of imperial monstrosity itself.
Functioning as an introduction to Emanuel’s methodologies and theoretical underpinnings for her reading of John’s Apocalypse, the author begins chapter one by orienting her readers to Revelation as firstly a Jewish text. Its language, what Emanuel calls a “halakhic worldview,” or nationalism under a Davidic messiah and interaction with Jewish scriptures, she proposes, reveals its authorial context in a Christ-following Jewish group, perhaps in the mid-60s CE. Emanuel hesitates, however, to limit the spatiotemporal environment too narrowly and emphasizes how trauma and consistent oppression under Roman imperialism need not be restricted to one particular incident of persecution or violence. Beyond idolatry, unlawful sex acts, and taboos around eating practices (33), a more explicit definition of “halakhic worldview” and “halakhically-oriented theology” would only strengthen the author’s argument and further distinguish John’s idea of what makes something “halakhic” from the “non-halakhic, non-Christ following” groups. Emanuel also addresses the anti-Jewish readings of Revelation and the marginalization of Jewishness in categories used often in the “parting of the ways” debate. Lastly, drawing on Bakhtinian dialogism, Emanuel skillfully positions not only relevant intertexts but also her own methodologies in active dialogue with one other.
In chapter two, Emanuel first defines the terms of her theoretical bounds—trauma, humor, and postcolonial — and highlights some methodological incongruencies, as well as enlightening intersections, between postcolonial studies and traditional trauma theory. Emanuel argues that the nature of the Apocalypse’s anti-imperial narrativizing not only allows for a postcolonial interpretation of Jewish cultural persistence but demands it (67). The author then goes on to lay the foundations of what she calls “a humor hermeneutic,” exploring its precedents in biblical interpretation, its relationship to Greco-Roman humor, and how it has been used historically as a way of “fostering culture persistence” (85). Like resistance, humor also has hybrid tendencies and may, in the breath of a single joke, relieve emotional pressure from a traumatic experience and subvert the trauma-inflicting tyrannical structure. The author touches on similar humor strategies in Esther, Judith, and even Judges 3, and emphasizes how grotesque and violent humor like that of Revelation has an array of precedents in Jewish literature. Because of its specific context in and response to empire, a more in-depth comparison to the Book of Esther might be worthwhile in this chapter. To conclude, Emanuel proposes that it is in the dynamic dialogism of resistance and persistence by way of humor devices that “the book of Revelation seeks to both remember Jewish imperial subjugation and rewrite the dominant imperial transcript” (93).
Chapter three brings its focuses on communal identities in the letters to the churches in Revelation and how they distinguish between insiders and outsiders, especially those whom John considers rival contemporaries. In line with her broader thesis, Emanuel argues "that Revelation relies on a dialogical use of humor to make its anti-imperial-assimilationist claims" (96) and offers a fresh analysis of Revelation’s references to Balaam, Balak, and Jezebel as narrative devices intended to mock those who partake in a “halakhically impure and assimilationist Jewish culture” (124). Emanuel is less concerned with who these references might “really” refer to than with understanding how narrativizing these figures simultaneously disempowers and satirizes the influence of John’s “others” and condemns them to an inevitable fate. Emanuel is particularly interested in the gender-specific mockings of Jezebel and speculates whether the “prophetess” is truly anatomically female. If the figure is rather an anatomically male rival of John, Jezebel becomes an even more striking comic butt whose so-called gender-demotion would be familiar to Hellenized Roman culture and satire. Ultimately, using darkly comical biblical figures in a contemporary imperial setting reanimates their laughability and, as Emanuel demonstrates, “constructs a comic counterworld in juxtaposition with a Sitz im Leben of trauma and despair” (101).
Turning from rival contemporaries who threaten to lead John’s community astray, chapter four examines how the portrayals of Rome’s leaders as “a dragon, two beasts, and a whore” might be read as devices of humor. Emanuel builds upon the consensus that such figures are derogatory personifications of the Roman chain of command by emphasizing the code language that Revelation uses as “a voice to the subaltern — a claim to the subaltern’s experiences” (129). Revelation’s code language casts Christ as the hero Apollo instead of a Roman emperor and, Emanuel argues, blatantly subverts the Roman trickster tale in two ways: once by casting Rome as the inferior Python/Typhon and twice by a humiliating defeat at the hands of the Jewish “underdog” (133). At the same time, the joke is intended to be hidden in plain sight for those that know the cipher and can laugh, albeit discreetly so as to avoid imperial backlash. Also in this chapter, Emanuel analyzes the Dragon, Sea Beast, Earth Beast, and Whore of Babylon through the lens of animal humor from both Jewish and Roman contexts. Examples from the latter, such as Apuleius’ Metamorphoses and Petronius’ Satyricon, are compelling when placed in dialogue with the description of the Sea Beast, as well as Emanuel’s demonstration of how feminization and animalization were employed as common motifs in Roman humor. Lastly, the author examines the performative aspects of the Whore of Babylon’s scene and entertains the likelihood of Revelation being “performed in part or in full amongst Christ-followers in the first century CE” (153). Emanuel’s brief scripted adaptation of the scene from Rev 13 is compelling on multiple fronts, especially in the change of font and format of the text, and calls attention to other ways that classic apocalyptic texts might be understood in performative contexts.
In her final chapter, Emanuel argues that John’s Apocalypse falls prey to the same inimical hierarchy that it intended to subvert by unconsciously mimicking violent imperialism with its own violent imperialism. She follows Revelation’s “counterstory” gone awry and, still through the lens of humor, demonstrates a difference between violent narratives that elevate the voice of the Jewish subaltern and those that recreate imperialism anew. Emanuel calls the former group “doomsday intertexts” (176) and situates the plague sequence of Exodus 7-10 and Nebuchadnezzar’s furnace incident in Daniel 3 as contrasting narratives with Revelation’s vengeful and hyperbolic destruction of all those who oppose the Lamb. The author then turns to the “trilogy of messianic figures” in the Apocalypse and analyzes each of their literary functions with an eye toward the blurred identity boundaries between what Emanuel identifies as masculine/effeminate and human/animal. Concluding her exegetical analysis of a revenge fantasy chock-full of satire and gore, Emanuel proposes that the Apocalypse goes too far: Caesar and Rome are not simply dethroned by violent satire but rather replaced by the Lamb and New Jerusalem — “Revelation’s flames blow back onto the text, burning…its own vision with it” (178). Calling on and integrating her analyses in previous chapters, the author offers here her answer to the seemingly clashing perspectives and mixed messages of John’s Apocalypse. In the midst of communal trauma both present and remembered, the Jewish community of the Apocalypse becomes caught up in its theatrical play and, in forgetting “the humanity of the laughable Other (200),” takes on the tyrannical identity of whom it despises.
The Book of Revelation, Emanuel concludes, employs humor as a tool of Jewish persistence and aims to counteract oppression by satirizing central Roman figures, while simultaneously becoming a sort of mirror of Rome's own violent methods and mimicking the oppressor's "imperial gaze." In the midst of its often grotesque catachresis — “humiliating Rome via Rome’s own tactics” (16) — Emanuel maintains the view that the Apocalypse was composed as a response to trauma under imperialistic tyranny and encourages readers to recognize the potential of its reparative work. Her reparative reading of Revelation relies on humor as the meditator of communal trauma experienced by the Christ-following Jewish group whom John represents. The crescendo of Emanuel's work invites communities of readers to embrace Revelation's affect, "to recognize the text as a work in process — in a state of recovery becoming" (210). Her invitation, however, does not recommend an overly positivistic approach so as to suggest that the Apocalypse should be absolved of its violence, misogyny, and mockery. Instead, readers are encouraged to participate in the recovery process and help “identify the posttraumatic signifiers” (211) so as to heal, retell, and unveil a different future than that of arguably the most influential apocalypse in Western history.
Megan R. Remington (mremington@ucla.edu) is a Ph.D. candidate at UCLA and is researching animals and other nonhumans in ancient Jewish apocalyptic literature.
[i] Bhabha, Homi K. The Location of Culture. London, UK, and New York: Routledge.