Review of Portier-Young, Apocalypse against Empire

H-JUDAIC BOOK REVIEW:

Anathea Portier-Young.Apocalypse against Empire: Theologies of Resistance in Early Judaism. Grand Rapids W. B. Eerdmans Pub. Co.,
2011. xxiii + 462 pp. $50.00 (cloth), ISBN 978-0-8028-6598-4.

Reviewed by John C. Reeves (The University of North Carolina,
Charlotte)
Published on H-Judaic (January, 2013)
Commissioned by Jason Kalman

Rethinking the Imperial Context for Early Jewish Apocalypticism

This impressive monograph, a thoroughly revised version of the
author's doctoral dissertation carried out under the direction of
James L. Crenshaw at Duke University almost a decade ago, provides a
new reading of the cultic crisis purportedly threatening the
Jerusalem Temple in Judea during the first half of the second century
BCE, a cultural schism whose main events are known almost exclusively
from later apocryphal sources like 1 and 2 Maccabees or allegedly
contemporary visionary (that is, "apocalyptic") compositions like the
biblical book of Daniel, or early portions from what would later
figure within the parascriptural collection of writings known by
modern scholars as _1 Enoch_. ...