Sarah Emanuel. Humor, Resistance, and Jewish Cultural Persistence in the Book of Revelation: Roasting Rome. Cambridge University Press, 2020.... 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. ...
Visit PaleoJudaica daily for the latest news on ancient Judaism and the biblical world.