Experiencing the Apocalypse at the Limits of Alterity

301 Pages·2010·4.89 MB·English

by  Leif Hongisto

Experiencing the Apocalypse
at the Limits of Alterity
Biblical Interpretation Series
Editors
R. Alan Culpepper
Ellen van Wolde
Associate Editors
David E. Orton
Rolf Rendtorff
Editorial Advisory Board
Janice Capel Anderson – Phyllis A. Bird
Erhard Blum – Werner H. Kelber
Ekkehard W. Stegemann – Vincent L. Wimbush
Jean Zumstein
VOLUME 102
Experiencing the Apocalypse
at the Limits of Alterity
By
Leif Hongisto
LEIDEN • BOSTON
2010
This book is printed on acid-free paper.
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Hongisto, Leif.
Experiencing the Apocalypse at the limits of alterity / by Leif Hongisto.
p. cm. — (Biblical interpretation series ; v. 102)
Includes bibliographical references and index.
ISBN 978-90-04-18563-0 (hardback : alk. paper)
1. Bible. N.T. Revelation—Criticism, Narrative. 2. Other (Philosophy) in the Bible.
I. Title. II. Series.
BS2825.52.H66 2010
228’.066—dc22
2010017809
ISSN 0928-0731
ISBN 978 90 04 18563 0
Copyright 2010 by Koninklijke Brill NV, Leiden, The Netherlands.
Koninklijke Brill NV incorporates the imprints Brill, Hotei Publishing,
IDC Publishers, Martinus Nijhoff Publishers and VSP.
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cONTENTS
Introduction .................................................................................................1
ParT ONE
aPOcaLyPSE, a TExT LOOkINg fOr a rEaDING
chapter One
critical Orientation ....................................................................................13
1.1 Questions and Method....................................................................14
1.1.1 Focus and Boundaries .........................................................19
1.1.2 Task ........................................................................................23
1.2 Some Definitions and assumptions .............................................26
1.3 Modalities of Reading .....................................................................41
1.3.1 realist and Non-realist relation to the Other .................42
1.3.2 a Virtual Text .......................................................................47
1.3.3 Shifts in Viewpoints .............................................................49
1.3.4 Text and ‘Site’ .........................................................................51
chapter Two
Reading the Form of the Apocalypse ......................................................55
2.1 Defining the form and function of the artefact .......................57
2.1.1 The Notion of a Setting ........................................................58
2.2 framing a Hybrid Text ...................................................................61
2.2.1 The Role of a Frame .............................................................63
2.3 The Scripture Profile of the apocalypse .......................................66
2.3.1 Literary Freedom..................................................................69
2.4 The apocalypse as Oral Performance ..........................................73
2.4.1 Word-pictures ......................................................................74
2.5 Historical, Narrative and Imaginative Qualities .........................78
2.6 The Trait of construction ..............................................................81
2.6.1 The Necessity of Selectivity ................................................83
2.6.2 Transaction.......................................................................... 84
vi cONTENTS
Chapter Three
Apocalypticality: An Integrating Function ............................................89
3.1 Imagining the ‘Other’ ......................................................................93
3.1.1 The Spectacular .....................................................................95
3.1.2 Sequels to repeated readings ............................................98
3.1.3 Staged ‘as if’ .........................................................................100
3.2 Prismatic Reflections ....................................................................102
3.2.1 Experience of Cognitive Dissonance ...............................104
3.3 from Plain Words to Powerful Metaphors ................................108
3.3.1 Communal Cognitions .......................................................112
3.3.2 Collective Experience .........................................................116
3.4 Search for a Setting .......................................................................120
3.4.1 Exegetical assumptions and Spiritual Experience .........123
ParT TWO
TakE uP aND rEaD
Take up and read ....................................................................................133
Chapter Four
Narrative Positioning – Aligning Experiences .....................................135
4.1 The Narrative Situation – the first Meeting with the ‘Other’ ..137
4.2 Visions of Jesus: Experiencing the known anew .....................138
4.2.1 Visionary Experiences of Jesus .........................................139
4.2.2 corpus of Visionary Sayings ............................................140
4.3 The Medium of Sharing god’s knowledge .................................143
4.3.1 Deictic Expressions .............................................................143
4.3.2 gave ‘Him’ ...........................................................................145
4.3.3 ‘He’ Sent ..............................................................................147
4.4 The Form of Visionary Appropriation .......................................150
4.4.1 John’s Own Vision .............................................................150
4.4.2 as He Saw It ........................................................................155
4.5 The Sweet Bitterness of reading ..................................................158
ExPErIENcINg THE aPOcaLyPSE vii
Chapter Five
Narrator Perspectives – Affirming Narration ......................................167
5.1 The Narrator as the Experiencer .................................................169
5.2 Co-Narrator ....................................................................................173
5.3 alternating Between Narrator and co-narrator .......................178
chapter Six
The Narratee’s Experience – connectedness of Life ...........................187
6.1 ‘you’ as Narrative Identity ............................................................191
6.2 The Other as Oneself .....................................................................195
6.3 When Narrative Voices Clash .....................................................198
6.4 The art of Suppleness ..................................................................203
chapter Seven
Towards an anatomy of apocalypticality ............................................210
7.1 Action Day .......................................................................................212
7.1.1 Time of action .....................................................................213
7.1.2 Secular and Sacred .............................................................214
7.1.3 Sinners and Saints ................................................................217
7.2 conceptual Blends and Shifts ......................................................220
7.2.1 Imagistic Cognitions ...........................................................221
7.2.2 Alterations ...........................................................................224
7.2.3 Merging of Time and Eons ...............................................225
7.3 concentric Spaces .........................................................................229
Conclusion ...............................................................................................234
Postscript
Twelve Storyboards of the apocalypse .................................................242
Bibliography .............................................................................................250
Index .........................................................................................................283

INTrODucTION
The gift of vision is a challenge, it is also an opportunity.
But only, I believe,
if we are prepared to root our looking and seeing in the body of feeling.1
More than any other New Testament text, the apocalypse2 is continual-
ly part of societal discourse, in both religious and secular contexts.3 The
predominantly secular western culture makes use of motifs, symbolism
and scenarios derived from both the Apocalypse itself and its interpre-
tations. Ordinary speech makes use of the word apocalyptic to refer to
a multiplicity of things: from anything pointless or outlandish to in-
surmountable evil that overcomes humanity. Even the term apocalypse
has become a common designation for envisionments of super-natural,
immanent and catastrophic end-of-the-world depictions.4 In current
media headlines, the term apocalypse stands for calamity, catastrophe
and chaos.5 The assumed end-of-the-present-history worldview of the
Apocalypse has had and still has influence on literature, lyrics and the
visual arts,6 and, consequently, on other disciplines using these second-
1 Levin, D. M. “understanding: Learning to Stand on the Earth and Stand under the
Sky.” J. r. Watson, ed. Portraits of American Continental Philosophers (Bloomington:
Indiana university Press, 1999) 109.
2 The last book of the New Testament is referred to by different names. Throughout
this presentation, I will refer to the text as the apocalypse.
3 ‘revelation is widely popular for the wrong reasons.’ raymond E. Brown, cited
in Borg, M. J. Reading the Bible Again for the First Time (San francisco: Harper San
Francisco, 2002) 265.
4 Aune, D. E. Apocalypticism, Prophecy and Magic in Early Christianity (Tübingen:
Mohr Siebeck, 2006) 1.
5 One of the many examples in business papers, ‘an apocalyptic mood has seized
the highest levels of global capital as the global financial system continues to implode.’
Bello, W. “capitalism in an apocalyptic Mood.” Foreign Policy in Focus, February 20,
2008.
6 charlotte Brontë, Leo Tolstoy, fjodor Dostoevsky, Thomas Mann, Emanuel Swe-
denborg, friedrich Engels, D. H. Lawrence, Bertolt Brecht, and William Blake, to
mention a few. In addition to these and others, comes the Hollywood film industry.
Judith L. kovacs and christopher rowland discuss the far-reaching influence of the
Apocalypse on society and culture, and the impact it has had on the Christian Church
through the ages. They consider its effect, not only on theologians from Origen and
augustine to late twentieth-century theologians of liberation, but also on writers, art-