On “The Seven Cities of the Apocalypse and Roman Culture” by Roland H. Worth Jr. ****

 

This slim volume wasn't quite what I was expecting, and that has its good and bad points. There is a second volume, apparently, with “Greek Culture” in a title that does more of what I would have expected: namely, broken down the local culture of each of the seven cities. This volume is more of an overview of the culture of first-century western Asia Minor in general.

The work begins with a discussion of Roman culture in the area that was, in most ways, familiar to me, since in many regards the region was little different than others in the Roman sphere, particularly in the east, where Greek culture continued to hold such sway. As such, the information on governmental systems, festivals, slavery, sporting events, and so on was concise and would be useful to someone who has not read other works on the subject.

Where the work really shined for me was in its second chapter, half of which is given over to the Jewish community in the region, which forged as much as 20 percent of the population. Worth discusses how the population got there and how it interacted with the locals. On the whole, one gets the feeling that the relationship to between the different ethnic groups was largely cordial, with Jewish people even taking a role in government in some cases. 

Worth's discussion of the geography of Patmos and the two legal forms of exile was also of value. He explores whether the author of Revelation was actually exiled and, if so, what form that would have taken. Unlike so many contemporary authors, Worth tends to view the author as the apostle John (as opposed to another John), though he notes that the other theories don't necessarily impact how one reads Revelation. For him, the differences in form and language can be easily explained because the work is a different genre than the other works attributed to John.

A lot of time is spent exploring why John chose seven cities and why just these seven cities to aim the Revelation at. Worth doesn't reach a dogmatic conclusion, though he certainly shows the weaknesses of various arguments: that they were the most (economically) important, that they had the most believers, that they were where early bishoprics formed, that they were centers of the Imperial cult, that they were on the same mail route or road, and so on. In each case, at least one city is an exception, and often other cities that would qualify under those same conditions. Worth also discusses the importance of the number seven biblically—meaning completeness. It seemed to me, by the end of the discussion, that the use of (these) seven cities was deliberate primarily for rhetorical purposes. As such, the letters were aimed at the church as a whole, not at specific congregations: the congregations here had largely symbolic purposes.

Worth also uses a chapter to discuss the Imperial cult, which again was largely familiar territory for me. The reason he focuses on the cult, of course, is because many read much of Revelation as being about the literaral Roman empire of the time and its emperors and faith. Worth shows how one can read various metaphors in the work as related to such ideas. I rarely find such readings of much value. The book draws so heavily on Old Testament tropes that it often seems to me more in line with Jewish prophetic works than with the contemporary scene, but certainly readers at the time may well have seen the Roman parallels, just as people even today read events now as being explored in the work.

As for whether I'll read Worth's second volume, I'm on the fence. Many of the things he alludes to about his closer readings of the seven cities seem either like things I'd already know from commentaries or like dubious assertions. But in a way, that's what I was expecting of this volume, so in that sense, the fact that this volume ended up not being that was appreciated.

On "A History of Pan-African Revolt" by C. L. R. James ****

Having just read Apetheker's account of slave revolts, I was a bit concerned that this much-shorter book would be redundant. I need not be. James concerns himself not just with revolts in the United States but with revolts throughout the world--and not just with revolts that involve the literally enslaved either. For James, a Marxist, African uprisings are tied in with class uprisings and with efforts to bring about a more equitable world. Reading such events in light of Marxist philosophy was interesting, even if in my opinion, it blinds James to certain other problems.

James starts his work with the slave uprising in San Domingo, the only one to result in the forging of an independent nation, in which the former enslaved people become the managers of the new regime. This was enabled, as James brings out, by a number of fortuitous historical forces, including the number of enslaved people versus the number of others on the island, and the ambivalent responses of the French colonizers, who were themselves at the time facing a movement of the masses toward "liberty" and the throwing off of an old monarchal regime.

Uprisings among the enslaved in the United States never benefitted from such advantages, which meant they were bound to fail. The numbers were never on the side of those who rebelled, even in pockets where the enslaved outnumbered others--those were simply pockets, with an outside world ready to reimpose the status quo. It is in James's analysis of pre-Civil War uprisings that he makes some claims about lower-class whites taking the side of the enslaved; other reading I've done suggests that was almost never the case. Rather, based on racial prejudice and a desire of lower-class whites to align themselves with higher-class whites, the lower classes almost always took to the cause of the higher classes against the enslaved, even to their own detriment. (A book by Glenn Feldman called The Disfranchisement Myth shows how lower-class whites in Alabama even voted in state constitutional changes that would prevent themselves from voting just to keep black people from voting, essentially disenfranchising themselves.)

Similar cynacism can be attached to the Civil War, which in this case C. L. R. James certainly does. Here, playing off economic and pragmatic concerns rather than idealistic ones, James claims, the North would eventually find that divorcing a chunk of the South's population from the conflict by offering freedom was the only way that it would be able to win. This in turn would set up the United States for much of what would follow the war, where a decade later, the gains black Americans made would be gradually pulled away, the need for their aid no longer of the highest value.

James next turns to uprisings in Africa and to the history of African colonization. He brings out, interestingly, how the slave trade had, at least, largely kept ancient African civilizations intact. As that drew to a close (mostly, he claims, for economic reasons rather than by the efforts of abolitionists), Europeans took to actually taking over the land on the continent and essentially "enslaving" the population through colonization. Chattel slavery was gone, but a new kind of economic slavery took its place that has resulted in the problems that the world has had ever since.

Another chapter focuses on Marcus Garvey, whose back to Africa movement, James is no fan of. However, he does credit Garvey with bringing to the fore the idea of that the effort among African-descended peoples to remove the injustices perpetrated on them must be a united, global one. James's discussion of the West Indies focuses on the way those nations have taken up Western ideals even after the end of colonization.

The edition I read included an epilogue with material on events that had happened since the book's original publication, some three extra decades, from the 1930s to the 1960s. James found hope in the throwing-off of colonizers among various African nations, though he noted that in many cases such revolutions really only perpetuated problems, insofar as dictators of a different ethnicity, with a dependence on the same economic structure wherein raw materials are provided to more developed economies, are no better than colonizers. Where the masses could find voice, however, there was hope. Tanzania was James's dreamland, a place where the leader was trying to establish true communism (not Soviet communism), wherein all Africans in the nation would contribute to the greater cause. He makes the happenings sound like the start of a utopia, one that alas history beyond the scope of the book has shown has been difficult to attain

On “Paul, Artemis, and the Jews in Ephesus,” by Rick Strelan ***

Strelan sets out in this work mostly to question the degree of effectiveness that Paul's ministry had in the city. Acts 19 gives us the impression that the city was very heavily converted over to Christian ideals, but Strelan raises many objections not so much to the event itself but to scholarly (and indeed, mainstream) interpretation of it. His basic points are that Paul's mission was not very effective and that what little effect it did have was mostly among Jewish people.

One reason we know Paul's ministry was not terribly effective, Strelan proposes, is because Artemis worship continued to the the city's focus for a couple of centuries more. Further, that ministry mostly involved Jewish people because his communication seems to be almost entirely with people with Jewish names, because he does his primary work in synagogues, and because Jewish practices among Christians continue. (Indeed, Strelan would seem to believe that what Gentiles did come to be Christians in the region were those who were already predisposed to certain Jewish practices. References to Gentiles in such works as the letter to the Ephesians may actually, in Strelan's view, be to various strands of Jewish belief: Jerusalem centered versus Diaspora centered; those Jews who have kept up stricter Jewish practice versus those who have not.)

How then does one have a near riot in town due to such messaging? Strelan provides a summary of just how important Artemis worship was to the city, as well as a summary of what we know of such worship. One interesting detail that many have gotten wrong: Artemis was not a fertility goddess—quite the opposite. She was one who helped people through transitional times of their lives; she was, in fact, very staid and virginal. Ascetic practices would have fit right along with worship of her.

The threat that Paul posed to the city, with his preaching against the gods, his noting that they weren't real, was actual. However, Strelan reads the riot within a Jewish context rather than a Christian one. It was Jews, who argued for belief in the one god, who posed the real threat, of which Christianity was a mere sect. It was against them that the riot took place. It took place, Strelan claims, at the time that it did because the city was going through a period of financial toil; such riots against Jewish people who did not support the main benefactor/goddess of the city were not uncommon when times grew tough, as they were taken as being a major contributor to the troubles.

Strelan's ideas are provocative. He spends much time referencing other scholars, such that one knows that he's mostly contributing to a conversation among them rather than presenting something for the general public interested in the subject. Even if there are things to doubt about Strelan's thesis, what becomes clear is that many assumptions have been made about Paul and about Ephesus that have colored our reading of what the primary texts actually state and record.

On “American Negro Slave Revolts” by Herbert Aptheker ***

Consisting essentially of two undenoted parts, this book first provides an overall theory of revolt, showing how revolt was feared, how enslavers attempted to prevent it, and why it happened. The second half then goes into a summary of the various revolts that happened from colonial times through the Civil War. The first part is a very interesting discussion that elicits at times a good degree of pathos; the second part, alas, feels mostly like an impersonal listing of events with often little analysis.

Aptheker notes that he took up the work because little attention had been paid in the historical literature to such revolts, outside of Nat Turner’s, which was taken as an outlier. This lack of attention led, in turn, to a mistaken notion that people enslaved in North America had largely been docile; indeed, one might say it even contributed to such Lost Cause tropes mythologized in works like Gone with the Wind and Song of the South of the happy slave. Aptheker shows that enslaved people were by and large anything but happy.

One thing that contributed to the fear of revolt was the sheer number of enslaved people; indeed, in parts of the South, enslaved Black people outnumbered white people. This was one reason, beyond desire to maintain a healthy number of representatives in Congress, that southern states so sought to extend slavery into new territories. By spreading out the population, it was hoped, the ability of enslaved people to gather and thus bring about a change to their status would be diluted. Laws passed in some states limited the ability of African Americans to assemble in any manner, except by the authority of an enslaver. So, essentially, if you were a Black person, unless you were working, you weren’t allowed to hang out with other folk. Sometimes, such laws included free Black people in addition to those who were enslaved. It boggles my mind how any social life would be possible--and thus how one’s sanity could be maintained. But of course, such laws were to prevent even the ability to plan a revolt. Other laws aimed at keeping certain Black people away from those who were enslaved. Obviously free Black people were seen as a not good influence on those enslaved and were by law prevented from migrating to some states; similarly, those from areas in the Caribbean that had won independence from their enslavers were also bad influences and often were banned from entering a state (or even from being enslaved, since theirs would be a pernicious influence on enslaved Americans.)

A particular contributor to slave revolt was economic tough times. One can easily imagine how when financial times got difficult, those who were enslaved were the last in line to receive basic necessities such as food. The degree to which enslaved people hated their lot is made plain in various tales of men and women who deliberately mutilated themselves to avoid service; one particularly affecting tale involved a pregnant woman who killed herself rather than bringing forth children who would themselves be slaves. Stories such as these, in addition to reports about rebellions, were often suppressed in the media, lest it encourage others to rebel.

From there, Aptheker turns to the individual accounts of revolts. These read, mostly, like those of another book I once browsed that attempted to tell the tale of southern hurricanes. Alas, rather than providing much in the way of a plot, it simply noted, and then this hurricane happened. Two years later, this hurricane, with this much damage, and so on. The revolts, outside of Nat Turner’s, which receives its own well-conceived chapter, come in for a similarly unstructured account here, which makes for tedious reading. I understand the reason Aptheker needed to document each case, but the real heart of the book comes in the analytical first half.