Browsing by Subject "Apocalypse of John"

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Initiates of the Lamb and followers of Dionysus : group formation within Western Asia Minor and Rev 14
(2019-05) Smith, Daniel Charles; Friesen, Steven J.
In this essay I argue that in Revelation 14 the followers of the Lamb are presented in ways that overlap with the claims and praxis of Dionysiac and Orphic groups in Western Asia Minor, thereby necessitating the formation of new lines of separation between the assemblies to which the Apocalypse is addressed and the religious networks surrounding them. Following the approach of Bruno Latour, I seek to recover the traces of Revelation’s groups as they would have been formed within the diverse and varied religious landscapes of Flavian Asia. I consider a variety of evidence from literary, epigraphic, and archaeological sources to demonstrate Orphic and Bacchic ideas of initiation, purity, and personal eschatology as they relate to the Apocalypse of John and its production of an insider group and an outside anti-group. A text consumed with the condemnation of competing groups, from nearby synagogues to Caesar in Rome, Revelation here constructs Bacchic and Orphic cults as another anti-group by presenting the pure initiates of the Lamb who have been granted blessing after death in opposition to the unrighteous whose inheritance is the unmixed wine of god’s wrath