“The Holy City Which Has Been Written in This Book”: The Utopian Scripturalization of Revelation

Abstract

The events of the 1960s, especially civil activism and youth uprisings around the world, shaped not only the Chicanx movement; indeed some of the broader calls for epistemological transformation articulated in the 1960s impacted a plurality of scholars and interpreters, including figures in biblical studies such as past Society of Biblical Literature presidents Fernando F. Segovia and Elisabeth Schüssler Fiorenza, both of whom have articulated the import of 1960s and 1970s activism to their work. Studying the biblical book of Revelation—especially with interpreters in the vein of Segovia and Schüssler Fiorenza, interpreters attentive to politics and social location—can be a place to excavate transformations in the legacy of a teleology of revelation as a utopian homing process. How can we make sense of and think about people reading the book of Revelation as a product and practice of utopia, as the making of and engagement of scriptures—or scripturalization—as always already in a utopian key?