The present report applies Pierre Bourdieu’s social theory to the study of ancient Judaean apocalypticism in its historical, socioeconomic, and political contexts. Its central thesis is that each Judaean apocalyptic discourse is waged against the dominant ideology of its society and its perceived sustainers and beneficiaries. The particular focus in this report is Flavian ideology—the dominant ideology of the Roman Empire in the last three decades of the first century CE—and its subversion by the apocalyptic discourse of the late-first century CE text Fourth Ezra. After the Romans quashed a revolt in the province of Judaea and sacked the Jerusalem temple in 70 CE, the soon-to-be Roman emperor Vespasian, and his sons Titus and Domitian, initiated and maintained an empire-wide discourse proclaiming Iudaea capta (‘Judaea captured’). By means of coins, monuments, statues, literary propaganda, and the institution of a new Judaean tax, the Flavian emperors magnified their successful suppression of this provincial revolt in order to legitimate their dynasty. This discourse, which quickly became misrecognized in society and persisted long after the tenure of the Flavian dynasty, marked all Judaeans throughout the empire as foreign rebels and barbarians. The author of Fourth Ezra challenged Flavian ideology, and the Iudaea capta discourse in particular, by “revealing”—that is, persuading his audience to believe—that Rome’s victory over Judaea is part of the divine plan, the glory of Rome is fleeting, and the righteous ones who keep God’s Law will still have an opportunity for redemption. A focus of the present analysis is the figure of a lamenting woman employed by both discourses. Whereas the Flavian discourse used a dejected Judaean woman to represent Judaea after the Roman victory, Fourth Ezra’s apocalyptic discourse reveals a similar figure of a lamenting Judaean woman to be Mother Zion, and has her transform into the new, eschatological Jerusalem. When these two discourses are viewed together, regardless of direct influence or dependence, it is clear that the apocalyptic discourse subverts Flavian ideology. In the process, the author of Fourth Ezra recycles power by simultaneously delegitimating the Flavian emperors and legitimating his own social circle of sage-leaders. / text

This dissertation brings two recent strands of research together and attempts to contribute to two areas of study: (1) apocalyptic Paul studies and (2) the discipline of intertextuality. When apocalyptic Paul is concerned, many works utilize comparative literature approaches. The present study, however, is different in two respects. First, this study sees intertextuality and apocalyptic as a cultural semiotic that is a meaning potential in culture. Whereas many intertextual studies focus on how later texts employ earlier texts for literary and theological purposes, the present study views culture as a matrix of intertextuality. In addition, this study deems apocalyptic as a cultural discourse that society and culture share to understand transcendent phenomena and events. The second distinctiveness of this study is its analytic method. Instead of word-to-word comparison, we investigate whether Paul’s letters present similar patterns of semantic relations between apocalyptic thematic items. After identifying recurrent thematic formations throughout multiple texts, this study explores Paul’s heteroglossia (different voices) in the thematic formations. As such, the meaning of Paul’s apocalyptic can be construed, when we scrutinize, first, how the apocalyptic languages or themes are used in culture, and second, how Paul differently employs them from others. To paraphrase, the meaning of Paul’s apocalyptic language can be vivid when the same apocalyptic thematic formations in Paul’s letters present different linguistic features from other writings. Through this procedure, the present study argues that though Paul shares similar thematic formations with other texts in the Greco-Roman world, the apostle’s apocalyptic thought is significantly distinctive from others. In Paul’s apocalyptic discourse, Jesus is the primary participant that interacts with other thematic items. Also, the apostle’s peculiar linguistic features in the shared apocalyptic formations converge around one figure that is Christ. In other words, Christ takes the central role in his apocalyptic discourse. Christ, therefore, is the apocalyptic lens for Paul to shape his understandings of transcendent phenomena (i.e., otherworldly journey, resurrection, sin and evil, and the two-age apocalyptic eschatology) through Christ.

Made available in DSpace on 2016-06-02T19:16:37Z (GMT). No. of bitstreams: 1 5120.pdf: 2852465 bytes, checksum: 77f35893f4551cd3f6537435f6b45bf1 (MD5) Previous issue date: 2013-02-07 / Financiadora de Estudos e Projetos / This paper seeks indications of how discourses of science are transmitted to society and even to find ideological confrontations between these two discursive forces. For this the chosen corpus was constituted from the texts of the Superinteressante magazine, and the main concepts used to support this work were the dialogical theory, memories of the future, the incompleteness and the valuation of aesthetic Bakhtin. We will also use Leon (1999), who shows us the ways and history of scientific discourse. Thus we have as hypotheses of how this discourse is constructed, how it is valued and how it also serves to entertain and inform. We also use old speeches about the apocalypse, as the Holy Bible, the Mayan prophecies and the prophecies of Nostradamus to turn the discourse of the magazine historical discourses, seeking thereby modeling common to apocalyptic discourse. Thus, it seeks to relate all these concepts with the main problem: how language mediates to change the perception of science and society. / Este trabalho busca indícios de como os discursos da ciência são transmitidos para a sociedade e, inclusive como nesse jogo também encontramos embates ideológicos entre essas duas forças discursivas. Para isso o corpus escolhido foi constituído a partir das textualizações da revista Superinteressante, e os principais conceitos utilizados para embasar este trabalho foram a teoria dialógica, as memórias de futuro, o inacabamento e a valoração do estético de Bakhtin. Também utilizaremos Leon (1999), que nos mostra os caminhos e a história dos discursos de divulgação científica. Desta maneira temos como hipóteses de como esse discurso é construído, como ele é valorado e como ele também serve para entreter, além de informar. Utilizaremos também discursos antigos sobre o apocalipse, como a Bíblia Sagrada, as profecias Maias e as profecias de Nostradamus para ligar os discursos da revista com os discursos históricos, buscando assim, modelações comuns aos discursos apocalípticos. Desta forma, busca-se relacionar todos esses conceitos com o problema principal: como a língua serve de mediação para mudar a percepção de ciência e de sociedade.