ABSTRACT
In this chapter, Leach explores both the meal practices of the Christ-following assemblies John writes to in Revelation and the discursive ways John correlates competing practices with dualistic cosmic empires (of Christ and Satan). Leach argues that John’s polemical rhetoric in Revelation toward particular Christ-following assemblies and members (centering in Rev 2–3 on eating eidōlothyta and sexual immorality) is entangled with his more pervasive cosmic and anti-imperial imagery of blood-drinking (attempted), child-eating, murder, and sexual immorality. This matrix of charges ambivalently draws on wider Roman accusations of anthropophagy (including blood-drinking) and sexual immorality, frequently leveled against ethnic groups and ritual associations characterized as “foreign,” secretive, misanthropic, and seditious. Through its dualistic alimentary discourse, Revelation both resists similar Roman accusations against Judaeans and Christ-followers, and simultaneously characterizes those John opposes within the Christ-following assemblies, the imperial government, and wider cultic system as themselves “foreign” (e.g., attaching names like Balaam, Jezebel, and Babylon), communally invasive, and socially corrosive elements.
