Apocalyptic Masculinity

Megan Wines, “Apocalyptic Masculinity: Messiahs, Monsters, and Men Out Of Time” (PhD Dissertation, Loyola University Chicago, 2025).

It is often said that apocalypses are “dramatic” texts, largely due to their otherworldly settings and larger-than-life themes. Ancient apocalypses have continued to hold cultural purchase, inspiring large swaths of popular media considering the end times across the centuries. As dramatic texts, it seems only fitting that within biblical studies, the discipline of performance criticism comes to bear upon the apocalypses, but the number of performance critical projects on apocalypses is limited primarily to Revelation, and the number pales in comparison to similar treatments of the gospels or Pauline letters.[1]  To expand thinking around performance and apocalypse, my project incorporates a consideration of gender in these categories. So, in this project, I am concerned with answering the question, “Is there such a thing as apocalyptic masculinity?” This project uses performance and performativity as methods for reading apocalyptic texts to delineate a particular masculinity distinctive to apocalypses. I bring these threads together through three themes: (1) messianic figures in apocalypses, (2) the relationship between the monstrous and the masculine, and (3) the place of pseudepigraphy and what happens when major male historical figures are pulled out of their historical locations to be used in other contexts. I argue that there is a particular strand of masculinity that is prevalent in apocalypses: one that is fluid, dissonant, and unstable. In talking about fluid apocalyptic masculinity, we can make sense of the shifting and reframing of the masculinity standards that were a part of the culture at large when the narratives were created. 

Chapter 1 is an orientation to the fields of performance studies and performance criticism as well as other performance-focused avenues of study that have influenced and been incorporated into biblical studies. It argues that the study of everyday performances—like gender and race—have been largely neglected by performance criticism thus far. It draws on insights from performance studies to suggest that moving past a narrow examination of performance events allows us to see the ways that gender is inscribed and reinscribed by the performance events. Judith Butler argues that gender is a performance, one that is solidified through repeated actions taken in line with the cultural scripts of what it means to be a “man” or a “woman” (or any other gendered identity).[2]  Queer studies, with its interest in the destabilization of a concept of essential gender, is baked into my consideration of gender as I examine not only how masculinity is constructed, but also how, within the apocalypses, it is constructed in a way that is fluid, unstable, and dissonant. 

By introducing considerations of gender performativity, my work is concerned with reaching back to the performance studies roots of performance criticism to fill out one of the unexplored avenues of performance analysis still available to performance critics. This chapter sets the groundwork for merging considerations of everyday gender performance with more traditional forms of performance as I highlight how performance events heighten awareness of, and often reinscribe, the gender performances happening in everyday life. This then shapes how people in general (and here men in particular) learn gendered behaviors from the media they consume. 

Chapter 2 surveys the fields of both apocalypse studies and masculinity studies as it argues that the two are understudied as a pair. The chapter begins with a consideration of the construction of “apocalypse” as a generic category by scholars. My understanding of “apocalypse” as a genre is influenced by both prototype theory (as engaged by John Collins and John Frow[3]) and the concept of constellation (as engaged by Hindy Najman, but initially from the work of Walter Benjamin[4]). I am not committed to a rigid definition of the genre but use the designation “apocalypse” as an etic category that allows me to examine texts that are similar in a variety of ways. I also point to how various common traits of texts that are classed as apocalypses lend themselves particularly well to a performance analysis of the texts. Finally, the chapter turns to an overview of masculinity studies within biblical scholarship. I argue that rather than focusing on “checklists” of masculinity that can be gleaned from the texts, it is more productive to examine masculinity as a worldview that is inscribed in the community through performances of apocalypses (among other texts). In this way, apocalypses reflect the established norms and ideals from their cultural contexts, while also serving as vehicles to change or shape those norms in the actions they call their audiences to engage.[5]

From there, I move into my topical chapters, each of which picks up a theme from the title of my dissertation (messiahs, monsters, and “men out of time”) in its examination of how each theme can illuminate our thinking about masculinity, apocalypse, and performance. I begin Chapter 3 with a consideration of messiahs and the messianic. I argue in this chapter that, first and foremost, “the messiah” is a male figure, and one that serves as a model of hegemonic masculinity for its audience. It is with messiah figures that I draw out the connection between masculinity and power, as hegemonic masculinities are ones that are specifically tied up with institutions of power. However, as a hegemonic ideal figure, the messiah served as an unattainable ideal for the everyday man. Within apocalypses, this figure becomes ever more divinized and superhuman. The chapter concludes with a case study, examining the figure of Jesus in Revelation as a figure who both maps well onto the pluriform messianic expectations but also falls well short of masculine norms in his crucified, leaking appearance as the slaughtered Lamb.

Chapter 4 looks at the function of monstrosity and masculinity. Drawing upon the work of Jeffrey Jerome Cohen, I consider how an examination of the two together can offer deeper insight into the cultural and social dynamics at play in apocalypses.[6] I examine the monstrous imagery used for the foreign kings in the Daniel story, intertwining insights from scholars like Anathea Portier-Young, who considers the monstrous imagery,[7] with those of Brian DiPalma,[8] who considers masculinity. I argue that these two work well together to emasculate the foreign rulers as a part of a project of resistance. I then turn to the divine entities within apocalypses. I argue the monstrous traits of God and Jesus in Revelation function to set them apart as wholly other, and thus not as a model for emulation for the audiences of the narrative. The chapter concludes with a consideration of the angels in the Apocalypses of Peter and Paul, where they are tasked with maintaining borders, and this includes the borders of appropriate gendered action. Yet angels do not always follow the rules they are set to enforce, and the chapter then turns to the Enochic Book of the Watchers where the angels themselves are the ones transgressing borders.  

My final chapter, Chapter 5, takes up both pseudepigraphy and time. It argues that apocalyptic pseudepigraphy rearranges the temporal narrative through the use of important male figures from the communal past. These figures are then used as an example of gendered comportment for the community of the apocalypse. It looks at how figures like Enoch, Ezra, and Paul import discourses surrounding them when they are incorporated as the main figures for the apocalypses that bear their names. The chapter first focuses on the scribal activity of Enoch and Ezra and how it pertains to their use as pseudepigraphic authors. Then I turn to an extended examination of the legacies of the masculinity of Paul that the author of the Apocalypse of Paul had to grapple with as a part of the use of Paul as a central figure in this narrative. 

Taken together, these themes illuminate the fluidity and instability of the depictions of masculinity in apocalypses. Rather than depicting one sole model of masculinity to aspire to, the apocalypses instead depict masculinities that exist at either end of a spectrum, with hypermasculine traits at one end and emasculating traits at the other.  Yet rather than having different figures for the two poles, apocalypses instead often have a sole figure exhibit traits from either end of the spectrum. This then causes a dissonance in the presentation of masculinity, one not resolved by the individual apocalypses. Rather, this dissonance, I argue, is a staple for how masculinities are depicted in apocalypses, the essential element of “apocalyptic masculinity.”  

My dissertation highlights how apocalypses serve the project of community and identity formation in the ancient world. While a chronologically diverse set of texts that do not uniformly address the same cultural contexts, apocalypses draw upon similar techniques as they instruct their male audience members how to be men. As these audiences heard these stories over and over again, the repetition of ideals helped to form their own masculinities as they resonated with or aspired to be like the various male characters presented to them.  Borne out of communities often in crisis and subjugated to foreign rule, apocalypses reflect the cognitive dissonance of a people trying to assert their own agency and claims to power while often lacking power. This dissonance is reflected in the way masculinity is depicted within the apocalypses, as they present us with men who are variously hypermasculine and completely unmasculine, often at the same time. These stories use messianic figures to imagine a future under the rule of God and his agents. They use monstrous imagery to emasculate their foreign rulers as well as to highlight the awe-full nature of God and his heavenly host. And they drew upon figures from the communal past as they rewrote them into cultural consciousness to make sense of connecting past to present as they looked to the future. The apocalypses are a part of the writing of the cultural scripts for men of the ancient world as they both encode the cultural norms and ideals that surround them and also rewrite or re-engrain the options for their audiences. While gender performativity is often an invisible, overlooked function of cultural construction, especially in a world where maleness is normative, this project has taken up the unveiling of the men of the apocalypses.

[1] For an overview of performance criticism see David Rhoads, “Performance Criticism: An Emerging Methodology in Second Testament Studies—Part I.” BTB 36.3 (2006): 118–33 and David Rhoads, “Performance Criticism: An Emerging Methodology in Second Testament Studies—Part II,” BTB 36.4 (2006): 165–73; for a more recent survey see Peter Perry, “Biblical Performance Criticism: Survey and Prospects,” Religions 10.117 (2019); For gospels and performance see works like Whitney Shiner, Proclaiming the Gospel (Harrisburg, PA: Trinity Press International, 2003) and Kelly Iverson, Performing Early Christian Literature: Audience Experience and Interpretation of the Gospels, (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2021); for Pauline letters in performance works like Bernhard Oestreich, Performance Criticism of the Pauline Letters, Translated by Lindsay Elias and Brent Blum, Biblical Performance Criticism vol 14 (Eugene, OR: Cascade, 2016); For prior works on Revelation and performance see works like Kayle De Waal, An Aural-Performance Analysis of Revelation 1 and 11, Studies in Biblical Literature 163 (New York: Peter Lang, 2015) and Peter Perry, Insights from Performance Criticism, (Minneapolis: Fortress Press, 2016). Interested parties may also look at the entirety of the Biblical Performance Criticism series published by Wipf and Stock. 

[2] Judith Butler, Gender Trouble: Feminism and the Subversion of Identity (New York: Routledge, 1999). 

[3] John Collins, Apocalypse, Prophecy, and Pseudepigraphy (Grand Rapids, MI: Eerdmans Publishing Company, 2015); John Frow, Genre (London: Routledge, 2006).

[4] Hindy Najman, “The Idea of Biblical Genre: From Discourse to Constellation” in Prayer and Poetry in the Dead Sea Scrolls and Related Literature: Essays in Honor of Eileen Schuller on the Occasion of Her 65th Birthday, eds. Jeremy Penner, Ken M Penner, and Cecilia Wassen (Leiden: Brill, 2012).

[5] This chapter engages the works of scholars like (but not limited to) Lynn Huber, Colleen Conway, Christopher Frilingos, and Stephen Moore as they have already begun to examine the relationship between masculinity and gender norms as they are presented in Revelation. 

[6] Jeffrey Jerome Cohen, ed, Monster Theory: Reading Culture (Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 1996).

[7]  Anathea Portier-Young, “Constructing Imperial and National Identities: Monstrous and Human Bodies in Book of Watchers, Daniel, and 2 Maccabees” Int 74.2 (2020): 159–70; Anathea Portier-Young, Apocalypse Against Empire: Theologies of Resistance in Early Judaism (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 2011).

[8] Brian DiPalma, Masculinities in the Court Tales of Daniel: Advancing Gender Studies in the Hebrew Bible (Abingdon, Oxon: Routledge, 2018).

Megan Wines earned her PhD in Theology with a concentration in New Testament and Early Christianity at Loyola University Chicago in 2025. Her research centers on apocalypse, gender, and performance. Outside of her dissertation work, she is also interested in the plethora of ways “religion” shows up in popular media and popular culture.